550 Stereo Upgrade

I replaced my 550's front OEM 4" speakers a few years ago when their foam surrounds melted away. Recently the same happened to both my rear OEM 5"x7" speakers. This time instead of replacing with new OEM units I decided to improve the system.

First I took out the front kick panels with the OEM speakers. As you can see speaker is mounted on flimsy sheet aluminum panel with no vibration damping. I replaced OEM front speakers with Polk Audio DB401 coaxial speakers, which fits without modification. I added butyl based vibration damping mat on the kick panel as well as some sound absorbing foam in the hollow metal chassis area behind the kick panel.

Sound is immediately improved significantly. Although still not much bass from these tiny 4" speakers, but the clarity, definition, and volume is much better than OEM.
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Next I took out the rear speakers. Yuk what a mess. This is a picture after I scraped away the tar goo that used to be the foam surround.
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The rear deck side trim panel that houses the rear speaker is just thin fiber reinforced plastic without any vibration damping mat.
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Polarity are not marked on OEM speakers. I suppose it's not necessary to mark wiring polarity since OEM speaker wire plug can only go in one way. Out of curiosity I checked the speakers to make sure they are indeed in phase. Nope. They were wired out of phase. In this picture you can see I marked the front speaker +ve on the left side of the plug, while the rear speaker +ve is on the right side of the plug. So this would have killed what little bass there was in the OEM system! I just shake my head at this fundamental error from the factory.
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I chose Polk Audio DB571 5"x7" coaxial speakers, which are slightly larger than OEM and will not mount directly to the rear deck side trim cover.

I could have custom made an adaptor trim ring spacer to mount these speakers, but that would have compromised sound quality. So I simply ground off the raised mounting boss and slightly enlarged the oval speaker hole on the side cover thus the speaker mates directly to the trim cover with the correct size Polk supplied trim ring. All are hidden under the OEM carpet so look OEM.

I added butyl vibration mat on the trim cover and sound absorbing foam. Note it's not necessary to cover 100% area with butyl mat
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While I had all the trim off the rear deck, thanks to Moorfan's excellent thread with how to pictures, I found the OEM vibration damping mats have delaminated from the chassis panel.

I peeled off one panel of the OEM mat. It's some cheap asphalt based material. No wonder it hardened and delaminated after many years.
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I don't have time to replace all the OEM mats, so I only did a small panel. I bought two batch of locally made butyl mats. One is with shiny aluminum foil, one is with black. I must say I like the look of the black version much better.

Here is picture showing how little of the OEM asphalt type mat stayed on. On the right side you can see the first piece of the black aluminum foil butyl mat I put in as replacement.
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My OEM head unit is a Sony XR-F20 with 30 watts peak/channel driving the 4 speakers. After just replacing the 4 very poor quality OEM speakers with Polk Audio units and adding some vibration damping mats and sound absorbing foam, the sound has been greatly improved.

BTW, the butyl mats I judiciously added so far totaled only 1.75kg or 3.86lbs.

Sony XR-F20 has a sub pre-amp output. Many years ago I added a Sony self powered sub woofer model XS-AW5X. It's very small in size with sturdy cast aluminum housing and is placed under the driver seat. Provides enough of the bass to compliment the Polk Audio speakers. While not audiophile grade by any means, my system is now 10 times better than OEM with or without the Sony active subwoofer.
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I was too lazy, but your thread inspired me to work on my car. Thanks a million!

 

Being a bit OCD, I can't leave well enough alone. So while I was doing the speaker upgrade I also bought a new Sony aftermarket head unit DSX-S310BTX, a Sony 6 disc CD changer CDX-T69.

With the new head unit, I can get bluetooth phone functions and music streaming from my iPhone, while maintaining CD changer control via Sony bus. It also has DSP to control high and low pass filter to all the speakers and subwoofer so the sound will be much cleaner. And it has more built-in power at 52 watts peak/channel. Aesthetically it doesn't match OEM, especially the background lighting is either blue or red instead of OEM green. None the less its added functionality makes up for its aesthetics or lack there of.

With the new CDX-T69 6 disk CD changer in the OEM trunk location I am hoping it has read ahead buffer and better suspension to solve the OEM CD changer skipping problem. Haven't had time to drive the car yet so can't vouch if it's better than OEM changer.
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As it stands right now, the sound quality and volume is very good. Easily out powering exhaust noise from silenced center x pipes without OEM rear cans.

Just in case I want to take it further, I already bought a class D 4 channel amp from Alpine to do the job. It's tiny at only 10" x 7.5" x 2" so can easily fit under the seat yet puts out 150 watts RMS/channel.
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Oh and before someone says engine music is the only music we need, here are some of my other music systems.

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kYoctRnDzk&list=UUjTonTQciE6LBKgPTr5zKCA&index=33&feature=plcp[/ame]

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5jpnLwxz3g&list=UUjTonTQciE6LBKgPTr5zKCA&index=8&feature=plcp[/ame]

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJTYYaOEpB4&list=UUjTonTQciE6LBKgPTr5zKCA&index=32&feature=plcp[/ame]

 

I did not replace the front OEM tweeters on the dash. They are actually quite good. I only replaced the OEM 4" speakers hidden behind the front kick panel carpet. It take only 5 minutes to remove the kick panels. Very easy.

Driver side's kick panel is held in by 3 screws and a tab. Lift up carpet slit to access 1 screw to the floor. The other two screws are the 2 forward most screws on the stainless steel scuff plate. After removing the 3 screws just pull kick panel towards the rear of the car and the retaining tab will unseat from its catch on the door frame.
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Passenger side's kick panel is held in by 2 screws and a tab. One screw is at the floor board near the hinge of the fuse panel door by foot rest. Lift up slit in carpet to see the floor screw. The other screw is up near the top of fuse panel door.

After unscrewing the screws, just pull the kick panels towards the rear of the car, and the retaining tab will slide off it's catch.

Please note my 550 is right hand drive so might be slightly different than LHD US version.
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My new head unit Sony DSX-S310BTX is iPhone, iPod compatible. In fact is has a built in tray behind the face plate to store the device. I think you can also plug in your iPad via the the front face place USB plug. So all the music can be on your iOS device.

I use my iPhone via Bluetooth instead of using the USB connection for my music. Sound quality is still very good inspite of the AAC compression and loss associated with Bluetooth. I am very happy with mine.

 

Yes, beautiful weather this time of the year in Hong Kong. Perfect for working on cars.

 

My OEM Sony XR-F20 has a short wiring harness adapter about 8 inches long with a 13 connector Amphenol male plug on one end to goes to the main wiring loom and a Sony proprietary plug on the head unit end. Unfortunately the DSX-S310BTX head unit has the new version Sony plug, so it's not direct plug and play to the new head unit. I quickly searched on the net for a new Amphenol 13 connector plug to make a new adapter harness, but didn't find it. Didn't have the patience or time to look further right now, so I just cut the the old Amphenol male plug and soldered onto the new Sony plug.

Since I did not cut into the main wiring loom, I can alway find a Amphenot 13 connector plug later when I have the time and remake an OEM Sony adapter harness.