Apline PXA-H700 Install

[ChrisK]

Alpine PXA-H700 Install

I know this may be overkill and too aftermaret for some, but I added the Surround Proccessor Alpine PXA-H700 under my Alpine DVD player headunit. I also deleted the ashtray area. The finish is only black primered but it gives you an idea of what it will look like. The good thing with the SOS center console is because it is mostly made of fiberglass, you can pretty much do anything you want with it and if you don't like it you can reglass it and start over

See updated pictures below. My original picture here was on imagestation and no longer works.

 

[jagtiger]

WOW! Nice setup! Did you install it yourself?

 

[ChrisK]

WOW! Nice setup! Did you install it yourself?

Thanks. Yes, so far I have done all the audio video and even my alarm myself. I'm still trying to work on my custom fiberglass sub enclosure to go where the OEM sub was, but I may break down and buy the premade ones from Andybuzz. Right now the H700 is not connected as I need to buy a few fiber optic cables to connect the CD changer and DVD player to the H700.

 

[racerX]

very nice. Don't worry about to aftermarket for some. It's your car.

Let me know when you are up and running and tell me if you can hear a big diference when you play a DVD Audio Disc.

The processor has a built in spl meter for automaticly matching the sound to the acoustics of the car. Correct?

As previous posts and experiance has shown the cabin is not the best for quality sound. imo. I am very curious to see what your results thoughts are.

 

[Acura NsX Pilot]

I would love to see a picture when everything is all lite up and working.

 

[RP-Motorsports]

Great setup! I have Alpine in my NSX as well, as well as the full Alpine alarm system. What speakers are you running? I have JL Audio throughout w/ a sub in the passenger footwell.

 

[NSX01]

Chris,

Nice audio and video system.

 

[DDozier]

Hey Chris, looks great. I was wondering if you think it is possible to match the factory radius rounded edge like is around the climate control. Can the glass be built up enough to allow that cut out to be routed with a quarter rounding bit, wait a minute I think i just figured it out on my own. I am thinking you could route the radius to a piece of balsa then glas that to the console from the back side then glass in the radius. Sand, paint, and the bevel would match.

Do you think there is enough width to do the radius as you get close to the area where the ashtray was. I am thinking of doing a true 2 DIN headunit in the factory location. I know I will loose the ashtray but I want to match the radius of the uper dash.

Thanks for your help and again great work. Was also wondering if you still have the Legend Coupe.

Dave

 

[ChrisK]

Hey Chris, looks great. I was wondering if you think it is possible to match the factory radius rounded edge like is around the climate control. Can the glass be built up enough to allow that cut out to be routed with a quarter rounding bit, wait a minute I think i just figured it out on my own. I am thinking you could route the radius to a piece of balsa then glas that to the console from the back side then glass in the radius. Sand, paint, and the bevel would match.

Do you think there is enough width to do the radius as you get close to the area where the ashtray was. I am thinking of doing a true 2 DIN headunit in the factory location. I know I will loose the ashtray but I want to match the radius of the uper dash.

Thanks for your help and again great work. Was also wondering if you still have the Legend Coupe.

Dave

First off thanks for the comments. Second, I sold both my Legend Coupes one to my brother and the other to my sister. I bought my wife a RX330 since we just had our baby and needed a bigger car with more doors.

Anyway, as the console comes from SOS it is no thicker than the stock console. However, you can make is as thick as you want it to be just by adding more fiberglass where you need it. It is an FRP contruction so the backing is all fiberglass, but it sticks really well to the plastic that it is bonded to so you can add it on the front if you need it there as well. That is mostly how I deleted the ashtray. I followed up with finishing surface filler (Like Bondo, or any other similar product) to get all the imperfections smoothed out and it also allows for the nice feather edge when sanding.

