GEN 2 Replaced the Sony amp, finally

[smurfslayer]

I mostly finished the swap out of the Sony amp in my ’17 Rap.

I’d been suffering with the muddy, imprecise mids and highs, bass roll off and funky eq for way too long.
I was hoping to do this in a couple more stages, but fate wouldn’t have it so I spent all day Sunday making all the stuff fit behind the seat.

I had a great board to mount everything on, the only problem was, it was .5” thick and the seat was hitting things when raising the seat. I had it all mapped for component positions and all. Which brings me to this.

The next time I post up some question that leads someone to believe I’m about to undertake a modification to truck audio, please remind me of this:

Ok, so I pulled the board and struggled to figure out how to make things fit where the seat was still able to be raised.

the DSR1 I am using comes with factory harnesses that really do a good job of simplifying things once you sort everything out. The sub connection is a little funky. They have 2 black, bare wire leads but also have RCA jacks for sub out. I figured the RCAs were correct and I was right.

It was a dog fight much of the day. I ended up repurposing the factory bracket for the Sony amp and after a frustrating series of mock ups finally got the sub amp mounted low where the sony amp was, main amp up near the seat bracket on the back wall (there’s more clearance there when you raise the seats) and DSR1 just above it. The wiring was $hitful.

I ran Morel components up front - well, the tweets anyway.... so I put the x-over by the amps, and ran wire to the tweets. I ran 3 feet short on the passenger side. Fortunately I had 5 feet extra on the driver’s side; cut, splice, connect and move on. By now, the wiring is looking like a bird nest for a very large bird. As I’m running out of daylight, I give up on neat and concentrate on can I get it to breath, not catch fire and produce sound? Yes, yes, and no, respectively.

just before dark I had to stop for food, I came back out and found the DSR on, but neither amp is breathing. Nothing. They have juice, signal, power but won’t come on. too dark to do any practical troubleshooting so I head inside for a Wild Turkey Kentucky Spirit

I check in the morning, wires verified, connectivity, got +/- at the amp, got signal. Mysteriously, after power cycling 2 or 3 times, I get sound ! Just about the time I pull a crimp connector off the main amp power wire, right at the fuse block. Repair, fire back up, and I get main amp working. No chimes, but who needs chimes anyway? Sub amp not working though. Many minutes of head scratching, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, back to anger... I call the ADS guys who partner with Rockford on the DSR1. They suggest I might want to consider changing the power on mode to signal, from speaker...
DOH!

Sub amp is now breathing. Since I’ve changed things, I run the sine wave tone again and set the gain on the sub. I should’ve worn ear plugs, damn that was loud. I had the main amp gain down close to stock and slowly cranked it up and mostly it was good.

Awesome, I can go work, and with a few smoke breaks, and lunch, I can clean up the install. Since I don’t smoke, all the smoke break time goes toward tidying up. Oh. My. GOD. there are wires everywhere. I tie, tape, bind and affix for an hour easy. After work, I finish up, fire up...

No Sub. repeat the stages of grief. I trace everything in the circuit, have power, signal, amp is on. after 20 minutes I decide to try the DSR app. Somehow, the gain got set to some ridiculous negative value. I turn it up and **** !! there is bass.

Now I have much cleaner, more crisp sound, throughout the volume range, no bass roll off, and I can clearly hear lyrics, rhythm tracks, quite solos... all from outside the truck with all the windows up

My chimes mysteriously started working. Fortunately, they’re not horribly loud because I am not able to adjust the volume on them, despite the instructions. The sync button beep no longer works either, it mutes a channel, but doesn’t make a sound. I’m betting that used to come from the center channel.

anyway, a few clean up items and I can move on to another mod.
I need to trim the power run to both amps and the DSR mount could be better. Last will be pulling the A series 6x9 from the front doors and putting in the Morels. I’m eager to get this one behind me.

 

[evan9r]

IF I remember correctly when I had the DSR1, the chimes are adjusted with the volume off. Just turn the dial. I dont remember ever seeing this anywhere. You might re read my old posts and see-Im too lazy to pull them up right now haha.

 

[goblues38]

it took me 3 times with the ZEN to get the chimes right.

