Mike5215

I was contacted on my W221/216 Audio Blog this weekend by an S Class owner who's going for the Prima install and a custom tuning configuration, leaving the speakers stock.

This is big news on a couple of levels. Beside eliminating the expense and labor of cracking open all four doors to replace speakers, it eliminates the need to ever open a door panel at all. Each individual speaker in the W221/216 has its own dedicated channel coming off the factory amp, so the whole Prima install is completed in the trunk without anything more invasive.

But the real question is, can the little Prima with its compact amp and powerful digital signal processors turn the ugly step-sister that is the stock system into Cinderella? I think it has the horsepower to get it done. If so, that mod becomes a no brainer for anyone who wants great audio in the car and wants to spend surgically rather than just shotgunning everything and hoping for the best.

Stay tuned...a full write up to follow.

triniexr

Subscribed... very interested in this.

Jason B

Mike, are you swapping out your speakers back to stock ones to test?

Mike5215

No, there's a guy who contacted me who's doing (at least he says he's doing) a Prima-only install. I'll send him my config and he can tweak it for the stock speakers and send it back, at which point we'll have a baseline config for the 221 and stock speakers. Presuming the guy knows how to tune the Prima. I don't think there's going to be a huge difference between me vs stock other than the 4" front door mids will be brighter, the front door tweeter won't be as aggressive and the rear door 6.5" will also be brighter, but all of that is well within Prima's adjustment range. Most of my EQ settings on a speaker-by-speaker basis are almost flat so there's a ton of room there to play with.