# 2008 Ferrari F430 Spyder - Mosconi, Illusion, Morel



## VP Electricity (Apr 11, 2009)

Not every day that most of us get to see, much less work in, a Ferrari. My partner Tom here at Musicar has been working with the Ferrari dealer for years, though, and we do have a good number come through here. 










The vehicle owner came to us as a radar/laser countermeasures customer with his other vehicle, before he found this one (it is in amazing condition for a five-year-old car, and it's what he's been looking for for years). We did radar and laser in this one immediately upon its delivery (he bought it out of state and had it transported), and he was unsure if he wanted an audio install. He finally decided to upgrade the audio just before he took it on a short vacation trip. He was concerned about how good the audio could sound with the convertible top down (his preferred mode to drive the car), and he was also concerned about the stock appearance of any subwoofer enclosure (I guess if you Google "Ferrari subwoofer" you can see some scary pictures!)

We had to keep the vehicle stock in appearance, retain the stock head unit, and overcome wind and engine noise with the top down. We also needed to make the system sound great with the top up OR with the top down, and for driver-only or two-occupant situations. 

The stock system was deck power to 6.5 woofers and 1" tweeters in the doors. The woofers, surprisingly, have series inductors on them, which would be great if there were an amp (the insertion losses of series inductors on 7.7V of deck power output are not inconsequential). As you can see, there wasn't much sealing the woofer against the door panel. 





























The head unit is by Becker, and it shares a lot of tooling with the old TrafficPro. We installed a Bluetooth streaming audio link so he could listen to external devices. 










The head unit has 2.6V of output on the preamp outs before the onset of clipping, and it has a subwoofer output as well (it was unused, but we were glad to find that the output was live, although unpinned from the factory). There was no processing being done to the signal at all, so no correction was required, and no external volume control was needed either. 

*The system:*

- Becker head unit into Mosconi 4to6 DSP
- Four-position preamp switch used with 4to6
- Mosconi AS100.4 running the midwoofers and tweeters actively 100WPC
- Mosconi AS200.2 running the subwoofer ~600W
- Illusion Audio C6 components in the factory locations (no passive crossovers)
- Morel Ultimo 8 subwoofer in a small sealed enclosure

*The front stage*

The Illusion Audio Carbon 6 was installed into the Ferrari stock mounting bracket. The front gasket was added to get better sealing of the mount to the back of the door panel. This improved the midbass attack a great deal. 




























The door panel is made of pretty thick fiberglass. It's very stiff, so its resonances are higher than the typical door panel. We used VMAX HD on the door to tame the vibrations. 



















The tweeters are in the stock trimpieces, but without the stock grilles. We weren't able to angle them for on-axis orientation due to the client's restrictions on appearance - but we found that the A-pillar blocked a lot of windshield reflection, so we were able to EQ the treble response without a lot of HF energy being immediately reflected off of the glass and making things painful. The copper-colored domes are not nearly this obvious visually in person - the camera really highlights the contrast. 




















*The subwoofer enclosure*

Subwoofer had to be discreet, look stock, take up almost no room, and have enough output to be worthwhile in a convertible. We decided to use the Morel Ultimo 8 carbon-fiber cone, cast-frame subwoofer. It's a nicely-made woofer with a ton of Xmax and a high Pe, and that was important for this application. There are some woofers that model better in a small sealed application than the Ultimo 8, but the ones we modeled all ran out of Xmax or Pe too quickly. 

Tom used these factory mount points and made a bracket for the sub:










Then he mocked up the subwoofer driver:










That let him design this framework around the woofer:










In process:




























Primed, before upholstery:











The electronics rack

The amp-and-processor rack is under the bonnet, and storage-space retention was a prime concern. 

The stick floor under the trim:










The amp floor in development:














































This rack was covered with a panel which was a composite of red acrylic, aluminum, and birch plywood, which was then wrapped in black leather that matched the stock luggage and the interior:














































Then the false floor was wrapped in black carpet:




























The plaque:


----------



## VP Electricity (Apr 11, 2009)

*The finished installation*

Electronics rack:




























Subwoofer:



















iPhone/iPad mini cradle:





























*The sound*

The tweeter positions gave us a wide stage, and the time-domain correction in the 4to6 let us make that stage stretch unbroken between the pillars. The image is solid and there's good differentiation - it's not that loud-mono sound that some T/A'd systems have. 