Now that you are rid of the sony bass management....do you see or should i say hear the light? The only way to truly upgrade the audio is to remove all factory amplification and signal processing.

 

[smurfslayer]

it took me 3 times with the ZEN to get the chimes right.

Now that you are rid of the sony bass management....do you see or should i say hear the light? The only way to truly upgrade the audio is to remove all factory amplification and signal processing.

‘sony bass management’. That phrase gave me a chuckle. At work, I sometimes use the word “manglement” to refer to how some of our teams are run. that made up word could also be used here.

It would be safe to say I can both hear and see what audio system could be like in the truck since I can now blur the mirrors with clean, crisp sound. It’s been staged in many small projects rather than one giant upgrade, so here’s my observations.

biggest bang for the buck - wrap the stock sub enclosure.
biggest impact - from stock to 300w amp and kicker 8” sub.
2nd biggest, upgrading from the 8” sub to the 10” JL sub in the MTI enclosure.

My order of mods was:

sub + amp.
wrap the sub, add (coax) speakers - except the tweets.
accumulated parts
Acquired the MTI 10” behind the seat enclosure.
Swapped sub boxes, was able to turn up the amp gain on the 300w amp almost to max.

This made the Sony system tolerable, but what’s missing is that the sound stage is just loud, not precise. It’s like I’m practicing real estate denial with at belt fed machine gun, only in this case I’m just throwing sound out there.

I’m actually starting to think that even though the coax speakers - in my case, Pioneer A series - sound better at low to mid volume, the signal processing is so poor in the F150 that better speakers make the stock amp sound worse. I’m not sure I can articulate how and why, but you just hear more sound to the point that important sound is overlaid with unimportant sound. Rhythm guitar for example.

Of course I know the speakers are better and reproduce better sound, so I guess new speakers are sort of like the “gateway drug” for stereo upgrades.


Next, I replaced the tweets with my Morel component tweets, but used the stock tweeter location. very minor improvement, barely noticeable.
- at this point, I have 4way coax in the doors, decent tweets, 3 way coax rear, and a 300w powered 10” sub.

After this, I replaced the 300w kenwood amp with the 500w JL Audio amp for the 10” JL sub.

big impact. I installed the adjustable gain knob to better control it but really didn’t need it since I couldn’t get much by way of a clean signal before clipping and the stock bass roll off kept the sub very well tamed.

as time permitted, I resumed work by swapping out the stock amp and adding in the DSR1. That thing was a pain to upgrade, and once I got it in I had lost daylight so had to pick up the next day. Got it running and all the speakers and sub were producing better sound.
- at this point, I have 4x Pioneer A series, pushed by 4 x 75w and the sub being pushed by 1x500 amp. I hooked up the Morel crossovers, wired in the tweets and door speakers as components through the crossover. I set the amp gain per channel set so the rears actually do something but I’ll admit that I kind of overdid it on the bass, it was drowning out some of my sound stage.

I knew I’d be returning to this, so I swapped out the front pioneers for the Morel component pieces and redid my amp gains. Once I’d done this I had to go back to the sub and turn it down a little to allow the voice and rhythm sound to be heard.

Now: Much more precise, a good sound stage, music plays more clearly, and as you’ve previously observed... I can have all 4 windows down and the moon roof open and still clearly hear what’s playing.

The DSR1 is doing its job with a few quirks.

Once in a while it starts up and the speakers are slow to fire up, so the chimes are through the dash until everything is working. Usually a few seconds.

issues:
chime volume update works, I’ve done it a couple times... and probably will a couple more as it seems to want to get louder.

sync beep is gone. volume dips but there’s no beeping from the sync screen.

The bifurcated support of this product is worrisome. R/F constantly points to idatalink who default to “repudiate the firmware and do it in this order”.

I will say this, Idatalink were responsive to me on a few calls I made to them.

The sound is hugely improved.

 

[goblues38]

yeah...i have no patience for all that....so i did it all in one big job...so happy i did.

 

[smurfslayer]

I just wasn’t able to put in all that time at once. Your method is better, I don’t question that. So nice to have good sound from the stereo.