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Volvo V60 - Audio Install Log

19820 Views 53 Replies 8 Participants Last post by  abcdefghii, 
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Starting a thread to document the audio install of my new to me, 2015 V60 R-Design. Prior to this I had a 2006 Audi A4 Avant, all of the audio equipment was previously installed in the Audi and I hope to use it all again in the Volvo.



I plan to do a few cosmetic mods to the car, but nothing much as I am very happy with the look of the car, will just tint the windows, maybe lower it around an inch and add some wheel spacers.

The car came stock with the "Volvo High Performance" system, which is 3 way in the front doors, what I assume to be coaxial in the rear doors and a center speaker. I read somewhere that the High Performance system was 12 speakers, but I can only identify 9 (3 per front door, 1 per rear door and center). Not that it matters, the front door speakers will be replaced with Scanspeak tweeters, Infinity Kappa 20MX mids and Stereo Integrity TM65 MK2 for midbass, rear doors will simply be disconnected (although if I can figure out how to mount a pair of small speakers in the D-pillars, then I will use the MiniDSP to run differential rear fill). The subwoofer will be a Stereo Integrity SQL12 (not pictured):


Amplification will be an Alpine PDX V9 (sub, midbass and mids) and a PDX V4 (tweeters and hopefully rear fill). Processing is via a MiniDSP 8x12 with Dirac Live. I have had the MiniDSP for around 2 years now and upgraded the firmware to run Dirac Live last summer, adding Dirac was a game changer in the Audi. Where previously tuning was manual tweak, listen, measure, tweak, measure, listen etc. for hours on end, with Dirac I enter my crossovers, take 9 measurements and load whatever house curve I want, the software then automatically adjusts everything needed to match the target. I can go from having no tune to a decent sounding tune in about 15 minutes. I'm watching that thread about the Android based head unit, I was spoiled with a Kenwood 9906XR in the Audi and using Android Auto was excellent, was also half wondering this morning if I could update the Sensus unit in my 2015 to the later Sensus from the 2015.5 model and later years.

Over the past weekend I decided to remove the door card to take a look at what I will be starting with, if anyone knows how to disconnect the exterior door pull from the door card please let me know. I could not figure it out and did not want to risk breaking the mechanism. I'm used to a simple hook in the Audi that just popped right out. Back to the speakers, the tweeter in the sail panel just pops off with 3 clips, grip the housing towards the front and rotate it away from the door and it will pop free. I do not have BLIS so just needed to unplug the tweeter. Replacement looks a little harder than I expected as it looks like the tweeter is somewhat sealed into the housing. In the picture below you can see the cross hatch pattern where it looks like the 2 halves were melted together. Since I don't want to demolish this, looks like I need to order some new tweeter housings:



If anyone knows how to get the tweeter out without demolishing the housing, I'm listening.

Onto the factory midrange, this is screwed to the doorcard with 3 T25 torx screws and on a little plastic mount, hopefully as long as there is enough depth (99% sure there is) then I can simply make my own mounting plate and install the 20MX in this location:



The midbass is mounted to the door itself, again with just 3 T25 torx screws, located directly beneath the mid. Looks like plenty of depth to mount the TM65's so no major concerns there:




Here's where things get a little confusing, at least for me, hoping some of you more familiar with Volvo's can help. So, the molex plug boot is in a sort of Z shape, getting 3 sets of wire through is going to be a massive headache first because there is little room between the door and the body and second because fishing 3 sets of wire through that boot will be problematic to say the least. Because of this I had hoped to tap into the stock speaker wiring inside the car and utilize the existing wire through the boot, I don't run huge amounts of power, so the stock wire should be fine for me and I will just splice my own wire into it inside the kick panel. But, at the moment I cannot figure out how it's wired (not yet pulled the molex plug, hoping I can get lucky). So, here is the wiring for the tweeter and mid:


The wires are the exact same color, even the plugs are identical. Here's the wiring going to the midbass:


4 wires, no clue why. I am going to try to find some wiring diagrams, hopefully that sheds some light on things and ideally I can use existing wire through the molex. Once I figure that out and can determine how to get a power wire from the battery to the trunk, I plan to remove the passengers seat to tap into the signal there to feed into the DSP which (along with the amps) will be located under the floor in the trunk). In the Audi I had a subwoofer mounted inside a suitcase, while it looked very stealthy and I got many compliments on it, it took up more cargo room than I am willing to sacrifice. The SQL12 will fit in a sealed enclosure from 0.8 - 1cf, which is OK for a subwoofer of that capability.

