2012 Passat TDI Audio Upgrade

[Texas Realtor]

Started the audio upgrade. Not big into typing everything up. So will post bunch of pics here. If you guys have a question ask.

First here is how to open the door trim to get to speakers and install Dynamat.

 

[Texas Realtor]

 

[eprater1]

do you plan on removing the stock rear tweeters in the rear doors? thx for the info, will be usefull down the road.

 

[Texas Realtor]

I plan on leaving them in there. They will be disconnected. My plan for the install is, if I ever want to sell the car all the wires will stay intact where all I have to do is put the original speakers back in and take my equipment out.

All the new equipment will be installed with new wiring. Basically the car will have two sets of wiring in it.

 

[Texas Realtor]

Trunk lid dynamat.

 

[eprater1]

I plan on leaving them in there. They will be disconnected. My plan for the install is, if I ever want to sell the car all the wires will stay intact where all I have to do is put the original speakers back in and take my equipment out.

All the new equipment will be installed with new wiring. Basically the car will have two sets of wiring in it.

what amp is driving the componets? or are you running wire from the factory head unit to each speaker? if so it would be much easier to just buy the connectors and put them on the aftermarket speakers for plug and play while retaining the ability to swap factories back in.

 

[Texas Realtor]

Factory Stereo ----> Audio Control LCQ-1 (LOC/EQ) ------> JL Audio HD 5 Channel amp.

 

[eprater1]

i know your prob not going to do this but from personal experience i have to make the recomendation.........ditch the rear speakers all together and run the system active, there i said it. (please no one bash me im just giving my opinion and not degrading what texas is doing at all)

use 4 channels of the amp for just the front components preferably w/o using the crossovers (active.) leave the rears running off of the factory unit and fade all the sound to the front and give it a few days of listening. the speakers will not change how they sound however you should start to noctice that you have a better sound stage vs when you had sound coming from both the front and the rear (esp those darn factor rear tweets all of 8" from your left ear if your tall and slide the seat back like me) and confusing your ears. if you have some extra company in the car and want sound in the rear for them simply fade the rears back in and poof your good to go. 99% of sound quality competitors run no rear speakers at all and no center channel.

if you want to get real crazy pick up an Audison Bit One you can return the audio control piece to offset some of the cost.

 

[eprater1]

http://www.audison.eu/index.php?page=productLine&id=5

in case you are wondering.

 

[eprater1]

dynamat looks good. be sure and put a ton on the rear deck. the factory fender sub rattled like hell on the '12 jettta i had and suspect the passat might as well.

 

[Texas Realtor]

dynamat looks good. be sure and put a ton on the rear deck. the factory fender sub rattled like hell on the '12 jettta i had and suspect the passat might as well.

Thanks for the input. I already have an 5 channel amp so I will have to use that. It is the JL Audio HD900/5. How would I run the fronts without the crossovers with that?

Audison Bit one is not in my budget at this time. Audio Control EQS is the best I can do unfortunately.

Rear deck lid should be easy to do the dynamat as needed as everything under it is bare and no trim needs to be taken apart. If it rattles I will add dynamat as needed. My rear deck rattled when the car was brand new, so VW has already added what they could to stop that rattle.

 

[740GLE]

Looks good, how much of an improvement did you get with just dynamat and highway rose noise? or does it just improve "deadening" the doors.

 

[Texas Realtor]

Looks good, how much of an improvement did you get with just dynamat and highway rose noise? or does it just improve "deadening" the doors.

The work is still in progress, it is not done yet.

eprater1 ---- Ditching the rear speakers is not an option for me as my two kids are big on music and they will never let me turn down the volume if they did not have speakers in the rear.
Again let me know how to do the active crossover with 5 channel amp. The rear speakers are Focals and they are most likely not going to play on the factory stereo power (Not enough power)

 

[eprater1]

Texas sent u a PM

 

[Texas Realtor]

 

[eprater1]

