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Musicar Ferrari install, and your vote
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06-30-2013, 07:24 PM | #1 |
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Musicar Ferrari install, and your vote
Hi, folks - asking a quick favor. Every Musicar system you've seen has been prepped, wired, and designed by my partner Tom Miller. He's also done all the installs we've posted on this forum.
He's in the running for 2013 Installer of the Year. I'd appreciate it if you could click here and vote for him. We aren't a retail operation, and so we didn't enter the running for Retailer of the Year. And here's an F430 we just did, for your viewing pleasure: Not every day that most of us get to see, much less work in, a Ferrari. My partner Tom here at Musicar has been working with the Ferrari dealer for years, though, and we do have a good number come through here. ![]() The vehicle owner came to us as a radar/laser countermeasures customer with his other vehicle, before he found this one (it is in amazing condition for a five-year-old car, and it's what he's been looking for for years). We did radar and laser in this one immediately upon its delivery (he bought it out of state and had it transported), and he was unsure if he wanted an audio install. He finally decided to upgrade the audio just before he took it on a short vacation trip. He was concerned about how good the audio could sound with the convertible top down (his preferred mode to drive the car), and he was also concerned about the stock appearance of any subwoofer enclosure (I guess if you Google "Ferrari subwoofer" you can see some scary pictures!) We had to keep the vehicle stock in appearance, retain the stock head unit, and overcome wind and engine noise with the top down. We also needed to make the system sound great with the top up OR with the top down, and for driver-only or two-occupant situations. The stock system was deck power to 6.5 woofers and 1" tweeters in the doors. The woofers, surprisingly, have series inductors on them, which would be great if there were an amp (the insertion losses of series inductors on 7.7V of deck power output are not inconsequential). As you can see, there wasn't much sealing the woofer against the door panel. ![]() ![]() ![]() The head unit is by Becker, and it shares a lot of tooling with the old TrafficPro. We installed a Bluetooth streaming audio link so he could listen to external devices. ![]() The head unit has 2.6V of output on the preamp outs before the onset of clipping, and it has a subwoofer output as well (it was unused, but we were glad to find that the output was live, although unpinned from the factory). There was no processing being done to the signal at all, so no correction was required, and no external volume control was needed either. The system: - Becker head unit into Mosconi 4to6 DSP - Four-position preamp switch used with 4to6 - Mosconi AS100.4 running the midwoofers and tweeters actively 100WPC - Mosconi AS200.2 running the subwoofer ~600W - Illusion Audio C6 components in the factory locations (no passive crossovers) - Morel Ultimo 8 subwoofer in a small sealed enclosure The front stage The Illusion Audio Carbon 6 was installed into the Ferrari stock mounting bracket. The front gasket was added to get better sealing of the mount to the back of the door panel. This improved the midbass attack a great deal. ![]() ![]() ![]() The door panel is made of pretty thick fiberglass. It's very stiff, so its resonances are higher than the typical door panel. We used VMAX HD on the door to tame the vibrations. ![]() ![]() The tweeters are in the stock trimpieces, but without the stock grilles. We weren't able to angle them for on-axis orientation due to the client's restrictions on appearance - but we found that the A-pillar blocked a lot of windshield reflection, so we were able to EQ the treble response without a lot of HF energy being immediately reflected off of the glass and making things painful. The copper-colored domes are not nearly this obvious visually in person - the camera really highlights the contrast. ![]() ![]() The subwoofer enclosure Subwoofer had to be discreet, look stock, take up almost no room, and have enough output to be worthwhile in a convertible. We decided to use the Morel Ultimo 8 carbon-fiber cone, cast-frame subwoofer. It's a nicely-made woofer with a ton of Xmax and a high Pe, and that was important for this application. There are some woofers that model better in a small sealed application than the Ultimo 8, but the ones we modeled all ran out of Xmax or Pe too quickly. Tom used these factory mount points and made a bracket for the sub: ![]() Then he mocked up the subwoofer driver: ![]() That let him design this framework around the woofer: ![]() In process: ![]() ![]() ![]() Primed, before upholstery: ![]() The electronics rack The amp-and-processor rack is under the bonnet, and storage-space retention was a prime concern. The stick floor under the trim: ![]() The amp floor in development: ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() This rack was covered with a panel which was a composite of red acrylic, aluminum, and birch plywood, which was then wrapped in black leather that matched the stock luggage and the interior: ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Then the false floor was wrapped in black carpet - the two pieces attach with neodymium magnets: ![]() ![]() ![]() The plaque: ![]() The finished installation Electronics rack: ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() (There is a shadow in this last pic which looks like a wrinkle, but it's not, it's an artifact): Subwoofer: ![]() ![]() iPhone/iPad mini cradle: ![]() ![]() ![]() The sound The tweeter positions gave us a wide stage, and the time-domain correction in the 4to6 let us make that stage stretch unbroken between the pillars. The image is solid and there's good differentiation - it's not that loud-mono sound that some T/A'd systems have. The midbass attack is pretty darned good - it would be even better with a different midwoofer mounting system, but that wasn't permitted in this project. It's as good as this mounting approach will let it be. Since the closest speaker is the subwoofer, we delayed the subwoofer in the time domain, which helped the midbass handoff a great deal. The client says it overcomes wind and engine noise with ease, and reports back to us that he is very happy with the results! |
06-30-2013, 08:08 PM | #2 |
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Holy shit that ferrari install is probably the nicest install i've ever seen for car audio. He's got my vote
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07-02-2013, 02:23 AM | #6 |
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Very clean and nice installation.
One of the best presentation and oem look I have ever seen.
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F36 Xdrive for her - HUD, park assist, heated steering wheel, rear camera, Apple car play
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07-02-2013, 08:21 PM | #9 |
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Thanks everyone.
This was just one of those projects that remind me how much I love my job. Things went relatively smoothly on it (for a Ferrari), and the results were pretty much what I envisioned. Ken absolutely knocked it out of the park on system design and tuning. Best part was when the customer texted me about 30 minutes after he left, cruising around with the top down and said "OMFG!!!! This is AWESOME!!!!" ![]() -Tom
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