The midbass attack is pretty darned good - it would be even better with a different midwoofer mounting system, but that wasn't permitted in this project. It's as good as this mounting approach will let it be. Since the closest speaker is the subwoofer, we delayed the subwoofer in the time domain, which helped the midbass handoff a great deal. 

The client says it overcomes wind and engine noise with ease, and reports back to us that he is very happy with the results!


----------



## BlueAc (May 19, 2007)

Wow!


----------



## WhereAmEye? (Jun 17, 2013)

Love this install, especially the subwoofer enclosure


----------



## quality_sound (Dec 25, 2005)

Looks great, Ken!


----------



## bbfoto (Aug 28, 2005)

Top-notch work VP & Tom.  I'd be a very pleased customer with that install as well.


----------



## [email protected] (Nov 7, 2010)

spectacular!~!!


----------



## jt_buck (Jan 25, 2013)

Wow man. Just kind of speechless.


----------



## UNFORGIVEN (Sep 25, 2010)

talk about quality work! nice job


----------



## AzzurriAudioworks (Dec 28, 2011)

Wow! Very nice work, and that sub enclosure looks amazing.

The shop I used to work at kinda had the same deal as you... The Ferrari dealership was right around the corner and we had a good relationship with them, so cars were often coming fresh off the boat from Italy to have radar detectors put in. But never did we get to do any audio on them while I was there. Consider me jealous!


----------



## LBaudio (Jan 9, 2009)

stealth


----------



## jtaudioacc (Apr 6, 2010)

I'm sure with the VP behind the knobs that thing sounds as good as it looks!


----------



## jpeezy (Feb 5, 2012)

bravo! beautiful install, the install that that car deserved!nice work guys. clean ,technical, well laid out,smart sub design.


----------



## boosted2.7 (Aug 14, 2012)

Very nice install!


----------



## strakele (Mar 2, 2009)

Gorgeous install perfectly befitting of the car it's in. Excellent job!


----------



## SQ Audi (Dec 21, 2010)

The install and sub enclosure are stellar. I have a question though...the sail panel tweeters look to be aiming slightly down...is this just a bad photo or does this affect the overall staging? If they are aiming down a bit, I would expect them to lower the stage a bit too. Perhaps just below the dash.


----------



## nammerbboi (Jun 14, 2013)

Very nice work. Wish I had the space and equipment to play around


----------



## jayhawkblk (May 29, 2007)

now that did the car justice. I love the idea for the sub but the iphone/ipad dock is a work of art.


----------



## VP Electricity (Apr 11, 2009)

SQ Audi said:


> The install and sub enclosure are stellar. I have a question though...the sail panel tweeters look to be aiming slightly down...is this just a bad photo or does this affect the overall staging? If they are aiming down a bit, I would expect them to lower the stage a bit too. Perhaps just below the dash.


As it turns out, the stage isn't below the dash - it's halfway between the top of the dash and the RV mirror. 

The tweeters are actually very close to ear level given how low you sit in the car. It's not really whether they are pointed down or not - we don't hear with our legs like grasshoppers  - it's their dispersion pattern and their reflection pattern. 

We don't have the tweeters near the windshield - the wrapped pillar "soaks" up a lot of the output that might have a chance at early reflection off the windshield. The driver tweeter is not nearly on axis for the driver, though - 45 degrees, maybe 50? - and the pass tweeter is probably 30 degrees off axis for the driver. 

We made four preset settings for the car - Driver Top Down and Driver Top Up, and Both-Seat Top Down and Up. One of the differences was how we EQ'd the treble. 

So, we EQd the top end of the driver tweeter differently than we did the top end of the passenger tweeter in the Driver-Only DSP presets. We compensated for the off-axis effects of "beaming" on the top end of a piston's output. When you have a lot of early-reflection, especially off of glass, this boosting of the upper octaves can come back to haunt you. 

That's why, in the Top-Up tuning settings, we didn't boost as much, since there was a lot more reflected energy off of the side windows.


----------



## customtronic (Jul 7, 2007)

Great work as always!


----------



## simplicityinsound (Feb 2, 2007)

Tom is an absolute genius...

VP on the other hand...meh...

hahahahaha

awesome awesome awesome work guys


----------



## jvctan16 (Jun 11, 2013)

Wow. The install is awesome. Its as if it came from the factory as part of the original stock.


----------



## Golden Ear (Oct 14, 2012)

Beautiful install on a beautiful car. Well done!!!


