DucatiNut

Anybody here improve their sound quality? I do not want a ghetto blaster with bass that will f**k my eardrums, just a better amp, good speakers (like Focals' kevlar units) or something along those lines. I do not want to spend too much.... I would rather put a down payment on an E class instead..... Any suggestions?
Thanks in advance..
Cheers

traumadoc

I placed an infiniti sub and amp in my trunk and it enhanced the sound of the entire system. There is actually pretty good treble and midrange (well ok fair....) but the sub with a separate adjustment level evened things out and gave it some punch without the ghetto sound.

Improviz

DucatiNut, did you get my PM?

dyno

If you want more amps you need to get signals somewhere from:

- you can boost it from speaker level and use devices like JL cleansweep or Rockford 3.60 , or AC, Alpine 650 ..

or you need to go inside the source ...

we went inside the OEM Harman Kardon audiogateway and extracted all our 8 pre-out signals so that now I can make a real SQ-ICE powered by a battery of 5 Genesis amplifiers, maintaining the 7.1 environment !!




next week the car will go to the installer
..will post further

Zod

owwww sick hope it turns out good!...what about the new updated sound system in 09 models?

dyno

nah ... its a class D amp and my tech can't stand those things.
class A- AB only


I also asked to "tune" a bit our stock chips
and he replaced some cheap operationls with Burr Browns ..

Zod

very nice!
keep us updated please i love to ee things liek this
best of luck to you
I am told the new LED lights fit directly onto our cars, can you confirm this?

dyno

yesterday we checked all channels ' response and had to do some trimming...
further, we the REM connection was set properly to avoid bump when igniting..
it's not easy at all, but I think now it is ok.
as soon as I'll receive some original Alcantara leather that I was able to get from the plant, the install of the system will begun, including remaking of the rear hat-panel for allowing nude vision of my new carbon subwoofer...

if i'll have spare alcantara, must decide what to use it for .. maybe to cover the back of front seats ? can't decide..

unfortunately ETA of those special new AMG tweeter housings is 20 january only!

azncarjunkie

What is this about new AMG tweeter housings? What are they and where do they fit, etc.?

I'm going to be redoing the stereo in the new year. Would be interesting if there's something bolt-in that works well.

dyno

if you enter AMG official site, you'll see the new audio E02 option
.. I don't know a lot about it, except that itt costs more than a couple thousands euro ( the top system in Audi A8 is something more 6 thousand if I remember well
in any case it is not what I'm looking for;
it's a class D amplification, while I wanted classic Genesis amps

yes, speakers are also better
... but I strived to get the new Morel Limited Edition speakers and Ultimo subwoofer

this pic is my collection of gear...

Amituk

dyno.. have you got more info on how to get the preouts?

I have the standard Command APS and would like to add some sinfoni amps (you are italian.. why arent you using sinfoni )

I will be using Rainbow Reference speakers.

Amit

azncarjunkie

what size speakers are even in the CLS55? looks like 3 ways up front. I'm trying to find out what speaker sizes i'll need to buy to replace.

blackmsport

can the factory speakers be directly replaced? if so, how good would it sound?

azncarjunkie

I wasn't planning on doing a simple swap, but not having to do any cutting wold be nice.

I am so underwhelmed by the factory harmon setup it's not funny

dyno

ciao Amit,
I know quite a few about audio .. just like top things
and my tech told me 2 names .. I found and bought 'em.

I'll ask him about Sinfoni ... from their tel number I guess they should be close to Audison .. maybe it is born from an exited technician


PREOUTS: I have all of them 8 channels (indeed Sub is double because our stock is a 2 coil sub)
.. and they work . I personally tested each of them by connecting one of my genesis to each new preouts.


this is the SUB PRE OUT SIGNAL exiting from my audiogateway




this is the FULL RANGE SIGNAL from door channel (it is then divided into our mid low + treeter application)



installation still not ready ... look where MB located our AGW



All speakers location are stock, except for the bigger Sub that requires a newly shaped acoustic box and mod to the panel.
(indeed also tweeters require a small mod ... will see when those new housings from the AMG package arrive if I can fit into them my Supremo tweeters).
The tech also said that it's not necessary to replace stock wires. they are good enough.

