After reading up on a Speedhunters article by Jordan about his RS4 audio upgrade, I was that impressed I decided to bite the bullet and treat myself to one too.
The DMX7017DAB is a double din mechless unit with a large touch screen display. The minimal buttons along the bottom edge gives it a more modern look without distracting you much.
It has the bells and whistles you expect to find on a modern aftermarket stereo like DAB, Bluetooth, rear USB, steering controls etc. What drew me to this was a couple of things. The first being the integrated dash cam.
With the dash cam plugging into the back of the unit, you can view the Camera aswell as play back recorded footage and photos. The camera has a built in shock sensor, a message promptly appears if the car has been hit in your absence, and you can review the footage straight away.
The second feature that I loved was the ability to mirror what my phone does. For Android an app called Android Auto is required. This allows you to mirror Google Maps/Waze onto the stereo, while still being able to listen to Spotify/Google Music and make/receive phone calls! Very handy for those road trips or convoys to car shows
Another feature the Kenwood unit has is a reverse camera. You can pick up a generic camera off eBay or Amazon for not a lot of money but I didn’t want the extra grief of splicing and hoping the built quality would last. So I went with Kenwoods unit and I’m glad I did. Direct plug and play and all I had to do was splice into the reverse light loom
I finished the install when darkness fell so I’m eager to see the quality in the daylight
The rear speakers have been crackling for awhile so this was one job that needed addressing more than anything. I didn’t know what I was letting myself in for until I was half way through it…
The rear seats, door cards and trim had to be removed before I could touch the parcel shelf. The parcel shelf area was covered in a black dust, thinking it was the parcel shelf material disintegrating, I was wrong.
As you can see, there wasn’t much left of the stock Clarion speakers, no wonder the sound quality was so poor! The new speakers dropped in a treat and I managed to reuse the original fixings. At the point I wished I had bought the wiring adapters but nevermind.
With the rear interior put back together it was time to tackle the front speakers. This was ALOT easier, a few trim clips and screws and access was easy. Luckily the front speakers already had the adapters (weirdly enough) so that was plain sailing.
I did buy some sound deadening pads to put on the inside but space is limited and daylight was becoming less and less. I’ll tackle this at a later date.
The last thing on the list was to install the slim subwoofer. I was hoping it would fit under the seat, but upon removing it I didn’t realise the centre is humped and tapers down. So I decided to put it behind the seat instead.
The wiring is a lot simpler, all of the wires go into a single plug, none of those nasty terminal screws we had ‘back in the day’. The hardest part was routing the live cable through the bulk head (wheel and arch liner off and it’s straight forward from there)
So there we have it, a full multimedia upgrade! I still need to play around with the equaliser, then I’ll get a video sorted
