F430 speaker replacement advice

For me, the Focal system ware always a good choice,
high quality, great sound and the fit near plug and play!

http://www.ferrarichat.com/forum/141417413-post177.html

 

I never used the speakers.. Who needs on a Ferrari?


Sent from my F430 using Tapatalk.

 

Personally I've never done a "too much" long trip.
If I open the valves , the sound becomes really too much loud.
I can't even hear the passenger.
But at least it's not annoying.. For me


Sent from my F430 using Tapatalk.

 

Being aware that there is the full spectrum of owners from Radio delete to the audiophile's $10,000 custom hifi installation, I would consider myself being somewhere on the relatively humble end of the spectrum. I would like to have an audio system that produces decent enough sound when going 200 on the Autobahn and something that puts out navigation instructions loud enough without strange noises when the revs are a bit on the sporty side. This was obviously not the case with the stock system.

That being said, I want to keep my F430 Spider Manual a modern classic with as little visible modification as possible. That means, if possible I deliberately want to keep the ancient Becker "Online Pro BE6105" stereo. I read somewhere that the amp inside the Becker headunit is just crap and that you could gain a _lot_ with just putting an external Amplifier in place. That was truly great advice.

In 2018, I also profited from some good progress in Amp design. I chose the ESX Quantum QM-TWO solely for its tiny dimensions (75 x 33 x 120 mm) and good ratings in review. At 190 € it is also quite cheap. 2x 80W RMS should be more than enough for what I was looking for. I crimped my own ISO & Mini-ISO plugs to attach the Line-Out and speaker cables to the Becker stereo without having to cut or otherwise damage any of the original cables/loom. The amp fits in the passenger side battery compartment with ease (3M VHB Dual-Lock velcro). Ground is connected under the center tunnel carpet and the plus line is really short in this mounting position. Everything is fully reversible (except from the paint removed for the GND cable.

Before installing it, I was thinking that if the sound would not be good enough, in a second stage, I still would be able to go for Focals on top of that. But, honestly, it is difference of day and night. The only thing I did, was upping the Bass setting in the Becker unit a bit. Now, I really do not see why going for new speakers would be necessary at all. Having driven this setup for a couple of months did not change that first impression. So I can highly recommend this setup, if your demands are similar to what I outlined above.

That's the setup, which is completely invisible with the footrest carpet piece installed:

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Cheers,
TS

 

-TS brings up a good point.

You can very easily improve the low end performance a bit on the OEM woofers.

Mix about 1/3 carpenters glue with a small amount of gloss black water-based paint, and then paint the cones. Don't paint the dust caps; just do the cones.

When this dries there will be a slight additional mass of the cone which helps low end performance, and the upper mid-range performance will be slightly better.

I did this many times in the past to improve drivers for a particular application.

The placement of the tweeters and woofers in Ferrari's defeats good acoustical design.

The Ferrari two-way system crosses over about 2,500 Hz, and at that frequency the two drivers should be about no more than 6" on-center!

So there is a very bad "hole" in the audio bandwidth between those two drivers.

Making it a 3-way with midrange driver close to the tweeter would greatly improve that system. Of course one would need to create a new crossover to do this.

Treating the OEM cones as I suggested together with the amp -TS mentioned can greatly improve the system

 

I shall add that my main reason for leaving the stock speakers _as is_ was actually not to save some $$ on replacement speakers, but rather saving the time and effort to remove the door panels. On other cars I have done that in the past, and maybe it's just me, but I always found this quite fiddly (sealing, glue, etc.). So I try to avoid it, if possible (and unnecessary)...

Like I said, I found them to sound much better than expected, even though they do look awfully cheap indeed.

Cheers,
TS