- Mercedes-Benz C-Class: Sound System Modifications
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W204 Third Party Component Speaker Upgrade
also what sucks is teh 2011 does NOT have parametric equilizer in the engineering menu, there is nothing you can change for volume or any settings in it, this car has audio 50 which the dealer said is bose but the speakers were no name and the rear doors had same speakers as in teh pics in teh DIY that audio 20 owners had.
Get your sub installed, and the 60.9's. Then wait about a week for the drivers to loosen-up. At least. This is NOT as surround system but a damn good two-channel. You will spend another $130 for the 60.9 at Amazon, but give them a try. The alternative of outboard amps (and then what speakers?, probably the 60.9 anyway), and just the amps plus the hassle of the install will run $800 for anything decent.
This underlines my point of looking for the best PRODUCT regardless of the BRAND.
The Bass1500 however I'm not so pleased with. After fiddling with the adjustments for hours I found that if I turned the bass up to a point where you could actually hear it, my rear deck would rattle like mad. I mounted in the same place Bill did... I will probably look into something else.... such as a separate amp and 10" sub with a box.
Last edited by mwaldron; May 7, 2011 at 12:36 PM.
Also, has anyone figured a better way to mount the aftermarket 60.9cs, which out cutting the factory speaker to bits, to get it to fit?
Acapulco Bill what did you use in your rear doors? Ive been looking around past 2 days and there are some nice 6.5 inch speakers out there and components that will let you mount the tweeter over the woofer if necessary. Im thinking of throwing the 62.9s in the spare pile and going with the 6090s or something like it.
Also I was messing with the cross over, but it really didn't seem to work. I was just playing with it to filter out 300hz and below to see if it would remove the bass and it didn't.
When you guys did the 60.9cs upgrades, was the tweeter too bright? or not matched well due to it being up near the mirrors? What eq settings did you use?
Last question.
When you did the 60.9cs upgrade and the 6.5 shallows in the back. Did you loose all the base you had with the paper cone speakers.
The tweeters of course you will need a Dremel to grind out a little of the black plastic to make them fit behind the mesh window grill. Well worth the effort though. Once broken in, and cranking them up until the soft clipping begins, my favorite tunes sound just like I remember them (in some cases as I actually engineered them for Columbia Records).
Some well recorded material can actually sounds better, the tweeters are so close and the sound is not dulled by reflections that a livingroom system always suffers. I use (and highly recommend) Apple lossless format or original CDs, as MP3 is a highly quality-compromised format, even maxed at 192 kbps.
As for the rears, the Infinity 6032si are shallow-mount and go right in, NOT the 6032cf which has a basket and magnet that's too deep. One could just leave the stock speakers in, but the timbre characteristics are very different, and I was glad to get the rears installed when adding the selfamplified subwoofer. But for jimmythegreek, if you already have the 62.9's in the rear, you can just leave them there, make sure the tweeter switch is at 0 dB and tilt the tweeters up as far as the mount will allow.
Here is the link on Amazon for the 6032si...
http://www.amazon.com/Infinity-Refer...4865043&sr=8-1
The Best of Mercedes & AMG
To the person who just had this installed with the Boss 1500, have you tried listening to the sytem without the Boss sub installed? How is the "bass" from the infinti speakers vs the stock paper speakers? I find that the stock paper speakers are pretty good as far as loudness or boominess goes, just wish it had a better frequency response range (if this is what it is called). Do the infiniti speakers lose this boominess and cause the system to sound "weak" unless I get an aftermarket sub?
Also @ Bill. I am a bit confused, I thoght it was reccommended to get the woofers with the tweeters in the center for the back doors (62.9i I believe) or is the general concensus now that the 6032si shallow woofers would be better? Don't shallow woofers not have as good of a sound?
Bass - now this is a whole thing. Most people mistake "bass" for second-harmonic distortion. The stock OEM speakers have lots of this distortion in the 150 - 600 Hz range, and although some may prefer this kind of sound, it is, frankly, just distortion.
The Infinity speakers, both the Infinity 60.9's and the 6032si, have very low bass distortion. The 60.9's in particular (I have a set sitting here in front of me as I write this) have a cone and dome manufactured from a sophisticated material, woven-glass-fiber with rubber surround, with a mesh-like imprint which both stiffens the cone and prevents waves traveling along the surface reducing both harmonic and phase distortion. Pretty neat, actually.
The 62.9's use the same woofer material, but may be too deep to put in the rear door easily. The 6032si has a polypropylene woofer where the material itself prevents resonances, however it is not as stiff as the woven-glass fiber. Both the 60.9 and the 62.9 are higher quality speakers than the HK Logic 7 system uses, even though Infinity is part of the HK group.
The upshot is that if you prefer audiophile-quality accurate, distortion free bass, then these speakers are for you. If you like the meaty, busy, "full" sound of the stock paper-cone speakers with a magnet structure the size of a half-dollar, then perhaps you would only be happy completing the setup with a subwoofer.
In any case, the highs the Infinity speakers provide are far superior: accurate, detailed, extended range and distortion free.
jimmythegreek wrote that he was unhappy with the 62.9's. For the FRONT they are NOT the speaker of choice because it is coaxial and the tweeter fires right into your ankle and thigh. The 60.9's have a separate tweeter which goes behind the mesh on the window frame, and are essential to obtaining good system performance, firing just inches from your face. For the rear, the 62.9 may actually be superior to the 6032si as they are 2 dB more efficient, although I have not heard them myself.
Pretty much I just want loud, crisp, and good bass feeling (not to be heard from 1/2 away, but enough to feel the vibrations in your seat (which the stock paper speakers do) but I want better frequency response than the stock speakers (espcially lower).
