# East Coast Finale - 13 Audi A6 Simple SQ Build - Audio Frog, Mosconi, Morel



## simplicityinsound (Feb 2, 2007)

Finally, here is the last of the trio of cars we received from the single east coast customer.  

The 2013 Audi A6 is the most simple build of the bunch, as it is intended as the daily driver for his girlfriend. We wish we could all be so lucky 

the goals:

1. achieve a nice level of sound quality

2. maintain a low key and stealthy look in the interior

3. maintain a stealthy appearance in the trunk and retain all usable trunk space

4. integrate the Mosconi AMAS high resolution streaming device into the mix as 99 percent of the listening will be done via an ipod.

lets first take a look at the car 




























as with the other two cars, and virtually any car that we do utilizing the AMAS system, a mosconi dsp controller is neccessary to retain master volume while streaming. A Mosconi RC Mini controller is thus molded in place of his ashtray, with the door closed, you cant see anything at all:










slide it open, and the RC mini is within easy reach to provide the control required while streaming:










a few build pics from Joey on the controller mount. first, he fabricated a template that frames the controller perfectly, leaving just a thin silver frame around the piece:



















he then transferred the opeing onto a piece of 1/8" acrylic:










and then heated up and bent it to the desired shape:



















then he fabricated a mounting bracket for the dsp:










then the piece was slide into place, and a few layers of filler was applied and followed by fine sanding until it was smooth and a perfect fit for the space:



















and then it was sprayed with SEM black paint:










and mounted to the astray assembly:










moving onto the front stage, which consists of a set of Morel Titanium Elate three way set but with an upgraded supremo piccolo tweeter. since the idea for this car is to be as low hey as possible, i molded the pillars to be relatively off axis and as unobtrusive as possible. 

the car already had the headliner and pillars done up in graphite alcantara, so i wrapped the new pillars in the same material:


















































































here are some build pics of the pillars pods.

first, i cut away some of the material on the pillars, and then aimed and attached the mounting baffles:










mold cloth was pulled, resin applied, alllowed to cure, and then the pods were reinforeced from the inside via a resin/filler mixture:










then several layers of filler followed by sanding got them to be smooth and blended in:










then i wrapped the pillars in graphite alcantara, which took a bit of pulling and swearing 










and the morel cdm 880 and piccolo tweeters were installed:



















while the back of the pillars were received some CLD coverage for reduced resonance:


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## simplicityinsound (Feb 2, 2007)

compared with the pillars, the door midbass mounting was a bit more complex. in typical bose fashion, the stock speaker is a 4" class driver mounted in a odd ported enclosure:










after discussing the situation with Morel, it was decided that we would mounted the elate titanium midbass into the same enclosure and seal it up.

but fist, we had to completely grind down the protrusions on the front of the enclosure to provide a smooth mounting surface:










once that was done, the enclosure received a bunch of CLD coverage on the outside and inside to reduce resonance:










i then fabricated two blanking plates out of ABS to seal up the port openings:



















two spacer baffle rings were fabricated and coated with several layers of ruck bedliner by jesse:



















and jesse secured these to the factory pods via nuts and bolts:










Blackhole STUFF was then put into the enclosure to help increase their acoustic volume:










and the morel titanium elate midbasses were secured in place:










the rest of the door received ample amount of CLD damper, and new wires were run into the doors:










the stock enclosure, now loaded with the morel goodness, was bolted back in place and connected:



















the back of the door card also got CLD coverage:










and finally, the door panel was put back on, and with the factory snap in grill off, you can look at the Elate titanium MW6:



















the same procedure was repeated on the passenger side:























































so thats it for the front stage, now a few pics of the wiring bundle was it travels from the front to the back of the car. as with any rear battery car we do, all signal wires, including spekaer wires were run down the opposite side of the car from the stock power line. in this case, the driver side. all the new wires were ziptied every few inches to the factory harness, and enters the trunk via the same conduit:























































the rear deck speakers were also removed and the rear deck received CLD damper:


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## simplicityinsound (Feb 2, 2007)

moving onto the trunk. as mentioned in the goals, the idea was to retain all cargo space and be totally stealthy, so here is the normal view. which looks 100 percent oem:










lift up the factory floor, and you see a simple fake floor setup by joey with a single Audio Frog GB10 subwoofer in the bottom right hand corner, it is framed by a black vinyl, silver plexi and wood accent trim panel just to give it a touch of flare and match the interior color scheme. the location of the subwoofer is completely dictated by the massive oem battery sitting smack dab in the middle of the spare tire well 




























look up and you will see a big metal amp rack bolted to the rear deck, this houses a mosconi 6to8v8 DSP with all the AMAS goodies attached, and two Mosconi AS200.4 amplifiers, they power the front stage active with 6x200 watts RMS, while sending the sub woofer close to 800 watts. all the wires are neatly organized and bundled and you dont see much of it all. kinda hard to take good pics of the rack from the bottom, so these are the best ones i was able to get:




























onto the build pics of the trunk.

first joey fabricated the basic metal rack:










and then welded on a series of mounting feet to bolt the rack to the rear deck at a flat angle. anywhere there is a mounting point, a rivet nut was installed into the rear deck:














































small metal rods were then welded onto the rack to provide a solid surface to ziptie wires to:




























and the rack was painted black:



















i then mounted the amps and dsp, and wired everything up:


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## simplicityinsound (Feb 2, 2007)

moving onto the subbox. here you see the stock battery mounted in the middle of the spare tire well, thus limiting the sub mounting location to the bottom right hand corners. power cable was run out of the area and up to the rear deck:



















while the stock amp's front high, mid, low and sub signal wires were tapped from the stock amp, the mid and high summed with a mosconi HLA SUM device, and then run up to the rear deck.

when we were building this car, there was some confusion as to whether or not a mobridge unit would function properly in this car as some people have experienced issues. it is likely that the mobridge would have worked in this case, but since 99 percent of the music listening was done via IPOD, the mosconi AMAS was essentially the main signal source so we decided to just go with a simple signal summing post amplifier scheme. replacing this with a mobridge in the future would be quite simple as all the wires were already there and basically the mobridge would just need to replace the HLA SUM sitting above the stock amp.










joey then fabricated a enclosure sidewall that sits next to the factory battery, tapped off the floor, and laid down many layers of glass to form the bottom.














































once that cured, it was pulled out of the car, trimmed a bit, topped with another piece of mdf, and the subwoofer test fitted:




























then, a single piece of flat MDF was cut out, and test fitted into the well,, flush mounting around the subwoofer:



















and the floor was blended to the cosmetic trim panel. in addition to giving the install a little visual pop, this trim panel also serves to hide the mounting bolts for the main floor panel:



















then trim panel was then wrapped in black vinyl, and then the silver painted plexi ring and the wood accent panel was secured to it:



















while the sub enclosure, now painted black, received the Audiofrog GB10



















the enclosure was then boltd to the car:










and the top floor panel covered in black carpet:










so thats it! 

how does it sound?

on the stock signal source, it isnt bad, but really, the focus is again, on the AMAS streaming. but for anyone whos interested, here are some oem signal analysis coming out of the stock amp.

here is the front mid and high signal summed, and at various volumes, very little dynamic eq but not very flat:










here is the front midbass signal at various volumes, and as you can see, a lot more eq variance going on based on volume levels:










and here is the stock subwoofer signal, again, similar to the midbass signal:










so here is the summed front low, mid and hgih signal before any flattening:










and here is what i managed to get after using the 6to8DSP's input EQ:










perhaps the biggest limitation to the stock signal is the midbass dynamic eq, when you turn the volume up, it injects a lot more midrange signal into the mix for some reason, and do the opposite as you go down in volume. this causes the thing to sound a bit strange if you choose to use the stock volume control. 

so my suggestion is, if you plan on using the stock signal source as your primary listening device, use a mobridge, you do end up loosing all your rear speakers unless you plan to add more amp channels to power them (un processed), or go with the AMAS or something similar as your primary signal source.

on the AMAS, the car sounds very nice. the imaging is pretty solid in the middle, and pillar to pillar. height is about half a foot off teh dash and depth is decent. 

tonally, like all the morel elate systems we have done, the car is VERY balanced. with a ton of midbass impact and extension, smooth midrange and very detailed yet not harsh highs. just very pleasant to listen to and the morels always seem to do well being more off axis.

id say the biggest surprised is how well the GB10 audiofrog subwoofer performs. this little single 10, perhaps becuase how well bass gets into the cabin with this car, sounds GREAT! it has really nice extension yet is so "dry" sounding with no overhang that it just dissapears into the music. really really pleased with how the subbass sounds in this car, despite being by far the smallest sub system of the trio.

anyway, thats it for this mini series of "cars from the east coast by SIS"...look for more soon! 