Last picture is a quick measurement with REW of the stock system, all the EQ is flat (has a 5 band in the head unit). In all honesty, it does not sound that bad other than the complete lack of anything below 35Hz.


If I did not already have all the equipment and plan to compete with the Volvo, I would be seriously tempted to just add a subwoofer and call it a day. I'd be lying if the thought has not crossed my mind, however one of my biggest complaints with the stock sound is that it does not get that loud and is missing some of the dynamics that you get with a really well set up system. It's good for what it is, but coming from what I was used to in the Audi, it's lacking.

Over the next few weeks I plan to pick up some of the supplies I will need, power cable, speaker wire, sound deadening etc. and get started. In the meantime, if anyone knows anything about that tweeter housing, disconnecting the door pull from the door card or getting wire through the boot/molex into the door, please let me know!
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abcdefghii said:
Starting a thread to document the audio install of my new to me, 2015 V60 R-Design. Prior to this I had a 2006 Audi A4 Avant, all of the audio equipment was previously installed in the Audi and I hope to use it all again in the Volvo.

Here's where things get a little confusing, at least for me, hoping some of you more familiar with Volvo's can help. So, the molex plug boot is in a sort of Z shape, getting 3 sets of wire through is going to be a massive headache first because there is little room between the door and the body and second because fishing 3 sets of wire through that boot will be problematic to say the least. Because of this I had hoped to tap into the stock speaker wiring inside the car and utilize the existing wire through the boot, I don't run huge amounts of power, so the stock wire should be fine for me and I will just splice my own wire into it inside the kick panel. But, at the moment I cannot figure out how it's wired (not yet pulled the molex plug, hoping I can get lucky). So, here is the wiring for the tweeter and mid:
Click to expand...
Unfortunately, the door loom uses a large 26-pin connector where only 2-wires are for the speakers (Pins 22/23 for front and 3/4 for rear). The additional splitting to the drivers occurs within the door itself. Therefore, unless you are intending on using passive crossovers, you will have to create additional holes to pass in the additional wires. You can see the diagram in my DIY Thread here.

Mark
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Thanks, that was what I suspected from looking inside the door. Will check out your thread for the wiring diagrams, hopefully I can manage to get the wires in without too much hassle.

I saw a build thread on DIYMA where someone with an S60 removed the door, drilled a new hole just for speaker wire and created an entire new boot. I'd rather not do that, but it may be the simplest option since I'm running 3 way active.
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In case anyone stumbles across this in future, I reached out to Mobridge to ask if they had any interface with the Volvo. I had found an old thread where it was mentioned they were a few weeks away from having a product. However, when I enquired about any updates received the below:

"The Volvo had too many variances in trying to get the system to 'marry' the unit so it got to the point where it just wasn't worth pursuing this any more."

Unfortunate as I think they were at one point close, but understandable that they stopped devoting resources to what would be a fairly niche product anyway.
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Slow progress, but progress....



Got the holes drilled into the door for the new rubber boot and speaker wire. Going to pick up some touch up paint tomorrow to paint the bare metal to protect it against the elements a little. Drilling was not as simple as hoped, but not crazy. Had to remove the door card, then pop the molex plug out from inside the door to make sure that none of the factory wiring was going to be impacted by the drill. Once that was done, the metal is 2 layers, which made drilling not quite as straight forward, but not terrible either. Getting the doors off and back on was actually incredibly simple.

Here's a better shot of the grommet on the kick panel side of things:


And here is why I was not going to even attempt to drill the molex, no way was I going to be able to get 3 sets of speaker wire through there.


