[PLUR]

Thanks. I partially disassembled the rear deck but it is glued in place and a real PITA to get in there. But I got far enough to get a snake camera in there and confirm the SR+ is wired up to the speakers. I also matched the colors to what you previously noted. Although the wire you showed as blue is purple-ish for me. I was also able to trace the wires back to a point next to the right rear passenger seat where I could tap into it.
But I could not pick up the polarity with the snake camera.

I'll tell you one thing though: I am not touching that rear deck again!

Are you planning to power these two rear through aftermarket amp+lc7i ? I'm thinking of this also. If you can post a pic of where these wires in right rear passenger seat for SR+, really appreciate it.

 

[twopedalwarrior]

Are you planning to power these two rear through aftermarket amp+lc7i ? I'm thinking of this also. If you can post a pic of where these wires in right rear passenger seat for SR+, really appreciate it.

Hi

Onlying thing on the rear being touched is the 8" woofer driver being summed up, that is all

 

[JWardell]

Hi All

New owner of a Model 3, only a couple weeks old and already taking it apart

I pulled out a very loved system from another car I am selling and decided to work with a local shop to get it installed.

Using the JL Fix86 as the bridge to a nice warm sounding McIntosh MC431 running a par of Boston Acoustics SPZ50's for the front stage. This is the first time I have had an audio shop do the install instead of my. My hands are a little gimped from mounting biking so it make this type of work much harder. The last steps they are trying to sort out is getting Fix86 to power up on its on, audio based signal, but they are having some difficulties. They were able to bypass the auto signal and get it to power on to confirm we are getting some audio. But it was running late when they got to it and we will reconvene next week. Since it is a long weekend I will read the manual and see if I can find out a way to get it to power up. I am sure the forums here have someone who's had the same situation.

Love this install, what a great use of the frunk and great way to show off your system. I didn't realize McIntosh did car audio

 

[fstr]

I wanted to provide a somewhat quick "how to" on upgrading the audio on the SR+ to utilize the unused speakers. I see many questions on all the forums on the SR+ audio, so hopefully this can be a consolidation of solutions thread. I will detail how to enable the rear deck speakers, the tweeters in the front doors and adding a sub. There are lots of info on adding subs. But specific to the SR+, there is no existing sub in the trunk to tap into.

As to the WHY? As many of us have noted, the partial premium audio leaves a lot to be desired. The woofers in the front doors only provide useful contribution when the volume is cranked to about 50%. And soon after pushing past 50% I didn't like the overall sound anymore. I also found I had to move the balance setting far back (to about the rear seats) to get a decent balance, otherwise all the sound came from the front. I wanted premium sound at reasonable listening levels. Additionally I am not the type that can be happy knowing there are speakers and somebody decided I couldn't use them.

At a high level to do these mods you would need: lots of speaker wire, t-taps, spade connectors, RCA cables, amp of choice, line out converter (LOC) of choice, bass blockers, and probably subwoofer wiring kit.
I tapped into the rear door speakers for the tweeters and rear deck. And I tapped into the woofers for the subwoofer.
For the amp I used: Alpine KTP-445U

On to the detailed steps:

1. Start at the drivers side front door. Remove the small piece of trim between the dash and drivers door. This will expose a pop rivet to remove the long trim piece that runs all the way from the dash to next to the drivers seat. Now you have the left side of the driver's foot well exposed. You need to tap into 12v accessory power. Follow these videos to find the 12v accessory power. Unfortunately on my car I found something already plugged into this point. So I simply traced the wire and t-tapped into this wire. You want to follow these instructions: Compliments of Ingineer
   
2. Next t-tap into the woofer and make new connections to the tweeter. Look at the photos in this thread and note the polarity of the wires. Compliments of _Travis_ Use bass blockers on the tweeters.
   
