Here you will find out the details of the car audio specifications, setup and the reasons behind the component selections for the system. In addition I hope in the near future to add some sub-sections detailing how certain parts of the audio install and construction were carried out. I have tried to include a few pictures here to hopefully give a better overall explanation.

Before going out and buying car audio gear (which is always fun!) or cutting/drilling holes into expensive pieces of automobiles (which is also fun) it is wise to spend some time with pen and paper, giving thought to what you hope to achieve, how you wish to achieve it and in the case of audio setups in general, what music are you into personally. After some thought and drawing back on past installation experiences I came up with a few ground rules as to what I was hoping to achieve.

• Keep the install 'stealth' within the vehicle. I hear too many horror stories of people getting their cars and/or sounds systems stolen so by keeping the install as hidden as possible from the would-be-thief walking by the car the better for me. Anyway, your system is designed to be heard - not seen.
• Avoid as much structural modification to the car as I could. Firstly it helps re-sale value of your car not to have big gaping holes in your car doors when it comes time to sell! Secondly I think it makes my job easier not having to cut into whats there, rather build upon it. Thirdly, often that piece of metal you cut into is structural and you can be doing more harm than good to the car safety wise.
• And lastly (and this is most important) the system needs to be built to suit my taste in music. At the moment that is mainly House, Trance, Drum n' Bass, etc - all music with a good hard bass line to it. So the final system needs to have a good low-end which in nearly all cases means the use of sub-woofers is mandatory - unless of course you like the sound of distortion coming from 4 inch stock car speakers!

The JL Audio XR525-CSi 2-Way splits are the top of the line speakers in the Evolution speaker range and whilst you pay for the privilege they are worth every cent. When the offer came up to get a new pair for less than half their original sale price - well the offer to update the front stage setup was just too good to refuse. They are a fine piece of German engineering which really shows once you give them a decent sound test - excellent power handling without any distortion and a very smooth sound output.

They have been fitted in the same kick panel frames used for the prior 5.25Inch Coaxials with the addition of the 2-Inch tweeters. The external crossover units have been mounted on blocks of MDF and placed under the front driver and passenger car seats to be out of the way.

Each kickpanel was constructed from multiple sheets of 6mm MDF, shaped to give the best fit when installed against the car floor and side wall. A total of three sheets of MDF was used for each panel giving a total thickness around the speaker of 18mm. As the images show the MDF sheets were each cut to a different shape to better fit the contour of the car, this process took some time and a jigsaw was my best friend for this stage of the project! Once completed the MDF sheets were glued together, holes drilled for the speakers and then carpeted. I was more than happy with the result and they seem to blend into the car interior rather nicely.

Now we get to the business end of the system! Having good bass in my system was a high priority with my taste in music, not over the top boomy bass but nice and tight and felt by the listener... both inside and outside the car. With limited space in the back of the Swift I obviously didn't want the sub enclosure taking up too much space, keeping in mind a mp3car computer still needed some space as well. Thus the speakers needed to be able to flex their power without the need for too big an enclosure volume.

So keeping with the JL-Audio theme I decided on dual JL-Audio 10Inch 10W08's installed into a custom sealed 18mm MDF enclosure. As the model number my hint they are 8ohm speakers, which have been wired in parallel to show a 4ohm load to the amplifier. As the pictures show the enclosure has been constructed as a set of wedges each with an approximate volume each of 16.5ltrs. Since both subs are running in mono I could have run them both in a common chamber, but decided to seal the speakers off to provide better internal strength to the speaker enclosure.

Once built the enclosure was sealed internally with a nice amount of silicon sealant, carpeted, wired and holes drilled for the speakers and amplifier which is also mounted to the box. Speaker damping material was also added to each enclosure... I have used this in the past and seems to give a nicer sound to the subs.

Supplying power the front stage and sub-woofers is a Clarion APA5240 5 channel amplifier. This amp has been in my possession for a few years now and is a great piece of hardware perfect for running the standard midrange-tweeter and sub(s) combination. It has all the switches you need for high/low pass filtering and bridging arrangements and with one flick of a switch has four channels running high pass with the fifth channel running low pass - which is the arrangement I am using.

The four high pass channels have been bridged into two channels to run the 5.25Inch splits, delivering around 90W RMS per channel/speaker. The fifth sub-woofer channel drives the twin 10Inch subs at about 100W RMS - which is not huge by any means, but more than sufficient to give a nice thump in the Swift. The crossover point is set to 110Hz which works well and avoids any distortion through the front stage.

In addition to the Clarion power amp I am running a 5 band EQ/pre-amp purchased from Jaycar, a local electronics chain here in Australia. Whilst the unit isn't brand name it performs fantastic for the price - which is often the case with Jaycar equipment. If your live in Australia and haven't been to one of their stores I would fully recommend checking them out. They sell some nice equipment/components, plus all the electrical hardware you would ever need for a car stereo install.

The pre-amp was purchased for my previous mp3car system out of necessity, since the output from that systems sound card decided not to behave with the Clarion's audio input at all - giving zero sound output. Most likely something to do with audio impedance/DC voltage. Running the pre-amp between the sound card and the power amplifier got things going great and I must admit it is good to have the EQ for tweaking the sound output.

Powering the system is one area I didn't want to skimp on since the system is running the 5-channel amp, 2 subs and the mp3car computer system which is quite a load on a battery. Therefore, power to the system is supplied directly from the battery through 4GA DC power cable, which is sufficient to provide enough current for the setup. This power cable is fused just after leaving the battery with a 50A car audio fuse, and once reaching the back of the car, it is split up to directly power both the amp and computer.

4GA cable is again used to ground the amp back to the chassis, with 25A auto power cable used for the mp3car system. To ensure a good ground back to the car battery another length of 4GA is run from the negative battery terminal straight to the engine bay chassis. The car battery itself was upgraded for the task from a stock 340CCA to a 480CCA, with slight modification to the battery holder, a new battery clamp and power terminals all required to accommodate larger sized battery.

Audio cabling between the mp3car system sound card, pre-amp and amplifier is achieved through double shielded heavy duty RCA leads - which at least sure do look nice! Speaker cabling to the fronts and sub-woofers is all through heavy duty fig 8 cable. Nothing really too flash here, but personally I find the claimed advantages of extra high quality cabling all a bit trivial.

I am really happy with the result in SQ have been able to pull off with the money spent and components selected. Mounting the 5.25Inch splits in the kickpanel area sounds great and builds an excellent front stage. And after driving around for a few weeks they don't really get in the way at all and you forget they are even there. Once again I am more than happy with the JL Audio subs - I cant praise them enough! I am surprised with how much more bass the twin 10Inch subs seem to put out in place of a single 12Inch.

Future upgrades? I may consider adding a pair of 4-5.25Inch speakers to the rear parcel shelf and another amp to provide some rear fill or possibly a higher quality pre-amp/EQ unit.

• Front Stage - Pre Dec 2002