My Build Log (MS8 Loooove)

My build summary is going to be very concise; if anyone has any specific questions after reading, please PM or reply and I will respond however necessary. For those of you who requested specific pics, please find the attachments and scroll through.

 

The overall sonic goal behind my installation was to create a slightly louder than stock system with greatly increased dynamics. The reason for this is that the stock radio after volume 15 begins to apply a harsh (annoying and heartbreaking) curve to the bass output of the stock system, making the system sound very shrill at any volume of 25+. My system as configured now sounds great regardless of volume! I also had a need to decrease road and wind noise to create a decent listening chamber—I did not require the isolation of a listening room, but I wanted to be immersed in my sound without the distraction of road noise. This was not meant to be a sound competition car, but I did require a well-centered soundstage with a natural, somewhat warm midrange and decent midbass attack. As for sub-bass, I opted for two 12” woofers in an effort to reduce the excess excursion that one 12” would require to produce the level of bass that I wanted. My car is not a bass monster, but my curve is definitely not flat from 20hz to 160hz: I do like a little rumble!

 

The aesthetic goal of my build was to create a system that looks very stock to the average person. I was looking for balance and symmetry in design without looking like a complete hack job--this system was meant to appear normal to your average stereo thief with no tacky “STEAL ME” blue lights or any excess flair. To those who are familiar with Legacies, my system should be noticeably different, but not overly so…I think I have accomplished that goal. This was a true shade tree job; at no point during the install was my car in any garage, and I am somewhat proud of my system even in its semi-raw state because of that fact. I have a bit more to do before I can call this system finished; I may rethink my trunk floor in the future, but I am willing to call it done for the near-future (At least done enough to create a build log) until I feel motivated to redesign.

 

 

My equipment consists of the following:

Alpine VPA-B222 Vehicle Hub

Alpine NVE-M300 Navigation

Alpine TME-M740BT Bluetooth monitor

 

JBL MS8 (Oooooooh Yeeeeeeeaah!)

Eclipse EA4000

Eclipse EA2000

Eclipse XA1000

 

Focal TN-47 Polykevlar

Focal 165K Woofer

Hertz HL-70 Midrange

JL 12w0 v4 (X2 in fiberglass stealth boxes)

No rear speakers. The end.

Sound deadening has been covered and I actually wrote a reply in the sound deadening thread, so I’ll keep this short. I used FatMat Mega Mat and applied it to the entire bare-metal shell of the car using the SDS approach. I did not wallpaper every panel with this stuff because that will not block isolate or reflect sound. It simply killed the resonance and created a more solid feel to every dampened panel on the car. My doors close like a Cadillac, but I would NEVER waste money or time to create this effect…always use the right tool for the job!

 

I then added a 1/8th inch layer of gymnastics foam as a decoupling layer for the mass-loaded vinyl that I applied right after. The gymnastics foam did a spectacular job of isolating any vibrations from the MLV. I added somewhere in the neighborhood of 70+ lbs. of MLV throughout the entire cabin of the car, the doors, and the trunk floor. This was THE single most important step towards reducing road noise. With the radio volume at a moderate listening level, I cannot hear the road or wind. The noise is not completely eliminated at all, just reduced enough to stifle most of that noise. I think the MLV in the doors, while the most difficult to apply, made the biggest impact on road noise reduction. I am no longer overwhelmed by the tire noise of a passing Tahoe. Unless your vehicle has tractor-trailer retreads, I probably will not hear your tires at ¼ radio volume!