Since the OEM deck is a 2DIN you should be able to do a standard 2DIN set up while keeping the ashtray. If you notice my heaunit above, it sits a little lower under the climate control than OEM. I had to do this because the original Alpine 7894 deck I had did not have good contrast that could be adjusted, so mounted high were the stock deck would start and in the same angle I could not see the display screen from my driving position. I am short at 5'4" so my angle of view was too far off axis. What I had to do was angle the deck down so it was more in my line of sight. However, because the climate control unit angles downward as well, the back end of the deck had no room and would hit the back end of the climate control so it couldn't be angled down from its stock location. I had to physically lower the headunit a little so I could allow for the tilt. If you can image it, the set up now looks sort of like a triangle where the rear end of the climate control and headunit meet at a point in back. Anyway, that extra 1/4"-1/2" lower position meant that I could not make a true 2DIN mount as it put me just in the ashtray area. Either way, I think I may put some PS2 controller connections and a A/V AUX inoput contections under the H700 so I would have deleted the ashtray anyway. I'll probably move the cig lighter into the arm rest so I can still charge my cell phone and make a custom mount for the aspirator fan behind the console.

 

[ChrisK]

Great setup! I have Alpine in my NSX as well, as well as the full Alpine alarm system. What speakers are you running? I have JL Audio throughout w/ a sub in the passenger footwell.

Right now I have Diamond Audio Hex S6.0s 6.5" components with silk dome tweeters in the doors and have a JL Audio 6W0 waiting to be installed in the OEM sub location. If I need more bass I do have a 10" Image Dynamics IDQ 10" sub that I could use as well but I don't know if I have enough space for it.

I also was thinking about trying HLCD (Horn Loaded Compression Drivers, AKA Waveguides) if I have enough space under the dash.

 

[Hugh]

Chris,
I have a JL 8W3v2D4 sub in the passenger footwell with JL 650-CXi speakers in the doors. They are powered by a JL 300/4 in the trunk running 75 watts to each door speaker at 4 ohms and 150 watts to the sub at 8 ohms. The bass is nice and tight with great punch.

This particular install is photographed and documented here.

 

[ZRO260B4U]

Chris,

Just curious as to what "Brand & Model" rear view camera you are using with your monitor?

Thanks

 

[ChrisK]

Chris,

Just curious as to what "Brand & Model" rear view camera you are using with your monitor?

Thanks

I don't know. I just bought one of those mini color reverse image cameras off of ebay. It is the one with a bunch of IR lights around the barrel of the camera is the camera itself is an auto adjusting one that goes into IR/Night mode when the light is low. That is way my image is not always that great. Under low light it goes into night mode (Similar to the night mode on camcorders and the image turns grainy and slighty greenish. Since I had to cover up the IR LED lights on the camera for the stealth install I bet that causes the camera to get a little confused at times and not work as well. Either way, it works well enough for what it was intended to be and for $50 I can't complain that much.

Hugh,

Your install look great. If I can get enough space out of my enclosure and the 6W0 turns out to be not enough I'll probably try the 8" JL. Right now I got about 0.3 cubes from my first attempt, but the fit is not exactly how I wanted it so I'll try again.

 

[Hugh]

Right now I got about 0.3 cubes from my first attempt, but the fit is not exactly how I wanted it so I'll try again.

For a sealed enclosure with the 6W0, JL reccomends 0.175 cubic feet and for a ported enclosure, 0.25 cubic feet.

For the 8W3 the numbers are 0.33 cubes and 0.75 cubes respectively.

 

[ChrisK]

For a sealed enclosure with the 6W0, JL reccomends 0.175 cubic feet and for a ported enclosure, 0.25 cubic feet.

For the 8W3 the numbers are 0.33 cubes and 0.75 cubes respectively.

I saw that on the spec sheet. I'm actually getting slightly less tha 0.3 since you have to subtract the speakers dispacement. I'm also using a box building program where you can plug in all the S/T parameters and specs and it will give you a read out of the frequency curve of different box sizes and designs.

Anyway, what is the exact amont of air space you have for your 8W3? How does it sound with that amount of air space? I'm not into loud bass but I would like it to go as low as possible. Thanks.

