bonas44

I hope to not sound like too much of an idiot, I am fairly educated when it comes to audio stuff, but just got an 04' A4 Quattro without the Bose Symphony II headunit.

I have a few questions and need answers from people that know Audi. I have a sat. button on the headunit, but need to know the right way to add it without having the receiver siiting on my dash. I have see the aftermarket boxes being sold, but what one do I need? Is it as simple as adding this box and signing up ( I doubt it) and which service do I use, XM or Sirius, or at least which brand's box would I have to get?

Also, I would love to swap out the 6 1/2" speakers in the front and rears, but have heard horror stories about the compatibility to doing this with rear amps, etc. Can anyone tell me how hard it is to do this, I think I'm going to just keep the head unit as is, but would like to use better speakers. Should I not bother, what would I need to buy or install if I did decide to do this.

Any help would be grateful, I just dont want to screw something up, then have to pay the dealer a ton to fix it. thanks.

Thread:

Murph

It's a myth that you can't improve the Bose systems with better transducers.

shwndh

So did you disable to Bose and adjust the sound with the hidden EQ with the new speakers in VAG? If so, is there a hidden EQ in the Symphony II and if so, how do you access it?

You mentioned that you didn't know the make of the speakers you got. Do you know if they're 4 ohm speakers like the stock junk that's in there or 8 ohm? And, you're using the stock amp with this setup?

Lastly, can you eloborate on the I-Beam thing in the trunk? I did a search for "I-Beam" and I kept comming up with something totally different.

Sorry for all the questions, but I've been searching for a cost effective way to upgrade my sound without overhauling my whole system. Would appreciate the info on your setup.<ul><li><a href="https://forums.audiworld.com/a6/msgs/615369.phtml">Your Post</a></li></ul>

stadtjunge

"Do you know if they're 4 ohm speakers like the stock junk that's in there or 8 ohm?"

The stock Bose Speakers are actually less than 2 ohms. Most speakers actually vary their impedance at any given current draw.

The best option if you REALLY don't want to add an aftermarket amplifier would be to find a really efficient speaker or a low impedance speaker. The Infinity Kappa series components have been really popular among Audi owners. I have always felt that they require more power than the car is willing to offer.

I strongly recommend Audi owners to look at the Hertz DSK165 components. They are a 2.5 ohm, highly efficient driver that images extremely well. The factory BOSE amp is perfect power output for these speakers, and they fit right into the factory locations perfectly.

Murph

The speakers in my A6 were Audax I believe, the tweeters definitely were. I did not disable the Bose feature although I think you can/should if you can as Bose does have a somewhat equalized setup. The I-Beam sub was cool but you could just get a sealed box with a dual 4 ohm sub woofer and wire the coils in parallel for 2 Ohms as the Bose set up is dual 4 ohm in parallel. You can get at the speaker wires by removing the Bose sub woofer grilles, take out the cheesy 4 inch subs. Make sure you parallel correctly, i.e + with + and - with -. You can test which is which with a 1.5v battery. When you touch a speaker as battery + and - to the speaker + and - the cone will move outward.

However for the B6 I just put Alpine Type R's in my non Bose system and they sound great. I also took out the thin 8 inch back shelf mounted sub woofer and ran a wire to a sealed 10 inch angled box. It sounds very good. The whole system is well balanced with good extension without boominess.

All that said, I guarantee that with better transducers, you'll have better sound. I hope that this helped.

shwndh

And nice bike!

Murph

I had to alter the door baffles for the Alpine Type R's. I think many have used Diamond Audio and others without any modifications. You may need to be creative in mounting the tweeters but that's about it. You'll find what fits at www.crutchfield.com as well.

Also one last thing about the crossovers. Not sure how the B6 Bose is set up but the stock uses a cheapo single capacitor as high frequency crossover. It is in line with the tweeter + lead IIRC up near the tweeter. The full spectrum is sent to the lower door speaker and the capacitor acts as a high pass filter for the highs to the tweeter. Most good 2 ways come with a crossover. If the Bose is like that, use the main speaker leads and mount that to the input of the crossover. Then run speaker leads to the mid bass and leads to the tweeter. You can mount the crossovers in the gap behind the door pocket. Be sure to check and find out if the Bose does that as well OR disable the Bose function.

As I said in my other post make sure you know what the + and - leads are. That way you keep the speaker phasing correct. Otherwise you get sound cancellation and it will sound really bad.

Good luck, it's really not that hard to do. I'm sure that someone who knows the B6 Bose setup better than me can add or correct if I am wrong about the B6 Bose setup vs the C5 which I know quite well.

EBG 18T [Eric]

are the Hertz DSK165 components resonable in price? how bad is the install in the a4?

stadtjunge

My buddy and I put them in his B6 A4 sedan, and they fit in perfectly.

Read Murph's post below. He has some very helpful insight into the wiring.

mayzilla

Ok, here is what I found after some extensive searching some months back. For satellite radio, go with Sirius-the packages are better and they won the war, eventually adding XM to the company.

Most (if not all) B6 A4s with a Symphony II and shark fin come pre-wired for satellite radio (and GPS). However, installing this yourself is a little more involved than simply bolting it in. Not much more, but you will end up removing most of your trunk to do it. That said, if you are comfortable with a screw driver, you should find this fairly easy using the following guide:

https://www.audiworld.com/tech/elec121.shtml

In the second to last picture, the wiring harnesses are shown, tucked up by the driver's rear wheel well. These wires were extremely difficult to find in my particular A4 as they were zip-tied up and out of sight. I was ready to give up and just run new wires, but alas, on the last try I found 'em.

The above works great if you are simply hooking up Sirius to an existing Symphony II. If you are going with an after-market head unit, bear in mind that you can still use the factory shark fin for both satellite radio and GPS.

Just a heads up if you are interested in GPS/NAV, hooking up the antenna for it proved to be a bit more difficult than did Sirius. The GPS antenna wire is conveniently located under the roof liner at the rear, close to the passenger (right) C pillar. To get at it, you will need to remove the rear trim piece for the headliner and loosen the C pillar interior panel and feel around up there. I believe Audi sells the extension wire needed to connect this to the NAV unit.

There used to be a great site for RNS-E installs (http://www.nav-plus.com) but it seems that site is now dead. Anyone know what happened to it? You can still access most of the info that was there using the internet wayback machine (http://www.archive.org/web/web.php)

Hope this helps!<ul><li><a href="https://www.audiworld.com/tech/elec121.shtml">https://www.audiworld.com/tech/elec121.shtml</a</li></ul>