If thats not enough, another $150 will get you a number of subwoofers, someone just asked me about this one:
http://www.amazon.com/Infinity-Bassl...4873085&sr=1-1
BUT at 14 x 17 x 18 inches it is 5 times the size of the Boss Bass600 or even the Boss Bass1500. Plus you would drive the sound into the trunk as it has a woofer plus a passive radiator. Huge sound, but yes down the block, not into the cabin of the C.
The same would be true of a Bazooka, only the Boss subs fit so neatly under the rear shelf.
The 62.9's from Amazon run $126 for TWO pairs (sorry!). Keep the 62.9's in the rear, Crutchfield says they dont fit, but now we know they do, thanks. They are a superior speaker to the 6032si. maybe I will get a pair of the 62.9's and swap them out.
Read my above post #164 about subwoofers.
To the person who just had this installed with the Boss 1500, have you tried listening to the sytem without the Boss sub installed? How is the "bass" from the infinti speakers vs the stock paper speakers? I find that the stock paper speakers are pretty good as far as loudness or boominess goes, just wish it had a better frequency response range (if this is what it is called). Do the infiniti speakers lose this boominess and cause the system to sound "weak" unless I get an aftermarket sub?
Also @ Bill. I am a bit confused, I thought it was reccommended to get the woofers with the tweeters in the center for the back doors (62.9i I believe) or is the general concensus now that the 6032si shallow woofers would be better? Don't shallow woofers not have as good of a sound?
In my opinion the Bass1500 was a total waste of money... All it does is vibrate my deck and adds almost nothing.
Last edited by mwaldron; May 8, 2011 at 01:13 PM.
As for the question "how much bass is enough?", I feel that it´s like SALT. Just enough enhances the flavor, too much and it's ruined. The smaller Boss Bass600 balances the 60.9's/6032/62.9 bass nicely but gives that extra "texture" and "oomph" on that last 2 octaves from 25-100 Hz. Its OK for me.
The Boss Bass600 (and Bass1500) has both a low pass AND a high pass filter, perhaps they were set wrong - for maximum bandwidth set the high-pass filter to 20 Hz and the low-pass filter to 150 Hz.
And yes Bill, the 62.9 fit fine into the rear doors using the stock mount the factory speakers are in. You just got to hack the factory speakers and mount inside of them. Theres a DIY in the DIY thread list. They dont sound half bad at 3/4 volume, but even w the bass set at -4 they bump too much with the factory Xover and the sub box can do that work, they need to work on midrange and highs, not low end bass, thats where they get really sloppy. Im thinking about going with JL audios up front and in back, or maybe the 6090s, and if it doesnt get cleaned up Ill get an amp and bite the bullet
I have a fuse box in the back right of my trunk. Does this mean that I can tap in there somewhere to get a power wire for my amp/sub? Also I have the base model without folding rear seats. How can I run left and right rear channel to get them into the trunk?
Question: are you using original CDs, or an MP3 player? You may actually be hearing the compression distortion created with MP3 encoding, more apparent in the bass, and exposed with a quality driver like the 62.9. I have found no distortion at any frequency of the 60.9s and 6032si, the Audio20 begins soft clipping long before these speakers are capable of mechanically distorting.
I called ken today, and he recommended the CL-62 PRO. 4 Tweeters and 2 MID
1 pr CL-6 6.5” mid woofer
1 pr EX-484 24dB 4th/5th order 2-way crossover
1 pr TW-25 1” silk tweeter
1 pr WS-100i 1" upstage tweeter
Power handling: 180 watt RMS @ high-pass 120Hz.
Frequency response: 55Hz-20.000Hz
Impedance: 4 Ohm
Sensitivity:92.3dB
Mounting depth 6.5” woofer 2 3/4”
Flush and surface tweeter housings
I explained that we only had about 20Watts RMS and he said it would sound better than the infinity 60.9cs
also what sucks is teh 2011 does NOT have parametric equilizer in the engineering menu, there is nothing you can change for volume or any settings in it, this car has audio 50 which the dealer said is bose but the speakers were no name and the rear doors had same speakers as in teh pics in teh DIY that audio 20 owners had.
Power handling vs frequency response: CDT says the speakers run down to 55 Hz (missing an octave, don't you think?) and THEN they say that their power is rated only ABOVE 120 Hz. Never heard of that. Ever.
Good efficiency at 92 dB. However, the impedance is 4 ohms, versus the Infinity's impedance of 2 ohms (which effectively gets 40 - 50 watts out of the Audio 20) plus they are slightly more efficient. Meaning that the Infinity 60.9 will play 4dB louder than the CDT, and anyone who has double-blind listener-tested speakers knows that just a 1 dB difference will be perceived as "better". In fact, this was demonstrated on a sound stage with three pairs of speakers, but only one pair was connected. Listeners were asked to vote for "A", "B" or "C" as their favorite, thinking they were listening to three different speakers. In reality they were all listening to speaker "B" played at -1, 0 and +1 dB differences. Of course EVERYONE chose the +1 speaker. Imagine with +4 dB?
Besides the CDT woofer cone material is still just coated paper. How stiff will that be in six months after rainwater collects in the bottom of the door? The Infinity use woven glass fibre, its waterproof & mildew proof.
And the crossover. A 4th order crossover is a Linkwitz–Riley, and a 5th order is something else. Which is it, 4th or 5th? Anyway, at 24 dB/octave, it means that the CDT tweeter can't handle much excursion below its crossover point. 18 dB/octave should be sufficiently steep. And it looks like the installer has to grind off the flange around the tweeter for the W204. The 60.9 tweeters are completely cylindrical.
Besides the CDT's price, why shell out $350. That's enough for almost three pairs of 60.9's from Amazon.
IMO.
Last edited by Acapulco Bill; May 11, 2011 at 06:13 PM.









