sTTanford

Thought I'd start a new thread since the other one was getting kinda low =)

I agree, the deal is too good to put off.

1) if i replace the head unit with the riocar and get an external amp, how is that going to affect the Bose system? is some proprietary Bose element within the headunit that controls the surround sound?

2) people who were talking about using the riocar WITH the OEM headunit and changer, how does jeff bipes' connector help that (where were you planning on putting the riocar in that case)?

JustJeff

1) If you get an external power amp, you should really replace the speakers, at least the rear ones.
You have a coupe. The front door speakers are powered by the amp in the head unit, and are 4 ohms.
The rear speakers are unknown, probably something specific to the "Bose" power amp.
You will loose the ability to power the center dash speaker this way, I think, unless the center dash speaker is wired into taps from the front door speakers.

2) My proposed A/B Aux input with the OEM H/U and CD Changer, can support the input to this existing system, via the output of the Riocar.
But, the CD Changer only uses left and right inputs, not front and rear separates.
The Riocar could only output the front line-outs, to the input of the head unit.
The front/rear fader controls on the existing OEM head unit would have to be used here.


<img src="http://www.riohome.com/products/gfx/Car/rio-car-img-M.jpg">

joffrey

Unfortunately, what you are going to find with the Bose system is that you will need to replace everything if you replace the Bose amp. Replacing the head unit is okay but you still have to live with the inferior speakers and Bose amp.

In the coupe, the rear speakers are used as subwoofers only and most of the Bose system's equalization comes from the amp. Yes, some of the eq also comes from the head unit but that seems to be more of a limiting (max/min values) than actual eq as I discovered during my transition.

I went thru a piece meal replacement of each component of my Bose system. I had been living with a bit of distortion that could only be heard when playing CD's (about 1/3 of my collection had noticeable distortion - those that are actually the best sounding, most dynamic CD's) regardless of volume. That being the case I at first suspected it was the CD changer. I therefore replaced the head unit with an Alpine CD changer/receiver with pre-amp outputs only. Not only did this get rid of the CD changer in the loop but it also replaced that piece of junk head unit. This did result in improved sound all the way around with better high and low frequency reproduction. However, the distortion heard with my CD's was still there! Therefore, my next hypothesis was it was the amplifier or the line out connections to the amp. Since the distortion was not related to volume level I could not believe it was the amp itself. In looking at the poor line out wire used between the head unit and the amp I deduced this to be my most likely candidate. Therefore, I then replaced the Bose amp with an MTX Thunder 4 channel unit. Well, this did resolve my distortion problem and now enabled me to utilize my fader control and run the rear speakers in full frequency mode. The Bose amp provided eq for the rears to run in subwoofer mode only and I now know why. The rears sound terrible trying to reproduce full range sound. Additionally, after switching amplifiers I found the speakers sounded terrible. This could only mean that the Bose amp was providing the necessary eq for the entire system (as is customary for any Bose system). That said I couldn't wait to replace all four speakers (I am ignoring the center speaker). A few days later I replaced the fronts with Diamond M561's and the rears with Diamond M361i's and added another MTX Thunder amp for my Boston Acoustics 10" subwoofer.

Now the system sounds like it should!

JustJeff

Maybe if you have the "Bose Upgrade". My fronts are driven from the amp in the HU.

joffrey

Bose system doesn't connect to these however. It only connects to the line outputs.

JustJeff

Thasnks for confirming this. I'm surprised that Audi runs separate wiring looms for this.