Bing


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## Lymen (Aug 9, 2011)

Love the basic style of this install, especially the wood and silver accents. Great work gents!


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## Bluenote (Aug 29, 2008)

Bing, can you share any thoughts about the sonic differences between the Elate and Elate Titanium series? Very nice build and love the wood grain on the sub!


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## #1BigMike (Aug 17, 2014)

Dude your pillars are so damn AWESOME! Simple but elegant. :thumbsup: You make it look so easy. 

With the german cars, you could use the AMAS with SP-DIF or the MObridge correct?


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## simplicityinsound (Feb 2, 2007)

Bluenote said:


> Bing, can you share any thoughts about the sonic differences between the Elate and Elate Titanium series? Very nice build and love the wood grain on the sub!


the changes are mainly to the midbass and the tweeter, the midbass to me has the biggest change as i myself went from an elate to the Ti elate. it seems more dynamic right out of the box, maybe more efficient? 

as you know the previous elate MW6 was no slouch in the midbass and impact department, but the Ti MW6 i feel is just slightly more in that regard. 

the MT250 to 350 is suppose to be an improvement as well, but i love the 250 so much so its harder to say as it can vary from car to car. 

but the reality is, the Ti isnt a separate lineup from the elate, it REPLACES the elate so its hard for us to compare them side by side as now, the only elate available is the Ti elate


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## [email protected] (Nov 7, 2010)

Lymen said:


> Love the basic style of this install, especially the wood and silver accents. Great work gents!


Thanks!!!!!


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## Bluenote (Aug 29, 2008)

Thanks for the comparative overview Bing


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## subterFUSE (Sep 21, 2009)

+ 1 on using a mObridge with these Audis.

I'm running the DA1 preamp in my 2013 S6 with Bose factory stereo.

When you unplug the Bose amplifier from MOST, the MMI actually downgrades the audio to the Standard version. The Bose DSP, Noise Cancellation and tone controls all disappear and the MMI reverts to the "GALA" menu options.

I also suggest using a DSP with a volume controller, like the Mosconi, Audison or Helix. Tis way you can leave the factory volume control at a constant level and then adjust volume directly on the DSP.

The factory volume knob still works when you have the mObridge, but like Bing mentioned above there are some dynamic EQ issues that arise.

I personally tested the mObridge output on the scope and found that there is zero distortion all the way up to volume level 33 out of 34. At full volume 34, for some reason the sine waves were distorted. So I keep the volume at 33 and use the DSP remote for my master.


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## shutmdown (Aug 24, 2008)

JOey beautiful welding and thats one sexy amp rack!

Bing, those pillars look great. Did the alcantara give you any trouble when wrapping them?


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## Yawar538 (Aug 28, 2013)

Loving the finishing of the install and the hard work put in was really rewarding. The accents' the amp rack and the pillars. Each having its own role to plya in the simplistic install. No wonder "simplicity in sound" is not everyone's game but you guys make each of it true. Kudos (Y)


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## Vidar (Jan 13, 2015)

More candy for my eyes! I really like the trunk and the Mosconi RC mini integration. In fact, all the minis you guys have done, is quite inspirational. 

A quick question (yeah, I've asked it before, but got no one's opinions): do you feel the Mosconi RC mini is enough, compared to the non mini version? Do you/the customers feel the lack of a display isn't a big deal?


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## simplicityinsound (Feb 2, 2007)

Vidar said:


> More candy for my eyes! I really like the trunk and the Mosconi RC mini integration. In fact, all the minis you guys have done, is quite inspirational.
> 
> A quick question (yeah, I've asked it before, but got no one's opinions): do you feel the Mosconi RC mini is enough, compared to the non mini version? Do you/the customers feel the lack of a display isn't a big deal?


i think the lights on the mini do just fine...i havent missed the display...

i think there is something thats cool about the display, but at the end of the day, the regular controller is just...uh...big...


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## Vidar (Jan 13, 2015)

simplicityinsound said:


> i think the lights on the mini do just fine...i havent missed the display...
> 
> i think there is something thats cool about the display, but at the end of the day, the regular controller is just...uh...big...


Thanks for your valuable opinions, Bing.  I've not had the chance to use either one, but my available space is much more receptive for the mini.


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## tjswarbrick (Nov 27, 2013)

Looks great as always. And very informative, not just on the build, but on equipment selection and use, as well.
You guys are awesome.


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