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On top of the battery, there are a couple of unused red accessory terminal posts. Find the right sized connectors and use one of the terminal posts. Really a handy feature in my '14A6, 3.0. With the battery in the trunk, it was an easy install. Strapped my amp on top of the radio brains bracket in the left side of the trunk.
Good choice on a boxed sub, had mine in the rear hat shelf for a while, but couldn't fully eliminate all rattles. Went with a non-ported box behind the back seat, much happier with the sound quality - and no more rattles!
Originally Posted by FalconX
Thanks for the info, I think I’m going to keep it simple and just add a JL Audio XD amp and a boxed sub.
Would like to get some feedback on how to “cleanly” attach the power cable to the battery. Anyone have suggestions on a clean connectors and pics? I have some brass battery terminal connectors but seems too big .
also any steps someone can provide to install the amp. Know the basics but I heard disconnecting the battery will disrupt the Audi system and would need dealer to reset. Is this correct?
Does the open terminal post accept 4 awg? Do you have a pic of your that show it? This is what shows on my 2012
any issues removing the bettary terminal on the system? I suppose it would be a non issue if using the existing extra terminal, but would still like to know
I'm not in a spot to grab a photo of my trunk, but for me the extra terminals were under the plastic piece covering the main positive connection. Never disconnected my battery, not sure what would happen there. I get the sense from others in the forum that it may be a bit of a pain to bring everything back to life after disconnecting, but have no personal experiences there. I had a bag of terminal connectors of various sizes laying around, found the one that worked and presto. Good luck!
Originally Posted by FalconX
Does the open terminal post accept 4 awg? Do you have a pic of your that show it? This is what shows on my 2012
any issues removing the bettary terminal on the system? I suppose it would be a non issue if using the existing extra terminal, but would still like to know
Has anyone that has performed an amp upgrade experienced subsequent battery issues? These cars are so sensitve to any changes in the electrical system.
Has anyone that has performed an amp upgrade experienced subsequent battery issues? These cars are so sensitve to any changes in the electrical system.
Has anyone that has performed an amp upgrade experienced subsequent battery issues? These cars are so sensitve to any changes in the electrical system.
No issues. The battery and alternators in these cars are very robust.
after 5 years of running a 2000 watt stereo on the oem battery, I needed a new battery. I told the dealer I wanted to buy a new battery. The Audi dealer replaced my battery for free under warranty. They said the battery warranty is 6 years.
I wanted to see if I could upgrade my B&O sub so I went looking for it. Was very surprised to see that it was only a tiny 6”. Has anybody ever swapped it out?
Just finished upgrading my subwoofer - just replaced the original speaker in the deck and didn't even add a new amplifier. Holy cow does it sound better! So disappointed and upset that the engineers at Audi didn't just do this right.
New Speaker: The original woofer is pathetic, it probably weighs 10 ounces total. After hours of shopping online, I chose this guy: https://www.parts-express.com/Dayton...-4-Ohm-295-251. I worked for a high-end loudspeaker company for a decade as an engineer so I knew what to look for. In order to use the stock Audi MMI system without adding a new amplifier, we need high efficiency/sensitivity. This one is 86.5dB at 1W which is good for a car sub. There are others, non-car-specific that are +90dB, but I couldn't find one that was 2ohms and had a good frequency response. The other thing to look for is a low resonant frequency, because its no good to be super efficient at 60hz, because the front speakers can already do that and you don't want that sound booming thru the car. That Dayton speaker has an Fs of 34.3Hz.
Holes in the Deck: The other big issue with the stock setup, and one I don't see mentioned here, is that there are a ton of holes in the deck. There might as well be a bunch of holes in the speaker cone itself. I had some flex tape and covered almost all the holes in the deck. There is some cushion that was intended to block this acoustic short-circuit so on the holes on the other end aren't as important. The holes right next to the speaker are very detrimental.
Problems installing it: After figuring out how to pry the hell out of the D pillars in order to pop them off and get the plastic cover off the back, I realized that the original hole was about 9-1/8" and I needed about 9-3/8" in order to drop the speaker in. I thought a dremel would be the way to go, but I was going thru sander bits and not making much progress. I began using a course file to just make room where I needed it. Eventually I realized that laying in the trunk and working with the file was a good way to work and the the file was much better than the dremel. After getting it close, I realized that I needed to carve away some of the speaker too and used a cutoff dremel wheel to chamfer the ring of the speaker on one side. In the end, I probably should have just hung the speaker from the deck and not dropped it thru the hole. I don't know however if the sheet metal would bow under the weight of the speaker over time, but I doubt it. Installation would have taken like half a day if I'd done that, instead it took 3. I used weather strip foam to make a gasket ring between the speaker and the deck, and I used rubber washers for the bolts.
Baffle: It's hard to say whether you need a baffle from the speaker cone to the plastic cover. Theoretically, if there are no holes in the deck, it shouldn't matter. I suspect you get 1 or 2 dB out of having the baffle because that polyester probably doesn't do a great job - especially near the hinge for the trunk. I ended up cutting out the old subwoofer and reusing the baffle by screwing it down on top of the new subwoofer. It wasn't until I was almost complete modifying it that I realized it probably isn't necessary. The horrible part is that it appears like a flat ring that will drop on top of the new speaker, but it has a chamfer on one side. And with the new woofer dropped in the hole, there is too much thickness to just add a spongy cushion ring between them. So I had to chop off like 3/8" of the depth of this thing around 75% of the circumference using the dremel cutoff wheel. It worked fine, but it was really ugly. If the subwoofer were instead hung from the bottom of the hole, a sponge ring would have worked fine without having to do anything but chop out the old speaker. I also reused the connector from the old baffle/speaker.
