Audio Upgrades

[RussBird82]

Without upgrading the head unit is it possible to do much in terms of audio upgrades on a 4200 and what could be done for say £1000? (including installation as I've no clue about this sort of stuff). At the moment its the original system with a Parrot bluetooth and what I believe are individual speakers all round. They're ok for listening to basic radio but even a hint of base they really struggle.

And although I've seen some head unit upgrades it looks to be a bit of a wormhole and I'd rather it looked stock playing average music than a poorly retrofitted device whereby I lose functionality to AC etc,

 

[julianmerak]

The front door speakers and rear shelf speakers are a standard size and easy to find replacements for. The connectors are slightly different from the original speakers so I had to buy a few wires and connectors to fix this. I bought Hertz DCX 130.3 speakers for the rear shelf and bought Sony XS-XB1621C for the front door speakers. I wish I had bought more of the Hertz range instead as they sound excellent. The rear side speakers are a complete pain and I ended up paying an audio specialist to install my new Hertz Dieci Series 5x7” coaxials (DCX570.3) speakers as they needed to cut the inner metal mounting panel and drill new fixing holes. Nobody had speakers that I found that would within the standard holes as the original speaker rear baskets are unusually small. The good news is that the sound is a massive improvement, not the best ever but certainly good enough to really enjoy the music. All the original speaker covers fit over the new speakers so the upgrade is totally invisible.

Julian

 

[Gooner]

As Julian says, there are plenty of replacement speakers that will fit. I would look at the Focal range as well.

The front speakers have a separate tweeter near the top of the door. You need to decide whether to replace the tweeter as well, with an appropriate change to the crossover circuitry, or disconnect the tweeter completely and buy an integrated speaker for the lower part of the door. All this will make sense to your installer (or it should) but it does matter.

PS Fair play for keeping originality. FWIW for £1000 you could upgrade the speakers and the system, get Carplay and still have working aircon . Best of luck.

 

[CatmanV2]

with an appropriate change to the crossover circuitry

From memory the 'crossover' is nothing but a capacitor working as a high pass filter, but.....

C

 

[Zep]

This might also be worth a read.

Post in thread 'FiFTY's Manual 4200 Build'
https://www.sportsmaserati.com/index.php?threads/fiftys-manual-4200-build.28073/post-679642

 

[Gooner]

From memory the 'crossover' is nothing but a capacitor working as a high pass filter, but.....

C

Yes, I think that’s all it is. But if you don’t get it right you can end up with high frequency distortion, on the edge of the audible range (at least to my old ears). It can make listening to music quite a strain, quite uncomfortable in my case.