# AAAAAAA's 2005 nissan altima 3.5 5.1 MS8 build



## AAAAAAA (Oct 5, 2007)

I have been playing around with the ms8 and a center channel, now it's time to go full out and make it look good... well hopefully.

Some of you may have remember me giving a lot of crap to massive audio and their bogus CEA RMS ratings on their amps. Eventually a rep form massive said :Can you PM me your info or email to [email protected] I would love to make you a believer of our products!!! And so I was put in touch with a great guy and here we are now

List of equipment:
-2 x massive audio CK5 stage 3 (5 1\4 comps)
-massive audio CK6 stage 3 (6 1\2 comps)
-2 x massive audio SW10's (Subwoofer 10inch)
-2 x massive audio NX5 (small foot print 5 channel)










-JBL MS8
-Pioneer double din

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First up the door, the hole seems to small so I traced out how big I wanted the hole









And then I used my scrowling sabre saw with metal blade to cut it out









NExt up is the the wodden ring. I didn't cover it with resin and I regret that. I ended up putting 2 so that the peerless 830883 would fit. What a deep sucka. Although now it is the massive ck6 woofer in there that's not pictured.

















I had to cut up part of the interior door pannel as to much of it was sticking out not allowing the speaker with dual rings to fit. I used clear coaking to secure it in place. It won't squeak, looks stock and it is both secure enough and easy enogh to remove if required. It is not as strong as stock though.


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## AAAAAAA (Oct 5, 2007)

Up Next are kick pannels. I made these a wile ago but have since revisited them. They use to be for 6 1\2 but I added another ring and changed it to 5 1\4. Since I have a baby I also did not want to stink up the car with resin smell but wanted sealed back kick pannels.

Here is how I did it.

Not pictured, I took my plastic kick pannels and a precut speaker ring. I rapped that plastic pannel in press and seal (Resin doesn't eat through it) and then used non-drying modeling clay to hold my ring in place. I could they angle the ring as I wanted with the clay. I made sure the glove box could open and such and then I rapped it tight with stretchy cloth. To secure the back, I used none other then paper clips of various sizes and strength. I used resin and then was able to peal off my mold from the stock grill. 

I get a perfect copy of the stock kick pannel without destroying my kick and stinking up the car. Perfect!

Since the back is so accessible I then put mat and resin inside the pod instead of outside saving me a lot of sanding and bondo. All the exterior needs is quick sanding to get it nice. To bad I can't find my pics of the process.

I do have a few pics of how I managed to seal them.

I did the reverse this time around, I took my new pod and stretched flmaterial over the back and used paper clips to keep it tight in the front.

You can see all the clips holing the material tight.









Here is how it looks like from the back.









So to make the back I used ...










Yep, plain old paper mache! And it works grrrreat!










I put lots of layers... maybe 5 -10 and with it still goey I raped the back with plastic bags and put them in the kicks with pressue on them so it would take the shape of where it needs to go.










Perfectly fitting kicks without getting any resin stink in the car









After the paper mache I of coursed plastered then with resin to make sure mold and water can't get to them. I then used a conbinsation of matt\resin and some bondo long strand fill to strengthen the interior. It does the job, I can stand on them.

Here they are after adding the ring for them to accept 5 1\4's and I got some propell nuts so that I could screw in and out as I want. What a god send these things are.


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## AAAAAAA (Oct 5, 2007)

And now continuing onto the center channel. The altima is perfect for this.

The massive comps come with a tweeter adapter then you usually screw onto the frame of the speaker but that didn't work to well since I am mounting the speaker behind the wooden ring. The adapter can usually be used for upright mounting, but I used t inside the speaker ring.









Of course more propell nuts.










I was glad that I tapped up the entire pannel before using some bondo










Ruff









Much nicer but still varying pin holes










Not sure how to finish it. I am considering sanding the panel down completely and painting it some metalic blue like the car...but that might be to much. I am opened to suggestions.


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## wangan30 (May 27, 2009)

Nice build

Where did you take your Massive Audio stuff?

