2015 Volvo V60 T6 R-Design

[naiku]

Getting closer, started figuring out where I want to mount everything in the trunk, decided on something very similar to this, just with the DSP at the top right in the picture instead of centrally mounted. It makes things a little simpler with managing wires and getting access to the USB on the front of the DSP. Along with that I cut the power and ground wires to length from the distribution blocks and located what I hope should be a decent ground in the trunk. Along with that I ran the high level input from the factory amp to the trunk, essentially followed the speakers from the front doors, wrapped in techflex and some tesa tape.






Not much to look at, the darker green plug will be replaced with the lighter green plug and that blue wire will get spliced into the red wire on the darker green plug. I have no idea why it worked previously with that red wire (or blue in the case of the light green plug) not connected, but apparently it does need to be connected. I did find out that there is a MOST25 adapter available, that will provide an optical input to the DSP, but at the moment I can't really justify the $600 cost of it. Especially as I just had to call an HVAC company to come figure out why the indoor coils keep freezing over, did my own troubleshooting, but no gauges to check the refrigerant level. Anyway, getting off track. Eventually I may pick up the Helix SDMI25 and swap to optical, but for now it's something that will have to wait.

To get a switched 12V I had to tap off the back of the front 12V socket between the cupholders, this meant removing the entire HVAC panel, in order to access a pair of screws just before the shifter to release the center console. I tried using a wire tap to retain use of the 12V socket, but for some reason never have any luck with those, since I rarely ever use the 12V socket I decided to just disconnect it and use spade terminals. At some point I may revisit getting the socket working again, but for now not overly concerned.

Since I had the center console taken apart I took the time to also run the DSP remote and a coax cable for an Fiio from the arm rest to the trunk as well.





I'd prefer a more fixed location for the DSP remote, but so far have not found any places suitable, so it may just stay in the arm rest. If I get time to this week I plan to drill a couple holes in that factory tray to pass power, ground and signal wires through before starting to permanently mount everything to it. With that done the trunk should come together fairly quickly and I can then move onto mounting speakers in the front doors. If everything goes smoothly, hopefully another week or two and I should be up and running.

[Afghan Vet]

Wow.....this Swedish lady is not playing nicely at all.....in fact.......she is not being nice at all.

I totally get the dilemma about $600 to get an easier input - tough bill to swallow when the method you are trying ‘should’ work. I hope that part gets sorted quickly and you are on to the exciting stuff


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

[naiku]

Wow.....this Swedish lady is not playing nicely at all.....in fact.......she is not being nice at all.

I totally get the dilemma about $600 to get an easier input - tough bill to swallow when the method you are trying ‘should’ work. I hope that part gets sorted quickly and you are on to the exciting stuff

Thanks, it's certainly been challenging that's for sure!! I'm hopeful that the hardest parts are all behind me now though, although I know I have one more bone-headed thing to deal with... when running the speaker cable I made sure to color code everything that went into the doors, so I know which is tweeter, mid and midbass, well I neglected to mark that on the end that plugs into the amp..... oops. I've got an idea of a simple way to figure them out, just wish I had remembered to mark BOTH ends of the speaker wire. It's nice seeing it all come together now though.

I did find the SDMI25 for just over $400, I'd just need family in the UK to ship it over to me, so that is certainly an option. Going to at least try using the high level input first though.

[naiku]

With the social distancing in place currently, I have been home and so able to get on with the install. First up was figuring out a way to mount the tweeters, the stock sail panel is a fairly complicated thing in that you can't actually buy it without a stock tweeter mounted due to the way it is constructed. With it removed from the car there are 5 plastic rivets that need to be carefully drilled out, while making sure not to drill through the side or front of the housing. Oddly, the drivers side the rivets were much simpler to drill, the passenger side the top of them had been melted with something which meant having to drill more to get them out. Eventually I was able to separate the 3 pieces and remove the stock tweeter, unfortunately the tweeters I had planned to use were too large to fit exactly in the stock housing. Some thinking and drilling a new hole later and I was able to secure them with a screw and nylon washer I had:





You can see the white nylon washer and screw in the center of the picture, as well as some of the points I had to drill (screw bottom left, black screw on the right as well as a hole near the top left and 2 more on the bottom right). Annoyingly, when I went to test fit this into the car the nylon washer stuck out so far that it would not allow me to mount the housing. I had no shorter screws, so in the end decided to try and use some contact cement and glue the tweeters. Left them sitting overnight and sure enough, next morning they are solidly mounted.


The mids were fairly straight forward to mount, although I suspect they may be touching the grill so might have to mount them slightly differently. The white plastic baffle screws to the back of the door card:





Volvo left me this nice little rubber flap that I could cut a hole and slip the speaker wire through, I wish I had noticed this before as I would have left my tweeter wires about a foot longer and used the same hole. Instead, I had to drill a hole for the tweeter wiring, but at least this worked perfectly for the mid:





Mounting the midbass was fairly simple, I had ordered a pair of brackets to use and they lined up perfectly. You can also see the hole I had to drill for tweeter wire in the top left of the pic (it's large due to needing to fit the XT60 through):





As you may notice, there is currently zero sound deadening treatment applied to the doors, as I mentioned earlier in the thread this is due to an open recall that I am waiting on being performed which requires dismantling the inner door to replace the door latches.


