Full Active Speaker system with Audison AP8.9Bit

[LGSONE]

So I'm about to pull the trigger on the Audison AP8.9Bit DSP/Amp 35x8 and do a full Active speaker setup. I need to verify speaker sizing.

Speaker Setup:
Front Dash, tweaters or 3 1/2"
Front Doors, Mid Bass 6 1/2" 6 3/4" or 6x9?
Rear Doors, Coaxial 6 1/2" 6 3/4" or 6x9?
Rear Pillars, tweaters or 3 1/2"
Sub JL passive box powered by outboard amp

Problem is what the heck are the speaker sizes, Crutchfield and Sonic don't even know.
It is the 9 speaker "Bose" system and the factory amp has 6 channels out. I thing the rear pillars and rear doors are wired in parallel. The AP8.9Bit has high level in and de-equalization for the inputs and configurable outputs.

I need a harness to come off the Bose amp into high level inputs and then a second harness to go into the factory cabling to the speakers from the amp outputs. I think I can get close with a Metra piece but i wanted to check to see if anyone here has another option.

Since the Bose amp has a MOST input stage I have to leave it in place as no convertor for MOST and GM-LAN29 exist. This is fine so it does not effect any of the factory chimes, traffic alerts, onstar, etc...

Does anyone have definitive answers to speaker sizes...

Only thing I wish was available with a JL stealthbox or MTX version... none yet.

It is surprising to see such spare information available for this new body style. Sorry for all the questions but before I tear apart a truck with barely 1000 miles on it I'd like to know so I can start and finish instead of chasing down quality gear.

LGSONE

 

[LGSONE]

Equipment after research
Front Dash 1 pr Tweeter 1" soft dome, channels 1-2
Front Doors 1 pr 6x9 Coaxials, channels 3-4
Rear Doors 1 pr 6 1/2, channels 5-6
Rear Pillars 1 pr Tweeter 1" soft dome, channels 7-8
Sub, JL box, channel 9

8 sheets 12x24" Hushmat, 2 in each door and some behind tweeters.
Audison AP8.9Bit.
1 JL Sub Amp
2 8 Ga Amp wiring kits
1 Metra 70-2057 Amp bypass kit
1 Metra 71-2107 Radio harness kit. (Not being used for its purpose but need the female connector for the Bose amp connection)
1 Metra 82-3006 Rear Door speaker brackets
1 Metra 82-3004 Front Door 6x9 speaker brackets


I'm going to sum the front dash / door channels for the high level inputs into the Audson and then break them back apart on the output stage of the amp / DSP.

All in all it will be about a 900 watt system. Plenty loud enough for most music I listen to. In my two visits to the shop they were in the process of putting one of these in a 2500 Crew cab. For critical listening I use Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture. I listened to it pre and post installation and holy smokes, amazing. Shop hangs 6 mic's in the car and runs thru an auto config with levels, delays and crossovers. Then a professional ear to tweak it in. Very impressed. if your into the SQ and not SPL, check this item out should you decide to upgrade.

LGSONE

 

[LGSONE]

Well all the parts are in, I added a bit more Hushmat and am doing the MVI HMI 2.5 upgrade while it is pulled apart. The factory harness bypass I need to start putting together, all but one plug that goes into the factory amp will be untouched, just plug and play with the Audison DSP/AMP. I put a wiring diagram together, it's a bit crude, board sitting in a hotel on business but I'll clean it up and post a pic. The only plug that will have to be modified is the Amp X1 but it is already cut into and soldered for the sub hi-level into the current amp. This will end up one of the Audison inputs so it will get modded a bit more. One thing I decided to do was use an Audison SPM4 and sum the front dash/door outputs from the factory amp to the Audison inputs. Won't matter too much because it will come back out as 8.1 channels with active xovers and gains for each speaker. Wife thinks I'm nuts but I'm sending her to FL for a weekend... I'm going to try to get the shop doing the install to take pic's but the installer is one of them old school cranky but great kinda guys... Maybe some good BBQ lunch when I drop off the truck might help. More to come...

LGSONE

 

[gat0r]

sounds like an impressive system

 

[LGSONE]

Its game on, dropped the Tahoe off tonight. The installer is one of the best I've ever worked with, third car he has done for me. One **** mofo, kind of one of those cranky cats who you just leave alone and let him do his thing. Perfect. I'm glad the shop is far away or they would kick me out. I asked him to take some pic's with my camera.. and forgot the damn battery charger. So hopefully the sales / DSP guy will shut me up and snap some pic's. I can't wait for Saturday, like a little kid..

Hopefully I'll have some progress pic's to share.

LGSONE

 

[LGSONE]

Progress Pic's, won't upload, security error....still...on Sun.

BUT HOLY HELL, what a difference... I am amazed at the difference. The factory de-equalization was very much an eye opener. It measures each output from the factory amp and wow does the Bose amp just chop the crap out of the signal curve. It really works hard to makeup for the stock drivers. TOO hard. Just replacing factory drivers would help a ton but then you have to account for all the factory tuning done... complicating issues with new speakers... More to come once I can post some pic's..

