I like that !!!

 

Where did you order that crazy long ribbon cable? I spent *forever* trying to find a supplier for a longer ribbon with those specs and never had any luck. Not sure if I actually need one anymore, but if you happen to still have the info I would be forever indebted to you

 

Ebay, but shipping takes FOREVER!

http://www.ebay.com/itm/AWM-RIBBON-2...#ht_953wt_1070

 

yep thats the one I got! The original poster of this thread said he got a 300mm I think it was and it fit barley so I figured 380mm would be good and it fit perfectly with enough "slack" that you had some room to move.

 

Hi grradams, how did you managed to squeeze in the stock volume control board? Not much room in the pocket where the double din unit goes flush under the spedo. Thanks

 

It was a TIGHT fit, but I faced the volume **** UP and pointing towards the front end of the car and slid it between the small opening in the center of the brace that will be directly below where you hid the original deck.

 

Thanks grradams. Not sure what I did wrong. The Amber Display does not light up now. Looks like I am Doom ... ( Any idea or help will be very much appreciated

 

anybody else can put more pictures of what they did ??
How much did you guys spend for the GPS touch screen module?
the metra isn't too expensive right now, however when I told the garage I wanted to go to, that I wanted to do this mod, he told me the a good,reliable unit would cost me close to 1000dollars...

 

Yep, any of the good aftermarket units WITH navi will be $700-$1000.

 

I just installed a Kenwood single den unit. The Metra kit comes with the empty pocket for single den use. It does come with hardware for double den also. It also comes with blank adapters for those that dont have the automatic controls (the four little round buttons at the bottom of temp control). There is also a black piece that fills in the void on the bottom of the speedo, so you dont need to keep the factory radio display in it.

I ordered the ribbon cable from the eBay site, but it was skinnier than the one used. I disconnected all ribbon cables and just kept the cd player unit hooked up. All functions still work on the Tach display (temp, avg mpg, mte...).

I have installed 8 radios with subwoofers on other makes/models. The mini by far was the hardest!! It took me two days (I dont have a garage). This forum helped tremendously! Thanks to all. I will gladly answer any questions. I will post pics of my install and the final outcome.

 

You have to keep the OEM HU in place to keep the on-board computer in the speedo working. You also need it in place if you need to update the ECU.

 

Any thoughts on using a tablet such as Galaxy Tab instead? I've been looking for hours on ways to do this and seen a few ideas...I'm looking at a MINI without Bluetooth so I was thinking of using the double din (possibly needing to alter it to fit the width of the tab) and attaching a charging dock to plug the tab into and simply using the aux input. Besides working out how to best fit it in place, would there be any obvious flaws to swapping out an expensive aftermarket unit for a simple tablet?

 

Only problem I can think of off the top of my head would be audio quality. (how would you get decent voltage pre-outs to run to an amp?) You really don't want to run any audio signal to an amp that doesn't start as line level. Ideally you want the unit to have a good DAC too.

 

It'll be fine. That's why amps have gain controls. Sure, it'll raise the noise floor but there is absolutely no problem running a tablet as a HU. People have been doing it with iPads since they came out and it's a beautiful solution.


neus - What did you mean with your last comment? The only difference between speaker-level and line-level outputs is Voltage. Some older Eclipse HUs would do 16V on the RCA which would have driven speakers quite easily.

 

Well, I guess that I primarily was referring to a combination of noise floor issues and preamp issues. If you run through a headphone out, you are invariably running through an additional sub-par headphone pre-amp that is completely unnecessary. Additionally, you are using the tablet's DAC which is usually pretty inferior to those in decent head units. If you use an external DAC + line out, you would be in MUCH better shape sonically.

 

Not necessarily. I haven't looked at the Galaxy's specs but everything apple makes, for instance, is dead flat and adds no distortion at all. Same with apple's DAC. I'm not saying the Galaxy is a match for an iPad, but it can be done pretty easily. Pretty impressive, actually.
The problem with an external DAC on a tablet without a digital output is you have to do an A/D conversion to make use of it and at that point it won't matter since you still have to use the Galaxy DAC to get signal in the first place.

 

Not quite. The differences between line-level and speaker-level outputs are voltage AND current capacity. a 16 V line-level output could theoretically provide 64 Watts into a 4Ω load (V^2 / R), but ONLY if the output were capable of providing 4 Amps of current (V/R). None of the 16 V RCA line-outs, from Eclipse or any other manufacturer, were capable of providing that much current.

