Dynaudio Front Soundstage
I purchased the front speakers from Northfield Moorooka. Great place to get gear from, and being a repeat customer, I can get a bit of a discount, which is nice. :)
The speakers I chose were a set of Dynaudio Esotec System 342. A really 'smooth' sounding set with excellent detail and highly detailed response.
They come in a massive, extremely well packed box. The drivers themselves ooze quality. Being handmade in Denmark, I expect nothing less. A picture of the beautiful blonde buxom babe who assembled them would have been nice, but I guess you can't have everything....
The woofers are impressively engineered. They sport a dual spider design, large vented magnet and a MASSIVE coil at a crazy 3"!
I guess that would explain the 120W RMS rating for the woofer alone...
The crossovers are rather large in comparison to more common brands. Dynaudio have used Solen branded polypropylene capacitors, with one Bennic electro on the woofer. The inductors look well made and the resistors look to be standard wire wound items.
However, these crossovers won't be getting a whole lot of use in my system.....
After pulling the door trim off, I discovered a plastic speaker carrier. It turns out the Dyn's fit perfectly into these carriers. Awesome.
After installing the speakers into the carrier, I noticed that the shield around the back of the speaker was blocking airflow. I measured 5mm of clearance around the speaker.
After cutting all the surplus plastic away (Dremel to the rescue). I ended up with 15mm clearance. Much better.
Quick test fit to make sure all is good, and on to the next step.
I am using Monitor OFC cable from Jaycar for the splits. The tweeter will probably be run in thinner cable, as this size is overkill for the power it will be drawing.
The cable is 273x0.12 and is a square shape which makes running it a bit easier.
I have soldered and heat shrunk the connections to prevent corrosion and loosening that can happen with spade lugs. Took a bit of guts to stick a soldering iron onto a set of $1000+ speakers...
Dynamat Install
After christmas, I was feeling a little bored, so I headed down to Northfield Moorooka, where I bought the Dyns and got myself a Bulk pack of Dynamat. There's 36 square feet spread over 9 sheets in the bulk pack i bought.
I covered the inner and outer door skins with the Dynamat. I also put a bit on the window winder motor, hopefully it quietens it a little (not that it wasn't already quiet).
You'll notice a large hole, I found a bit of 2.5mm aluminium sheet that was the right size, so I proceeded to cover it up.
Like so.
Damn, is that stuff hard to bend.... I screwed it in around the edges then Dynamatted (sp?) over the top. Most people use painted MDF to cover the holes, which is fine if the holes are flat. However, as you can see, I needed to curve the plate to allow room for the arm rest that is moulded into the door.
Here's the completed door. Sounds MUCH more solid, as it should having 12 square feet of Dynamat installed (3 full sheets).....
There are a few holes that I have left, one is near the woofer cutout and is where the wires for the 3 speakers will come out. I'll patch that up once the wiring is complete.
The other is where the door rods go up the top rear. I'll probably just stick some foam to the door skin to cover this hole. I can't use Dynamat as I like my doors to work.
More to come, I still have to Dynamat the rear section of the cabin, the rear parcel shelf and the dash board too....
Active Crossover Modification
I was able to source a Tru Technology 3-way active crossover from a guy on the Mobile Electronics Forum.
The model no. is F1-B and it's made in the USA like all Tru Tech gear. It's half DIN, so it will sit nicely under my headdeck (I have a 2 DIN space). I'll be using it for the Dyn's, once I get a stack of amps. (might have to raid the parts stockpile for another two Fusion amps...)
I opened it up for a look and to see what we could stuff up.
I noticed the opamps are TL702CP's. Adequate, but nothing special, certainly not audiophile grade.
After a little research, I found that the OPA2134PA op amps by Texas Instruments are a direct drop-in replacement and much better quality. Just need a decoupling cap per op amp and it's done.
You'll also notice that there are tantalum capacitors present. They will be removed and replaced with Nichicon Fine Gold series electrolytic capacitors of equal value. (Tantalumsss hurtsss uss, we hatess them!) I'll probably replace the other electrolytics with Rubycon ZL series caps while I'm at it (they're commonly used for motherboard recaps).
Oh, I'll probably change the green illumination to white to better match the lighting in my car. Just a matter of swapping 9x 3mm LED's at the back of each pot (The blue things).
Paid a visit to RS Components and Jaycar, and ended up spending far more than is sane for a heap of stuff to upgrade this baby.
My shopping list included:
- 11x Gold plated IC sockets for the new opamps.
- 11x OPA2134PA Burr-Brown opamps.
- 9x white 3mm LED's.
- 6x Nichicon Fine Gold electrolytic capacitors.
- 1x Plug and crimp terminals.
- + a few other bits & pieces.
First step is to remove the old opamps and install the IC sockets. I chose turned pin sockets with gold plated inner contacts to ensure a good connection.
This is the opamp (one of eleven). I cleaned out the local RS trade counter, so i had to wait a few days for the last few. They are Burr-Brown opamps, highly regarded in audio circles. Although they aren't the top of the range items, (which weigh in at almost $50 a piece..), these are still very good, I doubt I'll really hear much difference with my equipment and the fact that it's not exactly a recording studio.
As part of the install, I'm converting all interior illumination to LED's. The stock illumination is white (or a yellow shade thereof...) so I headed to Jaycar and got a stack of white 3mm LED's.
Here is a comparison of the old green LED's and the new white LED's. Looks a lot 'cleaner' with the white I reckon.
I also ordered a few Nichicon Fine Gold series (to come with the missing opamps) to replace the nasty tantalum capacitors in the signal path.
The FG series capacitors are specially designed for high end audio use. I have used them before in a few upgrades and the improvement in sound quality is a little more than subtle.
Although I noticed something interesting...
The tantalum capacitors used on the inputs are polarised, I was going to replace them with the FG's but there's a problem.
The capacitors are in the signal path. Now the thing with an audio signal is it is an AC signal, ie the signal is reversing half the time.
For a polarised component to see a reversed signal is bad. In this application, although the capacitors won't explode, the reversed signal causes the capacitors to act in a crazy non-linear way and basically stuffs the sound.
Not to mention tantalums make the bass sound tubby, harsh and gritty in the top end and compressed in their dynamics. Never use tantalum capacitors in audio applications!
To fix this, I ordered a few Black Gate 4.7uF 50V N series (non-polarised) capacitors to replace those stinky tantalums. I got them from HiFi Collective in the UK. They came in reasonable time and were well packed.
I also noticed that NONE of the opamps had bypass capacitors on their power supply pins. What? Gotta fix that.
So I bought some 0.01uF 1% Vishay MKP 1837 series metallised polypropylene capacitors. Phew.
I had to put them on the back of the PCB to fit them in, and even then, they are 0.7mm too tall. I'll have to space the PCB up from the standoffs with a nylon washer or two.
Being secondhand, the crossover didn't come with a plug for the power socket, so I managed to find a suitable replacement at RS. Part No. 484-1754, with pins purchased seperatley, part no. 215-5887. A few wires and some solder and I had a loom.
Once I had screwed it all back together, with some nylon washers under the PCB to make clearance for the bypass caps, it was done. You wouldn't know it except for the white illumination and awesome sound.
Last updated: 20 January 2008 by TERRA Operative.
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