3. Now remove the trim on the pillar between the driver and rear. While you are at it remove all the trim to the back seat and remove the back seat. Just run your fingers underneath the front of the back seat to find 2 latch points, lift up and remove 2 wire harnesses.
4. Remove the trim on the left passenger door (2 bolts and pull the whole assembly off the door frame) to note the speaker wire color and polarity. Trace the wire to the pillar where you removed the trim. No photos sorry! T-tap into the wires. You should now have 3 pairs of wire and a single wire for 12v. Bonus tip: in the wire loom that comes through the door the 2 speaker wires are slight thicker gauge and are loosely twisted around each other.
5. Route the wires to the right rear passenger side. I stuffed it behind the carpet that runs up the side rear bench seat. Just keep it out of the way of all the important stuff below the rear seat.
6. Now start doing the same thing again on the right side of the car (minus the 12v accessory wire). I should probably mention you need to mark the heck out of all the wires to know which is which....Also the tweeter on this side is missing the connector so you will have to get creative in connecting your wire run here. I used t-taps and a lot of swearing!
7. Once you have all the wires at the backseat, remove the piece of the backseat backrest that don't fold forward (the side of the backrest that is on the right side up against the side of the car). I chose to install my amp in a cavity here. I chose this spot because it was close enough to attach the amp to the 12v under the backseat without running additional wire. This is also where you will find the wires for the rear deck speaker (right at the top. Its a connector with 2 wires on the one side and 6 on the other. Clearly the speakers are terminated in this connector with no hope of getting wired up in future).
8. But for now, lets install the LOC. I chose the LC7i because it had 6 inputs/outputs (with flexible settings on inputs), had good reviews about quality and is reasonably priced. I installed the LOC directly behind the backseat to the underside of the rear dash (the area with bare metal exposed. Hopefully my photos explain it better. The left side of the photo is towards the front of the car. I installed the rear door tap ins to the main input, nothing on channel 2, and the woofer tap ins to channel 3. I installed a 2amp inline fuse on the 12v accessory line and installed it on the +12v terminal with a jumper to the remote in. Maybe I should have used the power from the backseat terminal instead?? Find the nearest grounding point and also run a remote out back to the amp. Some notes here: The LC7i is the only piece of equipment that is visible. But it is barely visible. You can see I screwed up and have an additional hole where I mounted it. The RCA connectors take up space and I had to move the LC7i. When you drill the mounting holes for the self tapping screws be very careful not to drill through the cloth on the top!
   
9. Now run a short set of RCA cables back to the amp as well as the remote out wire. I chose to only run 1 set of RCA cables and set the amp to run both outputs from one input because (a) less cables and (b) I could then potentially wire the A pillar speakers to channel 2 in future.
10. At the amp I wired the front outputs to the tweeters and the rear outputs to the rear deck. I cut the rear deck wires from the connector, leaving enough wire on the connector in case I need to re-attach in future. Photos speak louder than words but basically what you are looking for are the 4 wires in the back. The blue and black wires in the front are the wires that run through the connector. I suspect these are for the FM transmitter in the rear headliner (look for bonus photo). The green and yellow are right rear and the purple? and white are left. I removed headliners and rear deck (which is glued in place). And it was a PITA to get it all remove far enough to just get a snake camera routed to figure out the wire locations and colors. If nothing else, anybody that benefits from this post should overnight me six packs of beer for this effort! I could not figure out the polarity. I really would appreciate it if someone with a more discerning ear could figure out the polarity and let us all know.
    
    
    
11. Now clean up your wires and put everything back in place except the rear seat if you want to play along with the sub install (below).
    

 

[fstr]

There are a lot of info on the web for a model 3 sub install. So I will not be going through a detailed install. The only difference with the SR+ is routing the signal from the woofers instead of the existing sub. Perhaps I could have used the rear door mids....I have no idea, the woofers just made more sense to me.
Also I am not a big subwoofer person, I just wanted to round out the sound in my car.

With that in mind, I wanted to do a proof of concept install to see if I could fit a sub into the cavity where the stock sub is installed before I move to the sub trunk.
Now don't judge my woodworking too harshly. Like I said this was a proof of concept. I also didn't want to buy anything before testing. To that end I used scrap wood and had a very old Infinity Basslink lying around, so I ripped it apart and used both the amp and the speaker.. It is a 10" and really what should be used if going after this install location is a 8". The 10" would barely fit and is too big for the box. But I will use this setup for a few weeks before making up my mind.