1)you will use each of the 4 non sub channels for each of the 4 front speakers, two tweets and two woofers respectively.
2)you will need 2 Y splitters to split the two channels coming from the head unit, front left and front right.
3)hook up the front left outputs from the lcq to the front inputs of the amp and front right outputs of the lcq to the rear inputs of the amp. Now you will be able to retain front to back face while left to right will adjust tweeter to woofer fade of just the front speakers.
4) here is where you have to be careful not to damage your speakers (specifically the tweets) make sure and set the front output crossover somewhere around 5k hz so that the tweets only play frequencies above 5k hz and I would setup the woofers somewhere around 50hz. Yu completely eliminate the need for the focal crossovers by doing so and keep sound from being fed back into the crossover network this way.
5) I would set the gains very low initially and make sure the head unit is also at a low volume. If you can get your hands in a sound check cd that plays specific frequencies on certain tracks use that to know exactly where your crossovers are set since the nobs tend to be a little vague. Do not worry about the 80 or so watts going to the tweeters as long as the gain is set accordingly and the crossovers keep in it's useable range you will have no worries. I'm currently running about 165 watts to each of my tweets with zero issues. It is not the wattage that typically damages speakers but rather the dirty or distorted signal going to them. In this setup you will have the cleanest signal possible.

 

[eprater1]

http://sound.westhost.com/biamp-vs-passive.htm

This is about the best explanation of active vs passive I could find for you.

 

[Texas Realtor]

Thanks Eprater1, it sounds complicated. I think I am going to go with the basic setup for now. If I am not happy the installers have promised me they will do whatever I want. They are already going above and beyond by running new wires and doing everything the way I want it. According to them I will not notice a lot of difference between passive and active. My rear speakers would definitely not run on stock radio, I would have to buy another amp.

 

[eprater1]

I'm willing to bet those aftermarket focals are more efficient than the stockers and would run better than the stockers IMHO. Not as good as they could but wuldnt suffer completely. If I'm in the sugar business and recommend you take in 2 cups of sugar a day would you trust what I say? Just food for thought. I doubt they wanted to hve to run a second set of wires to the tweets. I haven't had my dash apart yet but not looking fwd to it when I do, They are way up the dash.

 

[Texas Realtor]

This is where I am placing my crossovers

New wires thru out, not cutting existing wires.

Ran out of Dynamat extreme so had to use some Stinger Roadkill deadening.

 

[Texas Realtor]

Battery Connection and Fuse.

Twitter placement in the factory location

 

[Texas Realtor]

 

[Texas Realtor]

Everything has been Dynamated in a manner that if my car ever goes to dealership for any warranty work they should not complain that they could not get to something because it was covered with Dynamat and was hard to get to without lot of work. I know I wouldn't like that if I were working on a car.

 

[eprater1]

did you take these pictures with a calculator???? LOL jk. looks good. any idea how much room there is in the lower portion of the center console around your feet? im toying with the idea of a 6" or 8 " subwoofer if room allows in that area. i would love to have the bass in the front soundstage and not having to play with time alignment to get it up front. good choice on the crossovers, too many people place them in the door itself where moisture will reak havoc on them.

 

[Kchorro]

WOW nice Job..i think road noise conceling will improved with all that dynamated...
Right?

 

[VeeDubTDI]

Really nice install. Looking forward to hearing how you like the sound.

Road noise should be significantly reduced.

 

[Texas Realtor]

did you take these pictures with a calculator???? LOL jk. looks good. any idea how much room there is in the lower portion of the center console around your feet? im toying with the idea of a 6" or 8 " subwoofer if room allows in that area. i would love to have the bass in the front soundstage and not having to play with time alignment to get it up front. good choice on the crossovers, too many people place them in the door itself where moisture will reak havoc on them.

All pictures were taken after having two beers quickly with a cell phone. I guess cell phone pictures are better than no pictures. No idea on room around the center console. The crossover location choise was that of the install place and their reasoning was the vibrations from the door closing and the moisture as you mentioned.

 

[Texas Realtor]

JR's Customs is doing an amazing work and attention to detail is just mind blowing.

 

[Texas Realtor]

Trunk is complete....

 

[eprater1]

im glad to see the front door speakers dont actually fire downwards as the door pannel lines lead you to believe. i was wondering why they would have done this, glad they didnt. looks like the woofers are mounted on about a 3/8" thick ring, where they too deep and hit the inside of the door causing the need for the spacer? do they expect any clearance issues with the insides of the door pannels? i had a hell of a time with my hertz millie mids in my 350, not bc of them being too deep but rather during higher outputs the cones hitting the door pannels. ended up having to heat and mold the pannels for final fitment.....sucked. looks good man and they are doing a hell of a job with the dynamat. may i be rude and ask what they are charging for the install? looks like you have around 4-500 in dynamat alone.