At the request of Edge, I'm writing this about my DPSM installation.

First I feel I need to state my experience (or lack thereof) in car audio:

1. First car ('89 Blazer) - I took it to an audio shop, had them put in a head unit and speakers
2. Second car ('02 Camaro) - same story; went to audio shop, had them put in a head unit and speakers. I later added a 1/8" input for my iPod and put in a power antenna which required a on/off lead from the head unit
3. Third car [auto-x car] ('99 Miata) - Removed the stock head unit and speakers. The wiring is still in place as SCCA rules don't allow for it's removal
4. Fourth car; current car ('04 MC) - Before this weekend my experience was limited to installing a DICE iPod controller inot the base (non-HK) system.

Considering my very limited experience in this area, I wanted something simple to install. I knew that living on campus in an apartment I have pretty much no fabrication facilities at my disposal. I cannot make any custom adaptors to fit aftermarket speakers in my doors or rear, so this kit was perfect for me.

I printed off pretty much every install guide I could find including the stereo upgrade guide stickied in the Audio, a guide from MINI2, and the DPSM install manual. The first two were useful to know how to actually take the car apart. The last was obviously important to know how to put stuff together. For the most part, this install was nearly identical to the install described in the sticky here. The differences being you have to run a bundle of cables about 1" thick from the radio to the amp in rear. Also if you're lucky like me and have a MC where the battery is in the front of the car you get to run a red cable about 1/4" thick to the back as well.

Here's the tools I used:



And here was my favorite tool. I'm not sure what it's called, but it's used to remove the buttons that hold on carpet in car interiors. Makes popping off panels real easy.


As this is mostly like the typical stereo install which has been documented before, I'll point out differences.

First, when you order a DPSM, you get a really big box in the mail:


Which contains lots of bubble wrap and a smaller box:


First off, I want to point out that in my car (maybe my build date causes this) but the door panel does not lift off after disconnecting the sides/bottom. I fought with my driver's side door panel for much longer than I should have only to find it comes straiht off. Picture evidence of how it attaches. The door side:


And the panel side:


You can't really see it because of the area I shot, but I managed to crack the outside of those clips things on the panel because I was on the assumption it lifted up and off. Passenger side went much easier as I knew how it attached.

Reoving speakers goes like usual, so I won't mention it. Applying the sound insulation inside the doors is a little tricky as there's no reference point as to where to center the parts. I put the pieces in the door and adjusted them until the fit, left one for a placement reference, removed the adhesive backing from the one I took out and then placed it accordingly to line up with the one I left in the door. Attach the other one in a similar fashion. As you can imagine with someone who's never applied this stuff before, two of the panels overlap, but I think overall it came out okay. Sorry, forgot to take pictures here.

Sound insulation for the rears was a little tricky. Below is a picture I took today and drew on some to try to illustrate what I'm about to talk about:


The orange box shows approximately where the easily accessable area is behind the speaker location. The red area shows how much further the rear sound insulation goes. I'm not including this in the "easily accessable area" because the rear fender comes up there. It's a tight fit, but until you press the sound insulation material against the car it doesn't stick too much.

Speaker comparisons:
Front Tweeter; Left is stock, right is DPSM:


Midranges; Right is stock, left is DPSM:


Rear 6x9's; Stock in box on right, DPSM on left:


Front speakers and crossover installed:



With regard to running wires
The wiring that carries the signals to/from the amp is long. Really long. I think I have about 2-3 ft more than necessary shoved behind the panel in the right-rear. This picture was taken in an attempt to show this:


It doesn't do justice to the wires.

The wiring is very simple as far as connections go - one end has two big square connectors where one plugs into the radio/dice/whatever you have and the other plugs into the wiring to the speakers. The other end of the long cable plugs into the amp (easy to figure out).

You also have to drill a hole for the "surround sound" switch. I don't recall the size it needs, but it's bigger than I have. I ended up using my biggest drill bit, then used the drill as a make-shift dremel to clear out enough material for the switch to fit (it's the engineering undergrad way ). Related to this, I can't notice any difference in sound when it's switched on/off.

I also had to run the wire from the battery to the rear. I went from the car to under the hood (bonnet, whatever) through a rubber grommet on the passenger side of the car. I decided that this would probably be safer than running it across through the dash where it could get pinched by pedal movement, plus I couldn't find an easily accessable grommet on the driver's side. After the power line entered the engine bay, I sent it across like you can see in the two pictures below (as well as the mounting of the fuse holder):


I ran it there because I assume the walls which separate the engine bay from that space will act as a heat shield. I'm sure if it's not safe I'll have many people jump on me in this thread...

The end result is I have like 320W of power (4x80W) in the car and my dash looks like this:

and my boot looks like this:


Plus I didn't have to cut the carpet or make any real permanent modifications to the car other than putting the sound insulation in. It looks bone stock, which is a big for me - I don't want to give anyone a reason to break in.

Oh, as a side note, you may want to buy some more of these:


These got killed when putting the door panels on/off. I didn't buy any extra. Hopefully my driver side door won't fall off .