I'm in Canada too, QC.


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## mrstangerbanger (Jul 12, 2010)

really looks good bro 

keep the pics coming


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## AAAAAAA (Oct 5, 2007)

wangan30 said:


> Nice build
> 
> Where did you take your Massive Audio stuff?
> 
> I'm in Canada too, QC.


Got it straight from the cows teat.

Got a textured paint that seems to match the interior, can't wait to try it out.


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## AAAAAAA (Oct 5, 2007)

Center channel speaker fitment



















Unfortunately the tweeter sticks out a bit past the face and I cant just rap it in grill cloth without there being a pointy middle. 

I am considering using one of the stock grills but making it smaller as the stockers are always so huge. 

I am open to other ideas though.


Bellow is the piece with a milk shake topping to try and get rid of the pin holes.


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## BurnOut956 (Sep 3, 2007)

looking good. is the center channel IB?


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## AAAAAAA (Oct 5, 2007)

Yes IB, the previous driver did quite well that way. No room for an enclosure anyway.


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## AAAAAAA (Oct 5, 2007)

Here is a pic of the beefy 5 1\4 massive comp









Started replacing the 4awg wire with some 0awg i had laying around. You can see the old crappy battery in there... it died on me yesterday... doh!


















Seems like I had a change of plans... I am leaving the 6.5 in the doors to try and figure out a way to do 3 way front stage and still keep the 5.1 surround with the ms8... to bad ms8 only has 8 outputs.









It was time to change out the rest of the wiring to... luckily I was able to find some low price "professional" grade CCA speaker wire at walmart. The thing is damn cheep but it's big and looks good. I realize CCA isn't as good but it is 14awg hehe. I don't know about you guys but I love musical clarity hehehe 









Close up of the kick panel before the 5 1\4 goes in. They are lined with non drying modeling clay and I put a nice hole in the back for some venting.









And here they are with speakers in em


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## AAAAAAA (Oct 5, 2007)

I removed the kicks for now and since my battery died I had to go get a new one:










Also for the pin holes,apparently there it better out there then milkshakes but I didn't know what to use...
So I went off to try something different and this is what I found








Super easy stuff to use and cheep and gets rid of pinholes easily. I couldn't believe it. But it *only* does pinholes, nothing bigger.

Here it is with some paint








And in the dash









Doesn't look to bad, the color is close but not perfect. It will look better once there is something covering up the hole... the hole isn't particularly pleasant to look at.

So I had won 1000$ sonicbux from sonicelectronix and went to the border to pick up my winnings









Sweet! New deck, RCA's, subs and.... yeah I had ordered a battery. Can't believe my battery died mere days before I received this one. Anyone want a deep cycle batt?

Here is a close up of the 15's with the DB meter on them... hehe they are pretty quiet now but once in the car I am sure that will change hehehe









Not that I am big on bass, these will probably just stay a few days, it's going to be to much boom for this audio fanatic.


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## Mako312 (May 10, 2010)

About to buy a 05'. I'm trying to use stock spots for my stuff without too much modification. What size are the door stock speakers? And what would you suggest replacing them with to utilize the stock spots?


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## unemployedconsumer (Sep 24, 2010)

Mako312 said:


> About to buy a 05'. I'm trying to use stock spots for my stuff without too much modification. What size are the door stock speakers? And what would you suggest replacing them with to utilize the stock spots?


Door speakers are 6.5in stock and you can get good depth with spacers (as seen above). Almost anything you want to run should fit with minimal modification on your part.


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## AAAAAAA (Oct 5, 2007)

Yeah front are 6.5's but you pretty much need a ring adapter, not as think as mine, to get get most 6.5's to fit.

The rear will accomidate literally any 5 1\4. the rears were super easy to do, I will psot pics up soon but the stock plastic trim can be used by cutting out just a few parts hehe.


