I am looking for advice regarding the components for my audio upgrade. (Please excuse my ignorance)
I have decided on the alpine IDA-x305.
I would like to upgrade the necessary components (Wiring, amps, speakers, sub, etc) in hopes of a really crisp system with a decent punch, without taking up too much space.

Due to this being a base coupe I currently only have front speakers.
Are the factory front component speakers adequate? Is there a factory amp that needs bypassed?
Somewhere on the forum i came across a clever 6x9 install in the rear sides. Is this worth the effort?

Recomendations for a sub/amp setup? I don't need anything thats going to rattle the car to bits.
Is a capictor required?
Any recommendations for an install kit (gauge of wire), or speaker setups are greatly appreciated especially if you include links .

FWIW I am addressing all the rattles with dynamat/foam/felt prior to the install.

Thanks in advance!

 

I have done a pretty extensive overhaul on my base stereo. You will find there are not a lot of people on here with first hand experience upgrading the base models, there were not many of them made and many of those who have them have not upgraded or are no longer active here. I would be happy to help you, just shoot me a PM.

 

PM sent thanks!

I figure I would include non-base model specific questions here just in case others find the information usefull down the road...

Has anyone run into issues with electrical system such as lights strobing during heavy bass? Anyone know the amp rating on the stock alternator?

Are there any good detailed walkthroughs regarding interior removal? I dug up a post or two that mentioned you have to be careful removing the seats so you do not disturb the srs airbag warning lights.

Any creative helpful wire routing for the rear amp/sub or is it easy enough to just run everything at the door sills?

It does look like the grommet behind the battery is the best location to get through the firewall.

If you have an aft sub in the boot do you delete the stock subs, install additional components, or leave/upgrade the stockers too?

Whats the best solution for minimizing the rattles (I will be foaming/matting whenever possible) The stock mirrors seam to vibrate a bit even with the base models front only components.

Thanks again in advance

 

I have upgraded my stereo to the point where when you open the windows and drive 75mph on the freeway, you can not here wind because of the music playing so loud

Anyway, enough bragging.

I put alpine spr17s one pair of speakers that are hooked up to alpine PDX 2.150 amp and i have custom box in the back with alpine SWX-1243D sub woofer that is hooked up to alpine PDX 1.600 amp. All of that is played through Alpine IDA-X001 wich is the best of all IDA-X players
I can not think, or ever heard of anything that sounded that good. Including that alpine demo car that they did, and i had opportunity to hear.
Yes , i had to compromise on trunk space, and yes you might need some dynamat, but man...it makes me happy every day.
Also about wires. You can and should use factory wires that are in already.
You will need amp kit.
And yes, there is some times light issue but it is not a big deal.
Hmm....
Where are you from?
I am in san diego area, so if you are somewhere close you can experience alpine's best

 

I believe the stock alternator is 130 amp. There will be a little dimming of lights (mostly only when you are stopped) but the lower wattage draw of the HID headlights mitigates the dimming too much (upgrade to HIDs if you have not already, best bang for your buck upgrade out there for these cars). I have (2) 1 farad capacitors sitting in my garage from a previous install, but I have no where to locate them.

As far as interior removal, if you use the search feature, you will find exactly what you are looking for, it is pretty straightforward.

Use the grommet under battery - BY FAR the easiest power wire I have ever run in a vehicle. Run wiring under the sills, but remember signal and power wires are never to be run on the same side of the vehicle.

Since I added two 12" subs in the boot, I decided to add another set of compenents to the stock sub location. If you have a base, you do not have anything in these locations at the present time, and nothing to power them. I wired a set of components up with the midbass driver in a bracket I made in the stock sub location, then mounted the tweets right under where my seatbelt comes out. It have great imaging and the extra set of components helps keep up with the bass.

Use dynomat (or equivalent quality) for all rattles issues. You will be pleasantly surprised that the car is pretty rock solid, but there will still be rattles if you put a large sub in the trunk

 

Finally all the wires are in. I've almost finished my box. (Single 10") I still need to make some brackets to tie things down, run the ground, and tidy up some interior bits.

The hardest part was definitely adding the mat/sound deadening to the rear fender wells. I probobly went a little overboard but it should sound great. I removed the entire rear interior (including the plastic window surrounds which were a pain) and used felt around all the plastic connectors and overlays in hopes of reducing the rattles.
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My head unit is scheduled to arrive today so hopefully I will get to test this out!
Thanks again for all the advice!

 

Has anyone here had to remove the plastic bezel surrounding the ashtray assembly? If so, how did you do it? I cannot find it in the searches I've done. Thanks for your help.

 

ShaverJ,

Everything is looking good, I would love to see some more pics with that nice, clean setup in the car. One question: looks like enough power, any reason you went with a type E over a type R? (I am biased as I have 2 12" type Rs in my XF)

 

I only went with a type E because it was on the shelf. I know very little about audio and figured it matched the specs of the amp. I finished the interior and wired in the deck everything sounds amazing. you can't hear a thing from outside the car even with the volume maxed. Well worth the effort.
I'll include more pics once I get them off the camera.

