Subwoofer upgrade to Audi Bose System

**MaXius** · 12-11-2009, 10:39 AM

Hi guys

Just wondering if anyone has some words of wisdom for me..

I recently bought an 09 Audi TTS Couple, which has the Bose sound system in it.
I think the subwoofer is lacking, especially in deep bass, so I decided i'll upgrade it.
Not sure about replacing the rest of the speakers at this stage, we'll see how much difference dynamatting the doors etc will make.

I'll digress for a moment; I used to be a bit into car audio, around 10 yr ago. Probably my best system was a Nakamichi CD40z head unit, fed into a Phoenix Gold amp (big white one with brassy heatsinks) - forgotten the model number, running a Kicker Impulse 10" Amp, and some Magnat 6 inch splits. I think I had a kenwood amp on some 3ways for the rear too. Sounded good enough, and cost me quite enough at the time. It was SQ, not SPL oriented.

Fast forward, all that stuff is ancient, lol.

So with this new beastie, i'm looking just to disable the bose subwoofer (I think its like 5 inch or something) and put my own sub/amp in the wheel well. That's the cliffnotes version.

Detailed version:

Probably settled on a Memphis 15-SC12D4 Subwoofer, which is a 12" Shallow Dual Coil 4 Ohm sub. 500W RMS, 1000W Peak.

Ideally they recommend a 1 cubic foot of air sized sub box, which will be what it gets when I glass in the spare tyre wheel well. Roughly 54cm diameter, but 15cm high. That's why i'm getting a shallow sub.

To run this little beastie, I was looking at an Alpine PDX 1.600 amp, though just before I found it doesn't have a remote sub control so was also toying with the idea of the JL Audio G1700. Probably still leaning toward the Alpine though...

Now in looking at what how my Bose system works, I was surprised and dismayed that it doesn't even have bl00dy sub preouts! However the bose thing works is pulling its feed from the front/rear L/R's. Someone should get slapped for that.

Anyway, this has led me to believe i'll need a LOC, so i'm looking at either a Maxxxsonics MX4, a Soundgate something, a PAC something, or a Peripheral SVENR (this one says it doesnt create any load, not sure about the others). Still trying to figure out what's the go there.

Whatever I get, I gather i'll be tapping into either the front L/R or the rear L/R, would assume the rears.

Then it's just a simple matter of hooking up the amp and sub to the LOC, and away we go!

If any of this sounds wrong, please enlighten me, as I mentioned i've been totally out of the game for a long while, I had to go look up what a 'Class D' amp actually was even!

D.

**soundman98** · 12-12-2009, 08:23 PM

first off, this is mainly a car computer site, so car audio is not a priority tro most of the members here... there is a stickey at the top of the car audio forum with a list of some more common car audio forums...

secondly, i do not have any knowledge of your specific car, but, in general, from what i have read, bose systems are a b!*** to work on, esp. in higher end cars like yours--at that level of car, the audio system is made for people that don't touch their cars, and bose had tirelessly worked with the manufacturer to get a 'audio system' in it, so integrating anything is nearly imposible(they did not leave room, or assume that anything other than bose equipment would be used/changed/modified)-- i would expect that bose has integrated a special eq for the sub, and possibly a bandpass filter to keep it operating smoothly-- that will not work very well with any aftermarket stuff, and will requre extra things to get to work (if they just eq'ed the sub, you would be able to use a jl audio clean sweep, if they are using any special filters, i am at a loss at what would need to be done to get the proper signal to the new amps).

if it were my car, i would rip out all of the factory stereo and replace it with a car computer

...

**Ramb0_Command0** · 12-17-2009, 02:39 PM

If you are gonna get a new HU anyway, I would just get one that has line-out outputs and feed those into your subwoofer amp, or get an amp that takes speaker level inputs. Either way you should be able to run the sub off it without much trouble while running the fronts off of the HU.

Also its not too surprising that they just tapped the speakers for the whopping 5 inch "sub", from what I've read most bose sound systems suck, compared to a low to mid range component system with a sub

**MaXius** · 12-17-2009, 06:02 PM

I'm not getting a new head unit though. And I think the clarity of the speakers is quite decent. Just the sub is small, which is the same with any small sub. I think Bose has come a long way with their car stuff.

All 4 inputs run from the head unit into the Bose Amp, then to the speakers/sub.

I'm going to tap the rears before they hit the amp, with an MTX Re-Q for my sub line, and disconnect the bose sub.