Buzzy Altea Speakers and ICE upgrade

Think you may need my speaker project I'll repost one of the posts and that's got the links. I'm assuming your head end is OK. I get a good sound now from this set up and other people followed the "project" and have their cars likewise fitted out.

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OK it's ALT54 [Paul] and myself on speakers. Paul did it before I did but then I had a learning curve I documented since you need the tube bit, that could be your G4 spacer. Not too sure. The cars own speakers protrude in their own custom body. They do this with all VW ones so I understand so you can't just bolt the speakers back into the door. They would hit the electric window which drop behind the front ones for a start and the back ones there is a fair bit of construction behind. Like the door frame as I recall. Hence you need to get the plane of the speaker back out to where it was with the custom ones.

I fitted the Infinity ones and you can get the size of these off their web site to work out how much room is behind. They fitted OK once I or rather my brother had hacked the speaker mounts that I also bought to size and they came with leads so you just disconnected the tweeter lead. As Paul said who was a great help the tweeters run in parallel so you just don't connect the wire going up.

The other thing, the problem with the Altea sound is that the speakers that come with it are Philips paper speakers, which are crap and give a mushy sound. The tweeters in the front and back door are at ear height since that sound, the high pitched one is the one that you can place the position of, in the Altea you have that one going at you from the back and front. Thus I think this is part of the mush as well as the mid range / bass not be able to handle what is inputted to it.

I'll give the link away below of what I did [my construction project] and Paul did fit a bass speaker in the boot as I recall to his. My memory is good. The headend once you pull it out using four tab bits has a diagram on it, of the pin out of the Quadlock if you find out how to fit a Sony MD changer tell me.... Nobody in the UK has sorted out the interface between the Altea Quadlock out and non-custom CD or MD changers. Although Paul fitted a Kenwood MP3 thingey as I recall. Over to Paul....

Here's my link:

http://www.seatcupra.net/forums/showthread.php?t=53642

http://www.seatcupra.net/forums/showthread.php?t=53080

You can find all Paul's posts here:

http://www.seatcupra.net/forums/sear...earchid=743057

Bit of dialogue here with me and him when I was picking his brains:

http://www.seatcupra.net/forums/showthread.php?t=51034

[The sound is great now with these speakers , oh and they too have the tweeters mounted in front of the bass / midrange so you adjust to the tweeter to your "sweet spot", I changed all four, I don't like boom boxes in the boot myself ... I like that the speakers I fitted have just been superceeded with the Infinity KAPPA652.7I ha - New for 2005, speaker depth 2 and 3/16"... think it's protrusion in front to get the speaker grill on you need to worry about as well... still mine were OK once I sorted out the spacer thingey "AUTOLEADS-SAK-3103 16.5cm custom replacement speaker accessory for the Golf IV" and cut it to size just taking the flange off... with leads which is the selling point since you just clip these leads to disable the top tweeters rather than clipping the cars leads]
Last edited by Tell : 23-05-2005 at 00:16. <<

Right dynamat no I think that is a major door removal type of thing and that is connected to taking the door apart take I recall two hours of garage time couold be per door, Paul posted this one up. I don't even think you could fit it in ?. One for Paul this is.

I would say yes forget the tweeters since the are indeed acoustically incorrect as for car as distance and that your getting a matrix sound of the same sound from two sources front and back which is stupid. Then there is the cost of getting at the tweeters, getting at the bass / mid range is nothing, except a TX screw driver and a speaker adaptor kit.

The latest model which now fit in the Inifinity range which is equivalent to what I installed are these

KAPPA652.7I - 165mm two-way loudspeaker

http://www.infinitysystems.com/caraudio/product.aspx?ProdId='KAPPA652.7I'&Ser=KAP&Cat=MEL

They have an outboard cross over which you just drop inside the door frame. They are OK there, they don't rattle.

I don't know about Rainbow speakers, can't help you. Some people talk Bose, Paul used Pioneer as I recall. I was just very happy with my old pair of Infinity speaker I put into my old ZX, so stuck with Infinity since they have that special bass patented methed of giving bigger bass sound by waffling the material.

You need the speaker adaptor kit as I identified. You can check whether they do one for the Altea now, doubt it, other than that the Golf IV one can be cut to size by lobbing off the plastic lip as outlined. That takes about 5 mins per kit, got my brother to do that .