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## Mako312 (May 10, 2010)

AAAAAAA said:


> Yeah front are 6.5's but you pretty much need a ring adapter, not as think as mine, to get get most 6.5's to fit.
> 
> The rear will accomidate literally any 5 1\4. the rears were super easy to do, I will psot pics up soon but the stock plastic trim can be used by cutting out just a few parts hehe.


Thanks. I look forward to it.


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## Mako312 (May 10, 2010)

Also how did you run the power wire? I was wondering for a good spot through the firewall. I might be running 00 gauge welding to a distro but I havent decided. So any ideas would be helpful.

Also whats the size of the tweeters? I cant find this info anywhere haha.

Sent from my DROIDX using Tapatalk


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## internationlriders (Nov 7, 2009)

Mako312 said:


> Also how did you run the power wire? I was wondering for a good spot through the firewall. I might be running 00 gauge welding to a distro but I havent decided. So any ideas would be helpful.
> 
> Also whats the size of the tweeters? I cant find this info anywhere haha.
> 
> Sent from my DROIDX using Tapatalk


Don't mean to jack your thread but I have a suggestion, I ran my power through the fender next to the battery, it runs right through into the cabin and I didn't have to do any drilling, I simply had a helping hand and a coat hanger, when I rerun my 0 gauge I'll post pics of where it runs perfectly.


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## AAAAAAA (Oct 5, 2007)

Most people run 4awg right where the wire for the hood release runs. Just pull out the stock gromet.

I was able to enlarge the hole a bit and get 0awg through it.


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## Mako312 (May 10, 2010)

Yea I'm just not sure 4g will be enough... Thanks.

Sent from my DROIDX using Tapatalk


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## AAAAAAA (Oct 5, 2007)

Amplifier pics, these look really nice. I like the clean and simple look of the anodized black.

The packaging is some of the nicest I have seen for amps, it opens like a chest does and the amp is well cradled in.









slick, gotta love the look of new









100watts x 4 @4ohms and 800 x 1 @1ohm. Not many 5 channels have this power in such a small chassis.


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## AAAAAAA (Oct 5, 2007)

Installed the rear speakers, this was easy the rears accept stock 5 1\4's. All I had to do was cut part of the plastic from the stock speaker plastic mount and a couple of plastic posts from the front to get my massive audio speaker to drop right in. I love it when it is this easy.

Here is it is from the back, normally the plastic would rap all around the speaker, but now it's more of just a plastic piece directly over the speaker.









Easy drop in

















When in coaxial mount, there is no elegant way of running the speaker wire without drilling a hole in the arm\bracket:this is what I did for my center speaker. I couldn't be bothered for the rears though since we won't see them.

For the crossover I trimmed some of the foam stuck on the door. I used a combination of glue and screws, it holds well enough and there is plastic isolating the xover from the door interior. Nice and safe.









Not pictured, I finally added the MS8 so these are logic 7 derived rears. They add space and enhance the listening experience without being really noticeable. Overall a worthy addition.


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## AAAAAAA (Oct 5, 2007)

HEre is the new center channel speaker, it is shallow mount and should fit better then the previous one that was a bit to big


















Well fototime sucks for free pic hosting. Those pics are tiny!

test picasa


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## trumpet (Nov 14, 2010)

It looks good. I like your choice of equipment. I've never seen a Massive Audio system with an MS-8. Hope you get some bigger pictures posted soon.


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## AAAAAAA (Oct 5, 2007)

Here we go

The new shallow 5 1\4 that will be replacing the other beefier and also to big 5 1\4. This is form the shallow line form massive audio. These little things are pretty. Massive knows how ot make things look good. And they are pretty damn shallow. You can also see the 6.5inch standing in the background. Sweet mid it is.


















Here it is from behind, here is a discoloration that seems quite obvious in the pic, but I can't see it normally. I guess it's just the camera that is particularly detailed.









Like the ck series, the SK terminals aren't to exiting









Here is a close up of the cone. Very attractive. We can see the cap looks a bit odd, tha's because these can come in coax mode with a tweeter sitting in the place of the cap.