I started my system design with the screen and bezel installation. My screen is an Alpine TME-M740BT, which is quite well known in the BMW community for its ease of integration into the radio bezel. I used this link (http://www.mybimmer.net/TME-M740BT_vhub_monitor.htm) for my reference as I fabricated the bezel for my monitor. I purchased a USDM OEM navigation bezel with the intention of filling all of the holes and adding a slightly different texture to the bezel other than smooth matte black. I purchased Dynatron 660 repair epoxy and several cans of spray paint in flat black, graphite wrinkle, and black with metal flake. This took about 3 days of spraying, sanding, and filling before I got the texture just right. My reasoning for creating a slight wrinkle in the bezel’s texture was to reduce or eliminate any glare that might reflect from the bezel back onto the monitor and it seems to work to a small degree, not enough to say “job well done”, but IMO, it still looks nicer than the factory matte finish.

 

I filled in all of the holes using the epoxy and reshaped the entire bezel a bit to create a stock-looking custom bezel specifically for the TME-740BT. This epoxy was easy to work with and made it very easy to create a plastic-like surface. For fabricating bezels, Bondo is usually the material of choice, but this epoxy is much more resilient and flexible, and it is very easy to create a uniform texture. Bondo has the tendency to get too hard and brittle to match the texture of factory plastic.

 

Originally I had hoped to create a bracket for the monitor between the two center HVAC ducts, but that mount was very unstable. My goal was modularity; if my monitor died, I wanted to be able to unscrew and replace that monitor with relative ease. Since that idea didn’t work out so well, I epoxied the front bezel of the TME right to the inside of the navigation bezel to create one solid piece of plastic. I now consider the OEM nav bezel the front bezel of my TME. If I ever need to replace the monitor, I will simply remove the front bezel of the new monitor and drop it into place on the nav bezel. Yaaaay!! ☺

My amp rack was pure joy to create! I used the foam spare tire tray to create the shape and then laid the amps out in a symmetrical fashion. The amps are mounted onto T-Nuts with machine hex screws. This is when I discovered that T-Nuts blow Rhinoceros balls…when using T-Nuts, do NOT forget to use wood glue or they will likely pull out!

 

As for cabling, I am using a single 1/0 Gauge Knukonceptz power cable with 4 gauge power distribution and a 1/0 gauge ground also with 4 gauge ground distribution. My speaker cables are Knukonceptz 16 gauge twisted. They are techflexed (Thank you, Furryletters!) and have 5” Knukonceptz wire pants over the exposed conductors in the amp rack. I am using Monster XLN 2ch. RCAs. They are red for a bit of extra pop in the amp rack and the stubby RCA connectors are very easy to work with.

 

I drilled individual holes for the speaker channels, power/ground, remote and RCA pairs. Many people have done this, but few drill so many holes to create this type of look. I have grommets to be installed for each hole, but as you can see, the amp rack is not finalized yet. I will likely be redoing this rack with a different material or covering it with 3M DiNoc. (Please let me know your opinions if you like. I am undecided about the amp rack finish!)

 

I did not use terminal strips of any kind. I know that there is minimal if any noticeable signal degradation when using terminal strips, but my wiring philosophy has always revolved around homerun cabling and I am stubborn!

This amp rack design is purely aesthetic; I could have hidden the wires completely with a panel, but I chose to display them for that extra WOW factor. I cannot begin to tell me how many times I have heard (regarding my UNFINISHED amp rack:redface:) “Wow, you’re really anal about your installs!” Yippeee another WIN!

The Vehicle Hub was a very annoying device to install and correctly configure. I think Babelfish wrote the owner’s manual, so it wasn’t much help. Fortunately, I was able to integrate my factory radio into this device along with my NVE-M300 and Ipod. A single RCA output goes into the MS8 and I can enjoy all of the integration capabilities of the VHub’s inputs BEFORE the MS8. This allows for plenty of flexibility with the MS8 since I am not required to use high-level inputs from the factory radio to get signal. The Alpine cleanly routes, switches, and interrupts each source in a very clean way…WIN! I use the TME-M740BT for control of the entire system. I have also retained volume control for the factory radio, so I can use it if I want to.

