Figure I'd post up with some progress pics from over the holidays of my stereo setup. I've been piecing things together for a few months now and recently started putting it all together.

Parts include:
HU: DEH-80prs
4ch AMP: MMATS SQ4160 (4x160watts per channel)
Monoblock AMP: MMATS D3500.1 (2700watts @ 1ohm)
Subs: Pioneer TS-W3002D4 12in (2 x dual 4ohm voice coil subs wired down to 1ohm)
Alternator: 235amp Truck Alternator
Wires: Combination of 0/1 Gauge power/ground, 4 Gauge Sub wires, 10 gauge speaker wires

I still need to wire up the passenger door speaker/tweeter and to use my leftover 0/1 gauge wires to perform a big 3 upgrade but as it sits now, it sounds pretty damn good. The subs hit pretty hard for being untuned and the stock speakers sound surprisingly good with a decent amp pushing them. You'll notice in the back seat some white curved plexiglass. I got them roughly cut/bent to size and shape to cover up the areas around the amps to give it a clean look (hide all the wires and line up with the plastic hatch panels. I'll be covering those with the same carpet material i used on the amp rack. The Radio bezel i've also made out of plexiglass. Plans are to cover that with some leftover Di-Noc carbon fiber vinyl wrap i have lying around and to mount my 7in tablet right under the head unit. Im contemplating redoing the bezel to push the head unit up a few more mm as the tablet will be butted up with the bottom of the bezel/dash plastic when mounted. Its not a huge deal as it'll fit regardless but i'll have to look to see if i can actually push the head unit up any further to grant the tablet some extra space. I opted to do a tablet AND a headunit as i didnt want to rely soley on the tablet as my media device. It connects to the head unit through bluetooth and the sound quality through this is pretty damn impressive. I'll also have a plug connected to the radio (usb) so that if i need to i can charge the tablet or if i need to for whatever reason i can access the tablet's media via a wired connection (although bluetooth 3 is good enough for this). I'm in dire need of performing the big 3 upgrade though as i cant maintain sustained heavy bass. Drains the battery pretty quick if its cranked up. Hopefully the big3 will solve that issue though and i wont have to look into throwing in a cap on top of everything. Im sure I could use a new battery too which should help. Once I track down the source of my battery drain I'll replace the battery but till then theres no need in having a new battery ruined by whatevers draining the current one. Still contemplating what I'll be doing with the hvac controls. Seeing as how I never use AC or heat since its just my nice weather weekend toy, I'm probably going to attempt to make the glove box its new home.

I'll get some more pics posted as i make more progress. Just figured I'd share these in the interim.





















Let me know what you guys think. Hope you guys like the progress so far.

 

That's really awesome setup, specially the tablet.
I want to do something similar so will be reading up on HVAC relocate.

 

Who's RCA cables are those? I need some 90* cables for my situation.

 

bad_408_vert: Thanks for the props. I probalby wont tackle the HVAC portion of this project till the weather warms up here (spring/summer). I'll post up though once I do.

Black_Z28: Not sure on the Brand of the RCA's. Bought them off fleabay. Just search for Triple Shielded 4 Channel RCA Cable 20' (20 Feet) and they'll pull up. Im sure you could find better quality RCAs out there that have 90* plug ends but I cant complain about these, especially for the price. I'm not getting any interference at all with them. I have my RCAs ran from opposite sides of the car from the main power cable but once the RCA's get to the back hatch platform, and run underneath my 4 channel amp theres a stretch of RCAs (the length of the 4 channel amp) thats running parallel to the power/ground cables for that amp. I built in wire holders underneath my amp rack to keep them as far from each other as possible but they're only a few inches away from it at that point. The triple shielding appears to be doing its job well. Not sure if it affects your situation but these RCA's are only 90* plugs on one end. The other end are straight RCA plug ends.

 

Stinger makes very good RCAs..It important to get get RCAs, because cheap ones with have interference noise and wont sound as good...

 

That's exactly what I need. I currently have KnuKonceptz RCAs, they're nice, but I'm running into clearance issues behind my radio, so I had to use an adapter. I don't have any clearance issues at the amp, and I'm using a amp rack for the hatch. I'm also trying to find a 6 channel RCA, right now I'm using one 2 channel, and one 4. I'll keep searching. But thanks for the review on the cables.

 

How do you like those amps?

Ive heard good things about pioneer subs, have you had a listen yet?

Lastly, what other speakers are you using throughout the car?

 

Loving the amps and subs so far. The subs sound really good and hit harder than I'll crank them to, especialy for being untuned. The 4 channel amp is really good too. Really bring the stock speakers to life

 

How do you plan to mount the tablet?

 

wut other speakers will the 2nd amp be powering? (ie- doors, sails, hatch and wut brand/model)

 

Is that a Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7" I spy in the picture? If it is I very much doubt that the HU USB port will supply the power it takes to properly charge that thing, remember it needs a 2 amp USB and the one in the HU is most likely a .5 amp. I'm looking to do something similar but I'm looking to mount the HU out of the way aswell as the A/C controls (gotta maintain HEAT around here) so all that is visible in the dash is the Tablet.

