2010 CX-9 Touring Install Log

mzmtg

Member
:
2010 CX-9
After the untimely demise of my Honda Pilot, I'm going to be reinstalling most of the gear I had in that car into my CX-9.

My CX-9 is a Touring model without Bose. At this point, my plan is to install the following over the next few weeks as I get time:

Head unit: Kenwood KMM-BT318U media player
Front speakers: JBL GTO609c components
Front tweeters: Dayton ND25FN-4 1-inch silk dome
Rear speakers: Factory, only turned on when the kids are riding back there and want to hear their music
Subwoofer: Kicker 40CWS124 12" Comp S in a prefab box (for now
Amplifier: MTX Thunder 4244 4-channel
 
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This week's project is getting the front speakers installed and running off the OEM head unit.

I'll just be mounting the Dayton tweeters into the factory tweeter mounting plate in the dash, here:

20171004_183909 by ben.garner, on Flickr
 
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Got the Dayton tweeters installed into the factory locations using the JBL GTO passive crossovers tapped into the factory speaker wiring. The JBL crossover passes a full range signal to the woofer by design, so the OEM door speakers are still getting a full range signal. The tweeters are crossed at about 5 kHz with a 12 db/oct slope.

20171015_135208 by ben.garner, on Flickr

20171015_135157 by ben.garner, on Flickr

20171015_154012 by ben.garner, on Flickr

20171015_154021 by ben.garner, on Flickr

This shot is looking up from under the dash towards the tweeter location. As you can see, it is wide open. I was able to reach my whole arm up in there. The driver's side is a little more crowded, but still has LOTS of room to work.

20171015_154028 by ben.garner, on Flickr

Crossover tapped into the factory wiring at the passenger kickpanel area. The driver's side was done similarly.

20171016_115322 by ben.garner, on Flickr

Tweeter connections.

20171016_123020 by ben.garner, on Flickr

Driver's side tweeter mounted.

20171016_123158 by ben.garner, on Flickr
 
I got the JBL woofers mounted to the Scosche SA68 adapter plates for the front doors. I used foam gasket tape to isolate the speakers from the adapters. I used some of the self-tapping screws that came with the JBL set for fasteners.

I have read several reviews online saying that the Scosche adapters do not actually fit 6.5" speakers. Well, they definitely for the JBL 6.5" woofers just fine.

20171015_173106 by ben.garner, on Flickr

20171017_204014 by ben.garner, on Flickr

20171017_204022 by ben.garner, on Flickr
 
Looks clean, nice install. Curious why you decided not to connect the tweeter using the factory wiring?
 
Any updates? I have the same year CX-9 and I'm contemplating swapping out the stock stereo in my wife's CX-9 for something more modern.

I was hoping to leverage your experience...
 
Any updates? I have the same year CX-9 and I'm contemplating swapping out the stock stereo in my wife's CX-9 for something more modern.

I was hoping to leverage your experience...

Updates?

Hell yes!

Finally got back at it last week.

I got the main power wire run & started working on the head unit wiring.

20171228_151334 by ben.garner, on Flickr

20171228_152202 by ben.garner, on Flickr

20171228_152143 by ben.garner, on Flickr

I'm using the Metra 70-7903T vehicle wiring adapter and the 40-HD10 adapter for the powered antenna.

20171229_102336 by ben.garner, on Flickr

(Using the Posi Twist connectors till I finalize things like whether or not rear speakers get head unit power and installing a steering wheel control integrator....hey at least they're not regular wire nuts...)
 
I installed my trusty old MTX Thunder 4244 under the driver's seat.

Man, I hate this black carpet. It doesn't show stains, but it shows EVERY speck of dirt, sand or whatever else is laying around. It seems impossible to keep clean.

