Bose mating to aftermarket unit

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OllyS4

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My standard head unit volume has now packed up as i expected it would.
So now I'm looking around for and aftermarket one but would like to know what lead and were to get it from to mate it to my factory fitted Bose system?
I see a few on ebay but don't know which one to get, if any.

I know it would sound better if i rewired the car and changed other things but id rather just plug and play for now.
Any help welcome
 
No doubt an aftermarket system would hook up to the OEM Bose set-up.

But you'll need to at least follow a schematic, in the end, it definitely won't be plug-and-play.

Same amount, if not more time than starting afresh with a regular amplifier source.
 
yes they will work used loads of similar ones in the past mainly from mes and armour all worked fine , alternativley you can make a headunit with front/rear preouts connect directly to the bose by using a homemade block but its a bit fiddly . This is a lot quicker apart from the size of the unit and lack of space.
 
I can certainly supply you the correct BOSE adaptors allowing a plug and play swap.

Is your car fully BOSE amplified, or just rear BOSE amplified?

Are you using a head unit with front and rear RCA pre-outs, or using standard ISO speaker outputs.
 
The last hu i bought came with the Audi Bose adapter. Was a straight plug and play.
 
i'd have to wonder how the power output of the bose amp compares to a modern decent aftermarket head unit...

You probably find that running the speakers directly from your new HU, or hooking up a proper standalone amp, would give better results than creating or buying adaptors to link the bose amp to a new HU.
 
A modern head unit will usually outperform the tiny 20W per channel amplifier used by BOSE and to be honest, I do not personally like the BOSE sound anyway.

However, BOSE speakers are usually 2 Ohm speakers (Porsche / Vauxhall etc / Not sure about AUDI? ) and if you bypass the BOSE amp to run the head unit directly on the BOSE speakers, you may find that you overload the audio stages of the head unit and cause some very expensive problems. (see below what I do for a living !!)

The BOSE amplifiers also utilise non-standard line levels for their inputs which is why the adaptors are required, unlike other amplified systems.

You could (should!) of course, rip out the BOSE amp, wiring and speakers, and replace with a complete aftermarket system for the best results, but I have refrained from suggesting this as the original thread was for somebody who I understood to be wanting a simple plug and play connection.
 
That link is spot on what i need. it is a fully amped system and I'm on a budget so just want a quick easy fix for now.
I haven't chosen a head unit yet so any (under £100) suggestion welcome pref with mp3.
 
Hvae a look here, decent prices, just bought my missus a Pioneer from them with direct ipod control for less than a £100 notes, DEH-50UB, great little headunit, plenty of other cheap options on there too.

http://shop.audioimages.co.uk/index.php
 
I've just replaced the Delta CC head unit that came with my car to a aftermarket Sony BT3600-U as I wanted a hands free phone unit, and Halfords were selling this for 117 quid. Also, as suggested by other folks on the ICE forums on here, I went to the hassle of removing the crappy Nokia amped speakers and replaced them with some cheap pioneers and ran some new cabling to the ISO loom at the front of the car. Removing the rear speakers is a real pain though, having to remove the whole of the back seat to slide the parcel shelf out to then remove the speakers. Sounds ok, but I now need to replace the front door components and probably stick a small sub in the boot. Any suggestions for this, as the head unit I bought has seperate RCA outputs for a sub woofer, could I just run some RCA cables from there to the boot and wire a sub straight on ?
 
I had a set of infinity components to fit in the front doors, however once fitted they sounded worse than the nokias. Close inspection revealed that the adaptor frames that attach the speaker to the door were shaped such that the rubber suspension that holds the cone was being crushed against the adaptor dampening the speakers output.

I ended up refitting the nokias and installing a sub in the boot, which i find gives excellent sound as the nokias arent struggling to produce the bass (i keep the equaliser at the 'flat' setting) and the sub nicely fills in the low end.