I'm looking for somebody really able to get the hat panel made and finished as I want it
.. something like this from Audi: need a new, removable, custom grille to fit a modified hat-panel . Want to see my carbon sub both nude without grill, or covered by the grill




will go to an Audio exhibition on 20th Jan .. to get convinced about somebody's crafmanship..
Alcantara is producing a new bach of my antrazit colour in these days ..

dyno

this should help you a bit

dyno

as I wrote somewhere in another thread, it all begun because I replaced stock front tweeters with old Dynaudio Md100 I had, and found a great quality improvement

dyno

arrived today !

tweeters are really heavy , seem made from a solid piece of metal
.. can't understand who's the producer .. everything hand-made in pure AMG style









... 290 E. delivered

lexaltezza

So how do they sound? I'm thinking about picking up a pair too if its worth it and granted they aren't absurdly expensive.

dyno

saturday I'll go to the installer where my car is now and will listen ..
for sure they are much heavier which means big magnet and the dome is also very big.
price ... I wrote it .

dyno

about DOOR SPEAKERS, my tech says that our speakers are not correctly positioned:
- Bass position should be turned about 3cm more toward the passenger because now they are wrongly directed toward its feet ! ..and the current grill is too restrictive

- TW position also requires a little adjustment

- rear door Tweeter are now wrongly positioned too down, while they should be placed on the door top panel

... he would also suggest me to install Midranges at front doors for a full 3-way system, to be positioned in the top panel under the tweeters.


I told that I do not want to see any speaker that looks attached or somehow glued to my doors (++) and I don't want to see any non-mercedes parts !
or speaker will stay where they are now.

I worked a bit on this and gave him the following option: you see the door grill in this Aston ..


.. if you can make a grill like that and get same finish, I'm OK for installing Midranges here ..



what do you think guys ?



(++)
in other words, i don't want to see anything like this



..even if my new speakers are thousands $$ worth ones

dyno

Well, I see no ideas at all coming from anybody

am I on the wrong way?

by the time, a 2 sqmeter large piece of the car's original Alcantara arrived


I gave him also the following draft idea for the bottom speaker cover:



after some search I found the producer and bought a large slide of perforated metal grill like the Aston's one, to let the installer make some practice and try out some moulds ...

will see ..
Saturday will go there to discuss some tentative budget and see at what point we are with the making of the subwoofer acoustic box and rear hat panel

azncarjunkie

I'm going the route of kickpanels instead since you don't have to butcher the door panels either. Have dynaudio 3 way components. tweeter and midbase are going into the kicks with the woofers into the doors.

dyno

sorry, what are kickpanels exactly ..
you mean you are changing location to the tweeter ?

Dynaudio is great for the tweeter; I had a mid bass (GTsomething) but it wasn't on pair with tweeter

azncarjunkie

custom fiberglass enclosures that go down by your feet (left for driver, right for passenger).

higher frequencies tend to be easier for us humans to distinguish even slight variance in distance. Therefore a tweeter (or midbass for that matter) at the top of the door panel will be 1 ft away from the drivers left ear while the other one will be 3 feet away from the drivers right ear creating a strange sound stage.

Ideally the 'right' sound stage will have the listener be equidistant between frontal speakers. Unfortunately in a car we need to deal with strange ergonomics. Kick panels are used to maximize the distance between the listener and the speakers but more importantly create a much smaller % difference between the distance of left/right ears and therefore creating a more 'accurate' sound stage. (i.e., left:right -- 3ft:4ft instead of 1ft:3ft)

The downside is that legs can get in the way and block higher frequencies which are much easier to muddle than lower frequencies.

Anyway...without getting into too much nonsense and true 'audiophile' debate from some people who can easily point out specific things that I'm purposely not mentioning.......just make sure it sounds good to you and that's all that matters.

My recommendation is to not put a midbass high up in the door like that. I think it's ugly, doesn't make sense to butcher a door panel, and doesn't make any sense from a sound-quality perspective.