I decided on this for the final layout, the amps still need final mounting (I need to access the front for the gain controls) and wires tidying up some, but this is ultimately where everything will sit:





With that done, I ran the power wire across the engine bay to the battery and it's alive:





Unfortunately, it sounds like garbage when using the speaker level input. As in, next to no output, muffled and crackly. In the picture above you can see my Fiio that I temporarily connected via RCA to rule anything post DSP out as being a problem, when using the DAP everything works perfectly. So, something is not right with the speaker level input, either a setting in the DSP (I can't find any) or something else going on. I am hoping to figure out what it is fairly quickly so I can get a baseline tune set up and secure the amps.

[naiku]

Tried a factory reset on the DSP as well as changing internal switches. No difference, well, its slightly louder garbage.

I'm debating cutting into the factory wiring now, I'm fairly confident the wiring harness I'm using is good. I hooked it to a spare speaker and it sounded ok (for a single speaker twisted to some wires). But, the DSP plays fine via DAP, so it must be something on the speaker level input. The hardest thing with cutting into the factory wire is the minimal room to access the wires.

If it's still no good after that, then I'll have to get the Helix adapter.

[Smitty]

Have you used the Infinity mids in another build or will this be your first time using them? They are interesting to me and I'd like to know how you like them.

[naiku]

Have you used the Infinity mids in another build or will this be your first time using them? They are interesting to me and I'd like to know how you like them.

I used them in my Audi for about a year or so, they were mounted in the kick panels in there. I was very happy with them, plenty of output running from 800Hz to 4200Hz and not expensive at all. Just looked and I paid $98 for them on Amazon, where they are currently listed for $94. I looked into AudioFrog GB25's (no doubt amazing speakers, but over my budget), the Morel CCW254's, but in the end went with the Infinity and am looking forward to getting them dialed in with the Volvo.

[naiku]

Trying to figure out the issues with using high level input, I took the following videos. The first is using the speaker level inputs into the DSP and as you can hear, it sounds awful:




The second is the same speaker wire I am using for the speaker level inputs, but this time connected to a pair of old surround speakers I had laying around (rules out an issue with the wiring between stock amp and DSP input):





And finally, the 3rd is using my Fiio into the DSP via RCA (just to rule out any issues on the output side of things):




A member on the Volvo forum mentioned the stock amp being Class D and the original speakers being 2ohms and that the MiniDSP input spec of 68ohms could be causing the stock amp to have stability issues with it seeing the 68ohm load. However, I am not smart enough to understand that, even though I think it makes sense. Going to reach out to MiniDSP tech support and see what they have to say. Anyone has any ideas?


Edit: Per the recommendation of a guy on swedespeed, I wired those speakers in video 2 above in parallel with the MiniDSP input so that the stock amp sees the lower load. Sure enough, doing this everything works. What I think I will have to do is remove the aftermarket harness I am using and try to swap the pins over (although removing any from the aftermarket harness proved incredibly frustrating) or either cut the wiring for the front speakers on the stock harness / use t-taps for the signal to the DSP, then plugging the factory plug back into the factory amp. That way the factory amplifier will still see the load of the rear speakers, which in turn should resolve the issue with the DSP input. I can fade the factory head unit all the way to the front which should mean the rears are not playing anything and causing problems with the sound stage. Not ideal as I had hoped to avoid any modifications to the factory harness (no real reason why, was just hoping not to do so), but it looks like I either do that or buy the Helix.

Edit 2: Went out to the car (working from home) cut the factory harness, spliced onto the wires going to the DSP input, thinking finally, I can move on with things. Nope. Still sounds terrible. Fade to the rear and the OEM rear speakers are working, I can't figure out how to turn off the center speaker (I am sure I can pull the grill and disconnect it). But, at this point I am going to say screw it and order the SDMI25.

[naiku]

While I wait for the SDMI25 to arrive, I figured I will just use the Fiio as a source and try to get a quick tune set up. This is where the MiniDSP comes into it's own IMO, took me all of 10 minutes to get something set up that while not perfect, is already an improvement over the stock Volvo system. I think I need to change the amp gains slightly, at least on the midbass as it is lacking a little (this could also be due to there currently being no real treatment on the door, although it is sealed up almost completely from the factory, but I suspect the plastic is a little flimsy that they used to seal it). At the moment I am just using a small fiberglass subwoofer enclosure with an MB Quart PWD254 that I had in the Audi before the suitcase, it does the job, but looking forward to getting the SQL-12 eventually.


I did discover that I need to swap the ends on the MiniDSP remote wire, the little retainer clip has broken off on one end. Of course, this end happens to be the end that I have the remote connected to and so it falls out constantly. In time, that would not be a problem, but since I will currently be using the wired remote as the volume control (line out from the Fiio) the plug falling out is not helpful. At least I am hardly driving at the moment, so it's no rush. Sort of on hold for doing too much more.


I think as well I am going to try to implement some form of rear fill in the D-pillar area. Not sure exactly how or when yet, but I really enjoy the effect that it gives so ultimately would like to run it again. There are speakers in the rear doors, but from previous experience that location does not work as well.

[naiku]

Another little update...






Also picked up a Y-cable in order to program the Helix with the Volvo serial number:





I believe the factory amp has a 12V and ground that I can use for powering the Helix, so will likely figure out some way of mounting it under the passenger seat. It's pretty small and not at all heavy, so I may just use some strong double sided tape or velcro. If I can remove the factory amp without removing the passengers seat I will, but I don't know that will be possible. Might try and temporarily wire it up later to get it coded to the Volvo.

Someone had mentioned that I could have simply used resistors on the high level input to make the factory amp think everything is OK, but knowing how hot resistors can get I did not want to try finding a spot to mount them and would rather just have the peace of mind of not dealing with it. Hopefully, with this piece installed I can move towards getting a tune and figuring out a subwoofer enclosure.