bmwm750

This is the one thing that I have considered addressing. You mounted a 12V3 yes? Where is it mounted, and how did you handle the signal source? Tap into the factory "sub" wiring?

TSHong

Yes the signal is tapped from the factory sub via a processor with a bass ****. The bass **** is mounted inside the ashtray.

I have a Alpine mono amp rated at 500W RMS at 2 ohm. The sub a JL Audio 12W3V3 2 ohm single voice coil and is mounted in an acoustic suspension box mounted in the trunk along with my amp. I turned down the bass on the Bose and turned the bass up and it sounds great. everyone who has listened to it can't believe I have a single 12 inch sub.

I have taken the ski boot out so I have a nice port for the cabin. The sub hits really hard and has a nice sound quality. If you are looking for a quality 12 inch sub, I would lightly recommend the JL 12W3V3. It's a setup I carried over from my D2 but with better components. Will take some pics and post them.

cooljustin

Was it hard to take out the ski boot? Any tips on how to remove that thing? I don't think I will use my A8 for carrying ski equipment. Maybe a Hyundai yes but not on my A8L

Varka

I looked into the feasibility of doing a full-on replacement of all the speakers and amps in the my 06 A8, and quickly realised that Audi have baked a lot of stuff into the little Bose amplifier module in the trunk...

From what I can determine based on the wiring diagrams and poking around a bit with a voltmeter, all the audio is PCM audio over the fiber ring up to the Bose amplifier module, at which point it goes through a DSP (digital signal processor), a bunch of class D amplifiers, and out to the speakers from there.

It appears there's a lot of equalization and signal processing magic going on in software on the Bose amp module, controlled over the CAN bus and fiber ring from the various buttons and display modules up front... this means that you'd have to reverse engineer the bose control unit to get access to that un-processed PCM signal in order to do your own stuff to it, and it'll very likely have no volume control whatsoever unless you write your own PCM decoder and pretty much build your own digital signal processor unit compatible with audi's fiber ring.

One thing that you *could* do is try and set the EQ and signal processing on the sound system to as 'unprocessed' as you can get, and build a signal mixer that takes the left and right outputs from the Bose unit to the speakers and then amplifies that out to the speakers you install. Even then, that'd probably be a total hack job as you'd still have to EQ everything back to something sane again.

Swapping out drivers is probably not going to yield the effect you're looking for: the Bose drivers, while probably on the 'cheap and nasty' end of the quality scale, seem to be carefully paired to the amp and processor. You may find you'll replace drivers with much nicer ones, only to find you end up with blown-out bass and treble from the Bose amp still trying to compensate for the cheap paper drivers it thinks are installed.

I was all ready to dive into a complex electronic engineering project and reverse engineer my own control unit... but then I lived with the A8 for a week, and decided that it was probably one of the best stereos I owned in terms of overall experience across a huge variety of music. I'm no stranger to building my own speakers (I am listening to a pair of Fostex 'Frugal Horns' right now), and quite honestly... the Bose system is pretty solid overall. The bass response is even and pushes in the right places, the treble and vocals are as balanced as you're going to get in a car (make sure you set the sound to 'driver focus' with no surround turned on), and overall it's a pleasure to listen to pretty much anything on it.

TSHong

If I remember correctly, there are some screws on the trunk side and that's it. There is a plastic bezel on the cabin side in which you can leave in there. It just covers the cut carpet around the hole.

cooljustin

Thank you! I will give it go on the weekend

bmwm750

So, in the D3 (with BOSE), since all the wiring is signal level until it gets to the amp located at each speaker, you're taking a line level signal, yes?

What processor are you using?

I would love to build and mount a box that would shoot through my ski pass through, but I actually use my ski sac quite a bit in the winter.

bmwm750

Could not agree more. Unless you were willing to get rid of the MMI and run a "normal" head unit up front, this is a project of monumental proportions- at least if you're going to get a result that is better than stock.

I am interested in adding a real sub to the factory system, but as far as swapping out all the guts, no way!

TSHong

I just looked up mr receipt and yes, it is a line level adapter LC2I audio control line with ACR-1 Remote. You will see both products on this link:
http://www.audiocontrol.com/17612/64...r-Control.html.

I just used a prefab box and it's a acoustic suspension so not ports but when I open the armrest, you can definitely tell the difference. Here are some pics but they are not well focused. One the bass ****, the little light gets brighter with more bass. I have it set where I turn the bass almost all the way down with rapp and modern music vs I have to turn it up quite a bit with 80's music. I really like having the bass ****. I would not build a sub set up without it.

Also the JLW3V3 just blows away the Alpine Type R that I had before. I kept having to replace a Type R because the rubber surrounds would delaminate over time. The sound quality and bass volume between the two are night and day. To be fair, I was running a 300W RMS Aline amp vs 500W RMS Alpine amp.