My impressions so far: I've only got about 1.5-2 hrs on the speakers, so they aren't even close to the 30 hrs break-in. Even so, it has MUCH more bass than the stock. The bass started off kind of boomy (scientific terms here...), but it seems to be better just after these few hours.

Comments? Questions? Concerns?

As long as this is, I'm sure I forgot to mention something, so just ask and I'll post up an answer / response.

 

Awesome, man... thanks for doing this.

You might even be the catalyst for other people to take the plunge too, saving the money on labor.

I'll be interested in hearing your ongoing opinions as you listen to the system more!

 

I would also like to point out that I did this entire installation in an on-campus parking lot on game day. I had maybe 3' of clearance on either side of my car and ended up stacking all the panels on the grass in front of my car. I put all the small stuff in the back of the mini where the seats should be. I was able to do the system in about 6-7 hours or so under these conditions. If I lived at a house where I could go inside and get some water and take a break it would have been even easier.

The only issue I had was apparently I was dehydrated and weak (that's my story and I'm sticking to it ) and didn't correctly connect the two plugs that go from the radio to the speaker wiring under the dash and so I thought it didn't work. As I posted in another thread yesterday, after going out the next day I re-tried plugging it in and it all worked out fine.

If I can do this under these conditions I know that just about anyone who has a house where they can walk away from the car for 5 minutes can do this.

Give me a couple weeks and I'll let you know what I think about the sound as it matures. I'll post up an update in this thread so it's consilidated in one place if someone does a search later on.

 

Just when I had decided it was too much of a hassle!

Total Time to take apart and put back together?

edit: Nevermind, I just read your post #2

 

A thing to take into consideration about that time - it took me just over an hour to take the interior out (probably over 15 min was fighting with the door panels that I'd read everywhere lift out) and when I put it back together I thought it wasn't working and I was dehydrated so I was moving very slowly. If I were to do it again I could probably shave off an hour or so.

 

Great write-up! While you struggled with your door panel, my struggle was with the left side screw for the glove box. It took me what seemed like FOREVER to get that scew to seat properly. I too had never taken the interior of a car apart, aside from installing the parrot bluetooth kit and a euro parcel shelf.

I thought the instructions were just clear enough. There are a few parts where you really need to read slosely 2 or 3 times to understand the wiring and connections but overall not too difficult.

I did mine at my house with plenty of room... you have my kudos for doing this in a campus parking lot!

 

Any updates on listening after the DPSM break in? I just picked up my 2006 S this afternoon with the DPSM installed. I am wondering how it sounds after a few hours. I am really interested in the high frequency sound....does it improve or is this break in limited to bass and Mid?

 

Right now it has about 15 hours on the system (I've lost track), so about 1/2 the break in period. I'm going on a trip to Alabama this weekend to Barber Motorsports Park (about 4 hrs each way) and was planning to post after that as the system would be darn close to the end of the break in. That said I'll go ahead and post how it is now. A bit of background - I normally don't listen to music very loud. There have been many times when I was listening to my iPod in the library and thought the music was too loud so I turned it down one "click" and realized it was then silent. When I drive I do about the same - just enough to cover road / wind noise. A few weeks ago I went on a trip to my parents' place (about 2.5 hrs each way of back roads) and an old-school Incubus song came up on the iPod. Obviously when something from S.C.I.E.N.C.E. comes up, you have to just crank it up. This is when the beauty of the DSPM shines. At normal volumes the system sounds pretty good. The sound is overall less muddy (through all frequencies, though I've noticed the most change over break-in with the mids and lows) but when turned up loud the clarity stays there. I've never had a car stereo where the sound stays this clear and this defined at the volumes the DSPM does. Of course, I've never put this much money into any car stereo either, normally stopping at ~$200 for all speakers and $200-300 for a head unit, so that probably has something to do with it.

At first when I installed it I was a little disappointed with the sound in the lows and mids but I can tell that since the speakers have loosened up some it's gotten much better. I haven't noticed much change in the high frequencies, but that's most likely because I (very happily) have noticed such a difference in the mids and lows. As I said I'm about 1/2 through the break in, so hopefully the sound will continue to improve.

 

101101 Very nice write up, pictures, and follow-up reply. Thanks for the information! I am going to post my thoughts on my DPSM install soon. I want to listen to my system for a few days before I comment...

 

After spending over 10 hours in my car between Friday at 4:00 and now I think my system is pretty much burned in. Here's my review:

They definately make your source quality stand out. At first I thought it was okay, not the instant clarity I expected but better than stock. Then (over this weekend) one of my friends rode in the car with me and plugged in his iPod with his very high bit-rate songs on it. Oh my... If you have a good, quality CD or audio file it will sound amazing. If you then listen to standard quality audio rips you will start to wonder where the sound quality went. I'm very tempted to go bach through my CD collection and re-rip all my music at much higher quality. As much as I normally dislike techno-type stuff, he had some high quality ripped songs and they sounded great. What stands out to me is daft punk's "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger".

In other words, if you get a DPSM you owe it to yourself to listen to CD's or high quality audio rips. With these quality inputs, it sounds great. I'm very pleased with it.

 

I've said it before and I'll say it again... the 128 kbit "defacto" common standard, which most people seem to think is "just fine"... just plain sucks.

