Gen 4 Audio Upgrade this week

This week I decided to do an audio upgrade on my Gen4.

It has a Pioneer S425BT receiver. Speakers are factory standard.


First step was to address the bass issue.

The guys had a couple of active subs in stock. No major brands, although there was a JBL unit that was a bit on the expensive side.
Eventually I got some cheaper 8"  Malaysian or Chinese Black Spider 8000W active sub.

Dividing by an estimated factor of 20 gives about 400 effective watts for the sub. ???

Installing the sub was rather quick. It was installed under the passenger seat. They routed the cables through the access hole on the passenger side, and mounted the sub control knob near the 12v lighter socket on the dash.

When I got home I reinstalled the sub:

1. Removed the passenger seat.
2. Removed the sub and used some rubber spacers to ensure the sub was mounted flat. The space under the passenger seat is not 100% level and has a bit of an protruding arc towards the gear stick.
3. Checked the cables and stuff again.

Tuning the audio

Initially the sub sounded downright crap. Bass was overpowering and caused too much vibration. An issue since I have not upgraded my suspension yet. For every song I had to fiddle with the sub control knob to get everything sounding ok.

After a couple of tests the following made a HUGE improvement:

Sub settings:

• Sub gain on about 80%
• Sub bass boost 0%
• Sub crossover frequency at about 80hz

On the head unit, I set the following:

• Front speakers High Pass Filter : 63hz, 12db
• Subwoofer Low Pass Filter:  80hz, 12db
• Turned all the other enhancements off or to zero.

The bass and the front speakers now mix extremely well, no excess bass vibrations and the speakers complement each other through the whole volume range.


Front speaker replacement

I went in this morning and asked them to check out my drivers side window crank. While they were in there, I asked them to replace the front speakers with a set of Pioneer TS-1034R's.   I did a quick check on Amazon and these seemed ok for the price.

These are two way speakers with a built in tweeter for the higher ranges.

Fitting them was a bit of an issue because of the bigger magnet, so I told them to cut out the original speakers from their plastic mounting bracket and mount them on that.

Conclusion:
Great improvement on the overall sound quality. I am not bothered about loud volume and excessive bass, but the sound now has a nice "body" and all the ranges are covered pretty well.

Will post some photos over the weekend.....


 

l fitted Pioneer rear speakers with the mounting kit from Suzuki.
lt's made a big difference to the sound quality, bass is better (although obviously not as much as installing a sub) and it just sounds better overall.

There's a kit to mount larger front speakers as well, which makes it easier, but l don't think l will bother.
As it sounds great with the rear speakers fitted.

The mounting kits are expensive for what you get, but it does make it easy to install the speakers.

I just got my rear mounting kit from the BigJimny shop and also bought some Pioneer speakers. I am hoping the sound quality will improve when driving over 60mph...

lt's a big improvement at all speeds, also helps if you set the speed dependent volume control so it automatically increases the volume as you go faster.

The lowest setting is sufficient unless you are hard of hearing, or eighteen years old