I didn't take any photos of the box build but I will describe it below. I pulled the liner out of the way after install to get these photos for the visual part of my presentation.

The build was basically as follows: I used the plastic piece in this cavity as a template and did a lot of "visual measurement" to create the front of the box. I cut it oversize and then trimmed it down to where it would fit where the front of the box would sit and also further back. I avoided MDF so that I could use a thinner piece. The sidewalls are 3/4" MDF. The deepest part of the box (including front and back should not exceed 7". Once all the side pieces where attached I used construction adhesive to glue it all up and seal all gaps. The next day with the glue dry I cut off an inch on the right side (rear of the car) and tapered it to the left. Then I installed the speaker and back panel with weatherstripping.

So far I think it will work for me. But it will not satisfy the bass lovers!

 

[fstr]

In terms of "bang for the buck", the rear deck speakers easily wins it for me.
But adding a sub makes a noticeable difference. I can now enjoy my music at way lower volumes without feeling the need to crank it up.
I still need more time with the tweeters but I don't think they add much. I suspect Tesla compromised for the lack of Tweeters with how they set the equalizer for the front midranges.
I am still thinking about how/if I want to enable the A-pillar speakers. I ordered a few parts from Amazon to run some tests. I also had a quick peek at the wiring and it seems like the right speaker is run under the headliner to the left speaker. From the left speaker the wiring runs towards the back of the car. I need to do some digging to figure out where it emerges from the headliner. I'm thinking if I enable these speakers that I would want a way to disable them. Kind of like the immersive sound setting but obviously not from the main screen.

 

[fstr]

Are you planning to power these two rear through aftermarket amp+lc7i ? I'm thinking of this also. If you can post a pic of where these wires in right rear passenger seat for SR+, really appreciate it.

Are you planning to power these two rear through aftermarket amp+lc7i ? I'm thinking of this also. If you can post a pic of where these wires in right rear passenger seat for SR+, really appreciate it.

I created a separate tread on the topic to cover it in as much detail as possible and to separate partial premium from premium audio discussions.
https://teslaownersonline.com/threads/how-to-partial-premium-upgraded-audio-sr.12881/

 

[PLUR]

I wanted to provide a somewhat quick "how to" on upgrading the audio on the SR+ to utilize the unused speakers. I see many questions on all the forums on the SR+ audio, so hopefully this can be a consolidation of solutions thread. I will detail how to enable the rear deck speakers, the tweeters in the front doors and adding a sub. There are lots of info on adding subs. But specific to the SR+, there is no existing sub in the trunk to tap into.

Thanks fstr!
I'm going to attempt to do this, could you help answer few newbie questions for my clarification
For the LC7i, the 8 wire total going to "Main Input" and "Ch3" are from 4 wires (L&Right woofers) and 4 wires (L&R rear door speakers)?
For the left tweeter wiring power, you find the connection wires inside the small piece of trim between the dash and drivers door? For right tweeter you mention on (6) there's no connector so we have to run wires through the door wire loom?
The remote turn on for the sub is from the signal remote out of lc7i?

I forgot reading from somewhere but someone did frequency graph of all the speakers and certain speakers drop off in freq so I think the woofer tap is best choice since woofer signal has more low range frequency. For the tweeters signal from 4" midrange is good, but I wonder if taping from the tweeter signal up in front of the front dash is also a possibility. I saw this chart that point to saying the mid tweeter speakers might be working so could be able to tap for signal.

Thanks again!

 

[fstr]

Thanks fstr!
I'm going to attempt to do this, could you help answer few newbie questions for my clarification
For the LC7i, the 8 wire total going to "Main Input" and "Ch3" are from 4 wires (L&Right woofers) and 4 wires (L&R rear door speakers)?
For the left tweeter wiring power, you find the connection wires inside the small piece of trim between the dash and drivers door? For right tweeter you mention on (6) there's no connector so we have to run wires through the door wire loom?
The remote turn on for the sub is from the signal remote out of lc7i?

