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Thread: 2017 Nissan Altima

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    Noob Serieus's Avatar
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    2017 Nissan Altima

    i guess it's about time to post this, since i got things making noise today

    i got rid of the soul back in early january - mostly just personal reasons, and i decided it just wasn't really the car i wanted right now, so i switched things up. i traded it in for more than what i paid (thank you rebates!!!) and got a good deal on one of the last 2017 model altima's on the lot. so here we are! the gear list is all the same as the soul. to recap, that includes:
    - factory radio
    - rockford dsr1
    - jl rd900/5
    - audiofrog gs60 in doors
    - audiofrog gb10 in dash, factory location
    - 2x jl w1v3, sealed

    i've been working on this over the past few weekends and finally finished things up today. this summer i hope to move the subs out of the temporary, pre-fab enclosure from crutchfield ($40, scratch and dent - enclosure is in perfect condition, though) and do a false floor for the amp & processor.

    pictures!!! i don't have many, and i'm not re-posting the pictures of the gear...for any close ups, feel free to go visit the kia soul thread.

    the car itself


    my tax return gift to myself. andy had these on sale for something like 25% off for a week, so i snagged one.

    the pre-fab enclosure, nothing special but it was cheap and is in perfect condition despite being marked "scratch and dent" by crutchfield. i probably couldn't build this any cheaper than i bought it for. i believe it is .75 cubic feet per sub

    plastic speaker adapters from car-speaker-adapters.com - these are really nice. the fit was perfect, but they are made in several pieces - i'm assuming they re-use the "risers" and the top rings on most of the products, so they can just be screwed onto whichever base is needed for each car. because of this, there are holes between the risers as you can see, not ideal...

    better shot at the hole between the risers.


    the solution - pretty simple, stuff duct seal in between the base & the top ring to seal everything up. the bonus is, this added a good deal of extra mass. not sure if it did anything, but it couldn't hurt!

    factory speaker in the doors. these were pretty nice for a base system

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    Noob Serieus's Avatar
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    Re: 2017 Nissan Altima


    THERE'S NO MOLEX CONNECTORS IN THE DOORS!!! speaker wire ran through the grommet.

    test fit the audiofrog gs60 with the speaker adapter, installed into the door. fits nice, depth of the magnet is about the same as the factory speaker with these adapters. i cut out noico foam to make a gasket between the adapter & the door, and between the speaker & the adapter. as you can see, not the cleanest of cuts - the adhesive on this stuff is super sticky and got stuck on the razor blade constantly. scissors do better with this stuff but i couldn't find any, and it didn't have to be pretty!

    fast ring installed, door panel ready to go back on!

    passenger side done up the same way

    test fit of the tweeter - i didn't get any final shots of either side of this, but they'd be the same...i only pulled it out, wired it up & tucked the factory speaker wire out of the way and taped it up with tesa tape so it wouldn't rattle around.

    kind of a bad picture, but this shows the mounting of the fuse holder. it's mounted to a factory bracket that supports the air box from the bottom (air box just sits on it, no clips/screws). this was a perfect spot & very close to the battery. from here, the wire continues to follow that main wiring harness into the car, through the factory grommet. i didn't take any other pictures of wiring because no one wants to see that shit anyway.

    sub level control knob for the dsr1 mounted in a blank switch plate. easy access! this thing works well, but if i had to do it again i would probably have gotten the jl knob for the amp instead - the rockford one feels a bit cheap and the PCB isn't symmetrical so it couldn't be mounted in the center of the switch plate (i don't know if the jl one is symmetrical, but just thought i'd mention that)

    that's all i've got for now. i was planning to do a hanging amp rack from the rear deck, but there's a lot of things going on under there that i don't want to mess with, so everything's mounted to the sub box & the box is secured with L brackets currently. i don't have any shots of that stuff just yet.

    the car sounds surprisingly good with 0 tuning (no ta, no eq, only crossovers set). there's a bit of hiss with the engine off, i think that's pretty common when retaining factory radios so i'm not going to put any fault towards the amp or processor. with the engine running, the hiss almost unnoticeable. i updated the dsr1 software a few weeks ago and today when powering it up, never had any issues with the bluetooth connection and everything seems to work really well. the tweeters are fantastic as can be expected from the audiofrog stuff, but i was really impressed with the mids for only being the gs line, they just disappear completely. midbass is not bad, could be better but i didn't do any deadening on the door really, only a few small pieces on the outer door skin right behind the magnets. there's a crossbeam running right behind the magnets so i didn't bother using the big piece of foam that comes with the fast rings there, it wouldn't have anything to stick to & would interfere with the window i think.

    one kind of surprising thing to me, there's good output all the way down to 20hz even though i'm tapped into the front outputs from the factory radio...i expected some kind of rolloff but it seems to be okay. nothing looks super weird on the rta. i'll post some pictures of the curve once i get some time to start tuning. i'm on meds right now, i just had 3 wisdom teeth pulled on thursday and i feel like my hearing is not fully working properly right now so i didn't want to mess with things too much.

    more to come once the tuning begins!