First, clearing out some room to work:

20171231_132134 by ben.garner, on Flickr


Ground point under the B-pillar trim in a factory threaded hole (That OEM wiring harness retainer can just dangle :p ):

20171231_134043 by ben.garner, on Flickr


I did slice a new hole in the carpet for running wires over to the door sill area:

20171231_140938 by ben.garner, on Flickr


Front speaker wires & the turn-on lead run forward with the main power wire. The subwoofer speaker wire runs to the rear under the rear door sill trim:

20171231_141535 by ben.garner, on Flickr


RCA cables come from the center console area, under the carpet:

20171231_145311 by ben.garner, on Flickr


All wired up with the amp velcro'd to the carpet (Front of the car is at the bottom of the photo):

20171231_145858 by ben.garner, on Flickr


With the seat back in:

20180101_091556 by ben.garner, on Flickr
 
Head unit is in and running. It turns out I did not need the power antenna adapter that came with the kit.

I am happy with how easily and securely the Mazda interior pieces come out and go back together. Nicely done.

20171231_144227 by ben.garner, on Flickr


The Metra wiring adapter includes a side connector so that the OEM head unit can be plugged back into the car with the aftermarket unit still in place. Why? Because the only way to adjust the clock in dash is with the buttons on the OEM unit. I located the side connector behind the fuse & filter access panel in the back of the glove box.

20171231_144533 by ben.garner, on Flickr


Here's the Kenwood in the Metra dash kit. The Metra piece matches the finish on the OEM dash really well. Unfortunately, the little pieces and trim rings that actually mount the head unit to the adapter don't match. Still pretty decent overall.

20180101_091524 by ben.garner, on Flickr


The bluetooth mic sneaks out here by the steering column.

20180102_123708 by ben.garner, on Flickr
 
The Metra wiring adapter includes a side connector so that the OEM head unit can be plugged back into the car with the aftermarket unit still in place. Why? Because the only way to adjust the clock in dash is with the buttons on the OEM unit. I located the side connector behind the fuse & filter access panel in the back of the glove box.

20171231_144533 by ben.garner, on Flickr

Does the AC still work without the OEM head unit installed? I thought there was an issue with this, where the HVAC controls went haywire without the head unit installed.

The other thing that is lost is the ability to cycle through the functions of the LED display, correct? For instance, you can't get to the current mileage, distance to empty, etc.... Also, by doing it this way, you lose the steering wheel buttons, correct?

Have you considered the PAC RP4-MZ11 adapter? I think that is supposed to keep the steering wheel buttons, and also allow you to adjust the clock and control the LED display.
 
Does the AC still work without the OEM head unit installed? I thought there was an issue with this, where the HVAC controls went haywire without the head unit installed.

No issues with the HVAC at all. Fully functional.

The other thing that is lost is the ability to cycle through the functions of the LED display, correct? For instance, you can't get to the current mileage, distance to empty, etc.... Also, by doing it this way, you lose the steering wheel buttons, correct?

Correct, I have no way to cycle through the trip computer functions in the display. I have also lost my steering wheel audio & phone controls for now.

Have you considered the PAC RP4-MZ11 adapter? I think that is supposed to keep the steering wheel buttons, and also allow you to adjust the clock and control the LED display.

Right now, I'm leaning towards the Metra Axxess ASWC-1 to restore the steering wheel controls. Still haven't pulled the trigger on that yet, though. The Axxess unit auto-detects the vehicle & aftermarket radio being used and sets up the button programming automatically. The Axxess also lets you re-map the steering wheel buttons to different radio functions if you want. It can also do dual programming of the buttons, giving each button a second custom function on a long-press.

FJ5X99m.jpg
 
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I've spent the last couple of weeks tuning the sound in the CX-9 using my Dayton IMM-6 mic and a free windows program called Room EQ Wizard (REW)

I've been posting the process over at DIYMA

This is what's gone down so far:

mzmtg said:
Here's where I've gone so far trying to make the best of what I have. I'm looking for any tips or constructive criticism.

My system is passive 6.5" components up front & a 12" sub in the back of the car. It's powered by a 4-channel MTX amp with the rear channel bridged to drive the sub. My headunit is a Kenwood that has all the tuning features of the midrange Kenwood & JVC units these days.

The main tools I use are:
13-band graphic EQ (range is +/- 9db per band)
Digital Time Alignment (distance & gain adjustment for each channel)
Crossovers ("Tweeter crossover" is actually an adjustable high pass shelf filter with frequency adjustment and seperate L & R gain)

I am not using any of the other adjustments like loudness, bass boost, subwoofer level control, "stage EQ", "sound realizer" and so on.