I forgot reading from somewhere but someone did frequency graph of all the speakers and certain speakers drop off in freq so I think the woofer tap is best choice since woofer signal has more low range frequency. For the tweeters signal from 4" midrange is good, but I wonder if taping from the tweeter signal up in front of the front dash is also a possibility. I saw this chart that point to saying the mid tweeter speakers might be working so could be able to tap for signal.

Thanks again!

For the LC7i, the 8 wire total going to "Main Input" and "Ch3" are from 4 wires (L&Right woofers) and 4 wires (L&R rear door speakers)?

Correct, but rear door speakers -> Main Input, and front door woofers -> "Ch3"

For the left tweeter wiring power, you find the connection wires inside the small piece of trim between the dash and drivers door?

No, it is right next to the woofer wiring when you remove the large piece of trim. Look at this video. you can skip the first triangle piece. The second is the small piece I was referring to that will reveal the pop rivet. The large piece hides the wires. Look at this photo. But do not follow the video for the 12v accessory wire. Look at my previous link for that.

For right tweeter you mention on (6) there's no connector so we have to run wires through the door wire loom?

No. I was able to just reach enough of the wire before it went through the door. Your mileage may vary.

The remote turn on for the sub is from the signal remote out of lc7i?

Correct, both amps are switched from the remote out signal on the LC7i. The important point is to ensure the LC7i turns off with the car. Easy to test as you can leave the trunk open and lock the car

I forgot reading from somewhere but someone did frequency graph of all the speakers and certain speakers drop off in freq so I think the woofer tap is best choice since woofer signal has more low range frequency. For the tweeters signal from 4" midrange is good, but I wonder if taping from the tweeter signal up in front of the front dash is also a possibility. I saw this chart that point to saying the mid tweeter speakers might be working so could be able to tap for signal.

The problem is that the mid tweeter is singular, not plural. I decided to first go with easy and re-use the signal from the rear doors before making things more complex by hunting for wires in the dash. I only wired up the tweeters yesterday so not much opinion on those yet

Good luck!

 

[fritter63]

So.... SR+ is on the way. I've found OEM model 3 subs on eBay, etc. Anybody thought about getting the wiring harness from a salvage? Would it be just as easy as installing it all, or do you think it would be software limited?

 

[R1Fast]

For those who have been running aftermarket amps (>= 1000w) for a while. Have you had any negative side effects of any kind?

I've held off my own install primarily due to potential consequences of amp draw. Even with the gains nearly at zero, my setup could draw 100a+ at medium volumes; concerned what the impact would be to the pack and 12v in daily use. The only solutions I can really think of are A) keep the volume below maybe ~5 or only install the sub amp (JL 1200/1 and two Mosconi AS100.4s).

I also read earlier in this thread that the dc-dc on the penthouse is capable of about ~200a. Has anyone found confirmation around this and/or where a 'safe' threshold might be?

 

[LRonHoyabembe]

Hello all! Back again. I really wanted my LC2i back, and was very unhappy with how my car audio shop installed everything previously. So, I got rid of the mechanical relay, and got this 60A SSR + 4ohm 100W resistor circuit set up. Works like a dream. I was, however, surprised to learn that SSRs still read the same voltage when switched off, but at ~0.07mA. This is negated by my resistor in parallel, but I found it pretty interesting.

Next step: fix the rest of the car audio shop's mistakes. They only wired left channel audio, so I'm gonna need to tap into the right channel and run that back to the LC2i. Shouldn't be too hard since @fstr mentioned how to get that above.

Another thing I'm pissed about: the car audio people drilled 3 holes into the metal bracket that connects to ground on the penthouse 12V. This is the location they chose to mount an 80A mechanical relay. Wtf??? I called the shop to complain some more, and the dude that did my install was fired. Not surprised.

Anywho, here's my "final" install:

 

[LRonHoyabembe]

Hooked up my right channel audio this evening. I want to caution anyone with an SR+ following along with some of the older posts here: my right channel’s wire colors were orange and BLACK, not orange and grey like someone else posted. I accidentally began to splice a grey wire when I realized it was a different gauge... then I took off the door panel and, lo and behold, the speaker had orange and black.

