Octave tangles with a beast DynAudio Illusion Audio Mosconi

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Octave
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Having done a few cars for him already Albin brought in his new highly modded and beast of a Ford F250 for some further upgrades. Main thing was whatever was to be added needed to have an OEM appearance.



First up was the installation of a Horn Blaster air horn kit. Knowing he has had vast experience with them I had my buddy Chris Lancaster at The Garage Orlando do the install. And he knocked it out of the part. Everything was mounted off of the frame while being tucked up out of the way using aluminum mounts to ensure against rusting and lines ran clean. The horns were hooked up to the steering wheel horn through a relay operated from the dash aux switches. So Albin can switch from the OEM horn to GET OUT OF MY WAY!!! Chris is also my go to for referrals when anyones asks for a good installer in the area. He's the only one in the Central Florida area that I would let touch my car.





Now on the interior. One of Albin's requests was to have a quieter interior. So in true Jeresy style the interior was stripped in preparation of a full sound deadening treatment.



For the roof and most of the truck Focal BAM was used. It's multi layer of deadener and foam offered the best for sound suppression.



While the headliner was out Albin wanted to do the headliner in genuine alcantara, also an Octave specialty. Coming from the BMW world he wanted that little extra touch to the interior. Given the King Ranch interior I think the alcantara gives that nubuck feeling to the interior.





After the headliner was back in I moved on to the audio source tapping. I ordered an aftermarket plug that is a replica of the OEM plug for the pins. The OEM pins for the front speakers were removed and the aftermarket pins were installed. This accomplishes many things at once. First if Albin ever wants to put it back to stock it's just a matter of removing the aftermarket pins and putting the OEM back in. I try my best not to cut any OEM wires if not needed. Another thing is for quick diagnose the wires are color coded so left/right and +/- can be quickly identified.



The aftermarket wires were soldered and heat shrunk to the signal source wiring.



Everything cleaned up.



 
While the dash panel was out I found a place for the bass remote.





Moving on to more sound deadening the back wall received a layer of Focal BAM.



With the back wall done I turned my attention to the floor which received more Focal BAM. With the carpet out I was able to do my detailed wire runs where I made sure to isolate them from running along any OEM wires. The wires are held down every 6" with Hush Mat Quiet tape. All speaker wire is Straight Wire Wave Guide.





Having already installed a Valentine V1 for him I had a tap for the ignition signal using my favorite style fuse tap.







With wires ran I went about running the wires into the doors. Running one wire into todays doors can be a pain but try running 2. An open area in the molex plug was found and drilled out to allow the wires to pass through.





 














Wires ran into the doors I could turn my attention to the deadening of the doors. In true Octave fashion removable ABS panels were fabricated to cover big open areas in the doors and to allow the deadener to adhere to panels to actually deaden instead of flopping around in space.



Here you can see that the panels were formed to conform to all the different angles of the door.





 
The inside door skin received a layer of Focal BAM.



With the panels removed all the internals of the door can be accessed. This makes life easy for service because the deadener doesn't have to be cut and then reapplied. You can also see the Black Hole Foil on the outside door skin.





Doors deadened the door speakers could be installed. For midranges DynAudio Esotec 162s were used.



The Esotec 162s are mounted to a plexiglass mounting ring that uses OEM mounting points. Plexiglass is only used by Octave because no matter how you treat wood rings moisture eventually will get at it. Here. That's not a concern.











Once the midranges were in and door panels back on I could turn my attention to the tweeters. DynAudio Esotec 102s were matched up with the 162s. Given there bigger size the tweeters needed to be molded into the OEM tweeter pod. Once finished they appear OEM.



 






Front doors done the rears received the same treatment as the fronts.













Interior back in I moved on to the subwoofer enclosure. Making sure that Dexter could do is his thing is the only way to mask off an area before fiberglassing.



 
The speaker leads were color coded heat shrunk and treated with solder.





The subwoofer of choice is the Illusion Audio Carbon 10 for it's shallow mounting depth and great SQ ability while being able to be put in a small enclosure. It is mounted using #8 wood screws.



An aluminum L bracket mounts the enclosure to the OEM seat rails.



Folding the seats back gives access to the main fuse block and tuning cable for the Mosconi 4to6. The fuse block was mounted to the OEM jack mount.





Given space was at minimum under the seat the Mosconi 4to6 DSP was mounted underneath the amplifier rack.



The amplifier rack was then mounted to the OEM seat rails. Was mounted the amplifier rack ties into the other side of the subwoofer enclosure completing the mounting of the subwoofer enclosure.



Speaker wire ends were finished in solder.



Amplifiers mounted and wires laid out. The Mosconi Gladen One 120.4 is running the front stage active while the Mosconi Gladen One 240.2 powers the subwoofer. The RCAs are the Straight Wire Symphony line and custom cut to length in house. I have come to conclusion that from this point forward every install at Octave will receive custom length RCAs. This ensures a cleaner install and no need to bundle up extra slack from off the shelf RCAs.



 
Now on to the fun stuff. The trim panels for the subwoofer/amplifier rack. The overall design was to make sure everything fit under the seats and to integrate the subwoofer/amplifier rack into the interior. To integrate it I used cues from the interior design as long as the colors. The colors were hard to match up so custom dye color matched to the OEM colors was sourced. After that the vinyl was matched to the individual grains of the interior. The attention to detail in the subwoofer/amplifier rack can not be expressed in these pictures.

















One of the finer details was the embossing of the King Ranch logo into the subwoofer enclosure trim.



My favorite detail was the amplifier surround. The door pockets were the inspiration for this.



 


Ok. It's a ****** truck. Has a ****** install. But how does it sound? Given OEM locations surprising. It has pillar to pillar width with good depth but the surpriser is the sound stage height. Its at mirror height which surprised me. Tonality wise the Dyns offer a warm experience while giving you plenty of mid bass impact. Vocals are centered and defined. The Illusion subwoofer fills in the bottom while not being over baring, blends with the front stage and stays up front without any hints that there's a subwoofer behind you. Now as always this is my impressions before speaker break in so I'm anxiously awaiting Albin to break the speakers which I don't think will have a problem with.

In closing you may not hear Albin's system but I'm sure he will let you know he's there with a hit from the train horns.

 
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Octave

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