OK, so yesterday I took the car to the audio shop that's about a block from the auto museum/law firm. Turns out the guy who owns it was a client of mine from 2005 - small world. Anyhow, we messed around with the settings on the old Kenwood DNX-8120. We deleted all of the previous phones that had been paired, but still couldn't get the new Galaxy S9+ to pair up. (Later, after restarting the phone on my way home, I did get it to pair, but it kept dropping and then would only pair as a telephone and not media device, so assume the phone isn't pairing correctly with the old head unit). The radio never has been able to receive stations worth a damn. So, the only way to play music in the car now is with a CD, of which I own about 3 (Elvis, Kid Rock and "Party Anthems of the '90's").
Next, we looked at the current setup in the floor of the frunk. It has a 5-channel Alpine amp and then 4 Focal crossovers. There is no subwoofer in the car. The car has very mediocre sound and very weak bass. He said that he really couldn't tell how the speakers were wired up - he said it is possible that there was a subwoofer in the car and it was removed since it is a 5 channel amp. He also said that 4 of the channels could have been used to run the 4 speakers in the front of the car (2 in dash and 2 in doors) and then the 2 rear seat speakers could have been run on the 5th channel. He said he would be able to tell once he started disconnecting wires.
He recommended swapping out the head unit with this one:
https://www.crutchfield.com/p_113DMX770 ... 2310&avf=Y
- head unit.jpg (32.6 KiB) Viewed 2531 times
which is a Kenwood DMX7704S. It has no DVD/CD drive (which I don't care about). Uses Android Auto/Apple CarPlay instead of having a Garmin navigation unit. He said he would install that unit and then try to tune the system to optimize the sound. Then, he said, after optimizing, if I still wanted better bass, he recommended a small powered subwoofer that would sit in the rear window - a flat sub that wouldn't stick up above the seatbacks to block the rear view out. Here is the unit, a Rockford Fosgate PS-8:
https://www.crutchfield.com/p_575PS8/Ro ... tml?tp=114
- sub.jpg (51.83 KiB) Viewed 2531 times
All in, with a new head unit and the subwoofer, installation, tuning, etc., I would be looking at $900. I told him let's just move ahead with both the head unit and the powered subwoofer. So, the car goes in on April 17th for the install. I think it will be $900 well spent.
One other thing, he said that the new head unit will support 2 camera inputs. I already have a backup camera installed and he recommended adding a front view camera on the front spoiler so that I can see how close I am to the curb/parking blocks when pulling into a spot. He said that would be cheap & easy to add, maybe $125, so I'm having that done also. I could alternatively use the input for a dash cam, but I think I'd get more use out of the curb-viewing camera.
BTW, he estimated that whoever did the original setup, with the Passport built-in laser/radar detector plus an active laser jammer, plus the stereo system, that they probably spent over $10,000.
