Hey guys, I posted a thread about the Phatbox a while back and have gotten it installed and wanted to provide a followup.

Seeing as the car is 3 weeks old, I decided to let the dealer put the Phatbox in as to avoid any warranty issues. The salesperson quoted me a price of $95 over the phone so I brought the car in today and had them do it.

The install ended up taking about 3.5 hours with the guy doing the work being a very competent mechanic who complained he had to disassemble half of the car to route the changer cable. Additionally the lack of a dedicated 2nd audio input for the changer cable meant that he had to use 3M locktite stripless wire connectors to tie together pins 18-20 (Phatnoise folk were kind enough to provide these for me along with the changer cable) so that they could be shared between the satellite radio and phatbox.

The owner of the dealership was irate that I had been quoted $95 as it ended up taking almost four hours to put the Phatbox in. He said that they will never sell or put another one in because he felt like I had somehow taken them to the cleaners for getting it installed at $95 (I should have mentioned to him how I got bent over on the trade-in price of my last A4, jerks).

Now that the unit is in, I can report that the volume level is quite a bit low compared to the in-dash CD changer or radio unit. The sound quality is still very good, just low. I ran it at full volume on my Concert II with Bose system (volume level 30) and it was hardly ear shattering. Additionally at absolute top volumes and during quiet passages you can hear some hard drive spinup noises when the hard disk is seeking.

I would say that it's still an accepteable solution for those who want MP3 in the car without having to go away from the stock head unit, but if you listen to very quiet music, like classical or soft jazz (thank god I listen to hard rock and alternative) then you might find the reduced gain level of having the Phatbox spliced in with the satellite radio a little bit of a problem.