 

Yes it is a samsung galaxy tab 2 7.0. If it turns out that the head unit cannot supply enough power to the tablet I'm not worried I'll just pick up a charging adapter (plugs into usb wire) and wire it up to the acc. cigarette lighter plug behind the plastics so that nothing is visible. This would totally be doable if you were just wanting the tablet visible and went the route of amps/converter for the tablet to amp (c6 thread was started not too long ago using this method) if you absolutely have to have the hvac controls front and center. I ultimately didnt want to rely on the tablet as being the primary source for music media in the car which is why im going the route im on. The headunit allows me to have an active/live crossover setup which grants me greater flexibility in fine tuning the sound setup than the tablet would allow me to have which is an added bonus.

I plan on de-stitching the mounts in an extra tablet case that I bought and affix it to the bezel i made. I've got a couple ideas im going to look into to dress it up a bit for when the tablet isnt mounted but overall i think it'll be just fine aesthetically.

 

I've seen how it was done in the C6 thread, thats not what I want, like you I still prefer to have the actual HU, I just would relocate it somewhere hidden but easily accessible, like vertically in the center console "cubby" so its hidden when the lid is closed.

As it sits right now my Pioneer HU is in the dash and my Tab 2 7" is in a "folio" case in the passenger seat with a 3.5mm stereo headphone connecting it to the aux in.

 

Those RCA's are xscorpians, they came with my amp kit. The shielding works real nice, I had to run mine on the passenger side with my power runs the whole way(didn't want to, and I tried to separate them as much as possible) Did you hook up that tiny blue wire that is on both ends with the fork connector as a ground? I didn't know what is was for so I just left it...

 

Mine didn't come with those blue wires. Those are probably for your remote wire

 

Ya, I didn't really know. I thought so too but then the kit also had a separate wire for the remote. I figured it could possibly be a ground for the shield....

 

Made some more progress on the setup today.

First off it was looking like my tweeters were blown over the years from the stock setup. When i hooked everything up I started with the gain all the way down and slowly krept it up on the High Pass and during some rock music with heavy percussions/symbols the tweeters never made more than a whisper. I started hunting for some decent deals on speakers and got a good deal on a set of infinity kappas components and 6x9s for the rear (i know the consensus is to just ditch the rear speakers and go all out on the fronts but i prefer to have the rear speakers for fill but unfortunately the stockers wont hold up to the amp). I've only gotten the components in and installed, hopefully the rears come in on monday or tuesday. The Kappa components sound pretty damn good thus far. I havent tuned the head unit yet since I havent gotten the rears in yet but as it sits, it sounds incredibly better than the stockers. The speakers fit perfectly obviously and the tweeter pods slipped right into the stock location ALMOST as if they were built for the car.

I used my extra 0 gauge wires for the big 3 upgrade. Finished the last wire of that today (Was rocking the big 2 for a few due to cold weather).

I played around some more with the radio bezel and positioning of the tablet and decided i didnt like having the tablet down low. It made it harder to operate due to the angle and the shifter preventing a natural hand position while trying to navigate the tablet. I'm going to move the head unit to the bottom and the tablet up top. After positioning everything I'm starting to like the looks of this setup better than my first. I'm going to have to remake the bezel and I've got some new ideas on how to support the tablet I'm going to experiment with. Baby steps i guess.

Here's some eye candy for now.





For those of you wondering, I'm using N7 Music Player App for my interface. This app is awesome. It has a very stylish menu for searching artists and you can pinch/spread to zoom into an album art view or vice versa. It also has a more classic/professional looking menu for navigating if the pinch/spread isnt your cup of tea.

I've got a video i took on my phone of the setup in action thus far but the clip is way too big to upload. I'll have to figure out how to compress it so i can upload it. Shows off using pandora and N7 controlling both through the headunit and both straight from the tablet. The sound quality is decent to boot considering its recorded off a cell phone. Gimme a bit and I'll try to get that compressed.

 

Great install! I like to see the tablet idea getting more popular. I just installed a Tab2 7.0 in my 2008 C6 as well (thread link). Good luck with the rest of your project!

 

Street Wires makes some very nice 90* rca adapters (ZNADPRS),so you can use them with any rca cables.

I wouldn't crank it up for very long running just off the battery, but you should be good with it running.

BTW, nice sub amp!

 

Hey hey, hopefully you approve of the amps new home Lol yea definitely not good on just the battery. My battery is failing (has been for the past year or so) but before i replace it i want to run some tests to track down a drain. I've upgraded my alternator to a 253 amp one and it seems to be supporting the amp/subs fairly well but when the subs hit hard and fast i still notice it taxing my battery/alternator combo. I'm hoping that once i find the drain and resolve that (I'm hoping the old stock alternator was the drain) and replace the battery with a deep cycle battery i'll have everything i need to support the subs and amps. If not i might be throwing in a cap to the mix but I'm really hoping it doesn't come to that.

Thanks man, checked out your build thread and my oh my what an amazing job you did. I can only hope my setup ends up half as good as yours. I'm a little limited in the tools department but we'll see what i can muster up. How are you liking the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 rooted? Do you have it overclocked at all? How are you liking the tab for music overall?

I'm liking mine a lot but i started to get a little worried that the tab 2 7.0 wasnt up to snuff spec wise. During music playback i would get intermittent skips (not sure if its caused by other processes running in the back and spiking in proc or mem usage) and the prospect of overclocking the tab 2 7.0 to alleviate this issue is tempting. The plus side of things is that I've only ever had the skipping issue during music playback via speakers (either the tabs or through the headphone jack) and it hasnt skipped at all when I'm transmitting through bluetooth (fingers crossed it stays that way). Maybe its just sending over the music file in a data format instead of just streaming the audio outright which could explain why it hasnt skipped via bluetooth.