Here is a nice pic of the outgoing ck5, good looks once again and since I have 2 that aren't doing anything now, these might go into my kick pods for a 3 way front. Of course I would need yet another amplifier.


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## AAAAAAA (Oct 5, 2007)

Now on to replacing it in the dash
The back of the panel doesn't look all that nice hehe.
You can see an extra screw sticking out. This is something we never hear about when guys talk about those hurricane\propel\T nuts, if those things decide to "un-catch" wile tightening or untightening..the screw shall always remain and is essentially unremovable. What a [email protected]$%@!

In any case this thing fits right in.









It's to bad the grill hides the cone... the cone looks really good. Dark titanium like.

Now the panel fits perfectly. I am considering changing over all the brown fake wood trim to the textured black, I like ti but I am not sure, what do you guys think? Looks good or out of place?


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## mrstangerbanger (Jul 12, 2010)

So how does it sound???

You must be running a MS8 how do you like it???


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## AAAAAAA (Oct 5, 2007)

Yes indeed I should include the ms8 pics



















As for the sound, its pretty good, I am happy with it, these massive ck6 mids can play low for a 6.5mid...but I really need to install some subs, should be soon since I just got a table saw, that should help out... might be a while though since it is so cold.

I should be re-tuning with subs by the end of this week, then I should have a pretty good opinion. Right now the center isn't perfect, hard to describe and the width is no wider then the doors\pillars, not much depth either. However it sounds good, it is enjoyable. This spring I will be redoing some kicks and perhaps swithc up tweeter location to try and help with width and depth.


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## internationlriders (Nov 7, 2009)

I'm jealous of your 5spd.  Great looking pods by the way!


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## AAAAAAA (Oct 5, 2007)

^Thanks

I am considering putting them back in.


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## AAAAAAA (Oct 5, 2007)

So I got one of these to help in the box building departement...however it seems like it's going to take me a while to set it up... looks like more then opening the box to get it up and running









So I temporarily ordered up some prefab box to hold me over as the system needs some subs.









This is the first cheep prefab the comes pre-wired with what looks like some bracing AND some sort of goop to seal the seams. I am pleasantly surprised.









HEre are some pics of the subs going in. Yup some more massive audio. These are a no longer in production line, not sure why I got these (guess because they were cheeper in price hehe), hopefully I end up happy with them. I do like some screw terminals on them making them easy to wire, unfortunetly they have some hex tops so they don't continu the tradition with their amps of star top screws.









I decided to take a pic of the rest of the massive gear that was laying around in the basement as well.


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## DAT (Oct 8, 2006)

Awesome Install keep it up!!


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## trumpet (Nov 14, 2010)

Sexy gear. Looks like you're going to have quite the substage. What model are the subs?


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## quality_sound (Dec 25, 2005)

What happened to the RF 15s?


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## AAAAAAA (Oct 5, 2007)

They are the SW10 model. I don't expect much in a small sealed box but we will see.

The RF 15's are sold, to big and to much for my sissy ass hehe.


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## DAT (Oct 8, 2006)

AAAAAAA said:


> They are the SW10 model. I don't expect much in a small sealed box but we will see.
> 
> The RF 15's are sold, to big and to much for my sissy ass hehe.


Those subs are not made any more I believe but they do sound well for the price point.

IMHO when doing a SQ setup the subs are the least important speaker in the car. Sure you want a quality sub but you can always make a decent sub sound fantastic with the right box.


Awaiting updates


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## quality_sound (Dec 25, 2005)

DAT said:


> Those subs are not made any more I believe but they do sound well for the price point.
> 
> IMHO when doing a SQ setup the subs are the least important speaker in the car. Sure you want a quality sub but you can always make a decent sub sound fantastic with the right box.
> 
> ...


Especially at sq volume levels.


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## AAAAAAA (Oct 5, 2007)

Right they are indeed discontinued. I do also believe that subs are less important then the rest. 

I doubt this prefab sealed box is the right box though. f3 is at around 50hz and it runs out of xmax quick(200watts) according to BB pro. And that's with the provided specs from massive, I haven't measured them myself.

