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      05-30-2010, 12:53 AM   #1
canyondrive
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Drives: 135i
Join Date: May 2010
Location: Silicon Valley

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10" Sub enclosure made by TPLSM3 - another review, and future Zune HD hack

After getting all the shipment and waiting for a three-day wkend, I was finally able to spend some time with my car today to put a subwoofer on a Hi-Fi system.
All thanks to Ben for making such a nice enclosure for me. I wouldn't even consider modding or subbing my car if I didn't see such a clever hack thing.



Review -
The installation was quite easy, following past DYI and wiring directions on this forum. It's such a cool thing that all I was working was in the trunk area.


Mr. Ben did such a nice contouring of the enclosure, the fiberglass goes all the way to the crease of the carpet trim and blends in nicely to the interior. It does look pretty nice already, but If we are able to find the source for the BMW carpet, I bet we can fool a lot of people as OEM accessory.


I made total of three 3/16" holes to the trunk carpet trim. The enclosure fits in nicely without any guessing the positioning.

I don't think I have such good ears nor I didn't want the audio to be base-heavy. I wasn't convinced enough that I need the top-of-the line amp and sub, so I went with somewhat economical route of getting a JL 10" W3 and JL G1300 amp (instead of W6 and 500/1 or something) , along with okay wiring kit and PAC remote line converter thing. The whole project cost is about $700 so far including the enclosure, buying everything new while trying to look cheapest price online.

For me, I wanted the sub to look as non-childish as possible, so I looked for a sub with minimal graphics - which happens to be JL subs. I'm still waiting for a mesh grill (on backorder) to complete the sub-tle installation project.
Ben actually waited on my sub selection and made the depth specific to my sub, so that it won't waste any unnecessary space of trunk.

I'm a bit embarrassed to say the whole installation took from 9ish to 4ish.. Since I'm a slowpoke when it comes to working on cars and end up being inefficient, partly due to the fact I live in an small apt and don't have a private garage. I also don't like to be seen working on my car too much so I try to minimize my exposure with things open around cars. So I did things like wiring and mounting in the room, bringing the whole thing down to the car and mounting it right away.

As for the sound, there is potential. That's all I found today. I had a trip to Target after the install and turning the gain back and fourth, twice. On freeway I can feel the bass, which wasn't there before. Obviously I'm not an audiophile of any kind, it would take me a while to know what sounds better. Good thing is that Ben made my enclosure just shallow enough to fit with W3, and it doesn't touch the trunk board when I need to tweak the amp settings.

As for the amp, I'm not sure if I got the right one- JL G1300. A lot of members here have 500/1 or something around $400, but I wasn't convinced that I can tell the difference as a audio beginner and didn't want to spend so much money. I also found a couple of posts about Class D amp and radio receptions issues, which influenced me to lean towards class AB amp (I have no idea that they mean though). If anybody has strong opinions about these amps, I'd be interested to know what you think.

I also bought an adjustable bass boost knob from JL, since I thought it might work better to adjust the sub gain while sitting in the car. It turns out it doesn't control gain, but adjust the amount of bass boost - which sounds kind of crappy bass.
In my opinion, this just messes things up in the overall audio quality and I should rather fine tune with the regular gain settings.



Side note - this is my next project - Zune HD with subscription is working well for me, and I want to be able to listen on my car without touching the screen (because it's dangerous and I don't like touching non-tactile things). So I am thinking of a custom cradle with remote, or remote sensor extended from the HD dock. Currently Zune HD doesn't sell any car kits or remotes except a desktop type dock, which can be powered by our USB ports.
Currently I just double-sticked the HD dock on top of ashtray and double-sticked the remote, which looks way too tacky. I'm thinking of hiding the dock somewhere but extending the remote IR sensor, so it can be still controlled by the remote.
If I had too much time, I might want to modify the shape of the remote, so it looks more BMW-ish. I don't think I can ever figure out to integrate to the idrive, though.
Appreciate 0