bring-the-noise
After quite a lot of dicking around I finally have a functional subwoofer in my car. I ordered an Infinity Basslink powered subwoofer from CarDomain.com on the 9th and received it on the 14th. Since I neglected to use the intervening time to order a cheap amplifier install kit from Crutchfield -- or CarDomain, for that matter -- or check the stores in town, I ended up going to three different places that night before settling on a Monster amp wiring kit. It appears that you're going to end up spending $50+ to get one locally. If you buy the first thing the salesman puts in your hand you'll spend $100+. I bought the 200-watt amp wiring kit (8 ga. wire + remote turn on + misc. bits) and some RCA cables. I could have had the sub installed at Best Buy for $60 but I opted to spend $54 on wires and spend hours doing it myself 'cuz I'm a glutton for punishment.
Step #1 in any WRX stereo install should be 'remove glove compartment'. It just saves a bunch of time when it comes to fishing wires through the dash. (I generally don't do that until I've spent at least 20 minutes attempting to do it the hard way.) A corollary to that might be 'remove engine' if you're running a new power cable to the battery. Since that wasn't really, what's the word... 'convenient', I muddled through and ran the wire with the engine in place. Getting that power to the back of the car isn't too difficult, all the side molding bits come off if you yank on 'em the right way. It does help to remove the back seat too, it's only held in with two bolts and the whole thing weighs about 5 pounds.
Back at the head unit... I had to remove my factory subwoofer harness and hook up the RCAs for the new sub. The four main speakers are still powered by the head unit and the sub has it's own amp. The nice thing is that the head unit (Pioneer DEH8600) has front, rear, and subwoofer outputs and can do much crossover voodoo inside the unit itself.
So, with the car still partially dismantled, I could finally plug in the subwoofer. I barely turned up the gain and had plenty of bass. I closed the rear hatch and settled in to the driver's seat for the first listen. Five minutes later... the subwoofer let out a loud FOOP!! and blew a fuse. Oh, the humanity.
I was a little... disphoric. I wasn't entirely surprised, however, as I had read a review at epinions.com from someone who'd had the same problem.
I reassembled the car and drove to the all-night "misc. auto fuse" store up the road. SuperAmerica. The new fuse didn't help. It turned on but produced no sound. So that sucked.
I called CarDomain the next day and they offered to exchange it but the Basslink is backordered so they didn't have anything to send to me. I called Fast-Trak and they said they'd fix it for free (liars). I schlepped it over to Ultimate Electronics (Fast-Trak drop off point) and within a couple of hours received a phone call saying that they wouldn't work on it at all -- for reasons unknown. I drove back and picked it up that night.
Time passes.
Yesterday -- as opposed to the previous night when it would have been convenient -- I decided to see if U.E. would match CarDomain's price, before I called up CarDomain to exchange it -- and potentially wait weeks for a replacement. The guy said he would -- so long as I buy the 3-year extended warranty. At that point I wanted the extra warranty anyway... I called CarDomain and set up an RMA. They e-mailed me a pre-paid return label which I couldn't print for want of a functioning print cartridge, so I faxed that sucker to the local UPS Store (nee Mailboxes etc.) over my Vonage phone line (yay) and hauled the subwoofer across town (yet again).
Bereft of the dead-weight Basslink I strode purposefully (not really) into Ultimate Electronics and strode out with a brand new Basslink. Elapsed time from dropping off the dead one to having a new one: less than 20 minutes. Not too bad.
(Weeks from now I'll have my original $254.95 back from CarDomain, with any luck.)
I hooked up the new subwoofer in the parking lot, just to save yet another trip in case it decided to implode immediately. Happily it did not die and I had tons of bass for the drive home.
I redid the 8600's automatic calibration with the subwoofer installed and got a much nicer looking (i.e. flatter) frequency curve than the previous times. I think it helped that I positioned the mic a bit differently (seat back upright so it's closer to where my ears are, and the mic against the headrest instead of hanging over the hole in the headrest).
Here's where the magic happens.
The automatic calibration did all this: set the front high-pass filter to 100Hz, set the slope to 6 db (I think), set the rear high-pass filter to 160Hz (smaller speakers), set the slope. Set the subwoofer crossover to 100 Hz, the slope to 18db, the level to -11, and reversed the phase. And it set the AutoEQ and the Time Alignment of all the speakers, of course.
Armed with a freshly charged iPod, containing 265+ hours of music, a freshly calibrated stereo, and an almost full tank of gas, I set out on a TWO HUNDRED MILE, 3-hour+ subwoofer shakedown run (no pun intended). I sampled countless dozens of songs while circling the entire metro area, repeatedly. Instead of anemic low-end response and distortion I have virtually unlimited, effortless bass and nary a hint of distortion at any comfortable volume level.
It sounds really nice... but I think I'm going to run the calibration again because the built-in crossover on the sub wasn't turned up to 120 Hz, and I think I want the sub to handle that instead of the front speakers. I might just tweak the high-pass filters manually first to see what that does. I've got a funky resonance issue with the front speakers that shows up rarely. There should be a couple of ways to fix that. I haven't adjusted the EQ yet other than to set the level on the "Powerful" setting to -2, that's how good the calibration was -- just about everything sounds really good by default.
With the subwoofer's amp handling the major power demands I am free to crank the stereo to the moon. If an unexpectedly loud passage comes along it will just shake the entire car instead of clipping. It's pretty sweet.
I'm gonna snag some of these pretty soon, I'd wager: Tire Totes
In the meantime my Summer tires are sitting in the hallway in 45-gallon "contractor cleanup" bags. Ruffies has some 3-mil bags which are nice but I couldn't find 'em and had to settle for some 2-mil thick bags. 39-gallon lawn cleanup bags are big enough, if I recall correctly, but too thin to block the tire smell; which is important if you're keeping the tires inside a 1 bedroom apartment... with the windows closed all Winter.
I don't think the Tire Totes will completely block the tire smell, since they don't cover the entire... tire, so I may still need to bag 'em, but merely having a handle is probably worth it. Part of the fun of seasonal tire changes, for me, is the schlepping of 200 lbs of tires down to the garage, then jacking up the car four times to change all the tires, then schlepping 200 lbs of tires back up the stairs. On the trip down to the car I take two tires at a time, on the trip up I find that one at a time is the way to go.
I am intrigued by these, though I'd hate to take all of the fun out of jacking up the car with the OEM scissor jack. The lug nuts came off very easily -- for lug nuts -- so I don't need that 32:1 lug wrench. I could use a good 'spinner' lug wrench though.
And, since I'm talking 'bout the car, if I can't get the gunk off the windshield and make the OEM wipers work I'll be getting a set of PIAA Super Silicone wiper blades. Maybe even the ones with wings.
I'm off to the garage with an armload of window cleaner and a bunch of razor blades. (Although, perhaps I should have gotten some steel wool instead: removing wax buildup.) It's very possible that the wipers are just crap. It is a new car but it was manufactured many months before I bought it.