 

***For anyone integrating our radios into the Alpine Vhub, please make sure to turn your audio controls to Bass -6, Mid -6, and Treble -6 so that your factory signal going into your audio processor via the VHub is not clipped. When it clips, the tweeters seem to receive some bass information and we ALL know how much tweeters love bass! After adjusting the audio levels, slowly bring those controls back as close to 0 as you can without clipping. Please be careful with this, it can ruin your day!!***

Great write up! Thanks

 

Out of curiosity, why did you choose the Alpine over an updated Kenwood unit which Subaru uses from the factory? I know in the first post you mentioned ease of install in the BMW community, but was hoping for some other technical aspect. Either way, it is a great project and I hope you car sounds as good as you want.

 

Best,

C.H.

I will Post the rest of my log when I am able to attach pics again. This thread IS worthles without pics!

 

cholmes1, to answer your question--I wanted factory integration, so with the Kenwood unit, I could have chosen the CarPortal. If I had this to do all over again (not entirely out of the question...hehe) I would have chosen the CarPortal, the Kenwood Black Box and the equivalent Kenwood standalone monitor. I got an incredible deal on the VHub and the TME, so after a lot of thinking and planning, it was easier to fabricate the bezel around the Alpine. The entire system interface was very simple and factory looking, and Alpine has always been rock-solid for me. I think the Kenwood unit might be a little better, so I may build it into my car at some point, but right now I am happy.

I'd love to see your front door install. I'm curious how much room there is in the factory locations of a larger woofer. I have a set of Mpyre 65m midbass woofers I'd like to install, but I doubt they'd fit.

I promise that front door install is coming! It is typed up and ready to go, but I cannot attach the pics. In fact, I have more pics to attach to my previous posts, but that time will come once I have the entire log posted. I will say, however, that those Mpyre woofers will likely be too deep for our doors. You can probably drop them in place, but your door card will not sit flush and the woofers will rattle against it.

My front stage began as a 2-Way active Focal Polykevlar component set with a 3sixty.2 as the processor (This is going to be for sale soon!), but I felt that my setup sacrificed a bit of midbass because of the wide crossover range and the overall vocal projection was not as vibrant as I would have hoped. Don’t get me wrong—the midbass was quite impressive, but I was able to increase its impact quite a bit by adding a midrange speaker. Without the subwoofers, the Polykevlar woofers WILL RATTLE MY REARVIEW with 75W RMS! Wow! They are crossed over at 63HZ/24db. (Quite low but manageable.) To further increase that impact, I created a very thick gasket between the speaker frame and the speaker space using duct sealant. This is like non-hardening clay and was done to ensure that there are no leaks at the mounting point of the midbass.

 

The scariest part of the build was definitely cutting those Hertz HL-70s into the doorcards. There are several ways that you can screw this up. For anyone thinking of doing this, please read these suggestions:

 

1. Apply a layer of duct tape or gaffer’s tape to the area to be drilled and press out all air bubbles to ensure strong adhesion.

2. Use an exact size holesaw AT YOUR OWN RISK! I would recommend using the next size down and then filing the hole until the speaker sits perfectly.

3. Press the holesaw teeth firmly into the doorcards. You need to be 100% sure of where the speaker is going to be mounted at this point because that holesaw will create PERMANENT dimples in the surface. The point is to reduce wandering of the holesaw, so press down as firmly as you can.

4. Release some pressure on the drill and then drill into the panel in reverse. This will score right through the leather/textile wrap on the doorcard but it will not cut through the plastic easily. The tape will also come off during this part: you will know at this point that you have cut through the leather.

5. When you switch the drill back to normal, resume drilling all the way through the doorcard. The reverse drilling action will have created a channel in the leather, further ensuring that the holesaw does not wander. This should produce a very clean hole in the doorcard with no stray marks.

 

I spent an entire day dedicated to this, making sure that the measurements were 100% perfect before cutting and the results turned our great. Since the material is a foam-padded leather-like wrapping, the foam began to decompress around the perimeter of the grille and within 2 hours; the grill now looks like it was pressed into the doorcard rather than cut into it. I think it looks somewhat inconspicuous; everyone who has sat in my car so far thought that those midrange speakers were stock…WIN AGAIN!

