I know this is audio related, but this question is targeted specifically to 4th gen owners so I put it here. Mods feel free to relocate this if you see fit and I apologize for the inconvenience.


My question: Has anyone put a subwoofer in between their two back speakers? Kind of like the newer maxima's, or Lexus, etc?

I was thinking about having someone custom fit a smaller 8 or 10 inch subwoofer on a line out conversion like that, and was wondering if anyone has done that.

(im doing line out conversion because I don't have any Pre-amps left on my deck)

Good idea, bad idea?

Thanks guys.

 

It's probably a good idea as it'll save you trunk space, but I dunno how you'd put it on a box...unless you hung the box from the rear lid. I imagine it'll vibrate the rear lid more.

 

I'd imagine that you should be able to pull that off with a decent free-air sub.

RedFoxXx installed his sub in between the rear seats. Always liked his setup - saves space, and looks really clean. Check out his cardomain here:

http://www.cardomain.com/ride/795512

 

Id say you should go ahead and get one of these bad boys and give your Bose Speakers and your Sub enough Voltage as well as having enough pre outs for basically anything....

http://cgi.ebay.com/AUDIOPIPE-MULTI-...item45ecdb4631

 

How difficult is it to wire this up?

 

I just put two 8's in the rear deck

 

LMFAO...thats DOPE man


I like the setup that dude put in the rear seat. Thats cool too.

 

Pics?

 

 

its not difficult at all, i just spliced a bunch of RCA's onto my metra harness.... and than the power on wire for the unit the power and ground.. thats about it..

 

In place of the stock rear speakers?

 

im running a infinity basslink 12" in the trunk...its mounted really secure, it hits really good and its between the rear speakers..

 

i know you are wanting to do something on in the deck itself but it is going to end up being a pain in the *** and not reversible when it comes time to sell the car.

I decided i didnt want to take up my entire trunk with subs like in my old car so i bought one of those thin boxes like for behind the seat in trucks off ebay. It has a 12" and is only running about 200 watts but it makes a huge difference! But there isnt so much bass that it is rattling stuff or overwhelming the music and i still have most of my trunk space

just thought i would throw it out there as an option

 

You're right about the pain selling, but I don't plan on selling my Maxima. If anything I'll part it out when I'm done with it.

How are you running your sub? Normally, or with a line out conversion?

 

I put a 12" sub in the trunk. Its running 110 watts rms. I barely turn it up cuz it knocks so hard lol. I installed a flipswitch for the sub on the dash, next to the cluster dimming **** on the right hand side of the steering wheel. I flip a switch on the dash, and the bass goes BOOM!! lol

 

Please Allow Me to help the OP with his problems; we have enough oppinons officially...

To the OP: What are you wanting to accomplish with the car; New headunit, Just Subs, New Speakers?

What is Your Current Setup?

Bose, Non-Bose?

Ive got plenty of options for you.

 

Thanks for your help!

Right now I have an aftermarket deck with the stock bose speakers. I have the adapter for the bose and the antenna, so both the preamps on my aftermarket deck are used up.

I want to get a little amp, like between 200-500 amps. For a subtle but clean sound, you know? Just a little extra punch. I'll probably just set it up with a lineout conversion.

I have a 12 inch MTX sitting next to me that I'd like to put to use. I think it'd be cool to do something custom. I want to put it in between the two speakers in the back but how much work would that be? or would it even be a good idea? This sub is pretty damn heavy. (It's an MTX Thunder 8000 for the record.)

Also, is it possible to put it in the trunk floor? Is that a lot of work to do?

 

I've seen a lot of people mount a sub in the spot where your spare tire sits. Seen people with three 8's or a 10" or 12". Just depends on the mounting depth.

Honestly, I'd rather go one of these routes.

I had this installed in my 3 series:
http://www.bavariansoundwerks.com/pr...e-M3-3-Series/

Roomy i had years ago installed this into her 5 series:
http://www.bavariansoundwerks.com/pr...9-5-Series-M5/

 

Can i get a Model # for your HU please(Sub as well Please)? Also your statement about the 200-500 Amps Im pretty sure you mean Watts Bud 200-500 Ampre's well... thats like 7250 Watts... haha, thats enough to destroy your car.

I would recommend Not doing a Line Output Converter for a subwoofer assuming you would like it to sound good.. I am happy to hear you are actually using your Pre Outs on your HU however rather than sending a High level signal to the Amp's... Trust me it sounds like Azz.

Personally; im a huge promoter of that crazy little splitter i posted a link to in my above post.. To my knowledge no one else has attempted to do it as i have; which it sounds EPIC in comparison to my AVIC-F700BT's Pre Outs Alone.. 2.2V FTL.. When they got bumped up to 4.4V though; they sound much clearer as well as Much Louder.

