[low_bass_makker]

Originally Posted by santosh.s

Thanks folks! Yes, it did.

Any comments about the "illumination lead" of HU? If I was to guess, it should be connected to head-lamp switch so that when I put on the lights, HU panel lights up too??

It is the reverse it will go dim when you lit up the Head light.

[Technocrat]

COngrats Santosh, nice to see all your equipment land without any issues.

Waiting for install to begin(do take lot of pictures )

Any comments about the "illumination lead" of HU? If I was to guess, it should be connected to head-lamp switch so that when I put on the lights, HU panel lights up too??

So thats why my HU lights up even if I switch on parking lights without the Key, cool

LBM- it does both, it has dimmer plus a few lights on HU come up if lights are put on :-)

[santosh.s]

It has been over a month since it was installed, sorry for the delay (read my laziness) in doing tedious job of uploading pictures.
Here are the pictures, my experience with the installation and initial impression about the whole system... for whatever worth it is!

Front doors being opened:





Spacer rings, required two each for both mids:




Door had to be cut because stock hole could not take even the magnet itself!


Mids being installed:




They are nicely hidden behind stock panel/grill:


Wires being laid out. Installing dual 4GA power + 14GA speaker wires is quite a task:






Amps and crossovers being installed on a MDF plank:








HU getting into the slot:


Tweeters on A pillars. I choose that location because it was relatively equidistant to mids as compared to other common location- door pads. However, Baleno's pillars are not good for such an install because it was tough to point tweeters in crisscross head rest direction even with angle mounts. I wish there was an adjustable swivel mounting option. Mounting had to be changed once because driver side tweeter was too off-axis in the begining.




Subwoofer in a sealed box:




The box size was smaller than required, so it was replaced by the right box after a few days of use. The new box also has an internal coat of fiberglass which supposedly strengthens it and probably dampens as well.


To be continued.........

[karankapoor]

WOW, lovely pics with almost everything sec has been captured. Amazing work done by the installer.

One small question is the 14 gauge wire which has been laid with the main power wire is for the Compo's if yes then it should have been laid from the other side with the RCA leads.

Edit: The thread title needs to be changed now.

[Whiz]

Superb detailed pics Santosh!!! Can't wait to audition it!!!

[santosh.s]

Originally Posted by karankapoor

One small question is the 14 gauge wire which has been laid with the main power wire is for the Compo's if yes then it should have been laid from the other side with the RCA leads.

I thought it is only RCAs that matter, there should not be any issue with speaker wires being routed together with power cables. Am I wrong here?

Edit: The thread title needs to be changed now.[/quote]
Yes, and it better be moved to show-off section now. But I am not sure if I can do that myself.

BTW, remaining pictures will follow.

[karankapoor]

It may not effect it but it is always recommended to lay rca/speaker wires from one side and the main wire from other side.

[santosh.s]

Bluetooth kit-
Mic on IRVM mounting:


Speaker- this is a nuisance, as explained later


So called rotary commander or something (controlling device), pretty nice:




HU in action:











Wired aux-in, phone charging and USB being tested:


There was a shoddy job done by one of installer's "boys" regarding fuses, there was nothing to hold wires against fuse terminals, except the black tape!! Wires would just come off if pulled:


I got it fixed with proper ANL fuses, like this:

[santosh.s]

Installation:
Overall it was quite satisfactory. Except for the fuse problem, and a few others like tweeter polarity was wrong, left and right RCAs swapped, (little) loose body grounding due to slipped screw and similar loose connection in sub terminal. Also, window auto rolling stopped working after the installation process. It was promptly troubleshooted to a wiring short which would make a concerned fuse blow, and it was fixed.

Otherwise quality of installation was excellent. If above problems did not exist in the first place, then I would have rated overall installation as excellent. All mountings are very nicely done and finished, both acoustically and visually.

Tuning and sound quality:
Initially since I was not familiar with HU's internal crossover options, I used filters in amps. Crossed over sub and components at 80Hz. To make sub and main speakers sound balanced, I had to use S/W volume and boost it by about 6dB (this matches with theoretical estimation considering speaker and amp specs). Later I switched to crossover in HU, again at 80Hz with maximum slope available which is 18dB/octave. Regarding amp gains, I took a simple approach of keeping both at minimum sensitivity which is 5V, in order to utilize 6V perouts of the HU. In internal crossover mode, the HU also supports gain settings for each channel. I utilized this to attenuate main speakers by 6dB, so that S/W volume is now at 0dB and can be altered in +/- 6dB range. I think it is best setting because both S/W volume and high volt preouts can be fully used. For the sake of safty, I have turned HPF on main speakers amp to about 70Hz, so that if HU's filter gets reset for some reason, speakers don't get dammaged by full range signal. In case of sub I don't think there is any such risk, so I have turned it's LPF frequency to all the way up.

I started testing of the system by playing some tracks by Sade. Quality of sound was immediately apparent! Later played CDs by Roxette, Queen, Eagles, Madonna, Phil Collins etc. Everything sounds very natural, right from lowest bass to highest treble instruments. Imaging is excellent, midbass as well as bass kick is also excellent. Successive bass/midbass notes are never smeared, attack and decay is controlled more by recording than the system. TA works as expected, it makes almost all bass upfront and makes the sound more like headphone listening than speakers. Sub is allmost invisible, so are speakers actually. Each instrument sound distictly isolated and located at it's place, somewhere in the firewall or lower part of windshield.