I didnt want to take up any room in my boot with the sub, so we ended up making a fibreglass enclosure which sits inside one of the side hatches in the boot area and sits flush with the side of the boot: http://lr90.org/Audi/stereo/ some pics in there you can look at.
 
fronts are a pain, ive done the same next time im gonna custom build some. Sub wise you will need to run a power lead from battery and remote and rcas from head unit . Straight forward but time consuming. Imo you need quite a powerfull sub as opposed to a small car made of **** . Getting sound into the cabin you will loose a lot , 6.5 and 4" are never gonna give good bass
 
Mines nothing particularly big or special, just a 12" pioneer, and a 300W RMS Sony amp, big difference is that unlike some chav in their shitbox you not trying to blow the rear screen out, just provide enough bass to provide a decent balanced sound to the music.
 
hi, I have just recieved a cable to allow me to connect up my alpine hu to my non Bose setup. I got the one for the two rear channels amplified as I thought the standard rear speakers were amplified? But using the cable doesn't give me any sound from the rear, it has the RCA plugs which I have put in the sockets for rear (there are 2 more for front aNd sub). Have I purchased the wrong lead or am I doing something wrong? Any help would be great thanks.
 
Nogwuy, is there any options on your stereo to turn the pre-outs/rca-outputs on? That maybe all you need to do, at the moment it may be just playing sound down the peaker wires in the other connector block.
 
this is the one i got

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&item=400019428068

not sure if its the correct one for my non bose system though as the rear speakers arnt making any noise?

maybe i should have got this one

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Audi-A3-A4-A6-A8-TT-Cabriolet-ISO-Adaptor-Car-Leads_W0QQitemZ400019425573QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUK_Cars_Parts_Vehicles_Terminals_Cabling_ET?hash=item400019425573&_trksid=p3911.c0.m14&_trkparms=72%3A1301|66%3A2|65%3A12|39%3A1|240%3A1318

without the rca plugs for my non bose setup? anyone know where ive gone wrong?
 
thanks for that, i di have a look in the menus (its an alpine x001 full speed ipod jobbie) but i couldnt see any way to turn them on/off. i used it in my other car with a sub connected to the sub rca bit and didnt need to turn thaton/off (although there is a separate volume for the sub on the hu). tried plugging it in the sub rca too but still no sound to the rear. does anyone know for sure if the rear speakers for the non bose system are amplified? i thought it had a mini amp thing built into one of the speakers? i remember seeing something in vag com about the stereo and changing the coding between a standard and non bose system, would that make any differance now that i am not using the standard hu? cheers

stapo69 said:
Nogwuy, is there any options on your stereo to turn the pre-outs/rca-outputs on? That maybe all you need to do, at the moment it may be just playing sound down the peaker wires in the other connector block.
Click to expand...
 
Dave DND said:
Make sure that you have wired up the remote lead correctly, or your head unit will not be switching on the Audi amp !!
Click to expand...
aaaaaaaaaah that could be it! will have a look tomorow any idea which wire i have to connect it up to? cheers
 
its usually blue and labelled as "amp" or "remote" on the head units loom.

Seems to me the sensible approach is to take the proper speaker outs from the head unit and run them directly to the rear speakers. The audi amp is about 20w whereas your headunit will output a lot more than this.
 
The blue lead off the adaptor needs putting onto the blue amp/cont off the loom of the alpine harness , then obviously if running another amp for a sub jumping into again , also one other thing use a signal seperator/booster if radio reception is poor , this also needs a feed to turn it on
 
do your seats fold down? if so rear speakers are easy ,and as aragon says yes you could run direct too rear speakers and wont need to take speakers or shelf out to do that just check the ohm , im pretty sure they are 4 but just check .
 
thanks guys, I'm now gonna go and have a try. My rear seats do fold down if I unlock them with the key. I also have a sub to put in too so that should make that easier aswell. Cheers.
 
when i installed my sub i removed the rear seat base and the boot carpet (it bolts down in an avant) and ran the cables to the amp which is on the back of the seat, then ran the sub cable across the boot floor to the sub, with the carpet back in the only bit you can see is the wires running down the edge of the seatback and dissapearing down underneath.
 
it worked, just had to connect up the blue/White lead. The rear speakers are very quiet compared to the fronts now though. Is this because the hu is doing a better job of amplifying the fronts than the Audi amp on the rears? Cheers guys.
 