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    ~Paw~Paw})]<^>¥ Hic's Avatar
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    Re: 2017 Nissan Altima

    Chris,

    Very nice ! Bass knob looks fine.

    Where are subs going?
    Last edited by Hic; 03-13-2018 at 01:15 AM.
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    Noob Notloudenuf's Avatar
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    Re: 2017 Nissan Altima

    I'd like to hear H by Tool in this car. Should be fun.

    Good work Chris!
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    2002 330Ci & 2020 Tacoma

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    Noob Truthunter's Avatar
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    Re: 2017 Nissan Altima

    Good idea using duct seal on the holes in the risers. When I first saw the photo I thought is was butyl.

    I've never used duct seal but I may have a good application for it. Is that stuff real hard to remove once applied or does it remove cleanly fairly easily?

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    Noob Serieus's Avatar
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    Re: 2017 Nissan Altima

    Quote Originally Posted by Hic View Post
    Chris,

    Very nice ! Bass knob looks fine.

    Where are subs going?
    thanks it'll work for now.

    the subs are in the pre-fab box up above, i didn't bother taking a picture of them installed in the box yet

    Quote Originally Posted by Notloudenuf View Post
    I'd like to hear H by Tool in this car. Should be fun.

    Good work Chris!
    thank you sir! i hope to take a small vacation to drive over to NC sometime in the future - maybe early-ish next year. melody's cousin lives near duke so we're wanting to visit her & i want to go back and visit some friends i'll get that song queued up for you if we go!

    Quote Originally Posted by Truthunter View Post
    Good idea using duct seal on the holes in the risers. When I first saw the photo I thought is was butyl.

    I've never used duct seal but I may have a good application for it. Is that stuff real hard to remove once applied or does it remove cleanly fairly easily?
    i can't take credit for the duct seal idea on these, req from DIYMA used it on some that he reviewed over there years ago. i stumbled across his post and thought it was a good idea. i do have some butyl rope from second skin that i thought would work well in there also, but i forgot to take it with me to my parents while i was working on this. i imagine that would have worked well in there though!

    this was my first time using duct seal for anything, so i can't give any long-term details but right out of the package, it's pretty easy to work with. it's sticky enough that it isn't going to unintentionally come off of wherever you put it, but it feels like it'd be pretty easy to pull off if you needed to. if you ever took a pottery class in high school or college, it almost feels like a slightly wet clay. the details on the sheet give a pretty extreme temperature range that this stuff is good for, and i know there's a few people between here & DIYMA that have used it in the doors around speakers to add mass (i think clay may have used it at some point, but not sure there), and i haven't read any horror stories...no melting or running.

    p.s. the dsr1 is great so far. some of the reviews online are negative and have some comments about bluetooth disconnecting, etc - there have been several software updates since it was released. i updated to the most recent version a couple of weeks ago and haven't had any issues like that. it's connected to the app without any issues every time i've tried so far, and hasn't disconnected on me at all. i played with the app in the car for about an hour yesterday and all good! super easy to work with, i love having all the tuning capabilities on my phone at any time.

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    Re: 2017 Nissan Altima

    It's a shame you are getting floor noise hiss; maybe it's just Nissan in general.

    I'm a new owner of a 2016 Altima; I'm debating keeping my factory radio or going aftermarket. I just really dislike floor noise. The noise is almost non existent with the stock radio, only noticeable when I turn the volume way higher than I ever would normally (not because it gets too loud, but rather the oe speakers start sounding bad and I can hear distortion lol). I know an aftermarket radio will sound better, but I'm not an audiophile. Really like the integrated look and a rotary volume knob.

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    Noob Serieus's Avatar
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    Re: 2017 Nissan Altima

    Quote Originally Posted by Lukaa View Post
    It's a shame you are getting floor noise hiss; maybe it's just Nissan in general.