 

I am using 2 JL Audio W0 v4 subwoofers mounted in corner stealth boxes. The boxes are slightly undersized for these woofers, but the subs do not sound terrible despite the space constraints. BTW, I have had these subs forever, and I will only get rid of them if they die! The reason that I used 12” subwoofers is that I was so impressed by the Wicked Cas Magic boxes, but I did not want to be stuck with 10” woofers if I could potentially fit a larger driver. After taking several measurements, I was able to determine that a 12” sub would fit if the mounting ring were placed just right. I created these boxes using slightly countersunk MDF rings that I routed (roughly) to fit around the rubber ring that holds the grille in place. I fiberglassed these sub boxes using a similar method to the walkthroughs on this site so I will not go into detail here. Please reply or PM if you have any questions about fiberglassing subs into our corners and I will provide details.

 

In this setup, since the boxes are a bit undersized, I do sacrifice a bit of sub bass quality. I think the impact and the aesthetic value make me happy enough to overlook the slight imperfection of minimal airspace in these woofer boxes. Normally, you would expect boomy and sloppy bass, but these JLs still play very tight, so I am not too upset! I originally had one installed, but because the SPL that I wanted required too much excursion than I was comfortable with for that tiny fiberglass box, I decided to mold the other corner box as well. Now that I have a much larger subwoofer cone area to push air around, my subs don’t have to show ALL the flaws of the tiny boxes!

Hi mate, sounds like a pretty decent setup. Am I right in my understanding that you have mounted your midranges to the door trim and if so, can I ask why????

Do you adjust the volume by using the standard knob on the stereo, or do you have to use the one that comes with the MS8?

I will say, however, that those Mpyre woofers will likely be too deep for our doors. You can probably drop them in place, but your door card will not sit flush and the woofers will rattle against it.

 

That's what I figured. Would probably be more work to do right than I want to do. I'll probably just stick with Type X components since I know and like their sound.

FINALLY!!! Some pics! I just got tired of relying on support to upload direct to the site, so I hosted them myself. Anyways...to answer some questions:

 

Garbo: These speakers are bolted to the door cards using 1 inch machine hex cap screws and matching nuts. My original intention was to apply fiberglass resin to the backside of the door card for added rigidity, but I found that it wasn't necessary since I normally do not pound my system. Sympathetic vibrations from the mids have almost no perceptible (to me) effect on the sound of the miss, so I left them as is. I wanted to use a thin layer of putty to further seal and isolate these drivers, but the leather on the door card provided a very solid gasket to seal off leaks, so it was not necessary. I did not want to fabricate kick panels because (I know, it is an unpopular opinion...) I HATE kick panels in cars and I wanted to stay as far away from that look as possible, so I opted for the factory-meets-aftermarket-in-the-middle approach with slightly flashier but nearly matching paint colors.

 

Chrisbl: I have 2 audio sources and I adjust the volume of both of them at the source. For the VHub, I use my touchscreen as the volume control and for my factory radio, I use the factory radio volume control in conjunction with the "mute" feature of the VHub for quick volume-down. One of my stipulations in choosing factory integration was that I must be able to use volume control at the head unit and not from a tiny remote. I locked the MS8 volume at 06 and never touched it again.

 

Dbl: Type X comps are great, I would stick with those as well. Those Mpyres, if I am not mistaken, have a great deal of excursion to reach those low crossover points. We can do about 7 inches in diameter with the right basket design and spacing, but your surround will pop!! I am cutting it close with my Focals and I purchased the extended door card pins just to make sure they didn't rattle. Mine will rattle a bit at certain frequencies under higher power, but the Mpyres will rattle all the time!

 

 

Ask away!!

Am curious where you are located? Would be interested in seeing your setup in person if we are in the same area. I am in Chicago.