4 V, 8 V, and 16 V line-outs could theoretically improve the signal-to-noise ratio by allowing you to turn down the input gain on your external amplifier, but it was mostly just a marketing ploy (like the current digital camera "pixel wars"), aimed at consumers who believe that "if some is good, more must be better".

 

Actually, the ipod headphone amp is dreadful and absolutely adds distortion. If you pull the line level out from the dock connector, the quality is significantly better. jump on Amazon and look at Fiio's options for a relatively inexpensive usb DAC + headphone amp that is much higher quality. at a minimum, if you are using ipod / ipad, use the FiiO L3 line out cable.

 

Has anyone successfully used the Metra kit in a 2011?

 

Which, while all true, is a bit outside the scope for the average consumer. As far as it being a marketing ploy, I promise you that in the late 80s and early 90s HU Voltage made a HUGE difference. Nowadays it's not as important as even very inexpensive amplifiers are very quiet with low noise floors. Take something like an old Punch 40dsm and run it with a .5V HU like my old Alpine 7618/5959 combo and then again with a 7909.

Here's a test from 2005 when there WERE some issues with iPod headphone outputs. As you see, they're about as perfect as it gets. ALL iPods have improved significantly from there.

http://home.comcast.net./~machrone/p...playertest.htm

And another:
http://www.machrone.net/mt/archives/...ipod_nano.html

There are more that I can't find right now but the point is that the headphone output of an iPod is fine. It started with the Shuffle in 2005 and as the other models have been upgraded they too have outstanding performance as well.


I forget who, but I have seen it done on here.

 

I realized it was beyond the scope, but I was only replying to the earlier claim that "The only difference between speaker-level and line-level outputs is Voltage. Some older Eclipse HUs would do 16V on the RCA which would have driven speakers quite easily." Even with 16 V line-outs, the head unit isn't going to be able to provide enough current to drive speakers directly, and the output impedance of the head unit is going to be high enough that trying to draw the required current will send your damping factor through the floor and trash the sound.

I was into car stereo in the 80s as well, and while I agree that increasing the line-out voltage from the standard 0.7 V to 2 V or 4 V was a real improvement, by the time you got to 8 V and 16 V, the advantages were more theoretical than actual. Like the difference between 102 dB signal-to-noise ratio and 105 dB, the ultra-high line-out voltages soon became just another spec for the marketing department and "measurebators" to crow about. That's why I compared it to the "megapixel wars" going on today - while 4 MP is noticeably better than 2 MP, stuffing 8 or 12 MP into a cell-phone sensor is just an exercise in one-upmanship, and usually doesn't result in better pictures.

Lastly, the Alpine 7909 was a phenomenal unit, for several reasons beyond its 4 V pre-outs. That's why Alpine re-issued it in 1998 and it still has a following to this day, more than 20 years after it was first released.

 

It wasn't loud and it didn't sound good at all, but it would do it. It was like the Pioneer HUs that you could bridge the speaker outputs to drive a sub with. Well, sorta. I guess a better example is those old EQ boosters.

I agree there is a point of diminishing returns. With older amps I found my tilting point to be 8V, but I'm REALLY picky about noise floor.

The 7618/5959 combo, other than the Voltage difference was really, really close to the 7909 in sound. No, it didn't have the copper chassis, being a cassette HU it really didn't need it, but 5959 did have the advantage of having a more stable transport. Six of one, half a dozen of the other. I'd still run a 7909 but only the reissue. It's a much better built unit. If only it had iPod control. I know it's blasphemy but it's convenient and all my good music is Apple Lossless anyway.

 

Does this ribbon cable come with the blue clips on it, or should I get them separately?

 

Hey, quality_sound. Those are very interesting links! guess what I am aware of really has more to do with the headphone amp under load. My buddy uses hi bitrate aac's WITH eq often times and simply has to use the line out into an external pre to avoid the obvious distortion. I also remembered the red wine mod on the 5th gen ipods that made such a huge difference by bypassing the headphone amp and swithcing the D/A's. It is good to know that, if not heavily loaded down, and without eq, the headphone out signal remains pretty accurate.

 

The EQ is what's gonna bite him in the ***. If he turned the EQ off then he'd be fine. With it on he's gonna clip the **** out of the outputs at certain frequencies. That makes a lot more sense as to needing to use the line out.