GEN 2 Memphis Stereo Upgrade

[Drgonzo3000]

I've been a big fan of Memphis for many, many years. They are a great upgrade that won't dent the wallet really. So after spending some time researching, planning and gathering everything I needed, it was time to finally get it all installed.

The first part was replacing the "stock" speakers. After pulling the door panels and seeing what was there I now know why the music was so bad, I'm thinking the previous owner had pulled out his good speakers and installed these Pioneer Walmart specials. I would really hope nobody would purposely install them into their Raptor.

Paper cone speakers in doors is just a bad idea right off the bat.



At least it was a split component set they installed in the doors and luckily I didn't have to tear the dash apart to find the crossover. It was just shoved into the hole where the pillar goes... And thats plastic weld holding the tweeter and covering the mounting screws!



For the front doors I went with a memphis 6x9 component set. I think the 6x9's have better mid bass than a 6.5 in a door when properly installed. Some left over sound deadener from Raam Audio that I have had in my attic for about 15 years now was used on the inner and outer door skin. Not a full door treatment as I think it's just wasteful. Fast Rings installed and butyl foam on the adapter plates and speakers.





For the pillar tweeters, luckily plastic weld doesn't stick for shit to metal. so it peeled off pretty good from the bracket and screws. I reused the mounting bracket and adjusting it better to fit the Memphis tweeters. Little hot glue keeps it all nice and tight.

 

[Drgonzo3000]

Rear doors had Pioneer 4 ways installed in some plates that were falling apart. Memphis 3 way in the proper Metra mounts replaced them. Same Fast Ring treatment and butyl foam. Little sound deadener on the doors to dull down the resonance some.

Before:



After:


The front component crossovers were going to be mounted in the center dash along with the DSP. Fashioned a mounting bracket out of some Aluminum/pvc coated sheet. Also wired up the T harness into the crossovers. Since this was day one and I knew this would take me a bout a week to complete, the connectors were added to allow the system to play as stock so I had music while I worked on the rest.

 

[Drgonzo3000]

Speaker now done it was time to work on the amp rack and the rest of the fun stuff!

Cardboard template made and transferred to black plastic sheet. Added a 1/4 roundover to the amp board to smooth out the edges. Aluminum strap cut/bent to mount into the stock location where the kicker add-on sub was.








Amps being used are a Memphis SRX1.500 and SRX4.300, These are a perfect match powerwise to the speakers I an running in the truck. After fumbling with layout for some time trying to get the amps to fit in the allotted space I started wiring everything thing up.



Amps have onboard fusing so no need to run an additional fuse block back here, just two stinger distro blocks. 1/0 power and ground wire will run all the way to the battery, cause glued together aluminum truck makes for bad grounds. All all wires are techflex covered for protection. Power wires are all ferrule crimped and heat shrinked. Stinger speed wire will carry the amplified feed back up front and taped into the stock wiring. The speed wire also contains a remote turn on which is running into a relay mounted to the back of the amp panel.

Amp rack all wired minus the main power/ground wire runs as I was waiting on the 1/0 ferrules to show up.

 

[Drgonzo3000]

With the power/ground wires now installed on the amp rack it was time to install the rack. Bolt the amp rack into place, ran the power/ground feeds down the passenger side and out the grommet above the fuse box, signal and speed wire run down the drivers side into the center stereo console. Power and ground hooked up to the battery which includes a plastic fuse holder mount attached to the battery tray.







Power to remote wire and amps fired right up. Now to finish the center console and install the DSP.

 

[Muchmore]

Very nice so far!

 

[Drgonzo3000]

For the DSP I took the advice from someone on here and went with the Dayton Audio DSP-408. Price was nice and it looked to be full of options... And then the issues started.

Their documentation is very lacking for the unit itself. it's non-existent for the computer software. the software is PC only and is very buggy. So vehicle stuff I use a Dell Mini which I have been using for tuning my cars, forscan, all sorts of stuff. Daytons software bugged out and won't scale for the screen resolution. Like the resize/close buttons on the top left were gone. So out came old trusty, a thinkpad running winXP from probably 2000 timeframe. It actually worked which was nice seeing as it's the last PC laptop I have and I seriously doubt it would run on Wine on my Mac. Seriously, why no Mac port! High level inputs didn't work at all, so I depinned then and was going to go the route of the ACM low level. Extended the haness and used RCA jack plugs. With it all wired up I went to test for sound and nothing. Checked all mixer settings and everything was good. After messing with it for some time I found out that I would only get sound if only the positive low level lead was plugged in. if the negative lead was attached there was no sound. So I disconnected the ground leads on all 4 inputs and now I had sound... WTF! Must be some weird ground issue with the DSP and the main ground wire coming from the T harness, IDK but it works and the sound it clean.

DSP is mounted on another plastic mount formed around the backup/video module behind the screen. it's a perfect spot as if I need to plug in the laptop to make adjustments I just need to pop off the top tray and I can plug right in. Little upset that the bluetooth dongle is like $40, explains the price point cause they will nickel and dime you for all the accessories. Bluetooth should have been built into the unit from factory.






I was originally going to go with a Fox Box but their are 1-2 month lead time and I wasn't looking to wait. Figured I would just build my own but funny enough with lumber prices these days and the time it would take m to design and build it, it was cheaper to by a premade one off ebay, shipped to my door. So 2 x 10" sub box shipped to my door, perfect fit and really well made. it's a dual chamber design and fully sealed. Doesn't have the fancy curved edges, ohh well. It's $140 box. I'll most likely remove the gray carpet, add some accent trim pieces and then re-wrap it in p-leather/black carpet. For now it serves it's purpose and sounds good.

Pair of Memphis PRXS1044 shallow mount 4ohm DVC's were installed. Wired them up to be 4ohm at the amp to ensure it stays cool. Don't need a nice hot heatsink shoved behind a tight space keeping my passengers backs toasty.






Spent some time with my Audio Control RTA app, pink noise and some Smilk "the last rainforest" getting the DSP all tuned up. Still need to do some fine tuning over the next couple weeks as I run through various music but all in all it sounds great.

 

[Drgonzo3000]

One issue I ran into tonight is that when I first turn the key to on I get a high pitch whine from the speakers until the DSP turn on, then dead quiet. like a 12khz whine. If I turn the key to accessory I get a noise like low fan is running. through the speakers. I need to test tomorrow and see if this is noise coming from the DSP or from the truck itself. I had wire the remote turn on into the pass fuse block "#23 I think" cause another issue I discovered was the DSP RCA turn on detect also doesn't work. It would come on but then shut off after like 10 seconds.

This DSP is being a real pain in my ass!

 

[The Car Stereo Company]

what year is your truck? 18,19, and 20 you should have gotten the zen module. if its a 17 with the sony system, then the harness will work. but you should get the signal after the sony amp

 

[Drgonzo3000]

what year is your truck? 18,19, and 20 you should have gotten the zen module. if its a 17 with the sony system, then the harness will work.

2017 with no amplified system, Thank God! Didn't want to have to deal with dropping $500+ just to get clean signal RCA outputs.

 

[The Car Stereo Company]

2017 with no amplified system, Thank God! Didn't want to have to deal with dropping $500+ just to get clean signal RCA outputs.

you lucked out then