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  #11  
Old 16th April 2020, 07:56 AM
NightOwl NightOwl is offline
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Not for the front doors at least.
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2006 Audi A8 3.0 TDI Quattro Sport
A8 W12/S8 Brakes front and rear (385mm/335mm)
Focal and JBL speakers, Helix amps
S8 anti-roll bars front and rear
Complete rear LED taillight
Xenon fog lights
All interior LED
S8 rims 9x20"
Stage II tune
S8 Grill
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  #12  
Old 18th April 2020, 09:53 PM
NightOwl NightOwl is offline
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Quick update.

The BOSE speakers arrived on friday, and I've done all the doors so far. The swap was as easy as it could be, rip off the door panel, unhook and unscrew the speaker, then screw back on the new speaker, hook it up and attach the door panel. Done in 15 minutes on each door.

The tweeters on top of the dash gave me a little bit more work, as the connection plug doesn't fit. Also, I see on the std tweeter there is a 4,7 µF to take away the bass, but there is non on the BOSE speaker. Making med think it could be a crossover hidden somewhere where the cables to the door woofer and the tweeter separates for the BOSE speakers? Well, if so, sending full range to the woofer doesn't matter much but I'm not feeling good about doing the same with the tweeter. There isn't much power in the std amp, but a tweeter is not built to play bass. Another surprise is that using a 4,7 µF together with a 4 ohm tweeter means it will start rolling off at 8k Hz. That is very high roll-off in my opinion, so I think I will use a 10 µF with the BOSE tweeter and see how it sounds. Luckily I have some good quality caps laying around from earlier speaker jobs.

And, haven't done anything with the subwoofer yet. Need to see some videos on how to gain access first.
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2006 Audi A8 3.0 TDI Quattro Sport
A8 W12/S8 Brakes front and rear (385mm/335mm)
Focal and JBL speakers, Helix amps
S8 anti-roll bars front and rear
Complete rear LED taillight
Xenon fog lights
All interior LED
S8 rims 9x20"
Stage II tune
S8 Grill
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  #13  
Old 19th April 2020, 02:55 PM
NightOwl NightOwl is offline
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Another quick update.

Finished the tweeters on top of the dash today and took a closer look at the subwoofer. The BOSE subwoofer has a box of electronics that I'm not sure what all is. The socket has five pins but there are seven cables going into the box, and there are four cables going to the speaker it self (looks like two and two of those joins together). The parts in the box is not a passive cross-over, not sure what it does. Also, doesn't feel too confident that the std sub shares the connection with the BOSE sub. Time will tell.

Anyhow, my wife and I had a short drive today, and we both agreed that the difference in sound is surprisingly big. It's not by any means in High-End land, but a descent lift in the right direction, especially the tweeters sound very good in my opinion. With the std sound system, I had the treble at 3+ to try to make it good, now I could dial it back to zero and still sounds balanced. My wife said she heard details in the music that she hasn't heard in this car before.

I understand that adding a cap and the plug doesn't fit for the tweeters is a deal breaker for many, but everybody know someone that can use soldering iron, right?
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2006 Audi A8 3.0 TDI Quattro Sport
A8 W12/S8 Brakes front and rear (385mm/335mm)
Focal and JBL speakers, Helix amps
S8 anti-roll bars front and rear
Complete rear LED taillight
Xenon fog lights
All interior LED
S8 rims 9x20"
Stage II tune
S8 Grill
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  #14  
Old 21st April 2020, 07:59 PM
NightOwl NightOwl is offline
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This is what I think will be the last update.

The BOSE sub woofer doesn't fit directly because it has a plug with five wires and the std sub only has two.

What have I learned so far?
Std sound system have:
Two tweeters on top of each side of the dash.
Front and rear doors has a 6,5" woofer.
Rear doors have a tweeter.
In the parcel shelf is a sub woofer, think its 10" but could be 12".
All driven by std no-name amplifier.

BOSE sound system has all above but:
One more tweeter in the middle of the dash (next to the wind shield as the others)
Two woofers in each side of the parcel shelf.
And there is a 12" sub woofer in the middle of the parcel shelf.
The tweeter in the rear doors are the same for std and BOSE sound system, all other are different.
All driven by BOSE amplifier.

If you are planning to "upgrade" from std to BOSE, you can only replace the speakers that are mounted in the std setup, there are simply no wires or channels from the amp for more speakers.

Going from std or even BOSE to B&O, I think it will be bigger headache than I will recommend.

So for those with itchy fingers that like to think outside the box, while using mostly the same locations for the speakers. Is there any possibilities? Of course there is, but you would need some tools and fabrication skills. This should apply to both std and BOSE sound system. To start off in the front of the car, you should decided if you go for two or three tweeter if have BOSE, std have only two so there its easy. I would abandon the holes under the cover and mount them on top with a screw or double sided tape. The holes has limited depth, at least the left (or was it the right?), so to make it easy I would recommend top mounting. Maybe some with an angle housing or just flat to bounce off of the wind shield. The doors has the same 6,5", but the back cover is slightly different, but shouldn't make any difference in choosing speaker. The only thing to think about is that the total depth should be less than 63mm. Passive cross-over may be a challenge for the front door woofer/dash tweeter as I think it would be a deep dig to find where the cables split to the woofer in the door and tweeter on the dash. I see some two-way sets has only cross-over for the tweeter and just full range for the woofer, while other has a dedicated two-way crossover box. There is also a possibility to take apart the two-way crossover and reassemble it in two pieces, one for the woofer and the other for the tweeter.

For the rear doors it would be easy as the woofer and tweeter are mounted not far from each other. For the tweeter in the rear doors, I didn't have a closer look at as it was the same in std and BOSE, but anyway I would go for the same as in the front to get the same sound. Mounting of the tweeter could be possible under the cover, if not, just mount them on the surface of the door panel.

