O
occasionalranter
Hi, thought people may be interested to hear that I've had great results from making a couple of not very expensive modifications to the front speaker setup in my T7 California Beach.
Problem 1: while there's quite a lot of mid-bass, it's muddy and boomy
Solution: I took off the door cards and applied basically the door metal and door card damping treatments indicated in this video:
. Subtitles are in English, it's all pretty well explained. You'll need a plastic trim tool, TX15 and 30 bits, 10mm spanner. I didn't use as much material and wasn't quite as thorough but covered the main issues: damping the outer door skin, thickening up the weather seal covering the large access hole, damping the inner door skin, wedging small amounts of foam or elastomer strip where plastic to plastic contact might cause vibration noise. Took about an hour per side, T7 door panels and the fixings are quite well made and less prone to breaking than other cars I've worked on in the past. Slowest bit was eliminating the same vibration issue that the video highlights around the 15 minute mark. Had to completely remove the trim piece on mine and lovebomb it with elastomer strip. Didn't touch the door speaker: it's not the weak link here, especially as I'm sticking with factory amplification.
Result: better bass, not louder or deeper, but much more enjoyable for being more accurate and feeling more solid.
(I bought this dynamat alternative which I've used many times before https://caraudiodirect.co.uk/produc...eadening-damping-material-kit-27-x-sheets-3mm and used about 5 sheets per door: 2 to go over the access hole cover, 2 on the outer door skin, 1 around the door speaker on the inner door skin. If this was a more serious install, I would have used more.)
(one other useful thing to have to hand when eliminating rattles is a roll of loom tape like this: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/175329048548)
Problem 2: the tweeters are a steaming pile of cr*p. Sibilant, hard-edged, no sense of space, no delicacy. (Time and time again I've had this in VW factory systems: in a Mk7 Golf, a Touran, a Tiguan. The only VWs I've had with non-horrid tweeters have been Ups)
Solution: I replaced them with some spare silk dome tweeters I had lying around from an Eton component set. The A-pillar trims come out fairly easily using just a trim tool, again much easier than many other cars I've worked on. Cut the wires to the factory tweeters, used some decent quality bullet connectors to wire in the new ones, made sure the inline high pass filters were actually inline and in the right direction, used a couple of narrow strips of the Skinz damping sheet to clamp the new tweeters in position against the factory grilles, bit of old spare dacron type filler round the wires to stop them rattling against the plastic trim, put everything back together.
Result: open, spacious, clear and unfatiguing treble.
I think the tweeters were from this set: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/173980296582 . Difficult to get them separately, but any set of silk domes from a decent brand at £50-100+ should do the trick. Maybe these JL Audio ones - https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/257179905000 - at £90 ?
I now have the bass, mid and treble set completely flat on the head unit. I've also brought the focus forwards so that there's just a tiny bit of rear fill, no more.
Very happy with the result. It doesn't go any louder, it doesn't liquidise your bowels with sub-30hz bass, but it is much nicer to listen to at 50-80% volume, much less fatiguing on, say, a 5 hour drive to the Lake District...
(Sorry, no pictures...)
Problem 1: while there's quite a lot of mid-bass, it's muddy and boomy
Solution: I took off the door cards and applied basically the door metal and door card damping treatments indicated in this video:
Result: better bass, not louder or deeper, but much more enjoyable for being more accurate and feeling more solid.
(I bought this dynamat alternative which I've used many times before https://caraudiodirect.co.uk/produc...eadening-damping-material-kit-27-x-sheets-3mm and used about 5 sheets per door: 2 to go over the access hole cover, 2 on the outer door skin, 1 around the door speaker on the inner door skin. If this was a more serious install, I would have used more.)
(one other useful thing to have to hand when eliminating rattles is a roll of loom tape like this: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/175329048548)
Problem 2: the tweeters are a steaming pile of cr*p. Sibilant, hard-edged, no sense of space, no delicacy. (Time and time again I've had this in VW factory systems: in a Mk7 Golf, a Touran, a Tiguan. The only VWs I've had with non-horrid tweeters have been Ups)
Solution: I replaced them with some spare silk dome tweeters I had lying around from an Eton component set. The A-pillar trims come out fairly easily using just a trim tool, again much easier than many other cars I've worked on. Cut the wires to the factory tweeters, used some decent quality bullet connectors to wire in the new ones, made sure the inline high pass filters were actually inline and in the right direction, used a couple of narrow strips of the Skinz damping sheet to clamp the new tweeters in position against the factory grilles, bit of old spare dacron type filler round the wires to stop them rattling against the plastic trim, put everything back together.
Result: open, spacious, clear and unfatiguing treble.
I think the tweeters were from this set: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/173980296582 . Difficult to get them separately, but any set of silk domes from a decent brand at £50-100+ should do the trick. Maybe these JL Audio ones - https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/257179905000 - at £90 ?
I now have the bass, mid and treble set completely flat on the head unit. I've also brought the focus forwards so that there's just a tiny bit of rear fill, no more.
Very happy with the result. It doesn't go any louder, it doesn't liquidise your bowels with sub-30hz bass, but it is much nicer to listen to at 50-80% volume, much less fatiguing on, say, a 5 hour drive to the Lake District...
(Sorry, no pictures...)
