[CU2] Accord Euro - Focal speaker upgrade

[JustRight]

Hi All,

I thought you might be interested in a project I have recently completed on my CU2 Luxury 6MT.

After taking delivery of the car back at the end of May I was very impressed by the car in general, but I thought that the sound system seemed to be a bit of a let down.

Now, to be fair, it's not actually that bad as far as stock systems go, but the shallow all plastic door and parcel shelf speakers leave a LOT to be desired. The factory head unit is pretty good and is supported by a small Panasonic amplifier mounted in the boot. This makes access to the unit really easy as you do not have to get into the dash. Also, the Panasonic system does not output in 4 channels from the head unit. Instead you get a simple L & R preamp out plus a pair of data lines that Panasonic call their ELS system?? Basically this instructs the amplifier how much Bass, Treble, Subwoofer, Center, Fade and Balance you have selected on the head unit. So its a case of leave the head unit alone and take the high level outputs from the amp in order to keep the full functionality of the head unit.

My upgrade consists of:

2 pairs of Focal 165VR component splits
1 pair of Focal 165CVX coaxials
1 Focal Solid-4 Amplifier
1 PAC SOEM-4 premium LOC

I chose to leave the Front Centre and Subwoofer speakers being powered by the factory Panasonic amp whilst replacing all the other speakers.

I run the front splits from two channels of the Solid-4 whilst running the rear splits and the parcel shelf coaxials in parallel from the other two channels. This works really well. The Solid-4 is built to handle 2 ohm loads and can also handle differential loads.

Needless to say that this has transformed the quality of sound from this system. It's very impressive now! Great tonal quality, adequate bass, without buzzes and rattles. All in all, very much better than standard. Although, I have to say that the system still sounds very 'bright' and rather harsh. Perhaps the Focal's will settle down over time?

Anyway, here are a few pics for you if you are interested.

First, mounting the Focal 165VR Crossover in the rear door trim:


Mounting the Focal 165VR Crossover in the front door trim:


The 165VR woofer in the front door. 1x16mm + 1x12mm MDF spacers.


The 165VR woofer in the rear door. 1x16mm MDF spacer.


Splicing into the speaker output loom from the Panasonic amp. Speaker level inputs to the PAC SOEM-4 transformer based, DC coupled LOC and RCA outputs to the Focal amplifier.


Finally the Focal Solid-4 Amplifier. I made a cradle which I mounted to the rear parcel shelf. The Amplifier is then mounted in the cradle which can be swung down for access to the controls and wiring. I've shown the amp in it's lowered position here.


Cheers

PS: The Focal Polyglass range of speakers provide an oustanding value for money basis for the upgrade of our Honda based systems. I can't speak highly enough of their quality and performance, or of the standard of support provided by the people at Focal Australia!

After much listening and research I added a Digital Signal Processor to enable me to fix the dreadful factory EQ of the standard Head Unit/Amplifier. Check out the details on this thread: http://www.ozhonda.com/forum/showthr...cessor-upgrade


A new update

I finally gave up on the factory sub-woofer in the parcel shelf. I have now installed a Focal Polyglass BombA 27V1 11" powered subwoofer. I have been able to take the RCA sub output from the Rockford Fosgate 360.2 as the input for the amplifier on the BombA 27V1. Apart from running some additional power and earth cabling and tying down the sub box, the installation was relatively straightforward, and the sub fits very nicely behind the rear seats leaving a good amount of boot space. I use special anderson plugs on the power and earth so the whole thing can be easily removed.

Also, on the strong advice of the guys at Focal Australia, I went to the trouble of removing the factory sub-woofer, leaving the resulting hole in the parcel shelf empty. This was not a simple job as it means removing the rear plastic parcel shelf completely, but the result has been well worth the effort.

I was also able to make use of the remote volume control provided with the RF 360.2 to control the output to the new Focal subwoofer, giving me effective volume control over the sub.

This additional installation has really rounded out the system and given me an enormous amount of bottom end that the component splits are just not designed to produce. By driving the sub from the 360.2 signal processor I have also been able to tune the sub along with the rest of the system, fantastic!


A new update

After some questions on other aspects of the install I have added some additional photos of the door trims etc:

Extra trimming required for clearance of the Focal speaker at maximum extension.

Click to view full size!


Location of Crossover in front door trim.

Click to view full size!


Location of Crossover in rear door trim.

Click to view full size!


Assembled front door.

Click to view full size!


Assembled rear door.

Click to view full size!


Click to view full size!

[JustRight]

Having done all of this work myself I know how valuable wiring diagram information can be. I used these diagrams to correctly identify the input and output wiring colour codes for the Panasonic Amplifier in the boot of my CU2.

So, if anyone was thinking of doing a job like this, these may help.

Premium Audio, without NAV:

Click to view full size!

Premium Audio, with NAV:

Click to view full size!