In the parcel shelf std has non woofers so that makes it easy, and BOSE has two, but I don't know the size of them although I won't be surprised if they are 6,5" too.

For the sub woofer, the std sub will be easy to replace with any other sub as it has two wires inn, some fabrication for a bracket would most likely be needed. The BOSE sub would be a little bit more tricky to replace as it has five wires going into it, but I've read online some has made a splitter to take out the signal and feed it into a normal car amp and then to the sub. Another thing with replacing the sub is that both the std and BOSE is very low profile, so you may need to cut out some to get room for the magnet and/or speaker housing.

The big frustration with modern cars is that the sound system is so integrated into the car and the amplifier has proprietary connection that doesn't follow any standard.

So, in the end. If I knew what I know now before I started, would I have done it differently? Good question, but probably not. Although tempting to go for even better speakers, I think (without knowing) that the std amp would quickly be the thing that holds it back. Expecting that the BOSE amp is better, it would actually be more tempting to do some serious upgrades if I had a BOSE sound system as a starting point.

Thanks for reading!
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2006 Audi A8 3.0 TDI Quattro Sport
A8 W12/S8 Brakes front and rear (385mm/335mm)
Focal and JBL speakers, Helix amps
S8 anti-roll bars front and rear
Complete rear LED taillight
Xenon fog lights
All interior LED
S8 rims 9x20"
Stage II tune
S8 Grill

Last edited by NightOwl; 23rd April 2020 at 10:18 AM.
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  #15  
Old 23rd April 2020, 09:06 AM
J i m s t e r J i m s t e r is offline
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Was interesting to see how far you got, kudos.

Strangely I think the radio feed has better sound in the standard system than the HDD so I use an FM transmitter bluetoothed to my phone. It still isn't great but sometimes, if I squint my ears ( ) it doesn't sound like it's being played under a couple of quilts.
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  #16  
Old 26th April 2020, 10:03 PM
NightOwl NightOwl is offline
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Not surprisingly there is a thought spinning in my head, what if? So I've been looking at some alternative 2-way component speakers and found there is actually not many to chose from because most of them are too deep. But looking at the back side of the door panel shows there is a ring there that should meet the speaker. So then I've been wondering, is it possible to mount the speaker even further out from the door that the stock speaker by modifying this ring? If so, then it opens up a whole lot of speakers. I would not like to mount the speaker from the outside of the door panel, then it would look too much home made. Curiouser and curiouser, as the cat said...
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2006 Audi A8 3.0 TDI Quattro Sport
A8 W12/S8 Brakes front and rear (385mm/335mm)
Focal and JBL speakers, Helix amps
S8 anti-roll bars front and rear
Complete rear LED taillight
Xenon fog lights
All interior LED
S8 rims 9x20"
Stage II tune
S8 Grill
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  #17  
Old 26th April 2020, 10:53 PM
MikkiJayne MikkiJayne is offline
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You need a 3D printer, then anything is possible

This is a 6.5" speaker mounted directly to the D2 front door, rather than the 4.5" speaker which was mounted to the door card. Designed in Fusion360 then 3D printed







This is as far forward (out of the door) as a 6.5" speaker can go while still fitting behind door card, albeit with some fairly heavy mods to the door card itself. And the door. And the window frame Its 80mm deep and clears the window glass by 5mm. Clearance is clearance
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  #18  
Old 27th April 2020, 12:05 AM
NightOwl NightOwl is offline
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Good stuff, MikkiJayne.
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2006 Audi A8 3.0 TDI Quattro Sport
A8 W12/S8 Brakes front and rear (385mm/335mm)
Focal and JBL speakers, Helix amps
S8 anti-roll bars front and rear
Complete rear LED taillight
Xenon fog lights
All interior LED
S8 rims 9x20"
Stage II tune
S8 Grill
Reply With Quote
  #19  
Old 28th April 2020, 02:56 PM
NightOwl NightOwl is offline
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This looks to be the never ending story...

I've been out today and had a look behind the door panels again, and can inform that the depth mentioned earlier in the thread is not entirely correct. With the woofers in the same position in relation to the door/panel, the available depth is about 98mm in the front and about 120mm in the rear (less in the front because of a support for the window). This opens up to about every 6,5" speaker set available. Need to mention though, this will include a lot of modification, fabrication and adaption. The goal will be to modify the BOSE brackets as they seems to fit a little bit better for the purpose than the std brackets, this will include reusing the "back cover" so no water or dust will have an easy access to the rear of the speaker element.

The ring mentioned in the previous post is so wide (185mm) that any average 6,5" will go inside it, so not cutting of this would be necessary I think. If needed, the woofer could be mounted about 15mm further out than original position.

At the same time the panels was off, I had a closer look at the rear door tweeter, and it's actually the same as the std front tweeter! Not the same part number as it didn't have the extended mounting bracket as in the front. This will be a massive upgrade!

I've been thinking to go for same set in the front and the rear, but has lately reconsidered to go for better quality in the front and a bit less in the rear, as I'm never in the back seat anyway.
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2006 Audi A8 3.0 TDI Quattro Sport
A8 W12/S8 Brakes front and rear (385mm/335mm)
Focal and JBL speakers, Helix amps
S8 anti-roll bars front and rear
Complete rear LED taillight
Xenon fog lights
All interior LED
S8 rims 9x20"
Stage II tune
S8 Grill
Reply With Quote
  #20  
Old 28th April 2020, 03:00 PM
MikkiJayne MikkiJayne is offline
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Plus you don't stand with your back to the stage at a gig
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