So, next is going to be running some wire towards the trunk. I can't deaden the doors just yet, there is a recall on Volvo door latches, which the repair involves them stripping the inner door entirely to get to the latch. If I put deadening over there, then they will have to rip it all off. I am slightly reluctant to even put the speakers in to be honest, but apparently Volvo will not even have parts until April.
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Another little update, previously I have always used spade connectors onto the speaker at the end of the run coming into the door itself. Decided to try XT60 connectors and make little pigtails to make life a little simpler:


Was getting annoyed with things until I picked up some decent solder, made life a whole lot easier then. I figure these will also make things a little simpler if I install speakers before the recall is completed.
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Slow going here, found a grommet under the hood that I hope to run power wire through. It's under the plastic cowl on the passenger side. Removed the grommet and can see foam insulation, removed the glovebox, spent 2 hours trying to get 4 gauge power wire through to where I could see it in the car to pull it to the trunk.

Got absolutely nowhere. Managed to poke about 2' of power wire through the grommet, but no sign of it anywhere in the car. Trying again tomorrow, the foam insulation is so dang thick I can't even get an approximate idea of where the wire I'm pushing through is going.
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abcdefghii said:
Slow going here, found a grommet under the hood that I hope to run power wire through. It's under the plastic cowl on the passenger side. Removed the grommet and can see foam insulation, removed the glovebox, spent 2 hours trying to get 4 gauge power wire through to where I could see it in the car to pull it to the trunk.

Got absolutely nowhere. Managed to poke about 2' of power wire through the grommet, but no sign of it anywhere in the car. Trying again tomorrow, the foam insulation is so dang thick I can't even get an approximate idea of where the wire I'm pushing through is going.
Click to expand...
Did you remove the PCM ? I was in mine this winter, remove glove box and uderdash trim, then all the connectors, then the PCM. I remember saying to myself " great place to pass wires" but never needed to go farther.

Great thred, wayyyy over my audio expertise, but following all the same. Factory stereo is way below par.

Regards

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No, I didn't remove it, but ended up getting the power wire through anyway. Definitely not the easiest job, in fact, it was a headache, but it's done. You will need a wire coat hanger, or something equally thin and flexible, but not too flexible, as well as electrical tape and your power wire. First thing to do is pop this cover off here where the strut brace is. The red circle indicates a grommet you are looking for:


Here is the grommet:


Inside the car, remove the glovebox and pull the carpet back so you can see all the insulation, wiring etc. that is in your way. Initially I spent about 2 hours trying to feed the power wire in from the top, bear in mind if you have even remotely large arms, fitting your arm in that hole by the strut brace to get at the grommet is going to suck. My forearm feels like it was shut in a door. So, after 2 hours of that and much cursing last night I gave up. Yesterday morning I figured I would try and come in from the footwell with a wire coat hanger, feed it up under the insulation and hope I could see it at the grommet to pull it out there. Nope, not a chance. I then decided to try feeding the coat hanger in from the grommet at the top, you have to be careful as you don't want to damage anything (there are a lot of wires behind the glovebox). The first couple tries it felt like the hanger hit something solid, that pushed it horizontally along the dash. I was about to give up when I heard a sound of a wire coat hanger hit something in the foot well. Walked around to look and I saw this:


See the white coat hanger, coming down diagonally in the middle of the picture. I followed the hanger back and could feel where it came into the cabin behind the PCM here just to the left of the wiring harness bundles.


Back under the hood I used a bunch of electrical tape to secure the power wire to the coat hanger. I had my wife pull the coat hanger from inside while I tried to feed the wire in from the top. It got stuck a couple times and I could tell the coat hanger was going to slip off if I kept pulling it, but kept gently trying. Sure enough, the hanger popped off. Since it felt like we had managed to get the wire someway into the car I decided to reach up behind the white plastic box where the coat hanger came in, just to see if I could feel anything. Success, the power wire had slipped off the hanger there, but had come through enough that I was able to get my hand behind the box, pull the power wire through enough that I could feed it the entire way into the car. You can see the bright red power wire here where it comes into the cabin.