Note: If you have trouble displaying these with Internet Explorer, use Firefox instead

Cheers

[MikesVtec]

Looks pretty pro good work. I m just gonna be a noob and say the stock sound system sounds pretty good to me and ask how much better is the upgrade?

[JustRight]

Looks pretty pro good work. I m just gonna be a noob and say the stock sound system sounds pretty good to me and ask how much better is the upgrade?

Significant improvement!

I found the standard setup to to be too bright. Too much treble and no depth to the mid-range with only ordinary bass. To my ears the equalisation was just all wrong. If I backed the treble off via the Head Unit then it just lacked depth. I think the culprit is the all plastic factory speakers. And when I say all plastic, I mean even the speaker cones are plastic, not a good recipie for true Hi-Fidelity.

Don't get me wrong though, the factory system is OK as far as it goes. Way better than in some cars I have owned, but it lacks power, and as I said I think the equalisation seems all wrong.

The Focal PolyGlass speakers address the lack of mid-range and bass and dramatically improve the quality of the sound. The Focal TNB tweeters have a reputation for being rather bright, but the guys at Focal Australia tell me that they do smooth out after about 40 hours of use. All in all the system has incredible clarity, and with the Focal Solid-4 amplifier power is no longer an issue. I don't listen at outrageously high volumes, I want my systems to have power and depth at low to moderate volumes and the Focal hardware certainly delivers that in spades.

Cheers.

[Type R Positive]

awesome work!!! I've been wanting to do that to mine, but just upgrade the speakers first.

[praja6]

awesome work!!! I've been wanting to do that to mine, but just upgrade the speakers first.

Type R, does our base model Euro CU2 comes with built in Amplifier or only 9 x speaekrs and 1 x subwoofer only.

Thanks

[JustRight]

Type R, does our base model Euro CU2 comes with built in Amplifier or only 9 x speaekrs and 1 x subwoofer only.

Thanks

Hi there mate,

Yes, all australian cars that come with the 'Premium' sound system, which includes the base model Euro, get the boot mounted Panasonic Amplifier. It needs it to drive all those speakers. So the pictures you see in my original post apply to both the Lux and Base models.

Cheers.

[JustRight]

awesome work!!! I've been wanting to do that to mine, but just upgrade the speakers first.

Type 'R'. If you do the speakers only you will find that the factory amp will drive them, but not that well. In fact I experimented with mine and setup the system at first without the Focal amplifier. The Panasonic amp can drive the Focals as they are quite efficient, BUT, the standard plastic speakers offer only a 2 ohm load to the amplifier, whereas the Focals are all 4 ohm. This means that the effective output of the Panasonic amp is cut to about 2/3 of its normal output (whatever that is) and I found that as soon as I stepped the volume up a bit the amplifier started clipping, and could not deliver the bass I was looking for.

You could probably get away with it, but the reality is that any quality replacement speaker, Focal or otherwise, really needs to be driven with plenty of power to get the most out of them.

Just a note on the fitting of alternative speakers. There is heaps of mounting depth in the rear doors, but in the front the maximum depth, based on the modifications I made is no more than 70mm. The Focal 165VR woofers in fact have a mounting depth of exactly 70mm, and I found that I had to mount them using the plastic mounting ring that Focal provide for fitting a speaker grille. This gave me about 1mm clearance to the bottom edge of the window glass, just enough

Cheers.

[Type R Positive]

Good info about the mounting depths mate! Will save a bit of heart ache later on.
Would you use something like the rockford fosgate 360?

[JustRight]

Good info about the mounting depths mate! Will save a bit of heart ache later on.
Would you use something like the rockford fosgate 360?

Yep, I have been giving a lot of thought to using a signal processor. The 3SIXTY.2 would certainly be my choice.

The first thing I wanted to do was upgrade the speakers and amplification, and then see just how the system sounded, and whether or not the dodgy equalisation was due to the OEM plastic speakers, or whether in fact the Head Unit was responsible for the poor mid-range and bass.

At the moment the jury is out deliberating. Something like the 3SIXTY.2 adds quite a bit of expense to the whole project, but then based on what I've spent so far it could be worth it. In that case I would simply replace my PAC SOEM-4 Line Level converter with the 3SIXTY.2 and pass the RCA outputs to the Focal Amplifier.

Hmmm, where is that Credit Card

[yungquan]

JustRight! +1 with your mods. Had a peep in the door cards last weekend and agree with you about the limited space. Did you bolt the spacers into the metal?

[JustRight]

JustRight! +1 with your mods. Had a peep in the door cards last weekend and agree with you about the limited space. Did you bolt the spacers into the metal?

Hi mate,

Yes indeed. I first screwed the MDF spacers to the doors and used black silastic to seal them. I then used long broad threaded screws to go right through the MDF and just take up on the metal door panel underneath. This made it much easier to fit and I could do up the screws really tight. The whole thing is very solid. No buzzes or rattles from the doors at all.

Honda have actually done a pretty good job of sealing and insulating the doors.

Cheers.