anyone put a subwoofer in trunk of Phaeton?

[dzier]

Curious to see if anyone has been brave enough to do this. I installed one in each of my audi's, but they already had subwoofer speakeres in the trunk, but the power was not impressive. The audio signal was already there in the trunk. With the battery in the rear, the pwer issue is easy. It is the access to the signal that is more difficult.

[W126C]

Modified by W126C at 9:29 AM 5-12-2007

[PanEuropean]

Hi David:

My guess is that if you wanted to install more powerful woofers (as opposed to a 'subwoofer'), what you could do is take the existing signal that goes to the woofers in the rear doors and re-route that signal to a more powerful woofer that you could locate elsewhere in the car. You likely would not notice the loss of the two rear door woofers, especially if you place your more powerful woofer in the back of the car.

The difficult part is going to be determining exactly where to put the more powerful woofer... there really are not many choices available. You can't put anything on the underside of the hatshelf because all the space under the hatshelf is occupied by controllers and electronics - that area is the 'server room' of the Phaeton. You can't put anything behind the rear seat backrest because there is a steel wall right behind the backrest. You can put anything under any of the seats because all the space under every seat is taken up with seat controller components.

About all you could do (best I can figure out) would be to replace the two rear door woofers with more powerful aftermarket woofers, and of course a secondary (downstream) amplifier to drive those more powerful replacement woofers. That would require a bit of fooling around and custom installation work. Or, I suppose you could put a single woofer in the place that the ski-bag goes now, then put a fabric screen over it. That would require that you leave the rear seat middle armrest open (or, that you load a drum solo into the CD player to blow the rear seat middle armrest forward into the down position).

Michael

[dzier]

Like my Audi's I would put an enclosure in the trunk. If it is powerful enough, it can move the back seat. My Audi I split of the existing sub speakers, so I would think that I would be able to spli off the rear. With the battery in the trunk, power for an amp would not be a big deal.

[chrisj428]

I believe Jim Hoadley successfully installed a subwoofer in a trunk enclosure. Perhaps he may be able to lend some insight.

[Lord bass]

I'm in the process of designing a bass box to fire thru the ski Hatch in my phaeton but need some help with supplying a signal to the amplifier that with drive the sub. Is there anywhere in the boot where i can pick up a signal without too much work?

Thanks in advance.

[WillemBal]

Try here:

Interior-Door-Panel-Removal-Bass-Speaker-Broken-Wire-Repair but also a bit about sub woofer installation

And some more here:
Audio-system-upgrade-to-Phaeton-need-advice....

For tapping off the audio, you can perhaps make a tap from the line input of the DSP,

T24d-13 (GND)
T24d-10 (Audio-in left)
T24d-11 (Audio-in right)

Or you might want to use the woofer outputs rear or front, with a voltage divider.
Willem

[Lord bass]

Thank Williem.
I have the 8 channel system not the DSP. Is the any thing under the hat shelf thst i can use to get a signal?

Raz

[WillemBal]

I have the 8 channel system not the DSP. Is there any thing under the hat shelf that i can use to get a signal?

Nope. There are only some sources for LF signals, such as the TV tuner and the phone.
You need to get to the Digital Sound System. A diagram of the complete system is given here: 34 Radio system with CD-Changer preparation (8-Channel).pdf

Wiring of the line input of the amplifier is identical (it too has a T24d, 24-pin connector).
Just the speaker wiring is a little different. The LF woofer wires are on the other, 23-pin connector. I guess you might want to use the rear woofer outputs on terminals 15(+) 18(-) and 9(+) and 12 (-) for left and right rear woofers, respectively.

Willem

[yorkiejules]

Hi Dzier,

I have just had x2 12" (Phoenix Gold) SL subs installled in the trunk of my car. A custom box was fabricated which only takes up around 5"depth of rear boot space. They are facing the rear seats and as suggested already on this thread by Pan European, the ski loading access area has been opened up and covered with speaker fabric. The middle arm rest does not need to be down to make a difference- believe me!
The signal was taken from the exisiting amp which is in the trunk. I have the standard audio install (8 speaker, non DSP) system. Obviously I had an additional amp installed to drive the subs.

FYI, I also upgraded the front doors with Rockford Fosgate 5 & 6.5" speakers as well driven off the standard amp.

[Lord bass]

Hi Dzier,

I have just had x2 12" (Phoenix Gold) SL subs installled in the trunk of my car. A custom box was fabricated which only takes up around 5"depth of rear boot space. They are facing the rear seats and as suggested already on this thread by Pan European, the ski loading access area has been opened up and covered with speaker fabric. The middle arm rest does not need to be down to make a difference- believe me!
The signal was taken from the exisiting amp which is in the trunk. I have the standard audio install (8 speaker, non DSP) system. Obviously I had an additional amp installed to drive the subs.

FYI, I also upgraded the front doors with Rockford Fosgate 5 & 6.5" speakers as well driven off the standard amp.

Thanks for the info. any pics?

Raz

[j3w]

Thank Williem.
I have the 8 channel system not the DSP. Is the any thing under the hat shelf thst i can use to get a signal?

Raz

I'm working on a similar project - I'm feeding ALL of the signals from the amp to a JL Audio Clean Sweep, then from there to a hat shelf mounted JL Audio 900/5 amp, which will send 100 watts to each corner and 500 watts to a trunk mounted 12".

At this stage I'm still buying components - this entire install will probably involve $4000 in gear and most of my weekends for a month.

[Paximus]

Interesting... Isn't that possibly approaching 100 amps from the power supply? Are you adding a third battery with second charger to pull the current peaks from?

Chris

[j3w]

Interesting... Isn't that possibly approaching 100 amps from the power supply? Are you adding a third battery with second charger to pull the current peaks from?

Chris

It's a class D amp - will probably not draw more than 50A. Considering how many accessories are available in a fully loaded Phaeton, I didn't think it would be an issue.

But I have not done the sums.

[invisiblewave]

A bigger issue might be the ground interference noise if you're exceeding the capacity of the alternator. Used to drive me crazy back in the days when I thought it was worth spending money on expensive car audio equipment!

[j3w]

A bigger issue might be the ground interference noise if you're exceeding the capacity of the alternator. Used to drive me crazy back in the days when I thought it was worth spending money on expensive car audio equipment!

New tech class D amps are almost everything proof. You could probably hook this up with alligator clips directly off either battery and get perfect sonic performance.

[Paximus]

You could probably hook this up with alligator clips directly off either battery and get perfect sonic performance.

Funnily enough, that sounds technically optimum to me!

[CFOOSE1]

I installed three 15'' subs in my Phaeton, two mids in the front doors and four more tweeters (two front two rear) for a total of seventeen speakers in the cabin.Sounds NICE

[Gabs08PHTN]

Hi Cf,
Did you splice the loudspeakers wiring inside the doors in order to install some filters and then connect the extra tweeters and mids?

Gabriel

[CFOOSE1]

I wired them in series

[Lord bass]

I have finished my sub woofer install. I got a VIBE 10" active Bandpass box and managed to fire the port through the ski hatch. I'm very happy with the improvement. I will post some pics when I get the car back as its currently at VW for some corrosion warranty work.

Thanks for the Help and advice!