Under the hood it's a straight shot from where the grommet is located across to the battery box beneath the plastic cowl. I am not sure yet how to secure it without it interfering with anything under there, but I think it is clear of the wiper motors anyway so should be simple to run it over to the battery. I think there are heater pipes there as well (does anyone know) so I am not sure if those would get so hot as to melt the wire? I don't think they would, but I also don't want to risk it. If it won't go under there, I can come out via the hole by the strut brace and run it behind the insulation at the back of the engine and into the battery box. Sure would be nice to just feed it under the plastic cowling though straight into the battery.

The factory set up in mine is really not bad at all, if I didn't already have equipment from my old vehicle, i honestly don't know if I'd bother upgrading. A few tweaks of the factory EQ, balance and fader has it sounding decent.

Later today I'm hopeful to get speaker wire passed from the door into the footwell, fingers crossed the hardest part will be done at that point.
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Another little update, the speaker wire, I had already drilled the hole in the doors and had planned to use a pair of these https://www.summitracing.com/parts/eli-4301-70-011 and then feed the wires through this large grommet in the kick panel area:


The center of that grommet is perfectly sized to seal against that boot. Thinking I could just snake the wires through the grommet and into the cabin, I started hunting around for an entry from the grommet. Which, apparently there is none. At least not a usable one in any visible location, I found where wire may come through, but it would have needed to be drilled bigger and was also incredibly difficult to route anything towards from the kick panel. A little research and I find that I have to drill another hole on the inside. Peeling back the carpet at the front edge of the doors, I drilled another hole here and was then able to feed the wire through.


Pulled the back seat cushion, upper and lower B-pillar trim, lower front and rear door trim and was then able to route my speaker wire and power wires alongside the factory wiring until finally they appeared here:


Finally, it feels like I am making some progress. The only other wires I now need to get into the trunk are going to be the signal tapped from the stock amp under the passengers seat, which hopefully (hahaha) won't be that difficult. Started trying to think of how to mount things in the trunk yesterday, the floor of the trunk lifts up to reveal quite a lot of space, I am tempted to make use of the insert under there as a sort of ready made amp rack. It's fairly thin, so I am thinking of attaching some wood/plastic beneath it and bolting the amps / DSP etc down through that.


Pro's with going this route, it's virtually ready, cons are it being flimsy. It's molded fairly tightly to everything underneath it, for example at one point I had the speaker wire resting near the air compressor and it would not go back down. The other option is to build something to go here:


Then simply mount everything to that. If it fits, I could make a large enough board that will cover the air compressor still and carpet it to match the trunk. I need to take some measurements though to see if I can get a flat piece of board to cover everything under there. Once I get the trunk figured out and the signal wires to the trunk, then things should go fairly quickly as it will just be a case of mounting speakers (not doing any sound deadening until recall is complete) and plugging everything in.

If anyone reading this has tapped into the stock amp for a signal to an aftermarket amplifier, did you have to remove the passenger seat to gain access to the stock amp? or were you able to tap for a signal with it in place?
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abcdefghii said:
If anyone reading this has tapped into the stock amp for a signal to an aftermarket amplifier, did you have to remove the passenger seat to gain access to the stock amp? or were you able to tap for a signal with it in place?
Click to expand...
An even better approach is to use a plug-in adapter to the amp. Take a look at my tread https://forums.swedespeed.com/showt...-Journey-to-the-Low-End&p=1715479#post1715479 for how I did it without even removing the amp much less the seat.