Install log is here: http://www.diymobileaudio.com/forum...8690-2010-mazda-cx-9-touring-install-log.html

I'm using the Dayton IMM-6 calibrated mic in my Android phone and the Audio Tool app for measurements.

I'm generally following Andy W's approach he's been writing up on the AudioFrog Forum: Time Alignment Part 5: Putting it all together

First, I set all my amp gains using an o-scope to watch for clipping. I used -10db sine tones, 1KHz for the front and 40Hz for the sub channel.

The passive crossovers cross my mids & tweeters about 4.8kHz with a 12db slope. My mids are high-passed at 80Hz with a 24db slope. My subwoofer is low-passed at 70Hz, 24db.

Then I used Erin's site to set up my time alignment. Here are my measurements and the site's calculations:
Capture by ben.garner, on Flickr

From there, I tweaked the left and right side values to move the image more to the center using pink noise pops.

My final time alignment settings are:
Front Left: 3.73ms
Front Right 2.8ms
Subwoofer: 0.0ms

Next I used uncorrelated pink noise & the Dayton mic to adjust the subwoofer gain down at the amplifier until it's volume at the driver's seat matched the front channels.

Setting the Audio Tool app to 1/3 Octave & playing the uncorrelated pink noise, here's my uncorrected response:
Screenshot_20180209-100710 by ben.garner, on Flickr

Then I used the headunit EQ to raise the bass level back up using the "Bass Extend" function. This turns the bottom EQ band (63Hz) setting into a shelf filter that raises or lowers all the frequencies below 63Hz.

Again using the mic and uncorrelated pink noise, I adjusted the other EQ bands to minimize any peaks that I could. I also used the the head unit "tweeter crossover" to bring down everything above 4kHz just a tiny bit.

My EQ settings so far (all filters have a Q of 1.35):
20-63 Hz: +9
100 Hz: +4
160 Hz: -8
250 Hz: -7
400 Hz: +6
630 Hz: -3
1 kHz: 0
1.6 kHz: -6
2.5 kHz: -3
4 kHz: -2
6.3 kHz: -4
10 kHz: -2
16 kHz: +5

Here's the response I'm at so far with EQ:
Screenshot_20180209-101025 by ben.garner, on Flickr

All that being said, the system definitely sounds better than it did before all this. I'm most impressed with the subwoofer integration using Andy's advice. It's blended into the front MUCH better than I was ever able to achieve trying to adjust the subwoofer's time delay to match its phase with the front.

So, thoughts from anyone?
 
mzmtg said:
Yeah, it looks like I may be chasing some cancellation with that boost at 400. I'll cut that back a little.

The volume scale on the head unit maxes out at 35. In my previous testing, I have confirmed that it does not clip with a 0db sine wave tone at 40Hz or 1000Hz played at max volume (35).

With the EQ set as described above, with a couple of big boosts, now the sound actually stops getting louder at a volume setting of 29. Turning it up past 29 doesn’t make the music any louder. So It looks like the head unit is cutting overall output when I’m asking it to put a bunch of power into a couple specific bands, possibly to avoid distortion. I don’t think I’m hearing any distortion in normal listening.

My previous setup was using the gains in the amp and the head unit crossover to get that ~12db boost in the sub bass that we all like. The result was, as everyone knows, it’s hard to get the subs and the mids to stay together when you turn it up.

I'm trying to emulate the bass control that the MS-8 does, as described here: http://www.diymobileaudio.com/forum.../8257-jbls-ms-8-processor-86.html#post1002963

And further explained here: https://www.audiofrog.com/community/tech-tips/time-alignment-part-4-getting-the-bass-right/

"5. The subwoofer level control in MS-8 isn't a level control for the subwoofer output channels. It's a shelving filter that boosts bass in ALL channels below 60Hz, but never above 160 Hz. When you boost or cut, the slope of the filter is adjusted. This helps to maintain the illusion of bass up front by sending the appropriate amount of midbass to the front speakers and bass to the subwoofers. It also maintains the crossover point. Here are a couple of graphs that illustrate this and why it's better.