 

It looks very nice.
I do not want to be jackass, but couple of things:
1) With subwoofer like that, alpine e type 10" you wasted dynamat or whatever you used to insulate your back, because it would not create probably any rattle what so ever. Our cars are surprisingly very tight.
2)If that is MRP M500 than what you want is 10" alpine s-type. It creates very good quality sound and it is not very expensive. You do not need r-type.
3)If that is in fact MRP F300, did you put any new speakers or used factory ones?
4)That hole on the sub box? You do not need ported box. What you want is sealed box. I creates better quality sound, but you do loose on power. Ported box creates more "punch" on lower frequencies, like rap music has, but looses quality on higher frequencies.Sealed box creates overall better quality across wider range of frequencies compared to ported and slotted boxes

Other than that, i am jealous. I wish i could make something like that. That box really looks amazing!

 

I agree with certain aspects here, but COMPLETELY disagree on others....

To each his own I suppose

 

Thanks again for the advice. This is constructive criticism as I am learning as I go.
I just assumed I needed a port as the box was rather small. Perhaps I will try plugging the port to see if the sound improves.
The amp is the MP500. I did not add any other speakers aside from the sub (the car is a base and only has front components) however I did run wire to the rear stock woofer location and a second set of rca cables to the back just in case I decide to add them.
Regarding the mat it was free (left over from a friends project. My biggest reasoning for this was to eliminate the squeaks from the plastic bits. It turns out these were mostly coming from the plastic push connectors from the plastic rear walls. I ended up felting all the holes and anywhere plastic touched other plastic.

What is better about the s or r types?
Is the sound quality vary enough to justify converting.

 

Here are some pics of the mounts. I used some 3/16" steel bar bolted to the stick gastank cover with some longer bolts.

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Installed an external hard drive in the center console today with a false floor. Ill get some pics up this weekend sometime. Unfortunately this deck is not directly plug in play with all drives and it had to be reformatted to fat32. As best I could tell this will limit your storage to 32gb. Luckily it still supports the same navigation through the directories as the ipod.

 

Type R sub-woofer is very powerful. It requires allot of power but in returns delivers the same.For the 10" type r you would need something more powerfull than that m500.The m500 is very good, but it does not deliver constant power and definitely not 500w at all times. Also if you go with 10" type R you have to add pair of speakers and one more amp for speakers, because bass would be too overpowering.Also type r sub-woofer, even though it still produces very good quality sound, frequency response is not good enough for the power that it has.
On the other hand , type S has less power and pretty much same frequency response as type r, which means that creates more pleasant sound for someone who does not like hard core bass.
For type s m500 would be plenty of power and probably you would not have to upgrade your factory speakers.
Also, just my opinion, it is pointless to put speakers behind your seat.
If you want to go for best of the best, you want type X speakers and subwoofer.
Keep in mind that X type components are very expensive, but they are best you can buy, in my opinion and in opinion of many others.
Also to run type X you need allot of power. To run one 10" you would need at least Alpine PDX 1.600 digital amplifier, but to run it full power you would need PDX 1.1000 (600w and 1Kw respectively)
Also type x are very big in size (depth) so it your box might not be suitable for them, maybe not even type R

PS. I apologize if some sentences are confusing, but sometimes i can not find right word in English language to describe what i want.

 

Thanks for the explanations on the different types! After listening for a couple days I am very satisfied with the current setup. If I outgrow the type E it sounds like the next best option is the Type S. I really don't want to make a deeper box if I don't have to .
I am still struggling to find the correct antenna adapter (I know the model #), no one seems to stock it around me so I will be ordering online.
The last bit of the project is hard-wiring a power source for the external hard drive. I do not want to have it plugged into the cigarette lighter all the time, because I have the base coupe I might pick up a fog light switch and wire it to that for a nice clean setup.
Can anyone confirm if the switch retains its setting when the car is turned on/off?
I also recall a post somewhere that said the buttons were similar to another model (but possible black), perhaps another chrysler model? I may need to go that route if I can't locate one specifically for the xf.

 

Oops looks like the fog lights come on with the headlight switch? Guess I need to find out what the two blank buttons are for and order one of those instead!

 

The blanks are for the heated seats you do not have. These spaces have been used by others in the past to add a switch and keep it clean.

Good luck.

 

Time for an update!
The hardware has been flawless so far but I struggled for a long time to get the aux input sorted and finally gave up. The packaging/advertising for this head unit was very deceiving and shame on me for not doing more research.

Contrary to what the packaging implies it does not come with an aux input out of the box, rather according to the manual and Alpine Tech support you must use an adapter that plugs into your bluetooth....so kiss your bluetooth unit (that you also have to purchase separately by the way) goodbye ....oh wait the cable was discontinued before the unit was ever on sale.....so next option was some other random adapter that plugs into some other port....nope also discontinued prior to the head units release.....It took a lot of digging on forums, phone calls, and searching for the correct cables to no avail...

Long story short I've been listening to music via my external harddrive for some time (ripping podcasts/streams to mp3) ugh what a pain

I happened across the Alpine website earlier today looking for a new unit and saw that they were now advertising Iphone compatibility??? hmmm? So next I searched a plethora of forums only to discover all the issues users have encountered with ios updates noting the compatibility was broken during ios 4.x versions...so I tried it anyway and to my surprise it synced the first time!

Finally got the streaming audio/podcast/news that I set out to get during the build (over a year later!)
I wish I would have ditched the Storm II sooner!

Oh I also never did find the appropriate antenna adapter, but just as well, I can't stand local broadcast radio. (I must have tried 3 or 4 different ones that were listed for use with the xf)

One last bit, I'm still planning on taking some of the advice from previous threads and building a new non-ported box, when I built the current one I went a little thin on the mdf