 

[Meeyatch1]

The pictures are not showing up...any way you could send them to me? PLEASE!!

 

[Hugh]

Which pictures are you talking about?

 

[ChrisK]

My original pictures posted were on Imagestation and they no longer allow any sort of linking so here are some new pictures with the Alpine PXA-H700 unit actually working. I still have a lot of work to do as I haven't painted the console yet, but at least it is up and running

As you can see, the blue color LCD of the H700 doesn't match the rest of the system yet, but I'll be changing that in a little while. For those who wanted to know how I got everything a similar color blue, I used a blue filter for the AC controls, in the Alpine 7996 DVD palter face, and will use the same for the H700 face. I tried to just match the AC display to the 7996 at first, but no matter what color filters I used it never really matched. Using the same color filter in all of them worked out well.

 

[racerX]

Chris K.

Great system and install. You must be very happy.

I would like to inquire about your gauge install. On a scale of 1 to 10 how difficult would you say it was. Also how long ago did you switch and do you have any regrets about ditchin the orange.

Last but not least, as an alpine customer do you know when the new F1 series launched at CES in Las Vegas will hit the street? It is also nice equipment. Again great job. enjoy. Thanks for sharing.

 

[ChrisK]

Chris K.

Great system and install. You must be very happy.

I would like to inquire about your gauge install. On a scale of 1 to 10 how difficult would you say it was. Also how long ago did you switch and do you have any regrets about ditchin the orange.

Last but not least, as an alpine customer do you know when the new F1 series launched at CES in Las Vegas will hit the street? It is also nice equipment. Again great job. enjoy. Thanks for sharing.

Hey man, thanks for the compliments. As for the gauge install, I sort of like it because it is different, but I think I may be going back to stock with silver rings like you may have seen some other owners here doing. I bought the white faced gagues 1. to shake things up and be different, and 2. for car shows because as we all know, the more little mods you have the better chances you have of winning something. The install was fairly easy. It is an overlay, so you don't remove your original gauges or needles. I used golf grip tape (Very thin double stick tape) to hold it down in place. I did have to cut out some notches in the cluster base to allow the wiring to exit from under the trim plate, but that is no big deal and can't be seen. Then, I just hooked up the positive lead to my parking light wire and grouned the otherside.

As for the Alpine F1, I have no idea when any of the new products will come out. To tell you the truth though, I do like Alpine but I think the F1 is not worth the price for me. . I have no doubt it sounds amazing, but my reasoning is my home surround proccessor which is a Meridian 565 would probably blow away the F1 gear for not much more in MRSP. Since the Meridian probably has a smaller footprint, if I wanted anything close to the F1 I could just throw in a 12V invertor and use my home proccessor.

 

[jagtiger]

My original pictures posted were on Imagestation and they no longer allow any sort of linking so here are some new pictures with the Alpine PXA-H700 unit actually working. I still have a lot of work to do as I haven't painted the console yet, but at least it is up and running

As you can see, the blue color LCD of the H700 doesn't match the rest of the system yet, but I'll be changing that in a little while. For those who wanted to know how I got everything a similar color blue, I used a blue filter for the AC controls, in the Alpine 7996 DVD palter face, and will use the same for the H700 face. I tried to just match the AC display to the 7996 at first, but no matter what color filters I used it never really matched. Using the same color filter in all of them worked out well.

Chrisk,

Awesome setup!! One of best I've seen so far!!Almost like a Jet cockpit!

I'm also planning ot install a white face gauge like yours and would appreciate if you can give me some tip on the best way to do it. Did you have problem with the install?Where did you install the transformer?Do you remember the location where you attached the positive wire? Sorry for all the question but my kit didnt come with a detailed instruction! Thanks in advance!

 

[Ko-nsx]

sound processer

Does the sound processor make a difference with the overall system? Really like your set-up. Sure want to match it with an aluminum dash kit!!!