The first one is a conventional control. It's pretty obvious why this moves the image of the bass to the back and sounds boomy. There's too much interaction between sub and midbass. This is why people claim that "underlapping" the bass is important and why so many people try to get big-assed midbass drivers in the front of the car and cross the sub at 50Hz. With MS-8, that's totally unnecessary, and the evidence of that is in the second graph.

I use a pair of 6" speakers driven by about 40 watts in the doors, another one in the center channel and a 500 watt amp on a pair of cheesy 10" woofers in an IB in the rear deck. The bass is seriously anchored to the front and the midbass is great. No hassles, no constant tweaking and I can boost bass by as much as 10dB on top of the target curve (which is a total of about 20dB) without the image shifting to the rear. I think my crossover point is about 80Hz, 4th order.

4481168677_15c073eb65.jpg


4481818732_be57f4832f.jpg
"

Looking at my EQ’d frequency response above, it looks like my sub-bass is actually more like 16-18db hotter than my mid-bass bands. So I can probably pull that bottom EQ band down from +9 to +7 at least. I’ll give that a shot later today and see how it goes. If it gives me back some more headroom in the head unit to play louder overall, I’ll be happy with that too.
 
mzmtg said:
I found a spreadsheet that converts the .at files from the Audio Tool app into a .txt file of 1/3 octave measurement data that can be imported in REW.

So heres the comparison between my left & right channels with no EQ. I can see the right side is quite a bit down from 150 900 hz.
L&R no EQ Normalized by ben.garner, on Flickr

Heres 3 separate measurements, Left, Right and Stereo.
L&R&Stereo no EQ Normalized by ben.garner, on Flickr

So I put together a couple of different EQ setups to try to bring the stereo response closer to either the Whitledge or JBL house curves. Obviously with a graphic EQ, I couldn;t just run the auto EQ function. So, I set my avaiable filters up and then adjusted them manually to try to get a decent curve fit. I tried to set the target level down so most of my filters are cuts with much smaller boosts. I also did not try to fill in the big hole at 400 Hz. Ill try each one and see how well they work and how I like the sound.

Heres the Whitledge curve EQ settings and the predicted response I came up with:

Whitledge EQ Filters by ben.garner, on Flickr

Whitledge EQ predicted by ben.garner, on Flickr

Here are the settings and the predicted response for the JBL curve.

JBL EQ Filters by ben.garner, on Flickr

JBL EQ predicted by ben.garner, on Flickr



Anyway, Ill report back
 
mzmtg said:
Oooh, neato. I measured the frequency response after putting in the EQ settings I figured up manually in REW and this is what I get:

2018-02-14 Whit EQd Actual Response by ben.garner, on Flickr

VERY close to the target. So REW works! Who knew? ;)

mzmtg said:
Well, hell, I just realized that REW can AutoEQ and optimize my graphic EQ. I didn;t see that I could ask it to just "optimize gains" on the filters where I specify the frequency and Q.

So, I'll see how it's numbers compare to mine...

Capture by ben.garner, on Flickr






I tweaked things a bit more today and I'll update here with the results....
 
mzmtg said:
In an effort to get some headroom back on the head unit's "preamp", I followed Andy's advice for those that don't have a low pass shelf filter in their DSP. I lowered the subwoofer cutoff frequency half an octave below the midrange HPF, so 60Hz and 80Hz, repsectivley and then turned the gain up on the subwoofer amplifier channels to get my +9db (or so) boost there.

115-Figure-7.JPG


This way I could get rid of the big boost in my EQ at 63Hz.

So with these EQ settings, I got this response:

2018-02-20 Whitledge Filters by ben.garner, on Flickr

2018-02-21 FR with subs up by ben.garner, on Flickr

I definitely have the headroom back in the head unit to play louder overall, but the subwoofer is not nearly as well integrated as it was before.

I'll keep messing with it (of course) to see if I can find a good compromise.
 
New goodies in the mail yesterday :)



(nailbyt)



(yupnope)



(rockon)(rockon)

Wiring from KnuConceptz is on the way too...
 
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