I reconnected my accidental splice with a butt splice connector and did the same with the audio. I really should have waited and got T-taps...

 

[Goodtohave]

I apologize in advance if it has been covered but this is a long thread!

On Th Sr+ are the rear speakers there? I think someone said yes and in the pics the wires are in the plugs from the pillar?

Thanks,

 

[LRonHoyabembe]

My Model 3 is at the service center for that "12V power reduced" error I got a few weeks ago. I only had it happen twice; both times the car sat for a few hours w/ the doors open, so I assumed it was the 12V battery getting drained. I wasn't going to bother with it, but Tesla said I should still schedule an appointment to make sure everything's ok. They have parts ready to replace the battery AND the power conversion system, but said they're going to test the new 12V battery first to determine if a new PCS is necessary.

Well, they put in a new battery and got an error saying "12V battery not supported". They said they've never seen this error before, and aren't sure what the cause is. They said it could be the PCS, but they don't know and may need engineer escalation.

Any chance I caused this by getting power from the DC-DC converter? I only have a single amp and it's ~300W @ 4ohms, so I would be very surprised if I ever pulled enough power to cause harm. Even if I pulled too much power, wouldn't it just trip an electronic fuse and reset? I'm nervous to reconnect my system when I get the car back if they do find that the PCS is causing the problems.

 

[_Travis_]

Hey everyone,

I think there's an entirely different group of people on this thread now than there was when I started my project a few months ago, but I've just now finished my installation so I wanted to give a summary, along with corrections and apologies for all the misinformation I posted in the past.

I ended up installing three-way components in the front and a subwoofer in the trunk. I installed the aftermarket tweeters, mids, and woofers in the factory speaker locations using 3D-printed brackets that I designed. Those are all available on GrabCAD if they're of use to anyone. I also made a fiberglass box and put my subwoofer in the trunk, right where the OEM subwoofer went.

I installed three amplifiers and two DSPs in the trunk well and powered all of it from the penthouse 12V terminal using the VC_Left trailer pin for the turn-on signal. I put a sheet of plywood over the top with vents and a fan for cooling.

The insight from @Jamie Sibley was completely correct, and after installing a 60A relay and a 2.4Ω, 100W resistor, my stereo (and my car) power up reliably, no problems.

And just for the sake of having everything in one place, here's the data I collected on the premium sound system, which I've posted previously but have since corrected. (The wiring colors are different for SR/SR+ and I don't have those)

And thanks again to @Ingineer, @JWardell, and @Defjukie for the information and help you've provided.

I've written up all of this in much more detail on my blog, which you can read if you're having trouble falling asleep.

 

[eXntrc]

Wow @_Travis_, just wow. I wish I had more time to reply but I'm headed out of the country again. I just wanted to take a moment to say a big THANK YOU for documenting everything that you did in such great detail. Those are an amazing series of pages!

I have so many questions, but I'll focus on these:

Traditionally, when we hook up our amplifiers for the first time we charge them slowly using a resistor to limit current and prevent damage to the amplifiers and/or the battery, and after that the amplifiers stay charged as long as the battery is charged. But the 12V converter in the Model 3 switches on and off when the car goes to sleep. If we just connected our amplifiers directly to the converter, our amplifiers would discharge when the car went to sleep and then try to charge from zero up to ~14V instantly when the car woke back up. This would pull tens or hundreds of amps for a millisecond or two, causing the converter to trip on over-current. Then we'd get error messages saying "Cannot Maintain Vehicle Power" and the car would refuse to drive for the next hour.

I noticed you're running an incredible amount of power in your install. 3 amplifiers and a total of 2300 watts. I'm curious how important you feel this step would be for say a single 1,000 watt class D amplifier? And if it's necessary, could you go into a little more detail about how this is wired up? I see the small wiring diagram in that section and I see the link to the solid state relay and the 100w resistor, but it would be tremendously helpful if you could show a photo of how those are connected together in addition to the wiring diagram.