All that the splitter entails is Splicing RCA' connector's onto your Headunit's Harness. So basically you go to your junk drawer and pull out some RCA Male to male wires for TV's VCR's or Whatever and cut and splice them onto the + and -'s of the Harness.. Than run The Ground, Power, and Turn on to the Harness as well.. I did mine in 15 mins.

The MTX Sub would probably do pretty well in a proper enclosure.. My question to you is 1. What Size is the Sub? 10" 12" 15"? 2. What Ohm Voice Coils does it have?, and 3. Do you have an Amp yet? oh, and what kind of music do you listen to (helpful in determining what type of Box to make.)?

Also, how much trunk room are you willing to sacrifice? Personally i would have liked to have made a Spare Tire Compartment Enclosure; but it does entail a bit of work.. To get it right, you would need to do a MDF Floor assuming youd like your trunk to be level.. as well as Fiberglass in the Well itself; which can be a pain.. That would be the only way to retain 99% of your trunk.

I appologize at this momment as i just reread your post and found that that wasnt your comment haha!

A 12" Sub between your Rear Speakers? Yeahh; probably not a good idea; especially since you would need to Baffle It as well as send a Good amount of Juice to the Sub to get it to Infinite Baffle.. Especially with a sub not designed for that purpose..

My suggestion; go ahead and custom build a little Encolsure for the area between your Rear Strut Towers. Just make sure you get the Proper Specs for your Sub! I can guarentee that just that 1 Sub will sound great with the proper enclosure and appropriate wattage applied.

Any questions i didnt answer feel free to continue asking.

 

Well first off I can't believe I said "amps" haha. I'm not THAT car audio stupid.

Anyways, the deck is a Kenwood kdc-mp242. The subwoofer I just bought used today. All I really know is that it's a 12 inch MTX Thunder 8000 and it's 4ohm.

I do not have the amp yet, but my uncle has a little 250watt amp i think he's going to give me. Not powerful, but subtle just like I want. Should be perfect. I don't want to beat the block down. I just want a little extra punch.

As far as what I listen too, hard to say. A lot of rap, a lot of metal, hardcore punk, classic rock, alternative...anything really.

Now, this harness you're talking about...I kind of get it and I'm interested. Because you mentioned your sound being louder which I noticed once I got the aftermarket deck, it is a little bit quieter. At max volume it is pretty loud but not as loud as it used to be. There's no way I could install that myself though. I had everything so far done professionally. There's a Micky Shorr by me that did it. I'm sure they could install this device too.

 

I have an alpine deck and have the rca cables running back there, i can control all of it's function's from the deck.

 

Well im glad to see at least one of us has the money to do such things haha.

Ohh yes, i just took a look at that headunit you have and man oh man; i do think you could definitely benefit from the use of that line driver (that splitter)..

Your headunit only puts out 22 Watts RMS; so if you had not used your Pre-Outs you would have hated it.. and your pre Outs are only 2V as well... so im definitely thinking that 20$ is Worth the extra 2.2-4 Volts that its going to provide.

Like i said its EASY as Hell to install; have you ever spliced a wire before? Whos going to be installing the Amplifier in your car? Have you decided what kind of enclosure you'd like to use in your car?

Im going to suggest that you use a simple Sealed Box for your purposes; as well as a 350 Watt RMS amplifier for that sub. As it is a Dual 4 Ohm sub it can be dropped down to 2 Ohms when wired in parallel.

So your going to want to find a Single channel Amp capable of 2 Ohms. let me know what amp your uncles got for you.

All You are going to need is a bunch of RCA's from say a VCR or a TV, you simpley cut the wires in half, connect the wire thats isolated inside the main wire to the Pos + to whichever speaker, than the Wire on the outside jsut free floating inside the Main black wire to the Ground -. its really simple.. than like i said you just connect the Blue wire from the splitter to the Blue Amp power on wire from your Headunit, and the Ground and Power from it to a Ground and Power Source. you can just use the ones from your headunit as well. really simple i swear..

Oh, and let me make a clear point real quick. Bass is like a Drug. You get addicted. You Want More. You Will Want More. Just do everything right the first time and you'll be alot happier in the long run.

 

Yeah, I wish I had known about the voltage issue before. It's not like it's terribly quiet but it could be so much louder.

I think what I'll do is definably buy this splitter you showed me. I'm just going to take it to the Micky Shorr I had put the deck in. I have a feeling they're going to look at me like I ride the short bus when I show them the splitter and tell them to put it in, but whatever. They're all about spending more money so they'll tell you anything you're doing is stupid compared to the expensive way to do it. (buy new everything!!)

But let me see if I've got this right...If I DID decide to brave this myself, what you have to do is get RCA cables..and connect them to all the Bose speakers and put them into this amplifier? And connect the blue wire to the one on my deck's harness..

