Originally Posted by sgroer

Premium Plus Non Bose Subwoofer upgrade.

I posted about a week ago about how I had discovered the miserable little sub Audi put in our cars. It's a 10 inch woofer, but weighs less than a pound.

Today I installed a DLS OA10D in the rear deck, with a SONY XM1S amp.

It involved removing the rear deck, removing the old sub, bolting in the new one, and installing the amp.

It took me about 4 hours to complete. I'll provide more details when I get time to take some pics.

Well, after the install was complete, the moment of truth arrived. I turned it on and it sounds unreal. Tight, beautiful musical bass. It really is amazing. I can't imagine needing more bass than this. Just phenomenal. If you want to crank it, it continues to give more and more...to the point it's probably embarrassing outside the car.

The MMI subwoofer dial, which previously did seemingly nothing now perfectly controls the aftermarket sub. I really had no idea an open air sub could sound this good.

So here are some Pics and a step by step.

1) Remove the rear deck - This sounds more daunting than it is. You need to remove the c pillar covers on each side - the ones along the side of the rear deck. They pop off easily with two clips each

2) Remove the drivers side speaker grille on the rear deck by pulling up on the front of it. It unclips and slides towards the front. Then remove the 5 screws unerneath the grille

3) Push up on the front of the rear deck, thereby unclipping the three large clips. The back of the deck is secured by 3 hooks, pull the deck towards the front of the car and the entire thing will slide out with a little maneuvering.

4) Remove the old "sub" - four obvious screws and the speaker connection and she's outta there!

5) Installing the new sub requires drilling holes. You will be dropping the new sub into the hole from the top. However, as you will notice, you cant drill from the top, because of the rear window. I ended up removing the rubber ring from the new sub, and using it as a template to drill the holes from the underside. I just lightly taped it in place and made my marks. Drilling the holes was easy. The pics show the sub from above and below

6) Bolt the new sub to the metal deck and reinstall the rear deck and c-pillar covers. You don't need to use any of the old subwoofer parts / grilles / etc.

7) Amp install - I installed the amp in drivers side cubby hole in the trunk. It lays neatly in there and I strapped it to the black plastic "shelf" by running straps in between the underside of the shelf and the top of the factory radio unit which sits one level below where the amp will now be.

I ran a 6 gauge fused power wire to the battery in the trunk. There is a perfect grounding spot on the driver's side rear wheel well - a couple of other wires are already grounded there. I attached a 6 gauge grounding wire to that point and connected it to the amp. There is a picture of the grounding spot.

Tapping the sub line , I used a wire tap and tapped into it at the radio unit, just below the amp. You will see a pair of twisted wires - one brown wire with a blue stripe, and one blue wire. The blue wire is the positive, and the brown with blue is negative sub feed. There is a pic of this. I connected it to the left speaker high level feed of the XMS1 Amp.

I then Ran speaker wire to the sub and connected it to the "L" out on the amp. This sony amp defaults to mono mode when only one speaker is connected.

Also, the amp I used does not require a remote wire - it uses the speaker inputs as a remote wire. It actually turns on when you open the driver's door and shuts off about 3 minutes after the MMI has powered down.

I made the appropriate adjustments to the amp, and fired it up!

I cannot recommend this $250 upgrade enough. It is night and day. I am so thrilled with the outcome.


Parts:

Subwoofer...
http://www.sonicelectronix.com/item_...FZNV7AodkgjjTA

And the amp...
http://www.amazon.com/Sony-XM1S-Slim...0470538&sr=8-1

Originally Posted by birdyA6

Hi everyone,

Quick question, and thank you in advance for the answer. I went to a local shop today and the owner recommended that I have a custom enclosure fashioned in the spare tire well rather than mess with the rear deck of my A6. Does anyone have any experience with this? Just trying to figure out if there are any cons and if the $1k price tag for the whole thing is justified.

Also, I had expressed interest in being able to maintain the control of the sub level via the current stock method in dash, but he told me that it would not be possible when installing in the tire well location. Any work around for this at all?

Originally Posted by sgroer

Do you have Bose or standard sound system?

Originally Posted by sgroer

Should be easy, and you can control the sub via the MMI. This will happen "magically" when they tap into the subwoofer speaker wire coming out of the factory Amp. You cannot do this from the Bose system :-)


I'm sure an enclosure will sound better than an open air sub, but you lose valuable trunk space, and I'm still giddy with my choice to put it in the rear deck. Unless you are a real basshead, the deck will suit you. Of course, the shop likely doesn't sell the sub referenced in this thread, and perhaps they don't have a good open air sub to offer.

Originally Posted by birdyA6

Thank you for your thoughts. The reason we are thinking of putting the enclosure into the spare well is to preserve the precious trunk space, as you mentioned above. Part of what sold me on the A6 was the trunk real estate, as we do a fair amount of travel. I'm just worried that it may rattle a bit.

I suppose now the question is whether the shop can "extend" the factory sub wire down into the tire well so that I can maintain control via the MMI. I'm not too keen on the idea of an aftermarket **** anywhere near my beautiful dash.

Originally Posted by sgroer

Make sure to use an amp with speaker level inputs. They should use wiretaps to tap into the sub line and basically add a "piggyback" wire that connects to the speaker level input on your amp. With a long enough wire, you could extend it to your living room if you wanted to :-) The directions in my original post describe the wires that need to be tapped. Should be totally doable.

Originally Posted by aj0408

I am pretty new to car audio. This is a great thread. Thanks OP and everyone who has been giving information. I just bought a a6 premium plus non-bose. This will be great project. Once question I had was while I am doing this, should I not spend a couple of hundred bucks more and go with a 5 channel amp (4 channels for the car speaker and one for sub).

Basically, I ma trying to get better bass and use a better amp for my other speakers. Has anyone thought of it and so what were the conclusions?

Thanks all.

Originally Posted by aj0408

I am pretty new to car audio. This is a great thread. Thanks OP and everyone who has been giving information. I just bought a a6 premium plus non-bose. This will be great project. Once question I had was while I am doing this, should I not spend a couple of hundred bucks more and go with a 5 channel amp (4 channels for the car speaker and one for sub).

Basically, I ma trying to get better bass and use a better amp for my other speakers. Has anyone thought of it and so what were the conclusions?

Thanks all.