Results: Its perfect. Everything I could hope for. Way more output than I was expecting. I can make the side mirrors vibrate a little. The car now actually has low bass and kick-drums when before you just had a hint of them. I also don't have any rattles, so I suspect that other people are driving the hell of the speakers and that the holes in the deck are diminishing their output. They could drive the speakers much less if they weren't fighting the holes. Or maybe they just want a ton of output and I'm okay just with a good bump. Remember to test the polarity of the subwoofer. I used a frequency generator app on my phone and could hear that the sound was very low around 50hz, which means that the bass speakers and subwoofer were cancelling each other out. I reversed the wires on the subwoofer and had good output across the entire frequency ****.
TLDR: 1. buy an efficient subwoofer with a low resonant frequency, 2. hang the subwoofer from the hole rather than dropping it thru the hole like I did, 3. you can reuse the baffle if you hang the speaker, 4. cover the holes in the deck, 5. make sure you have the polarity right. Good luck! And curse the original Audi engineers for this subwoofer!
Just finished upgrading my subwoofer - just replaced the original speaker in the deck and didn't even add a new amplifier. Holy cow does it sound better! So disappointed and upset that the engineers at Audi didn't just do this right.
New Speaker: The original woofer is pathetic, it probably weighs 10 ounces total. After hours of shopping online, I chose this guy: https://www.parts-express.com/Dayton...-4-Ohm-295-251. I worked for a high-end loudspeaker company for a decade as an engineer so I knew what to look for. In order to use the stock Audi MMI system without adding a new amplifier, we need high efficiency/sensitivity. This one is 86.5dB at 1W which is good for a car sub. There are others, non-car-specific that are +90dB, but I couldn't find one that was 2ohms and had a good frequency response. The other thing to look for is a low resonant frequency, because its no good to be super efficient at 60hz, because the front speakers can already do that and you don't want that sound booming thru the car. That Dayton speaker has an Fs of 34.3Hz.
Holes in the Deck: The other big issue with the stock setup, and one I don't see mentioned here, is that there are a ton of holes in the deck. There might as well be a bunch of holes in the speaker cone itself. I had some flex tape and covered almost all the holes in the deck. There is some cushion that was intended to block this acoustic short-circuit so on the holes on the other end aren't as important. The holes right next to the speaker are very detrimental.
Problems installing it: After figuring out how to pry the hell out of the D pillars in order to pop them off and get the plastic cover off the back, I realized that the original hole was about 9-1/8" and I needed about 9-3/8" in order to drop the speaker in. I thought a dremel would be the way to go, but I was going thru sander bits and not making much progress. I began using a course file to just make room where I needed it. Eventually I realized that laying in the trunk and working with the file was a good way to work and the the file was much better than the dremel. After getting it close, I realized that I needed to carve away some of the speaker too and used a cutoff dremel wheel to chamfer the ring of the speaker on one side. In the end, I probably should have just hung the speaker from the deck and not dropped it thru the hole. I don't know however if the sheet metal would bow under the weight of the speaker over time, but I doubt it. Installation would have taken like half a day if I'd done that, instead it took 3. I used weather strip foam to make a gasket ring between the speaker and the deck, and I used rubber washers for the bolts.
Baffle: It's hard to say whether you need a baffle from the speaker cone to the plastic cover. Theoretically, if there are no holes in the deck, it shouldn't matter. I suspect you get 1 or 2 dB out of having the baffle because that polyester probably doesn't do a great job - especially near the hinge for the trunk. I ended up cutting out the old subwoofer and reusing the baffle by screwing it down on top of the new subwoofer. It wasn't until I was almost complete modifying it that I realized it probably isn't necessary. The horrible part is that it appears like a flat ring that will drop on top of the new speaker, but it has a chamfer on one side. And with the new woofer dropped in the hole, there is too much thickness to just add a spongy cushion ring between them. So I had to chop off like 3/8" of the depth of this thing around 75% of the circumference using the dremel cutoff wheel. It worked fine, but it was really ugly. If the subwoofer were instead hung from the bottom of the hole, a sponge ring would have worked fine without having to do anything but chop out the old speaker. I also reused the connector from the old baffle/speaker.
Results: Its perfect. Everything I could hope for. Way more output than I was expecting. I can make the side mirrors vibrate a little. The car now actually has low bass and kick-drums when before you just had a hint of them. I also don't have any rattles, so I suspect that other people are driving the hell of the speakers and that the holes in the deck are diminishing their output. They could drive the speakers much less if they weren't fighting the holes. Or maybe they just want a ton of output and I'm okay just with a good bump. Remember to test the polarity of the subwoofer. I used a frequency generator app on my phone and could hear that the sound was very low around 50hz, which means that the bass speakers and subwoofer were cancelling each other out. I reversed the wires on the subwoofer and had good output across the entire frequency ****.
TLDR: 1. buy an efficient subwoofer with a low resonant frequency, 2. hang the subwoofer from the hole rather than dropping it thru the hole like I did, 3. you can reuse the baffle if you hang the speaker, 4. cover the holes in the deck, 5. make sure you have the polarity right. Good luck! And curse the original Audi engineers for this subwoofer!
Please post if you took any pics or video, if you took any during the project?
09-03-2018, 04:23 PM
