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My ICE Page

Here is a diagram of the very simple music system I used to have in my first car:


oldest ICE


As you can see, the system was mainly Sony MiniDisc.
MiniDisc was created by Sharp and Sony and used a form of compression called ATRAC to squeeze 74min of music (the same as normal CD) into a disc under half the size. The problem with this was that you lost a small amount of definition in the playback (as there were losses from compressing to store music to uncompressing for playback). However, such small losses in quality could only be heard at home with a dedicated set of separate hi-fi components. When listening in a car (which is a noisy acoustic environment), MD sounded as good as CD.
The reason I originally chose MiniDisc was that it was very easy to re-edit and had good shock resistant properties. The reason I chose Sony is that they were the only company making a reasonably priced 6 MD changer at the time (£185 vs. Pioneer's £450) so I needed a Sony HeadUnit (£235) for compatibility and ended up buying the full system as Sony in the end.


I then graduated to a better sounding system (better components) but one still relying on the brilliant Sony MD tech that was perfect for car use:


old ICE


It had fewer speakers but what was there was so much better than the previous car that I was happy with my install.
My Rockford Fosgate Sub supplemented the 20-40Hz frequencies (lowest octave) that are lost in car on the move (it was in a 36l / 1.27ft³ ported enclosure with a 4" port tuned to 40Hz - nice, deep & powerful but not enough to annoy the neighbours).
This was my second car (a civic) and therefore my second attempt at altering the bog standard radio cassette. The most difficult part was routing the wires under/through the upholstery. My advice is, if you're feeling adventurous, don't waste £250 odd (what I was quoted at the time - probably quadrupled since then) having it installed for you, read a 'haynes' manual and save yourself a couple of bob.


Note that in both of these installs (and subsequent ones) I have not been interested in adding capacitors because they only provide minimal ripple smoothing unless you use large banks of them and certainly won't provide the massive amounts of current to make up for deficient alternator specs that some people try and use them for (getting a higher spec alternator and battery is usually better).


Now as the sound inside any car is compromised by road noise anyway I decided to bypass my old MD/sub system for my TVR and instead use my iPod to conveniantly have 3230 songs on the move (the 2 things I've added are separate to most of the system which was factory installed):


TVR ICE


I then updated my old 'daily drive' to a newer car as well and did the same again to upgrade the poor bog standard sound system (although I'd added everything in here myself, including the custom fascia):


Jazz ICE
In fact, I thought I'd post up the full install procedure for this in my separate internal page Jazz Page.


I then bought a new 'daily drive' which had a factory 10 speaker Bose system installed. The sound was actually quite poor & muddy sounding (no highs, no lows, that's Bose) so I improved this by adding in the Alpine SWE-815 Active 8" DVC from my previous Jazz (easy to do by splicing into the connections going into the digital amp/processor) and changing the front components to Focal ISS 170 speakers:


Audi ICE


I have changed my 'daily drive' yet again, this time jumping ship to BMW, complete with a 16 speaker Harman Kardon system factory installed... absolutely blows away the old stock A3 Bose both in SQ and SPL. I have improved the bass by changing the OEM Harman Kardon underseat subs with Focal IFBMW-SUB.V2 8" upgraded replacements which were a direct drop-in into the factory enclosures. These in addition to the factory installed system sound good when equalised with calibrated REW software, but no amount of calibration can hide the fact that the lowest octave is simply missing. This is exacerbated by the fact that the cabin speakers XO @110Hz but the underseat's don't reach quite that high, leaving a small hole in the frequency response here. To try to remedy these issues I have subsequently made this into a 17 speaker system by adding a 300W 12" amplified sub (the Rockford Fosgate P300-12) being fed by a decent line output convertor (the WāvTech LinkD) that can cope with the HK amp's 30+V peaks.
Here are my HU EQ settings with the LOC Gain = 9o'clock (no clipping), Phase = 180o, Sub Gain = 09:30, Sub XO = 11o'clock (110Hz), Sub Bass Boost = 0dB (Punch Remote not connected) → Treble -4 & Bass -4 (emphasises midrange), L7 OFF, 100Hz -4, 200Hz -4, 500Hz -4, 1kHz +4, 2kHz -4, 5kHz +1, 10kHz -1


BMW ICE


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26th September 2000

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