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Good news, I just saw your reply to my questions over there and replied about which harness you used. I think I found the correct one, but wanted to be certain.
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With the social distancing in place currently, I have been home and so able to get on with the install. First up was figuring out a way to mount the tweeters, the stock sail panel is a fairly complicated thing in that you can't actually buy it without a stock tweeter mounted due to the way it is constructed. With it removed from the car there are 5 plastic rivets that need to be carefully drilled out, while making sure not to drill through the side or front of the housing. Oddly, the drivers side the rivets were much simpler to drill, the passenger side the top of them had been melted with something which meant having to drill more to get them out. Eventually I was able to separate the 3 pieces and remove the stock tweeter, unfortunately the tweeters I had planned to use were too large to fit exactly in the stock housing. Some thinking and drilling a new hole later and I was able to secure them with a screw and nylon washer I had:


You can see the white nylon washer and screw in the center of the picture, as well as some of the points I had to drill (screw bottom left, black screw on the right as well as a hole near the top left and 2 more on the bottom right). Annoyingly, when I went to test fit this into the car the nylon washer stuck out so far that it would not allow me to mount the housing. I had no shorter screws, so in the end decided to try and use some contact cement and glue the tweeters. Left them sitting overnight and sure enough, next morning they are solidly mounted.

The mids were fairly straight forward to mount, although I suspect they may be touching the grill so might have to mount them slightly differently. The white plastic baffle screws to the back of the door card:


Volvo left me this nice little rubber flap that I could cut a hole and slip the speaker wire through, I wish I had noticed this before as I would have left my tweeter wires about a foot longer and used the same hole. Instead, I had to drill a hole for the tweeter wiring, but at least this worked perfectly for the mid:


Mounting the midbass was fairly simple, I had ordered a pair of brackets to use and they lined up perfectly. You can also see the hole I had to drill for tweeter wire in the top left of the pic (it's large due to needing to fit the XT60 through):


As you may notice, there is currently zero sound deadening treatment applied to the doors, as I mentioned earlier in the thread this is due to an open recall that I am waiting on being performed which requires dismantling the inner door to replace the door latches.

I decided on this for the final layout, the amps still need final mounting (I need to access the front for the gain controls) and wires tidying up some, but this is ultimately where everything will sit:


With that done, I ran the power wire across the engine bay to the battery and it's alive:


Unfortunately, it sounds like garbage when using the speaker level input. As in, next to no output, muffled and crackly. In the picture above you can see my Fiio that I temporarily connected via RCA to rule anything post DSP out as being a problem, when using the DAP everything works perfectly. So, something is not right with the speaker level input, either a setting in the DSP (I can't find any) or something else going on. I am hoping to figure out what it is fairly quickly so I can get a baseline tune set up and secure the amps.
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There are internal sensitivity settings in the DSP using DIP switches. I would first start with those, after making sure you have not switched any input polarity or channels in the wiring. It’s easy to get one or more wires crossed between channels or + and -. I would then use single tones via the USB or BT HU inputs to check levels and distortion in each channel before attempting to tune.


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Thanks Mark.

Tried a factory reset on the DSP as well as changing those internal switches. No difference, well, its slightly louder garbage. I'll double triple check polarity, I made sure to label things so it should be fine, but it's a simple thing to check.

I'm debating cutting into the factory wiring now, I'm fairly confident the wiring harness I'm using is good. I hooked it to a spare speaker and it sounded ok (for a single speaker twisted to some wires). But, the DSP plays fine via DAP, so it must be something on the speaker level input. The hardest thing with cutting into the factory wire is the minimal room to access the wires.

If it's still no good after that, then I'll have to get the Helix adapter.
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Unfortunately, "garbage" is not a technical description that I can decipher, which is why I suggested sending a single tone (80Hz, 400Hz, IKHz, etc) from the Head Unit. By varying the volume you can get a lot of information from the audio quality as to the nature of any distortion/noise. You could even record it and post it here as myself and others are quite familiar with what different types of distortion sound like. There are even smartphone apps such as Audio Tools which will display the tone and its distortions.

One thought is that the speaker level MinDSP inputs are spec's at 68 ohms where the stock speakers are 2 ohms. It's possible that the amp, since it is a Class D design, is having a stability issue with such a high impedance. Before going down the Helix route, I would try hooking up the stock bass speakers in parallel with your DSP and see if that changes things.

