Yes, this post was about adding speakers and the person asked specifically about the rear ones:

Umm, you say you never laid claim to anything but a simple upgrade. Unfortunately, your omission of specific details left the level of upgrade open for interpretation (added to by the calibre of vehicle involved). Also, soon as you mention adding an amp most people would assume a significant upgrade. Can I also quote where you say you did a speaker upgrade:

I'm sorry but what you said there was misleading and enough to make me believe we where on the same page and start the time wasting investigation of install technique.

Once again can I simply ask that next time you contribute to a forum with some advice on an install or an experience, you be a tad more specific.

Thanks,

Oz

 

hey OzSL55, any reviews on the LC6? The local installer was suggesting just going with a DEI speaker level converter.. i want to know if the LC6 is the way to go.

 

I don't have any reviews on the LC6, but I've used plenty of audiocontrol gear in the past and it's designed with quality in mind. The LC6 caters for up to 6 channels of input (link to site) and is recommended for MB and BMW installs. Unfortunately, there is little info around about DEI's converter. However, I see that it's like a $14.00 product, so I'd be dubious as to it's sound quality and frankly if you were intending to upgrade to fairly decent speakers, which you need to do to at least to make an audible improvement over the MB factory units (which are still better than 90% of the other brand factory units), I wouldn't be trusting such a cheap converter to do the job. Do you know what speakers/amp you want use? If you try to go too cheap on it, it will hardly be worth the install effort and the sonic improvements will be minor at best.

 

Finally, after much waiting for the LC6 to arrive we finally have worked everything out in my car and learned plenty along the way.

The LC6 is just what's called for in this application, mind you JL is bringing out a similar device in June which should also be very good for these OEM integration problems. The only pitfall that the installer needs to be made aware of and one which none of the many people we spoke to indentified, is that the Command headunit has a reverse phase output in it's low end signal(thanks OEM Command maker!). This caused us some serious angst as it made us think quite understandably, that the ADS amp wasn't powerful enough to drive the Boston Z9's properly and the sound had serious lower mid range deficiencies. I was fortunate enough to be able to directly A/B compare mine with the sound of the Z9's in local Boston rep's own car, which is a big empty station wagon hard to deal with acoustically. I already knew there was a problem, but after hearing them again in the rep's fairly simple setup I knew exactly how much was missing from the sound. I had to laugh out loud when the rep made the remark to me that the sound in my car made it sound like a Bose system, which I said to him summed it up perfectly! We then wasted some serious time trying to figure it out and then tried Boston's largest amp, which naturally overcame the phase problem through sheer grunt. However, once this problem was indentified a few days ago we found that the ADS now drives the Z9's beautifully, as it should have in the first place. In the interim we had decided that we may need a digital EQ to counterract some lower mid range frequency deficiencies we thought were caused by the Command but really related to the whole phase problem. Fortunately, we didn't waste any time with the AudioControl DQT EQ before the phase problem was solved. After that though, we hooked up the DQT and had a go at fine tuning the system in conjunction with some laptop based RTA software. We were able to address a minor deficiency in the 600-900k range which did add a small but noticeable improvement in the expected lower mid ranges. At this stage I am thinking, even though it's not entirely necessary, to keep the DQT in the system and setup some custom EQ maps for myself.

Anyway, the end result is an enormous improvement over the drab stock sound quality or Bose system B.S. quality.

Hopefully a few out there will benefit from this info now that we have paved the way here to a degree.

And to SLVRSL55, I hope Isaac picked up on the phase situation, as it is in no way apparent when you hook up a OEM style plug to the Command as the phase is reversed internally in the Command unit itself. It was only by a process of elimination that my installers worked it out after significant time. So if he simply routed it to your amp that drives the sub, your sub is running out of phase and your mid range speakers may well be also, depending whether they use the stock reverse mounting or face forward (which is why the Command output is reverse phase in the first place) or if you didn't replace the mid-bass driver in the door (you didn't mention much about that).

 

Thanks for the heads up. I'll check with him. Glad your system came out to your satisfaction.

 

No worries.

You might want to tell Isaac to spell check his email newsletters before sending them out too. He kindly put my installers on his email database (they are kind of bemused by that) and they showed me his email about his winning a 'Top Retialer' award recently.