Hello from California

[Tywhiteguy]

A couple months ago I purchased a 2012 lancer ES Sportback with about 70k miles (not sure of km) and a lot more dents and scratches than I would like but I didn’t even know there was a hatchback lancer until I saw this. It was the first car that I purchased myself and by far my favorite (previous was crappy sonata that I had for far too long). So far I’ve upgraded all the lights to LEDs and added a poor mans DRL, tinted the rear taillights, tinted windows, drop in K&N air and cabin filters, muffler delete, custom horn, evo style nose spray, carbon fiber steering wheel, samurai sword shift knob, pioneer head unit/amp/12” sub (which I’ll be switching to two 12s today) and added a switch for the amp so mechanics don’t drain my battery
May have missed a few but have plenty more planned, RA snorkel on its way, catback, high flow cat, headers/extractors, wheels, brake kit and coil overs to name a few. This forum has already been so much help; shout-out to bumblebee lancerdarryl lancer2014 and all the other amazing people that have helped me out along the way. I’m from California, USA but these fellas from AUS have been extremely helpful and very knowledgeable. Thanks for having me!

[aspir3]

Welcome to Club CJ

[bumblebee]

Thanks for joining up and thanks for saying thanks.
There is a good mine of info here to read thru and learn from.

And welcome aboard

[NathanVen]

@Tywhiteguy are you happy with your Pioneer? Would you recommend it?

Sorry for being off topic. Maybe you can help me. I'm on a quest for a new stereo.

I've been reading reviews about Pioneer stereos but they are useless hype. It's beyond
me why people are doing it.

This head unit landed on my short list AVH-1550NEX. From all the blogs that I've read
one stood out. The blogger was hyper critical about Pioneer and put me on the fence.
The Pioneer stereo review was OK until I've reached the shortcomings section.

How hard is to install these units anyways? What about that radio lag? Is it that bad?

Any tips are welcomed

[Tywhiteguy]

It’s not bad. I wish mine had a dial for the volume instead of up and down buttons. I don’t use it for the radio so I can’t speak too much on that. As far as the wiring it’s not too bad, mostly color to color. I bought a bypass for the DVD system after I installed it and putting the bypass in was very simple, a 10 min job. The Bluetooth (which,aside from the DVD) is all I use and it does disconnect on its own from time to time which is strange. On my old car it mounted with the brackets parallel with the unit but I believe it’s supposed to be on an angle in the lancer because I have a gap. On mine (AVH-211ex) it’s kind of a boring screen tho you’re given the option of maybe 5 colors and that’s it. Soon I want to get one with apple CarPlay I like those interactive screens. My reason for buying pioneer was simply because I had always heard they were one of the top brands and I already had a pioneer amp.

[bumblebee]

Pioneer make decent HU.always great value for $
I have never been overly fussed about their amps though.
My preference is Alpine Amp. I have PDX-F6. Absolutely brilliant. Been using Alpine for well over 20 years.
Can still remember years ago running their amps s hot we could cook egg's on them and they kept coming back for more year in and year out.

[Tywhiteguy]

Yah I hooked everything up myself and I think I may have done something wrong because I have a bit of distortion, it doesn’t go as loud as I would think, and quite simply I’m no professional

[bumblebee]

Lots of distortion is no good
Not only do you get sore ears from listening to it but it will destroy your speakers and possibly your amp
Most people wind the gain control way to high.
I did a write up here on the forum that explains how to do a decent setup.
You need to know how many watts RMS your speakers are and some maths will tell.ylu the AC voltage to be pushing out the amp with a 1Khz test tone running with zero speakers attached.
I think from memory i got the test tone from Stinger Car Audio.
You will need the equaliser on the HU set to a flat response.
You.will also need a multimeter set to AC to set the voltage as it exists the amp

[Tywhiteguy]

Would be great to check that out, do you have the link to that wrote up?

[bumblebee]

From memory you need to download a 1Khz test tone to play thru the stereo with the EQ at flat response
Disconnect all speakers from amp
Have the HU set to flat chat
Have the gain on the amp set to zero
Play the test signal
Now you also need a DMM(digital multimeter) and set it to AC
If you have say 80WRMS speakers and 4 ohm
80wrms X 4 ohm = 320
Then do square root of 320
Answer is 17.88 AC
So with the test tone playing and HU setup to flat response and Put the test leads in to the socket if the amp and make sure you don't short the leads together or you will get the amp if it doesn't have short circuit protection.
Slowly wind the gain up till you read 17.88 volts
Do this for each channel your running the 80wrms speakers off.
Then once done turn the HU volume down to zero
Turn it all off
Plug the speaker wires back into the amp
Power it all up
You should be able to play damn near anything full volume now with zero distortion
It's never failed me yet

[Tywhiteguy]

Ok I still have stock speakers, will this help at all if I find what rms they are?

[bumblebee]

You need to know the RMS rating of the speaker yes.
No doubt they are 4 ohm.
I don't know if the RMS is written on the back of the OEM speaker or not
I tossed mine years ago and didn't bother to check what they were rated at
Lol
Having said that
The OEM speakers aren't all that bad
So long as you have some tweeters in the upper door
You can get OEM tweeters that are plug and play and improve things dramatically

[Tywhiteguy]

Don’t have tweeters on mine just a fake plastic vent looking thing lol so I’ll look into that first then run that test

[Tywhiteguy]

Went to the junkyard and picked up a new instrument cluster but it only had one tweeter!! AAAGGH!! Lol on the bright side it does sound clearer but that could be the placebo affect working on me

[bumblebee]

The cheap plastic dodad you look at the in the corner of the windows
It lifts out
Look inside and you will find a spare plug there
That plug will plug directly into the OEM tweeters
Grab them out of a wreck
Plug it in
Enjoy

It will sound clear straight off the bat

Why?
Tweeters handle all the high pitch stuff from say 10,000 kHz above
The mid range door speakers do everything below that.
So now you have a much better sounding stereo for bugger all just by adding tweeters
And when you drop in something half decent in door speakers and a decent amp you will be amazed at the difference.
Don't let anyone fool you into thinking you need to spend a million $ on speaker.
It's not the speakers that make the difference
It's the AMP
Have a good amp with good clean power being fed into it and it will make a nice clear output signal.
Have a crap power supply with lots of noise and the amp will just amplify crap and give you loud crap.
For door speakers I highly recommend the Jaycar response 6.5 inch kevlar
Absolutely amazing value for money and the sound quality it's bloody magic.
May not be the loudest speaker on the market , but more then loud enough to make you go deaf with.

https://www.jaycar.com.au/6-5-coaxial-s ... r/p/CS2402