There's a reason, when I bought my first iPod, that I ripped everything in 256 kbit... and now I'm even considering redoing the entire collection in 320 kbit... the entire 60GB (will end up 75GB if I do it).

 

With my stock speaker setup I couldn't tell a difference in sound quality between CDs and my 128Kbps rips. I guess it's only with decent / good systems you actually tell a difference.

On a related note, what would give the better sound quality rips while not being too large of a file in iTunes; AAC 256Kbps, AIFF (at highest settings), Apple Lossless, or MP3 on highest settings?

 

I've had fantastic sound quality when ripping to the --alt-preset extreme standard using Exact Audio Copy and LAME. Not exactly plug and play to setup but once setup it's as easy as swapping in disks.

Once ripped, tagged and filed try AnaPod from RedChair Software and you'll never go back to iTunes again.

 

Your choices are all over the place... let's see...

• Standard AIFF is totally uncompressed, so each CD you rip will consume the same size as the CD itself (up to 700MB for a full length CD).
• Apple Lossless will save you some disk space, but the compression is limited to how much it will save (40% to 60% over AIFF or WAV).
• Both Standard AIFF & Apple Lossless will give you maximum quality, as neither one will permanently throw away any of the data from the source CD.

Now, your other two choices are AAC 256 kbit and "MP3 on highest settings".

Next to MP3, AAC is the better format, period. It's effectively the "next generation" of MP3, and despite many people's perception, it is not a proprietary Apple format. Other software & devices are starting to support it now as well.

However, your statement limited AAC to 256 kbit, when both AAC & MP3 can go up to 320 kbit within iTunes. Going strictly by what you stated, MP3 at 320 kbit will probably give you better quality than AAC at 256 kbit.

My opinion is that AAC at 320 kbit is the best compromise between quality & disk space. Sure, it's 2.5 times more data (and 2.5 times larger files) than the old 128 kbit common defacto standard, but I think it's worth it.

There's a really good info page about AAC on Wikipedia, worth reading so that you can appreciate how superior it is to MP3:

Advanced Audio Coding - Wikipedia

Here's a quick cheat sheet on approximate file sizes for the formats:

• AIFF / WAV (i.e. raw data from CD): ~ 10MB per minute
• Apple Lossless ~ 4MB to 6MB per minute
• 320 kbit AAC & MP3: ~ 2.5MB per minute
• 256 kbit AAC & MP3: ~ 2MB per minute
• 128 kbit AAC & MP3: ~ 1MB per minute

Those numbers are very approximate, but it gives you some idea. Generally, AAC will produce a smaller file than MP3 at the same bitrate (and have better quality).

 

Honestly, the DPSM install in a non-HK car is really very easy! So long as you're confident to pull many interior panels off, it's basically plug-and-play.

Here's some stuff on my website from when I installed DPSM in GPMINI:
http://www.gbmini.net/wp/2007/03/dps...all_in_gpmini/


And yes, it's worth grabbing a collection of replacement clips before you start - many of the clips seem to be broken when the car is originally built, so you are at a disadvantage even before you start pulling panels off!

 

So how is it working?

 

It's still working good. After reading a few stories on here I'm a little worried about the future of the system, but it works perfectly fine now.

 

Update: it's been 15 months and in the past few days I noticed when listening to my iPod that it occasionally cuts out. I assumed this was something with the iPod adaptor and the wires maybe damaged. This morning on the way to a doctor appointment the sound cut out a little and started a very rapid tat tat tat tat tat (imagine current being applied to the speakers in a step pulse input). It almost sounded like someone hitting a bass drum rapidly. I turned off the head unit to stop the sound and it continued. This tells me there's an issue with the amp or a short in the wiring. After the doctor appointment I pulled tools out my trunk and within 5 minutes had the head unit out, the amp bypassed, and the head unit back in. I can tell a HUGE difference in sound now - the bass lacks volume and definition and midranges are pretty much gone. Treble isn't much better. Overall I want to replace this amp NOW. I miss my sound quality.

 

This is the 5th or 6th DPSM failure I've seen reported (example, GBMINI: http://www.gbmini.net/wp/2008/08/dead_dpsm). Considering that DPSM is extremely rare and very few people have it, this is an unusually high failure rate for what should be a premium product. I had considered getting DPSM but the reports put me off.

 

The amp in my system has been replaced twice.

 

As noted on my website, my DPSM amp was under 2 year warranty - hopefully yours will be, too.
It sounds wonderful, but it does seem to fail too often

 

My DPSM was installed by the dealer before I took delivery. I believe it is covered by the full 4 year, 50k warranty. The latest problem was back in October. The sound would drop out altogether or it would sound like popcorn popping, the lights on the amp would bink while it was doing this.

 

Assuming my car's warranty is up and I installed the system myself (ordered online from a dealer), any idea how I would go about getting a replacement amp?

 

I think accessory parts have a 2 year warranty from date of purchase. Check with the dealer you bought it from.

 

Just emailed the parts department at the dealership I bought it from. I don't expect I'll hear back in the next day or two with new years tomorrow; if I don't hear back from them by next week I'm calling.