LGSONE

 

[LGSONE]

 

[LGSONE]

 

[LGSONE]

Ok, yea. It has been a great weekend. I got up this morning and tuned in some gains and did some listening while driving. I'll have some more pic's from the sales guy this week and I have to say, worth the money to me. Just listening to the SD card with mp3's don't really do it justice. It sounds much better don't get me wrong but pulling out some old fashioned CD's really shine in comparison to the equivalent in the mp3 version. Some Jerry Garcia live tunes off the CD put me right back at the Dead concert. I'll post some more pic's of the doors when I get them. I pulled the JL sub amp and put in a kicker amp I had the gain control knob for. In the center console storage the subwoofer gain knob is nicely hidden and if I had not seen it prior to the install I would have thought it was stock. I'll post some pic's of that as well... Questions, shoot em on over. The factory jack is now in the storage compartment at the back.

 

[BlackOh7on22s]

Looking really good!

 

[LGSONE]

 

[Denada]

Fantastic setup, looks (and I'm sure sounds amazing). The one issue I had with the vehicle speaker layout is that the sound stage is narrowly focused directly in front of you and it's hard to achieve depth. The sound just doesn't envelop you like a good system should. My solution, and it has made a WORLD of difference, is to do what other auto manufactures do and put tweeters in the sail panels. Heck even the Eskies come with that type of setup I believe. I used a pair of Infinity Reference tweeters and it looks completely stock.

 

[LGSONE]

Did you omit the dash tweeter, I would think so. The audison tuning is pretty sweet and the sound stage is really opened up and has a very wide feel to it. With compressed music it is not as easy to really create the depth but when I played some CD's I was very surprised to hear the difference in the sound stage. To most it sounds great but these little touches really immerse you in the music... nothing better than a long highway drive and you just take it all in..

LGSONE

 

[Denada]

The Bose dash speakers sound more like a tweeter / midrange hybrid so I left them. Which meant the system was lacking the punch of directional tweeters which I have grown to love in high end car audio systems. They are running off a dedicated Kenwood micro amp in the rear jack space. Aside from subs, the optimal setup would involve having every speaker pointed directly at you.

You bring up an interesting point about music source...it makes such a difference. Songs on the radio are horrible (even HD) and XM/Sirius isn't that much better. Digital versions of songs copied from CD can sound pretty good if you convert them properly/use a losless codec like FLAC (although not sure our systems can play them, haven't tried). CDs obviously sound the best but who listens to those any more!?! Plus you would need one of those 10 disc changers like they had in the 90s to provide any kind of selection. Pandora, Spotify, etc. probably offer the best mix of selection and sound quality so that is the predominant source in my car. Steaming music is still compressed a great deal which is why I like having the tweeters pull those high hat and snare drum hits out of the song and deliver them directly to my ears.

 

[ctide21]

Great setup. How will you handle the Bose active noise cancellation in the Denali. Will it automatically compensate or is it deactivated.

 

[LGSONE]

From the audio shop that did the install they had simply disconnected the mic's, and for some reason they did it at the mic locations in the headliner. Didn't understand that but my vehicle did not have the cabling / mic's so it was a mute point for my install. After having listened for several days now I could not be happier. I have the Audison tuning software and have made some minor tweaks in gains and some eq curve's. The software has A and B settings with A being the shop / mic tuning and B being the "tweaked" version. Is it super loud, no 35x8, but by no means is it lacking. If I was a younger man I might have done a Bit Tune model or a Helix DSP PRO with a JL 75x8 amp..

My dad, who just bought a '15 High Country and thinks I'm crazy for installing the stereo changed his tune after listening to some Elvis and Dusty Springfield. And Big Love off of the Dance CD from Fleetwood Mac is amazing.

LGSONE

 

[ctide21]

Thanks for the info. With your setup you were able to isolate the factory chimes so the are not amplified. If so, how did you go about it.

 

[LGSONE]

Chimes still run thru the same bose amplifier to the audison but all I did was to turn them all the way down in the radio setup and they are not loud at all. I do wish there was a MOST to line level adaptor but because the amp does all of the chimes, onstar etc... just not going to happen. Too bad you cannot get a Bose PREamp with all the inputs from MOST and the GMLan29 inputs.

LGSONE

 

[ctide21]

The Audison Bit DMI is a MOST adapter. Would that have worked as well.

 

[LGSONE]

GM needs a different adaptor, we contact audison directly as well as other resources for this issue... just not made.

One note on this install. I notice some mid / vocals distortion on a couple of songs and wrote it off as the recording but then by chance I pulled my SD card and put it in my wifes 2015 Jeep Cherokee, not a hint of distortions. Long story short, when using the audison SPM-4 you have to flip the phase of one of the front channel dash / door inputs or you end up with a big spike in the crossover range the de-equalization can't entirely correct for in the factory tuning. Once this was done it was re Bit-tuned and sounded much better. As I'm sure most of you audio head know with this stuff sometimes you have to step away and listen to the system on multiple occasions to pick up on this stuff. Independence Audio in KC stuck with it to get this right, at first it was assumed a speaker or hardware was bad but a bit of RTFM and viola... come to find out this was the first SPM4 they had installed and it is great to work with a company who really takes the time to make sure clients are happy.

LGSONE