Installing Alpine head unit into Jeep - a bit of a nightmare

[fizmo100]

Hi, I'm looking for some advice from those in the know.

I've taken my 07 Jeep Commander to a local outfit to have an Alpine W925R installed, but they have been having issues with the installation.

The Jeep has the Boston Acoustics sound system installed which has an amp in the rear of the Jeep. It seems this amp isn't being fed the appropriate signal over Canbus to power up, so while the head unit turns on and sends an audio output, the amp remains switched off and no audio reaches the speakers.

The installer says he knows of an adaptor that can be used to rectify the issue with Canbus and get the amp to power up. Should this not work, he has suggested as a Plan B that he could run wires to each of the speakers directly from the head unit, bypassing the amp entirely.

I don't know enough about car audio to know if this Plan B is a good idea. The factory configuration for the Jeep has a pair of coaxial speakers in the back, a pair of woofers in the front doors, and a pair of mids/tweeters in the dash, giving a 6 speaker system. If wires are run directly from the head unit to the speakers, isn't it going to be necessary to include passive crossovers to resolve the front door/dash woofer/tweeter split? Also, should I have any concerns about how long the OEM paper coned speakers will last when linked directly to to 45W head unit?

I'm not clued up at all about car audio, so if anyone can throw some light on this I'd be very grateful!

Edited by fizmo100 on Monday 27th February 22:19

[OldGermanHeaps]

How into your audio are you? Plan c replace the boston amp with a jbl ms8. Its an 8 channel amp wirlth digital signal processing, automatic time alignment, built in fully adjustable active crossovers with auto tuning, full spectrum eq, and audessy auto adjustment. You can pick them up used for £250, and they can make almost any system sound amazing. In my traffic i ran loads of deadening, 12"sub ported into the cabin from the load area, 8" bass drivers in the doors, 4" mids on the dash tops and tweeters cut into the dash aimed at the driver, all tuned and aligned by the ms8 and i have never heard a better soundstage in any setup this side of a £12k linn home setup.
The downside was you have to press the bypass button on the jbl control when you answer a call on bluetooth or the caller hears a slight echo due to the slight time alignment and processing delay confusing the handsfree echo cancellation on the head unit.
In my e60 the standard paper coned speakers sounded far better due the the more effective active crossover setup and cleaner signal with no clipping.

Edited by OldGermanHeaps on Monday 27th February 22:28

[fizmo100]

I'm trying to avoid spending any more money on it to be honest - I originally bought a Pumpkin Android head unit, which the guy tried to fit. Because there was no sound coming from it he diagnosed it as being faulty, so it got returned, and I bought the Alpine unit from a customer of his who was selling it, so I've already spent a few hundred quid more than I intended to. I'm not looking for super-duper sound at the moment, I was happy enough with the sound in the Jeep to begin with, I just want bluetooth and built in Satnav. If the standard speakers will be fine hooked to the Alpine direct then that seems like the way to go, but I'm worried about blowing them, and also not sure how to get around the fact the front speakers are split between bass in the door and mid/treble in the dash. I would have assumed a crossover would be needed, but I've seen some wild and wonderful suggestions about connecting them in parallel with capacitors added in, which is beyond my understanding of how this stuff works.

[red22]

A capacitor is a simple crossover. It will block low frequencies getting to your tweeters.

[SteBrown91]

Id double check with the company first but this adaptor may work? I wouldn't bypass the amp since then the speakers will be relying on the head unit amp which is unlikely to be better.

http://www.connects2.co.uk/Product/ProductItem/CT5...

[fizmo100]

Thanks for that, will pass it on to the installer. The website name rings a bell, I think he may have mentioned that he was in touch with them already. My only concern now is that the stock head unit is reinstalled, and there is nothing coming out of the speakers. I'm wondering if in his attempts to bypass the amp the installer may have fried it!

I'll try the harness, and if that doesn't work I think I'll have to bite the bullet and replace the amp with a less fiddly one. Starting to wish I'd just left the damn thing alone and stuck with my phone satnav and FM transmitter for audio!

[broncoupe]

Hi speak to incartec
they import just this sort of adaptor from US
This isn't major problem just need correct adaptor