BB Pro says these are more of a sealed box sub, however massive recommends ported for a lot more bass extension, bb pro confirms. Should be able to hear them soon, just need to put them in the car and go through a calibration session.


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## AAAAAAA (Oct 5, 2007)

Nothing beats a floating box in a trunk hehe










Still need to mess around with tuning and let the subs break in a bit. If these are anything like the CK components, once they break in there might be a big difference.

I will have more listening time tomorrow.


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## DAT (Oct 8, 2006)

Looking good....


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## JayinMI (Oct 18, 2008)

AAAAAAA said:


> Most people run 4awg right where the wire for the hood release runs. Just pull out the stock gromet.
> 
> I was able to enlarge the hole a bit and get 0awg through it.


That doesn't make it right. You should always run your power wires through a grommet, not a bare hole. Most cars have a factory grommet with enough room to run 4ga through. Some don't. I'd drill a hole and (at least) use a snap grommet to keep sharp edges from cutting into the wire's casing. Seal that up with silicone afterward...or at least butyl rope caulk....ideally, a compression fitting would be better.

I see too many DIY installs where people ran power through the door jamb, or through a drilled hole with sharp edges, or pop a 2" grommet out and run a piece of 3/8" thick 4ga through and don't seal it up...then they wonder why they have problems when they're BCM or alarm or something gets wet.

Jay


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## AAAAAAA (Oct 5, 2007)

^You are right, I noticed some water when running new wire including the 0 awg. When I enlarged the hole, I was able to use a gromet but didn't seal it with silicone, sounds like a good idea though.


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## tprince5 (Jan 11, 2011)

This was a great thread and awesome install. I have an 06 altima that will be running an almost identical setup, but with all JBL product. Did you ever decide if you were happy with your center channel placment? I was going to do exactly what you did for mine, but if you still feel it isn't as deep a soundstage I might fire mine up and as close to the windshield as possible. My ms8 with my JBL comps in the stock location gives me an amazing soundstage even without a center. One little neat trick is to move your seat forward a couple clicks when you run the sweeps for the auto calibration, as you move back to the normal position that you listen in it will make your soundstage appear deeper. Also be sure to keep your head straight up when you turn to the left and right during the setup as some people tend to wind up looking downward when they turn their head. Experiment with running the setup at different volumes as well. I am currently getting the best results with my ms8 at -40 and my head unit at 16 out of 50.

Keep up the nice work!


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## AAAAAAA (Oct 5, 2007)

Hi, thanks for the compliments. I am happy with my center channel but hard to say if I would be happier with it firing differently. I am considering relocating it to the other compartment under the radio, it seems to be a popular place to put center channels of late. And it would stick out less, be less obvious. I also sometimes find my soundstage to be to high but I am aware I could lower it some using the EQ.

It sounds great –soundstage is very good- from both front seats even when the setting is for “driver” and not “front”. I really love having a center speaker.

With some bass boost (I find ms8 tunes perfectly for when the car is turned off but lacks bass when driving) it’s crazy how sometimes it seems like the kick drums powerfully emanate from the center channel (ms8 is really good at creating the illusion of up front bass).

From an installation stand point, following the curve of the dash for that location, it turns out there isn’t much mounting room for the driver because it hits the head unit. That’s why I ended up having to go with a shallow mount driver.

As for a “deep”sound stage, I am not to sure what you mean by that, but the stage is no wider then the car’s interior (it was a bit wider before ms8 with some songs). The center is sometimes very focused and sometimes it seems like there could be a few inches of difference from the sounds coming from a singer’s mouth for instance. But I read that this could be due to xover points, basically I would have either better more focused results by xovering my tweets at 4khz (but the mids don’t’ play well that high) or bringing my tweets closer to my mids.

As for the levels, HU volume has no bearing on the setup but I would highly recommend lowering the volume completely before starting sweep setups as a few ms8’s have screwed up and have allowed H\U music to come through full range to all drivers of course destroying tweets and such.


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