The head units amplifier is probably 40-50w and the audi one will be around 10-20w per channel. As such for a given output volume the rears will get less power.

In normal circumstances, when your using an external amplifier, the amplifier would have a gain control, which allows you to compensate for this difference in power by adjusting the line level signal being fed to the amp up or down.

You could emulate the gain control by using the head units fader control to fade the volume to the rear until they sound about equal, or the better option would be to bin the audi amp all together and run some new cables from the headunits speaker outs to the speakers directly. Would probably sound better too.
 
Yeh thanks, I have faded too the rear to even out the sound (is about 80% rear to make it sound right!) so will definitly run some more wire back to bypass the Audi amp. I was wondering though, is there a way of making the stereo power off when the ignition key is out the same as the concert hu did? As the alpine one doesn't seem to do so. Thanks guys.
 
yep i did this on mine.

The problem is that the concert only has a permenant live connected to it, and uses some signalling from the car to turn it off with the ignition.

What i did was to splice into the stereos live feed and run it to a relay (i used a 4 pin vauxhall fuel pump relay as i had it laying around) then take the relays output and feed it to the stereos ignition live.
You then need a trigger for the relay, theres two that can be used, one in central electrics labelled 75X which will turn the radio off with the ignition switch, and the other is on the back of the ignition barrel itself (i think its a small red wire) which will allow the radio to stay on until the key is removed, the second one more closely emulates the concerts operation, and also means you dont have to sit with the ignition on if your listening to the tunes while parked up. I used 75X but its sometimes annoying to have to have the main ignition on to listen to music.

Then all you need to do is tie the relays coil to ground and it should all work nicely.

If you get yourself a relay, it should have a picture on it of the circuit and some numbering, if your not sure then post up the pic and numbering and i'll tell you what to put where.
 
cool, will any type of relay do then? I think I have one from a mk 2 golf winscreen wipe timer thing?
 
hmm that probably wont work, generally the ones that will work will have 4 or 5 pins and dont do fancy things like intermittant wipe... just plain old relay is what you want. You'll often find them in places where you've got a high current source such as a fuel pump or heated rear screen as it means the control circuitry can be made much smaller and simpler. Some cars also use them for things like lights as it stops the stalk having to handle the current for all the cars lighting.

If you dont have one laying around, you can get standard relays from maplin or halfords or your local motorfactors...
 
ok mate I will get hold of one and give it a go. Got the hu all wired in now with my 2 iPod connections through into the glove box neatly. Only thing is that the face of the hu is set in about a 1 cm from the dash and looks daft! I havnt fitted the dash blanks for the gaps at the edges yet as I'm still waiting for them in the post. Do they solve the depth issue also? Or do I need something else for that? (car is a face lift if that makes any differance).
 
the fill in pieces on my car just fills in the corners, they dont effect where the hu sits...

On ours, the head unit itself sits back into the dash a little, but once the front trim piece is fitted it sits about flush, and with the face on it sits a little proud of the surface...
 
the cage should secure the unit top and bottom and sides when fitted , have you put the trim surroung on and clicked the unit into the little retaining catches on the sides?
 
I have clicked on the frame bit and the housing cage thing is secured firmly with the hu clipped in correctly at each side. The problem is that it sits too far into the dash so the face of the hu is recessed. Do the side blanks have a lip bit that goes under the hu frame slightly to bring it up flush to the dash? If not I will have to re set the cage think a bit further out so it all lines up I guess? Just realized that the hu screen and lights dim to match the dash when I turn on the ignition which is cool! I have changed the lighting to red too, so it's a pretty decent Mach to the dash also
Thanks for all the help/advice guys, I will put the sub in tomorow when I have the power lead. (sorry for hijacking the original thread).
 
yes they do trim should be level with dash some thing like this
DSC01151.jpg
 
Just to let you all know I've got mine fitted and working now.
got the wire from the link in post 3 to ebay and that works with my fully amped Bose system.
I had to connect the blue/white wires from the hu to the ebay wire loom and get a aerial plug adaptor.
Two downpoints...
1) i forgot to take my CD cartridge out and had to refit my old stereo again just to get them back
2) because of the HU is amped and so is the rest of the system my volume is abit sensitive.
 
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