And i dont doubt your point about bass hahah. Very good point.

 

when you install a system dont wire to much because the voltage can put to much stress on your alternator... Unless you get a capacitor, then you can hook up more wattage.. Alot of guys tend to try and hook up 4-5 amplifiers without a capacitor and thought it was good enough to just run it on there regular single duty alternator untill it was shot... YOU WANT WATTAGE, CHECK FOR GOOD GAUGES AND TRUE WATTAGE, NO EBAY CRAP, IT'LL JUST BLOW AFTER YOUR VOLUME IS TURNED UP...

TRUST ME, I HOOKED UP MY SYSTEM THE FILTHIEST WAY ( DIRTY, UN ORGANIZED), and it thumped but it gave out quick!!

DO IT RIGHT, BASS GETS ADDICTING BUT SO DOES SPENDING MONEY>>>

 

Here's my Dynaudio Esotar 1200 in the rear deck, adding a sub in the rear deck is nothing new its an Infinite baffle installation and I love the performance. If you are not looking on keeping the car then I wouldn't go this route.

 

That looks way clean! What exactly did you go through to do that? And how much would you say that sub-woofer weighed?

And...where are your rear speakers?

 

Saylee, Just.... Just No. Period; to pretty much everything you said... Capacitors are a SCAM. Want proof? Hope ya got time for a long read.... go to Realmofexcursion.com and go to the forums and a sticky is posted about capacitors; they are worthless Period.

The RCA's just need to be wired up to the Wiring harness AT the Headunit, you dont have to run them all the way to the speaker, just use the prexisting wiring and..... ah screw it; ill get you a pic or two later... gonna be late though.

Eyce; your sub is going to weigh in at least 20 LB's as i know just the magnet is right around 13 LBS...

 

sub between the seats looks real clean, might do that myself

 

I take no credit for the original idea for doing this but I did all the work myself. Search for a thread on Infinite Baffle, I basically removed the rear speakers and I really have no need for any with all the base i have from the sub. I cut a whole using the spec from the sub and mounted it on a 1/2 plywood baffle board. I then sealed it all up using foam seal and mounted a piece of plywood to separate the front of the car from the trunk.

So basically Im using my entire trunk as my sealed enclosure, I used Cascade sound deadening on the entire trunk and spare wheel area which took me 7 hrs alone. If your going to do it, you have to do it right and sound deadening is a must. Search for that thread and there is a lot of detail on the installation of the sub in the rear deck of the 4th gen.

 

Thanks for the compliment, well worth it if your trying to save all your trunk space. Get yourself a sub that performs well in an Infinite Baffle installation along with a good Amp to power it and your set.

 

And most importantly; Ground Everything, than ground it again, than ground it another time.... And once more for good measure... than well... GROUND IT AGAIN!!!~

And unfortunately i dont see Eyce doing a IB setup as it would require alot of Sound Deadening.... Hes looking for Quick and Dirty not Huge and Daunting..

Personally i have a question though; what are some other materials (prefrably lightweight) that i can use to sound deaden?

 

Haha Okay, that makes a little more sense, but I will wait for the pictures. Thank you for that. I think I'll definitely end up getting this splitter unit regardless of what I do with the subs, just because of the extra voltage.

So then my question is, with this splitter installed would I then run that "bose adapter" off the splitter rather than my headunits existing preamps? that's the idea right?

 

interesting read, i enjoyed it and will now proceed to mock my friend for years who has 4 of them.

 

i'm still waiting to see these 2 8's in the trunk

 

sounds like a little difficult problem there

 

you can do it if you use a free air speaker. the free air speaker will use your entire trunk as the box. and if you sell the car just sell the car with the speaker by that time you'll want a new speaker anyway. Also Try to find a speaker cover that looks like the factory cover (i.e. the small mesh covers)no one will ever really know unless you tell them and it will help protect the speaker from the direct sunlight it will see. (1) good 8"/10" sub with a quality amp should fit and will be plenty of bass inside of the car. like these http://signature.crutchfield.com/g_5...s%7cFFFree_Air the pioneer would fit perfectly because it would not hit the torsion bars in the trunk. Btw if you do this you will need to dynamat the **** out of the rear deck and you will need to seal and hole in the rear deck. I have two JL 12w-6's in my trunk and it is way too much IMO I have to keep the bass almost turned off and I have thought about doing this myself many times just to gain the trunk space back

 

i have a 12" pioneer sub. i was thinking about putting it in between the factory bose.
who ever had the car before me made like holes in the rear deck. so if i fabricate something that will separate the top sub from the bottom end of the sub. i should be all good.

 

an IB setup? Yup Plenty of done it. Talk to Nismo14. He has done it. HE is obsessed with it.

 

Oh yea, I will try to get to pics today

 

That is how to mount 8" subs in the rear deck.