Next I checked waveforms for clipping and found none. None at all. Even on the subwoofer, even at max volume. That's amazing in an OEM system. The Model 3's premium stereo is producing perfect sine waves at 45V. Additionally, the OEM system gives a perfectly linear increase on all channels. Typically, OEM systems that have subwoofers stop boosting the subwoofer after a certain point because it's undersized compared to the rest of the system and they don't want to damage it, but the Model 3 premium subwoofer goes all the way up. ... If all you want to do is install an aftermarket subwoofer, that's pretty easy. You can just tap into the OEM subwoofer signal on the rear OEM amplifier and feed that into your aftermarket amplifier

To be honest, I was completely shocked to read this. Every day I feel like the subwoofer isn't doing what I think it should in the car. I too have the premium audio, but I swear I can't even hear the subwoofer unless the main volume is up over 70%. The door speakers always sound far louder than the sub. Now, I'm not planning to go the full DSP route but I fully expected to need a LC2i to deal with the low volume cut-off of the sub. Are you saying the LC2i shouldn't be necessary? Or am I misunderstanding this portion of your post?

That's all for now. Thank you again so much for taking the time to write everything up in such detail. Those pages are a true godsend for anyone wanting to get serious about aftermarket audio in the 3.

 

[JWardell]

Hey everyone,

I think there's an entirely different group of people on this thread now than there was when I started my project a few months ago, but I've just now finished my installation so I wanted to give a summary, along with corrections and apologies for all the misinformation I posted in the past.

I ended up installing three-way components in the front and a subwoofer in the trunk. I installed the aftermarket tweeters, mids, and woofers in the factory speaker locations using 3D-printed brackets that I designed. Those are all available on GrabCAD if they're of use to anyone. I also made a fiberglass box and put my subwoofer in the trunk, right where the OEM subwoofer went.

View attachment 26387 View attachment 26388 View attachment 26389 View attachment 26390

I installed three amplifiers and two DSPs in the trunk well and powered all of it from the penthouse 12V terminal using the VC_Left trailer pin for the turn-on signal. I put a sheet of plywood over the top with vents and a fan for cooling.

View attachment 26391 View attachment 26392

The insight from @Jamie Sibley was completely correct, and after installing a 60A relay and a 2.4Ω, 100W resistor, my stereo (and my car) power up reliably, no problems.

And just for the sake of having everything in one place, here's the data I collected on the premium sound system, which I've posted previously but have since corrected.

View attachment 26393 View attachment 26405 View attachment 26395

And thanks again to @Ingineer, @JWardell, and @Defjukie for the information and help you've provided.

I've written up all of this in much more detail on my blog, which you can read if you're having trouble falling asleep.

Awesome install and super informative blog post! Well done and thank you for going through all the EXTRA time on top of installation to document everything with nice photos and diagrams!

 

[_Travis_]

Wow @_Travis_, just wow. I wish I had more time to reply but I'm headed out of the country again. I just wanted to take a moment to say a big THANK YOU for documenting everything that you did in such great detail. Those are an amazing series of pages!

I have so many questions, but I'll focus on these:

I noticed you're running an incredible amount of power in your install. 3 amplifiers and a total of 2300 watts. I'm curious how important you feel this step would be for say a single 1,000 watt class D amplifier? And if it's necessary, could you go into a little more detail about how this is wired up? I see the small wiring diagram in that section and I see the link to the solid state relay and the 100w resistor, but it would be tremendously helpful if you could show a photo of how those are connected together in addition to the wiring diagram.

To be honest, I was completely shocked to read this. Every day I feel like the subwoofer isn't doing what I think it should in the car. I too have the premium audio, but I swear I can't even hear the subwoofer unless the main volume is up over 70%. The door speakers always sound far louder than the sub. Now, I'm not planning to go the full DSP route but I fully expected to need a LC2i to deal with the low volume cut-off of the sub. Are you saying the LC2i shouldn't be necessary? Or am I misunderstanding this portion of your post?

That's all for now. Thank you again so much for taking the time to write everything up in such detail. Those pages are a true godsend for anyone wanting to get serious about aftermarket audio in the 3.