As I outlined with the Audioleads speaker adaptor kit you just plug the lead into the socket and you just snips a couple of wires which I named which cuts the connection to the tweater. Got to thank Paul again for his useful info on how to disconnect the tweaters, they are just looked. This is why the sound is so crap, there is no crossover on the existing set up and they are cheap crap speakers.

It's getting late and I did loose one version of this hence why this is the no frills post. Mine sounds great and don't forget new speakers have to be burnt in, so they get better with playing. You get an amazing sound I think and my bass responce is pretty good. More base in the car than in the office Mission speakers but not so much as on the lounge surround sound with my Mission subwoofer . Saying that you do get the carfloor to now vibrate with the bass that those Philips speakers would no way handle.

We came back with Salf Keita Moffou CD Remixed from France the Xmas before which is a heavy club mix, on the factory speakers it sounded complete mush, on the Infinity ones it's amazing.

Yep this is what mine were

http://www.onlinecarstereo.com/CarAudio/ProductDetail.aspx?ProductID=12498

This is the latest model

http://www.onlinecarstereo.com/CarAudio/ProductDetail.aspx?ProductID=15358

This site has them a 1/4" bigger but the Infinity site has them still at 6.5",

http://www.infinitysystems.com/caraudio/product.aspx?ProdId='KAPPA62.7I'&Ser=KAP&Cat=MEL

think that's a typo above... this is the manual

http://manuals.harman.com/INF/CAR/Owner's Manual/KAPPA.pdf

I'll be interested to hear whether you are happy with it once installed... I reckon so, you'll be delighted.

I would not have thought so, else why else could one use them... PAUL WHERE ARE YOU <ALT54> ... see what he says.

No, I replaced all four with the same.... it's the same set up in the car as is, duff front and back, same tweeters etc in front and back.

The head unit is pretty good and you will be amazed when you get rid of those Philips speakers... trust me.

CD changers I went for an MD... there is stuff about CD changers elsewhere and your Seat dealer sells the one to go in the arm rest. The Sony box thingy that I got installed for my Sony MD changer also supports the Sony CD changer and a Sony HD disk changer as well. I plastered that up on one of my threads once I got the Sony MD changer put in since dear Halfords hadn't got a clue. If you look at my threads perhaps around July time you'll see one when I announce that I got the MD changer in and name the audio leads box that does the trick, that's if you want to go down the Sony route, this box converts the headends signals to the Sony one... it's basically the Golf V compatible one.

Paul ALT54 has a fancy HD system installed in his under the passenger seat if your into that.

The details of the box which converts the headend CD changer signals to the Sony sort is here

http://www.seatcupra.net/forums/showthread.php?t=63078&goto=nextnewest

So if you want to install Sont equipment.

I will be very interested to see how you find it Loadswine... others who's names I forget that also did it, said it was good, so I don't think you will be disappointed. I'm still amazed by what changing the speakers can do from those Philips paper ones to proper ones does and I would disconnect the inbuilt tweeters, they are part of the problem. You do get use to tweeter sound coming from down by your feet but other than that it's really good sound I find.

Could be your speakers.... if you have tweeters built into the speakers as a seperate unit that hangs in the surround it should not be a problem. You could say the positioning is wrong, but then the positioning of the existing tweeters in the Altea is wrong.

Anybody who wants to change them [tweeters] must take the door apart which is suppose to be a two hour garage job.... so a downside there - mid range / bass are easy to get at and you just cut a couple of wires to knock out the built in tweeters details above. I wouldn't keep the tweeters there since they drove me mad.

The Infinity speakers are pretty good... you have the sweet spot adjustments. I'm a DIY person as far as changing speakers. It gets a bit academic about muddy sound, given that the existing sound is pretty muddy with the Phillips paper speakers, if you don't want to pay for someone to take each door apart then one hasn't achieved much if you don't change anything. Then their is the question of whether having the rear tweeter in your ear as well as the front tweeters is the best set up. It's not, it drives one wild.

On the existing speakers the component speakers have no crossover and the top speaker is just wired in parrallel to the paper mid range / bass which isn't saying much. We are talking about seperate tweeters in this upgrade, it's just that they are in one enclosure and the sound is not muddy once you have done it .