Finally, instead of cutting into the factory wiring, you can extract the speaker pins from the connector and replace them with the pins you have wired to the MiniDSP.
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mark-sf said:
Unfortunately, "garbage" is not a technical description that I can decipher
Click to expand...
Garbage as in, sounds like it is playing through a tin can, muffled, low volume, distortion in the mid range. Here are 3 videos I took. The first is using the speaker level inputs into the DSP:


The second is the same speaker wire I am using for the speaker level inputs, but this time connected to a pair of old surround speakers I had laying around (rules out an issue with the wiring between stock amp and DSP input):


And finally, the 3rd is using my Fiio into the DSP via RCA (just to rule out any issues on the output side of things):


mark-sf said:
One thought is that the speaker level MinDSP inputs are spec's at 68 ohms where the stock speakers are 2 ohms. It's possible that the amp, since it is a Class D design, is having a stability issue with such a high impedance. Before going down the Helix route, I would try hooking up the stock bass speakers in parallel with your DSP and see if that changes things.
Click to expand...
I have not tried this yet, but it does make sense. However, I know of one other person with a 2015 and using high level inputs to their DSP and having no issues. However, they have a JL FIX/TWK combo, so it could be possible that the JL FIX is doing something internally that the MiniDSP is not able to do.
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abcdefghii said:
Garbage as in, sounds like it is playing through a tin can, muffled, low volume, distortion in the mid range. Here are 3 videos I took. The first is using the speaker level inputs into the DSP:

The second is the same speaker wire I am using for the speaker level inputs, but this time connected to a pair of old surround speakers I had laying around (rules out an issue with the wiring between stock amp and DSP input):

And finally, the 3rd is using my Fiio into the DSP via RCA (just to rule out any issues on the output side of things):

I have not tried this yet, but it does make sense. However, I know of one other person with a 2015 and using high level inputs to their DSP and having no issues. However, they have a JL FIX/TWK combo, so it could be possible that the JL FIX is doing something internally that the MiniDSP is not able to do.
Click to expand...
Since you have the external speakers you used in #2 test at hand you can use them for the "load" to tap off for the DSP signal. I would expect that unless something is defective in the MiniDSP High-Level input section, that it will work just fine. Can't say why the JL Fix works as there is insufficient technical detail in its manual do determine the difference.

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OK, just got done trying with the external speakers wired in parallel.... and, yep, that has everything working correctly. So, now at least knowing what the problem is might help with figuring out a solution. Thanks for your help with this, if it were not for your knowledge of the stock amp I'd be still trying to wrap my head around it and likely spending hundreds on the Helix unit.

I'm wondering if I remove the aftermarket harness I am using and try to swap the pins over (although removing any from the aftermarket harness proved incredibly frustrating) or either cut the wiring for the front speakers on the stock harness / use t-taps for the signal to the DSP, then plugging the factory plug back into the factory amp. That way the factory amplifier will still see the load of the rear speakers, which in turn should resolve the issue with the DSP input. I can fade the factory head unit all the way to the front which should mean the rears are not playing anything and causing problems with the sound stage.

The person I know using the JL Fix simply cut the factory harness to tap off it, leaving the rears connected as described above, which I would bet is why they are having no problems.



Edit: Well this is utterly maddening. Went out to the car, removed the aftermarket plug. Cut the LF and RF wires on the factory harness (I am planning to keep the car for years, decided cutting 4 speaker wires is not the end of the world). Crimped those onto the wires going to the DSP input and plugged the stock harness back into the stock amp. Turned on the ignition. :mad:

Back to the DSP output sounding terrible again. I am just going to order the Helix and bypass the factory amp at this point.
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You are correct that we now know what the problem is; however, your solution to cut wires or change the harness was not. You can’t keep a load on just some channels and expect the other channels to work. However, you can substitute a load for that of the speakers and get it to work without going the Helix route.

If you get a 4 ohm 50w wire-wound resistor for each channel and mount them near the DSP (they have screw mounts) then they will stand in for the amp load and it will work fine. These can be gotten from Amazon for about $5 each.


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