Thanks again

So keep in mind, my system is "rated for" 2300W but in reality it's using 80-100W normally and maybe 500-600W for fractions of a second at a time on heavy bass notes if I have it turned up really high. The charging circuit isn't concerned about that. The purpose of the charging circuit is to limit the current pulled by the amplifier at the moment when the car wakes up and the penthouse 12V turns on. The capacitors inside the aftermarket amplifiers have to charge up from zero to 14V, and they try to do this instantly, which causes huge bursts of current resulting in the "Cannot Maintain Vehicle Power" errors that so many people have seen. I'd recommend using a charging circuit for any aftermarket amplifier, regardless of size. Even if you're not getting error messages now, the startup current spikes might damage your amplifiers or your car's power systems over time. I went the fancy route and bought a big solid state relay, but a plain mechanical automotive relay should work just fine and that'll cost $5-10. @Jamie Sibley 's posts show more detail about how to hook those up. I connect my turn-on signal to the relay and to the Remote In on the first of my two DSPs, and then the Remote Out from that first DSP turns on the second DSP and all three amps. This creates a short time delay that ensures the relay is closed before my amps turn on. I'd recommend doing the same thing on your system because that short time delay prevents a lot of potential problems.

As for the subwoofer, the OEM subwoofer is pretty small and the factory system is designed such that most of your bass should come from the front door woofers. You have two 7" woofers right next to you compared to one 8" woofer 10' away behind the trunk liner. My point wasn't that it's particularly powerful, just that it's very linear, which is what we want when using those signals to drive an aftermarket system. The OEM speaker levels don't change with respect to each other as OEM volume changes, and that means we can use the OEM volume control with our aftermarket equipment and we'll get the same sound profile regardless of OEM volume level.

And regarding the LC2i, whether you need that depends on the amp you're using. The LC2i provides a low-pass filter, which we don't need since we already have a low-passed subwoofer signal. Some amps accept 50V speaker signals and some only accept 2V line-level signals, and the LC2i shifts speaker-level signals down to line-level for amps that only accept line-level. Some amps have the ability to turn themselves on using the audio signal, like the LC2i does, and some don't, so the LC2i also provides a turn-on signal for the amp if the amp can't turn itself on using audio and you don't want to use the VC_Left turn-on signal. So if your amp accepts speaker-level input and either your amp can turn itself on using the audio signal or you're willing to use the VC_Left turn-on signal, then no, you don't need the LC2i.

 

[LRonHoyabembe]

Wow @_Travis_, just wow. I wish I had more time to reply but I'm headed out of the country again. I just wanted to take a moment to say a big THANK YOU for documenting everything that you did in such great detail. Those are an amazing series of pages!

I have so many questions, but I'll focus on these:

I noticed you're running an incredible amount of power in your install. 3 amplifiers and a total of 2300 watts. I'm curious how important you feel this step would be for say a single 1,000 watt class D amplifier? And if it's necessary, could you go into a little more detail about how this is wired up? I see the small wiring diagram in that section and I see the link to the solid state relay and the 100w resistor, but it would be tremendously helpful if you could show a photo of how those are connected together in addition to the wiring diagram.

To be honest, I was completely shocked to read this. Every day I feel like the subwoofer isn't doing what I think it should in the car. I too have the premium audio, but I swear I can't even hear the subwoofer unless the main volume is up over 70%. The door speakers always sound far louder than the sub. Now, I'm not planning to go the full DSP route but I fully expected to need a LC2i to deal with the low volume cut-off of the sub. Are you saying the LC2i shouldn't be necessary? Or am I misunderstanding this portion of your post?

That's all for now. Thank you again so much for taking the time to write everything up in such detail. Those pages are a true godsend for anyone wanting to get serious about aftermarket audio in the 3.

If you don't have some kind of signal processor providing sub output, and you're just running a door woofer tap to a LOC, I recommend the LC2i to make up for lost bass. I've had both of these setups and the LC2i really helps the lows. BUT I don't have any other DSP's like @_Travis_