A longtime customer from Rockville recently contacted the team at Extreme Audio about upgrading the stereo system in his 2011 Land Rover LR4 SUV. We’ve done a lot of work with this client in the past, including several unique jobs that have included custom home theater subwoofers. As you can see from the photos, the client has a unique style and wanted an audio system in his LR4 that would sound great at any reasonable volume level. After discussing some design options and auditioning several products in our displays, we came up with a cool system design that would meet his needs.
LR4 Audio System Integration
Before beginning any work on the vehicle, our technicians evaluated the factory sound system to determine whether it had an up-mixer and to develop a plan to deal with it. We were able to turn off most of the signal processing in the deck so that we could extract clean left and right stereo signals from the factory amp. We fed those signals into two sets of JL Audio FiX-LSA-4 resistor networks, then to a FiX-86 integration processor to undo any equalization or time-alignment included in the factory amp. The output of the FiX feeds into a TwK-88 processor to provide crossovers, equalization and signal delay for the new sound system.
Land Rover Speaker and Subwoofer Upgrades
The first task was to remove the factory woofers, midrange speakers and tweeters from all four doors of the LR4. Once we had taken that apart, the team set to work creating a set of custom mounting brackets out of PVC plastic for the woofer and midrange from a JL Audio C5-653 three-way speaker set. Once we had the spacing right to install the speakers in the correct locations, our team added a kerf to the back so they could angle the midrange to fit against the door perfectly. The tweeters from the component set fit nicely into the factory locations in the door.
We also treated each door with Soundskins damping material to reduce buzzes and rattles, and we added foam coupling rings to the woofers in the door to focus their output into the listening area.
The client brought us a custom-made mounting bracket and braided straps to secure the system’s JL Audio CS212OG-W6v3 enclosure into the cargo area of the SUV. We secured the bracket to the cargo area cover panel of the vehicle and added the cool graphics panel he supplied to the rear of the enclosure.
JL Audio System Amplifiers
The system is powered by a trio of JL Audio HD-Series amplifiers. A pair of HD600/4 amps power the front and rear speakers, while an HD1200/1 powers the system subwoofer. The amplifiers, signal processors and passive crossover networks for the system are laid out on the truck floor and concealed by the cover panel. We used Stinger 0-AWG and 4-AWG power and ground wire to feed power to the amplifiers and added a pair of T-Spec V8-3DDC stiffening capacitors to ensure that the system will sound great, even with the volume cranked!
We added an HD-RLC remote level control to the subwoofer amp and mounted it in the dash of the truck on another custom panel the client brought us.
With more than 2,000 watts of power available, we needed to add some fans under the cover panel to help circulate air and keep the amplifiers functioning reliably.
Land Rover Stereo System Tuning
Once our team had the system installed, we set to work calibrating the equalizer, signal delay and level controls for each channel of the system. The result? The SUV has an amazingly wide soundstage that spans the width of the vehicle. Instruments and performers are positioned nicely across the stage with good accuracy.
After three long days of work, we had the Land Rover LR4 stereo complete and it was time for the client to return to Extreme Audio to hear the system. He loved the way it looks and sounds! If you are interested in a custom audio system upgrade for your vehicle, we invite you to visit one of our two locations in the Richmond area. You can also reach us by phone or by e-mail or to schedule a personal consultation.
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