Happy With Bose Sound System?

Dabunkster · April 13, 2015

Sorry for the delay in my response, was out of town for a couple of days. I mounted the hd900.5 and the mosconi dsp behind the trim panel on the drivers side in the rear cargo area. I also mounted the two crossovers for my 1/2 channel component focals that I installed in the front doors and tweeters in there. There is plenty of room in there to mount the equipment, in fact if you wanted to go crazy I believe you could fit just about any size amp and the dsp in there. I took the jack and jack tools out of the compartment and now store them under the cargo tray under the floor, they fit there, and now this gives me access to pop off the jack panel door and get to the amp which came in useful as I played with the gains on both the dsp and the amp to get things to line up tightly. In addition since that is the location of the Bose amp, it is right behind the factory jack holder. Now just to be clear, I have the "premium" bose system, as it says on the window sticker, but not the upgraded Bose system that is in the Denali or the LTZ that has the center speaker. On that system does your turn signal noise and warning chimes come out of only the center speaker and not the drivers side speaker? If that's the case and you don't amp that signal maybe whoever told you that is right and you would be ok. But I kinda find that hard to believe. Here is why. The output of the Bose amp already crosses over the signal. For example the output of the amp only sends full range to channels 1 and 2, it only sends mids to 3 and 4, and it only sends the sub level to the sub output on my LT. I would guess that would be the case on yours and if you don't amp the center channel, I would be afraid that you might be missing a range of frequencies if you just amp the left and right channels.

As far as doing the install yourself or getting it done. I will tell you that messing with that is not for the faint of heart. I'm fortunate that I have had experience playing with the adding aftermarket to the Bose system in 3 of my previous vehicles so I had a pretty good understanding of how it worked. But I will tell you the 2015 was completely different than the last install I did on my 2004 Yukon XL Denali. Fortunately I had a couple of buddies in the business I was able to pester for some help to get things worked out. I'm not one to waste money on having other folks do something that I think I can do, but if I were a novice I would get a shop to install the DSP and AMP, and tackle the easier job of installing aftermarket speakers. And believe me if you go with a DSP you will spend hours getting it calibrated and set up (I probably have hundreds of hours playing with the equalizer, the mixing board, the time delays, and all) that you will be able to say you have your own thumbprint on the system. IMHO. One last piece of advice. In my opinion the acoustics on the 15 suburban were completely different that my 04 denali. I think primarily because in the 04, my tweeters were on the a pillar where as in 15 they are on the dash. I had a heck of a time keeping my sound stage up front. And for me that is critical. While I like it loud, again I like it clear and with great imaging. Since the vehicles are so cavernous, I found the only way to accomplish that was to set up the rear speakers only to be fill speakers. This allowed the sound stage to stay up front where I am. So if/when you talk to a shop I would make sure that would be part of the conversation.

Madcow2020 · April 14, 2015

You can also turn the chimes down under settings.

Sent from the future via a wifi time portal.

Dabunkster · April 14, 2015

Yes you are correct. I should have mentioned that. But that setting doesn't seem to affect the turn signal clicker volume.

Wrench589 · April 14, 2015

Dabunkster - couple questions for you.

1. Is the signal from the head unit to the rear factory amp an industry standard "line level" signal, or something else? Reason I ask is my '86 Vette has a Bose system in it and the signal from the head unit was amplified, then there was a small booster amp located at each speaker (with 12v power as well). Made adding aftermarket stuff impossible. Was an "all-or-nothing" proposition!

2. What are you referring to for Channel 1, 2, 3 and 4? Is channel 1 the front left and right door speakers? To me, a "channel" is a signal to a give speaker. Hence, a 2 channel amp can power 2 speakers, using a left and a right.

3. You said you wired the "front speaker wire" out of the factory amp to the "ch1/2" input of the DSP. Do you mean the right and left front door speakers? What about the right and left dash tweeters? where did you wire them into the DSP?

4. Do the rear door speakers carry a full range sound, or are they using those small speakers in the back pillars for the high frequency and the rear door fro the low frequency?

5. You mentioned that you wired "the sub channels to ch5/6". Sub channels? Mine only has 1 sub-woofer. Does yours have 2?

6. Does the Mosconi DSP allow you to set which inputs get mixed together and which dont' and then whicj outputs get which mix?

FYI, Our Denali has the center speaker, so GM calls in a "10 speaker system", which it does have - 1 in each front door, 1 in each rear door, 3 in the dash, a subwoofer under the center console, and 2 right at the back of the headliner in the rear pillars (oone each side). BUT, it is only a 9 channel system, because those two rear ones are wired toegther in parallel to a common output from the amp.

Thanks!

Dabunkster · April 16, 2015

1.) I measured 6.5 volts coming off of the bose amp. Plenty of voltage to use line level converters, or even Hi impedance inputs on your amp or dsp, which is what I did.

2.) A channel can be defined any way you want to run it. On the DSP you have the capability of 6 input channels and 8 output channels. In my application I took the Full Range Signal that powers BOTH the LF Tweeter and LF Door speaker and that is Channel 1. The full range signal that powers both the RF tweeter and RF door speaker is Channel 2. The LR door speaker and LR pillar speaker are channel 3. The RR door speaker and RR pillar speaker are channel 4. The Left Sub is Channel 5, and the right sub is Channel 6.

For the output, Channel 1 Is Front Left (both tweeter and door), Channel 2 is Front Right (both tweeter and door), Channel 3 is rear left door and pillar, and channel 4 is right rear door and pillar. Channels 5 and 6 are not used. Channel 7 is sub left and Channel 8 is Sub right.

3.) So with a full range signal coming from the front left output of bose amp going into Channel 1 of the DSP, then out to the front left input of the hd900.5, Then from the hd900.5 I run that signal to the passive crossovers that came with the Focal KR165s. This has one set of inputs and two outputs. One output for the tweeter (which runs a 12db slope at I forget what frequency which is spec'd by focal) to the tweeter to protect it, and the other to the door speaker (at a 12db slope at again I forget what frequency which is specd by focal). This makes sure you are sending the right frequencies to the right speaker on that channel. Further adjustment and crossovers can be set in the DSP.

4.) The rear speaker output from the bose amp are not full range. I do not know the actual low and high pass specifications, but in my estimate they probably put out from about 65-70 hz to maybe 7500-8500. You get plenty of mid-bass, you will get vocals, but you really don't get much top end. Again why I set them up to use rear fill instead of full range.

5.) Yes there is only one subwoofer. You take that signal and split it to give you a left and a right input into the DSP.

6.) Yes. There is a mixer that allows you to send any % of any input to any output. You can download the software and fire it up in offline mode to look it and play around here:

http://mosconi-system.it/product/gladen-dsp-6to8/

I hope this helps.

Wrench589 · April 17, 2015

Hmmmm, you kinda lost me with "In my application I took the Full Range Signal that powers BOTH the LF Tweeter and LF Door speaker and that is Channel 1. The full range signal that powers both the RF tweeter and RF door speaker is Channel 2. The LR door speaker and LR pillar speaker are channel 3. The RR door speaker and RR pillar speaker are channel 4."

First, there is no full range signal for the front. The Bose outputs a front left and right tweeter, and a front left and right door speaker. I assume these are not full range signals, but rather the amp does the crossover function from the full range input signals. Are you saying that the signal going to the front tweeters is full range, and the signal going to the front doors is also full range, not filtered?

Second, which LR pillar and RR pillar are you referring to? The only rear pillar speakers I can find are at the very back of the vehicle, and the left and right speakers are connected together in parallel. So, not a separate left and right signal. Is there speakers in the pillars immediately behind the rear doors also?