# Aftermarket amplifiers and DSP with factory deck and the effect on alerts noises



## justdofit (Apr 17, 2014)

Just a quick update on this, I took delivery of the cruze today and looks (sounds) like all the indicator clicks and warning tones come through the front drivers side speakers. Fading the deck to the rear makes no difference to the behaviour of these tones which is great and should fit my plan.

one thing I noticed is the reverse sensor beeps and turn by turn navigation audio behave the same way. This got me thinking about a better placement for the dedicated car convenience audio speaker that I'll run off the decks front drivers side channel. The prime spot seems to be to mount the speaker in-place of that useless (to me) cubby on the dash...

i could easily fabricate something, but noticed some USA models with a factory speaker there? Does anyone know if this is a direct swap for the cubby? Or possibly the part number - this would make an international search/order a little easier 

this is the speaker I spotted (attached) - any help tracking down one of these, even if just the grill and enclosure/baffle would be greatly appreciated. The navigation lady has a really pleasant voice and I don't want to muffle it with an under dash placement 

in other news it looks like my 12" IDMax (v3) may just fit in a 1.3cuft enclosure with a footprint I can live with, this would be great as it's been my most favourite sub of all time (closely followed by the idq v3) and it's actually what I swapped the morel Ultimo 12 out for in my last car :wub:


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## jstoner22 (Aug 21, 2012)

That is a sweet setup. I especially love the Mosconi gear you have.

The aftermarket dash kits come with a small speaker housed in them to play door chimes, etc. Perhaps you can tap into the appropriate line and simply place a tiny speaker within center console somewhere? 

I didn't find myself using that dash 'cubby' at first either. However, with the limited storage space available in the Cruze, I suggest you let it grow on you. It did on me out of necessity.


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## justdofit (Apr 17, 2014)

G'day mate, I think you're onto something with the storage, and I may end up using it if it doesn't rattle too much - there's a couple of other options I'm considering for speaker placement, another is just using one of those little comms speakers you see with aftermarket Bluetooth kits and mounting it up out of sight under the dash 

i love the mosconi amps also. I replaced 4 JL Audio HDs (2 x 600/4s and 2 x 750/1) with these to run my car after nationals (I placed 3rd in Advanced). Not really going to get into the ab vs d class issue, but to me even though I was technically halving my power (only recently added the m12 for the sub) the balls on these things was and is just insane! They're very easy to dial in too, the power supply is rock solid - I ran my IDMax (d2 v3) off one of my as100.4s for a little while - bridged in dual mono sending just short of 500wrms to each voice coil of the sub - gain matching the dual mono channels was very easy and you could see with the dmm that there were no fluctuations... I would love to grab a 3rd one (AS200.2) but I figured it would be a squeeze to fit it in this car - so will just stash the pdx m12 somewhere to run the idmax.

the speakers are DLS Scandinavia series components that replaced my scan-speak illuminators a while back. I absolutely love the midbass on these drivers, I've yet to use the 3C midrange drivers but am looking forward to it. If I can't fit the big Scandinavia 1 tweeters in (97mm face plate and almost 1kg weight) I'll squeeze in my 1" illuminator domes somewhere as they're tiny and super shallow 

This is is my last build over on DIYMA (Basic SQ Install | 2005 VZ Holden Commodore SV6 - Car Audio | DiyMobileAudio.com | Car Stereo Forum) - it was in a Holden Commodore which is made in AUS at the same facility where these series 2 onwards Cruzes are made.

am hoping to improve on the end result this time now, that I have a little more experience - the plan is to compete with this car over here - just for fun.


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## justdofit (Apr 17, 2014)

Further on this. Just in-case someone is looking for a bleep/chirp/chime free source.

After pulling off my front door cards and front speakers for sound deadening (removed the pillars and tweets also) I noticed the park assist is coming through the rear speakers 

Hopefully I'll be able to hook up the tweeters and have someone help me test if it's coming through the front speakers also... This would be a massive pain as the park assist is about 100 x louder than the indicator clicks and door chimes that would be bearable through an aftermarket system...

Anyhow I will update this thread with my findings in-case the info is useful to anyone else with park assist.

Here's hoping the front is free of these beeps otherwise an aftermarket source will come much sooner rather than later.


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## justdofit (Apr 17, 2014)

I managed to get out and test this today - I couldn't wrangle any help so I just rigged up the DMM to measure AC voltage on the tweeter wiring when the Park assist is beeping. And luckily for me it doesn't appear to be using the front speakers. In fact even the indicator clicks etc only measure quiet low in output - only a fraction of music or the navigation audio.

I think if I set the gain structure up correctly I should be able to maintain a similar level for these clicks through the aftermarket system - am keen to see where the factory deck clips to determine what sort of max volume I'll get, but I'm assuming it will be more than high enough for my tastes.

I guess it's time to move forward with the rest of the build and perhaps start up a build log in the "Cruze Owner Projects" section?


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## nybble (Mar 30, 2014)

I would have expected if you were using the PAC harness to get the LineOut's, the stereo would still be pushing the same tones down to the same speaker. Am I wrong in assuming this?


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## CHEVYCRUZE RS (Mar 29, 2011)

Setup sounds interesting , keep us posted dude I'm excited !!


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## justdofit (Apr 17, 2014)

nybble said:


> I would have expected if you were using the PAC harness to get the LineOut's, the stereo would still be pushing the same tones down to the same speaker. Am I wrong in assuming this?


Hi nybble, I may have confused everyone with my initial approach. I was originally going to run my whole system off the rear speaker channels as I had hoped they would be free of the cars tones.

I found out later that the rear speakers play the much louder and incredibly annoying park assist beeps. So I will be using the front speaker channels and just dealing with the indicator clicks and door chimes that come through the front drivers side speakers.

You are right, if using a PAC harness and connecting front to front and rear to rear (rcas from loc to amps) this would not alter which speakers play the tones.

I won't be using a LOC (PAC or otherwise) at this stage with my install. Instead I'm using a simple T-Harness (the one below) I picked up from my local car audio store. These are used mainly for aftermarket bluetooth module installs, and are a simple way of tapping into the speaker wiring without cutting up the factory harness.








I have soldered in female RCA terminals on the front speaker wires (the t-harness uses iso molex plugs which I'll use for now to make future changes simple). I'll pass through the rears into the factory wiring to keep the park assist tones active (as before) - and simply use the factory deck to fade to the front so all music is fed into my DSP and not played through the rears at all (the park assist beeps like all the other car tones ignore fading/balance/volume settings). I decided to solder in female terminals over simply lopping off an RCA end, so I can keep my options open and already have RCAs run if I decide to go the aftermarket deck route. This is the patch lead I've made up for the t-harness to split out the front speaker wires into an RCA run to my DSP.









At the moment it seems the DSP I'm using will accept hi-level input without too much issue. I am using the PS8 unit from Arc Audio.


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## justdofit (Apr 17, 2014)

CHEVYCRUZE RS said:


> Setup sounds interesting , keep us posted dude I'm excited !!


Will do mate, perhaps I should put a thread together in the owner projects section?

I have already started documenting my build on the local Australian car audio forums (http://www.caraudio.com.au/forums/index.php/topic/571457-cruze-sri-v-daily-driver-install) - so I may just filter out all my ramblings and put something concise together for here once the initial build is complete


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