Notwithstanding all the praise above, I noticed something lacking as well. Some bass notes appeared to be relatively suppressed. I tested with test tones which exposed a significant dip in the range of 60-80Hz. It must be cabin resonance related bass cancelling. Then I tried opening up speaker openings in rear tray, as shown below, thinking that it will help bass travel easily from boot to cabin-
Parcel tray was something like this before, cardboard I suppose with small holes:




I made it like this, so that speaker openings are now covered with just a piece of clothe/thin carpet:


It did not make much difference to the dip in response, but it made subwoofer more clear/transperenent as opposed to somewhat "muffled" earlier. Then I tried various sub positions, without much gain, untill I recollected an article which discussed how bass cancellation can happen for a sub placed in boot of a sedan. Solution is to place it towards extreme rear and firing in rear direction too. There is of course some gap of 4-6 inches between the sub and dicky lid. That produces the best result and the dip in response is cured to a very good extent. As of now I don't feel any need to fine tune using parametric EQ, instead I can keep it in usual bass/treble control mode (HU does not allow both at a time!).

FM tuner plays odd frequencies very well, but can not be tuned into even frequencies. Because this is US specific model. (There was some "hungama" over this in Clarion 785 thread)

I don't know what kind of and how much difference it would have made if speakers were the likes of high end Dynaudio/Rainbow or amps where Genesis/Tru etc. But in absolute terms, I feel like I got what I imagined/expected from this setup, and I am sure it will keep me happy!

Weakest link now is not in the system, but it is engine and road noise. I deliberately did not do any damping to know how it sounds. There was one exception- rear number plate which was fixed even before installing the ICE. Apart from that I was pleasantly surprised to see that there weren't much rattles even at quite high volumes. Parcel tray would rattle a bit on loud bass notes, but that too kind of disappeared after cutting cardboard over speaker openings. Front door pads rattle badly at a particular frequency while using test tones, but for normal music I hardly notice any rattling. May be old Baleno ads claiming 13 noise reduction tecniques hold some water, and may be underbody antirust coating that I got done on day one is also helping in sound deadening. Whatever may be the reason, but I don't feel desperate need of damping. I do feel like reducing engine noise and road noise, but then I am afraid I may not hear horns from other vehicles, when ICE is alredy making it's own noise!

Bluetooth kit:
Just like the HU, this kit is also feature packed. It supports handsfree calling with auto mute, redial/voice dialling features, A2DP streaming, still keeps wired aux-in usable for any external device and it can charge all old/new Nokia phones. Voice quality is pretty good, person on the other side does not even notice whether I am using the kit or phone itself. Wired aux-in works well, but there is slight hiss (noise pick up) noticeable at full volume and silence in music. At normal volume, it is hardly audible. Such a hiss is not at all audible in USB/CD mode even at full volume, probably because RCAs are well shielded and high volt preout shows its effect.

From what I knew, I was skeptical about SQ of A2DP music streaming. But when I tested it with my phone using 320kbps mp3s, I was pleasantly surprised once again! It sounded as if I am playing the same song through USB or CD!! So, it is going to be a quite usable, cool feature.

Comming to down sides of the kit, it has a couple of issues-
- It is supposed to route call conversation through HU, just like music, but due to some known bug it doesn't. That is why I have to keep that "Nokia" speaker, just for phone conversations. Luckily, wired stereo music/A2DP goes to HU as expected. One of my enthusiastic DIY friend is in the process of making a small circuit board using relay and all to overcome this problem. Untill then I will have to use Nokia speaker.

- It has quite a long "bluetooth delay". HU muting happens quickly, but it takes a few seconds before the ring/voice to appear through speaker. This is not too big a problem as such, can be easily lived with.

[low_bass_makker]

Nice review. One thing I would like to add here. If you switched on the 80 hz 12 db slope on the HU and some what similar on the Speaker amp the result would be 80 hz with close to 24 db slope because of the two filters which would lead to less midbass. I would suggest to make the amps flat and adjust the crossovers from the HU to get the best results.

Also test by taking out the battery lead and see if the Crossover in the HU reset with it. This will take away your fear of the speaker damage.

[panky12345]

LBM, why are you talking chinese? Where's all this in my HU?

[low_bass_makker]

Originally Posted by panky12345

LBM, why are you talking chinese? Where's all this in my HU?

It is all there..You just have to look for it.

[DocG]

I love the detailed post with pics. Great that you're pleased with the outcome, some great products have gone into this concoction.

I'd agree with LBM about the filters being best set off the HU.

Just wondering why there's a double post of all the pics or is it just me?

[santosh.s]

Thanks LBM (or should I say McLBM now) and DocG, yes I will try making both amps flat, and also check what happens when battery is disconnected. Right now HPF setting in HU is 80Hz, but inside the amp it is little lower at 70Hz.

Duplicate images- it is unintentional and I am clueless about why the list of "attached thumbnails" is shown again at the bottom. If I remember correctly, when I used an embedded image link of an attachment last time, it used to automatically disappear from the list at bottom. May be I am mistaken or something has changed since then in the website!

[abhinav.gupta88]

If that is the case.
The HPF should be at 80hz but with a double slope. I'd say switch off the HPF from the Amp. There must be settings.