Your midrange speaker mounting looks surprisingly good. I usually don't like to look of speakers mounted like that, but with the grill you've got on there, it pretty much matches the rest of the interior. Did you do anything to strengthen the door card though? Seems like it would be too flimsy to be a good speaker mounting point.

 

Also, did you have the rear doors apart at all? Do they have roughly the same space as the front in terms of speaker depth and such?

Hey all, sorry for the delay in responses…anyways, to answer a few questions:

 

cholmes: I am located in Westchester County, NY so it’s quite a hike from Chicago! However, if you ever find yourself in the greater NY region, I’ll certainly be around!

 

Dbl: I agree with you about tacky looking speakers mounted to the door card; usually it comes out looking very much like a destroyed door with a noise-making plug in it! What I was trying to avoid was the use of kickpanels to mount my midrange—I absolutely HATE that look (I know, a somewhat unpopular position, but it’s my car! ) and I wanted to stay as far away from it as I could. I had gone through several mock-ups of midrange design and went through 2 pairs of dome midranges, Dynaudio MD140 and Beyma SD-35, trying to accomplish the task of mounting midranges on the door, under the dash, etc. (These will also be for sale very soon!)

 

I started with the idea that I would fabricate a bracket to be mounted directly to the metal of the door the same way that the factory speakers are mounted, and then flushing a grill into the door card to create a very factory appearance. The Dynaudios were a bit too large for the way I wanted to mount them (I cried a little bit… → ) and the Beymas seemed to be fit for that job. With the Beymas, I thought I might be able to get the mounting point a little farther under the dash, but they were a little too big for that! By then, I was also toying with the idea of moving a pair of midranges to the tweeter mounting point and then flushing the tweeters into the A-pillar. I began looking at the CDT-HD2 and other tiny midranges, and then I saw these Hertz midranges... If they weren’t designed the way that they are, I would not have mounted them to the door card. They are small and light and they match my interior very well. I purchased them after carefully planning and measuring; I knew before I even spent the money that these speakers would work very well mounted in this fashion!

 

As a mounting point, these speakers are very sturdy against the door card with no need for additional bracing. I assumed that I would have to paint at least a couple of layers of fiberglass at the mounting point for rigidity, but the door card has an integral curve right at the top of my mounting location, so the speakers are mounted to the most rigid section of that part of the panel. There is no flex that I can detect, so I couldn’t ever call it a flimsy mount location, especially considering the weight of the drivers. If I had used something as heavy as the Beymas, this mounting location definitely would not have worked without lots of fiberglass!

 

I have not had the rear speakers removed at all, but the rear speakers are virtually the same as the fronts. I actually think (if I remember correctly) the mounting location is a bit deeper in the rear than it is up front. If someone else knows this for sure, please let us know! I do know that if I wanted to, I could mount my Focal mids in the rear with my spacers and not worry about the fit.

Hey thanks for answering all of my questions man, you're really helping me plan my own system. I think I might try some beefy 6.5" drivers in the rear doors to run as sub duty since I hated losing the trunk space for subs in my previous car; that's why I was curious about the rear doors.

 

My other curiosity is that there's apparently an 8" hole in the rear deck for an optional subwoofer in the Japanese models. I might check that out as an option and run a sub free-air in that location. I've read about a guy that considered it, but abandoned it after realizing there's only about 3" of depth available due to the trunk springs.

No problem, just trying to be as informative as I can. I also considered that 8" hole as well, but I think you would need to explore a flat sub or a sub with a small basket that is capable of running infinite baffle. The only problem you may encounter with 6.5 inch subs in the rear doors is the amount of excursion you'll need to produce maaaajor bass. You will need extended door pins so that the surrounds don't hit the door cards. When you start to hear too much driver action or door card vibrations, the bass image will begin to pull towards the rear. The MS8 can help quite a bit to avoid this effect despite the excessive distortion so it is still quite usable as a sub-bass, but try to minimize the vibrations!