    I'm a new owner of a 2016 Altima; I'm debating keeping my factory radio or going aftermarket. I just really dislike floor noise. The noise is almost non existent with the stock radio, only noticeable when I turn the volume way higher than I ever would normally (not because it gets too loud, but rather the oe speakers start sounding bad and I can hear distortion lol). I know an aftermarket radio will sound better, but I'm not an audiophile. Really like the integrated look and a rotary volume knob.
    yup, definitely could be Nissan head units in general. it's not the worst that i've ever heard but it's just a mild annoyance when i do notice it in certain quiet parts of songs. it's hard

    a few more updates here since i've been slacking...i sold my desktop about 2 months ago now i think so i could get a better laptop for tuning, so i now have a fancy new 6 core laptop that should do the job nicely. the old 11" inspiron was a bit too slow & small for my liking in REW. also, i had the most annoying constant buzzing from the tweeter areas in the dash ever since i put the tweeters in, i fixed that last weekend...i thought maybe i just didn't get one of the screws on the mounts tight or something, but it was actually the grill on the left tweeter as the main culprit. there's still a bit of a rattle somewhere on the right tweeter over sharp bumps, nothing too bad but need to look into it more, i tried tightening everything up again and it's still around. the grill on the right tweeter wasn't buzzing like the left side but i went ahead and pulled it off anyways, i'll probably pick up a hot glue gun this week and put a little dab on them so i can run with the grills for protection. interestingly, there's a noticeable difference in the sound w/ the tweeters off, they're a good bit more sharp on s sounds.

    to add to this, there's some weird kind of static that comes and goes in one of the channels. i think it may be related to heat since it didn't start until we started seeing some warmer days but i'm not totally sure...i played around with muting each channel one at a time and i think i found it to be in the right mid (it's either that or the right tweeter), but i can't say for sure just yet, i'll have to do some digging there.

    lastly, i think i'm giving up on my quest to keep the stock head unit, and i'm thinking the sony xav-ax5000 will be the replacement here soon. i miss having nav in the dash & i don't think this thing will ever sound the way i want it to with the stock head unit. i'm hoping to not need to make any other equipment changes (besides a better, permanent sub enclosure), i think it sounds pretty decent without the static and i think with a good, flat signal out of a different head unit it'll clean up really nicely. as usual, more to come once i stop being lazy and start actually working on things

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    Senior Member chithead's Avatar
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    Re: 2017 Nissan Altima

    Sorry to hear about those woes - but at least you have some solutions in the works!
    Are you not entertained?!?!


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    Re: 2017 Nissan Altima

    time for an update, i suppose

    about 2 weeks i tore the doors apart and did some more in depth testing to verify what the issue is with my passenger side mid, and it seems to follow only the speaker. i tried moving it to the driver side to verify there was no issue with the speaker wire run, swapped the inputs to the processor, swapped the outputs on the processor, and swapped amp channels as well just for a triple check, and seems like it's definitely the speaker. i contacted andy @ audiofrog to ask if he had any suggestions on saturday, and as per usual he got back to me in less than 5 minutes and offered to warranty it if i send it back to him. i don't feel good about doing that as i don't believe this is a manufacturing defect. i don't think i pushed it hard enough to cause damage, so i think the previous owner (these were purchased as open box on crutchfield) may have damaged it and returned...crutchfield probably didn't test them loud enough to trigger any issues and so here we are - just my guess, it could also be as simple as having some debris stuck in the coil gap or something else, i'm not too sure...

    anyway, i asked if he'd do a trade up deal for the gb60's instead and he said he'd cut me a deal. i wasn't ready to purchase just yet so i told him i'd get back in contact with him to figure out the details & how much i'll owe him, but thought it was cool that he offered the deal. i was initially going to save up for awhile to pick them up, but my girlfriend and i separated last week & my bonus at work comes in this coming friday...it was originally planned to help fund the engagement ring but that funding is now free so, i should be ordering up the gb60's from andy this week. i considered asking to purchase a single new gs60 mid since i like them pretty well so far, but i'm wanting something i can abuse a little more and not have to worry about...

    may also spend some time & money redoing the trunk to clean it up - i'd like to do a simple false floor to hide the amp & dsp, and i'm thinking that i want to do IB subs instead of sealed enclosures, so i may be selling the pair jl's and picking up something more beefy, the jl's sound fine but i think they're a bit light on displacement for an IB setup. i'm thinking something like the dayton ultimax's would be cool, either a pair of 12's or maybe a single 15 - if i can swing it, i think it'd be cool to offset a single 15 off to one side and hinge the other side of the baffle so it can be opened for longer items (i.e. snowboard/skis...i'll be picking up a pair of wheels & winter tires to go with my season pass this year) in a pinch. i think the biggest thing there is ensuring that the baffle still seals well when closed...and making sure i have room for that kind of setup, lol

    anyway, should have some more updates w/ pictures soon. when i install the gb60's i'll be doing a bit more work on the doors to seal & deaden them up, i'm sure those things are going to vibrate the piss out of everything in there. i got the passenger side done pretty well when i was testing the speaker a couple weeks ago, but i didn't have time to do more on the driver side and i've got a few buzzes popping up.

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