 

I will likely use my 8" hole as a passage to let bass into the cabin so I may have to add on to my build log...

Great write up, can you post some pics of your JBL MS8 installed please?

More questions

 

Did you consider an Alpine PXE-H660 for your install? What helped you pick the MS-8 over it?

 

Where did you tap into the factory head unit's signal for your vehicle hub?

 

Also, how hard was it to take apart the car to do all this? Mostly getting the factory head unit out and the door cards. I'm hesitant to start pulling apart such a nice car because I don't want to break anything. I've never broken anything major in the other cars I've done, but this one cost considerably more lol. I've read that removing the trim piece on the door handle is hard to do without breaking it.

I have researched the JBL MS8 and it only shows positive things. That is why I pushed out the cash for it.

Back again to answer a few!

 

@Coppertone: I didn't really take any pics of the MS-8 install progress, so I can snap a couple of pics and log the installation for you which should pretty much accomplish the same thing. Stay tuned for that info once I get it all together for you. FYI, the MS8 is under my front passenger seat.

 

@Dbl: I did consider the Alpine PXE units so much so that I currently own a PXE-H650. I had the PXE-H650 for a while after my first 3sixty.2 went south; I was contemplating sticking with this unit altogether. I feel that the 3sixty.2 had an easier time dealing with precise changes to each channel than the PXE. Once the PXE is auto calibrated, changing any of the settings can potentially bust up the tune. You can accomplish almost the same tune with the PXE that you can with the 3sixty.2, but you will arrive at the correct tune much quicker, but lacking output. The MS8 will get you a rock solid tune on the 1st or second try! In terms of overall sound quality, I think the binaural microphone measuring device is what gives the MS8 such accuracy and even though you cannot adjust each little parameter of each driver, there is much less trial and error to get your drivers sounding their best. If I had this to do over again, I would have never purchased a 3sixty.2 OR the PXE--I would have gone straight for the MS8, hands-down!

 

For The head unit, get a forward and reverse radio harness and then extend the speaker leads into the harness using a 9-conductor wire. Match the colors (Grey, White, Purple, Green) and you should be able to get the signal to your MS8 regardless of where it is mounted.

 

In terms of taking the car apart, this car is not too bad. I have had this car apart so many times that I think I memorized all of the screws!! I can remove and replace the radio in under 4 minutes!! (I timed myself!) If you are afraid of scratches, use a pick and hook set, a very thin crowbar(pry bar), and an old t-shirt.

 

You have 3 screws in the door card. Two of those screws are in the handle, which is what keeps the door card from flexing too much. You pull the handle cover off in a downward and to the front motion and the handle comes right off with the clips still attached. That is the most dreaded part of the door card removal, but I have never EVER felt like I was breaking it. I actually enjoy ripping that handle off the door! I am a nut, what can I say?! I am not telling you to go rip your car apart, but I am telling you that you CAN do this!

Under my two front seats are my two JL Audio amps. The drivers side is a four channel one, and the passenger side is mono. My crossovers for my speakers have been relocated. I wanted to try out this JBL MS8 based upon so many positive reviews. Just reading about how much you liked it convinced me to purchase one. Although all of the shops around here think that it is an added toy that is not needed.

My shops also thought that it was an added toy--until they heard the difference! Many of them have no idea of what an external processor is capable of in a mobile environment, so they dismiss it as money wasted. Many of their cars ALSO have too much fiberglass, too many pairs of components using the factory passive crossovers, and too much bass! As a former installer myself, I know that the marketing hype (More is EVERYTHING!) and the desire to work within one's knowledge base constrains the installer's ability to try new/complicated products. My closest local shop had NO IDEA what it meant to run "Active Components"...go figure; that guy makes a TON of money!! When I explain my system to shops, they are quite a bit mystified and they ask LOTS of questions, seeking to add new technology to their workflow instead of the basic "Deck and 4 plus Sub" mentality.