----------



## edouble101 (Dec 9, 2010)

VP Electricity said:


> *The finished installation*
> 
> The client says it *overcomes wind and engine noise* with ease, and reports back to us that he is very happy with the results!


Excellent install. I do not know why anybody would not want to hear a Ferrari engine though


----------



## cajunner (Apr 13, 2007)

very nice work

looks like there was room for some custom aluminum mid mounts, those steel factory rings have some dimpling to them.

maybe even a mass-added piece of solid surfacing material to reduce the space between the grille and the invert motors. Then you could have used some butyl rope to fill in the space between the solid surface ring and the panel, which would have provided even more isolation between front and back waves.


----------



## reithi (Mar 29, 2012)

Sweeeeet!!!!.

The sub with matching leather and red stitching has blown me away. Besides, there are not many builds out there where birch plywood has been used.

I have picked up a trick or two from this one so keep the build logs coming in future.


----------



## 07azhhr (Dec 28, 2011)

Nice build. Looks like you could teach Ferrari a thing or two about hiding the mounting hardware lol.


----------



## req (Aug 4, 2007)

looks great - specially the phone\tablet dock. where is the build log of that thing lol.

its disapointing the customer didnt want you to build out the sail panels. it looks like it would have been very straight forward to put a small ring more on-axis instead of the OEM "toward the dash" angle. the boot install looks great as well. i love the use of T-nuts and plywood instead of MDF.

lots of really top notch installs on this site as of late!


----------



## crx4luke (Aug 9, 2008)

Echo on the iPod holder. That is awesome. Also love the remainder of the install as well.


----------



## gijoe (Mar 25, 2008)

Incredible work, my favorite part is the stitching on the enclosure. You really made this project appropriate for a Ferrari!


----------



## Eggroll (Mar 2, 2012)

Wow nice work!


----------



## PerformanceAudioLVNV (Apr 1, 2010)

Beautiful work! Tom's eye for design makes me want to beat my head against the desk. Everything he builds is simply amazing! And the craftsmanship behind it is second to none! His execution of even the simple things just scream high quality.
One day I'm gonna sneak out there just to watch & take it all in!




























Subwoofer:



















iPhone/iPad mini cradle:





























*The sound*


----------



## SUX 2BU (Oct 27, 2008)

As said already, excellent work. I appreciate the pic of the formwork done on the subwoofer enclosure. 

Was the phone cradle a scratch-built custom piece or available off the shelf?


----------



## aholland1198 (Oct 7, 2009)

Great work. Very classy sub box. 
I do have a silly question, but I have searched for the foam you used around the mids. Can you tell me where one might find this? 


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


----------



## optimaprime (Aug 16, 2007)

Wow !!!! This some serious badass work! Where do I buy that phone craddle/slash ipad craddle ? Soooooo badass man love it!


----------



## optimaprime (Aug 16, 2007)

And that sub woofer box damnnnnn pure audio sex !


Time to clean up now


----------



## PerformanceAudioLVNV (Apr 1, 2010)

Tom builds those phone cradles. They're a work of art!




SUX 2BU said:


> As said already, excellent work. I appreciate the pic of the formwork done on the subwoofer enclosure.
> 
> Was the phone cradle a scratch-built custom piece or available off the shelf?


----------



## optimaprime (Aug 16, 2007)

I need one !


----------



## eddieg (Dec 20, 2009)

I'm sorry if I am going to be rude but there is no other way of saying this - I had a HARD-ON just from reading the subject line!

:laugh:


----------



## PerformanceAudioLVNV (Apr 1, 2010)

eddieg said:


> I'm sorry if I am going to be rude but there is no other way of saying this - I had a HARD-ON just from reading the subject line!
> 
> :laugh:


I'd say that's a normal reaction. Lol


----------



## colled96 (Feb 2, 2010)

Outstanding planning+workmanship=perfect execution. As near perfect as you can get without any mass fabrication. outstanding work guys!!!!


----------



## Lunchbox12 (Sep 4, 2011)

Very cool install given the constraints! Well done!!!


----------



## The Performer (Aug 12, 2012)

Just think of how much better it would sound if yall were using some quality equipment like boss or planet audio.... 

Sent from my SCH-I545 using Tapatalk


----------



## VP Electricity (Apr 11, 2009)

The Performer said:


> Just think of how much better it would sound if yall were using some quality equipment like boss or planet audio....


There are always tradeoffs


----------



## Chaos (Oct 27, 2005)

That is one b-e-a-utiful install.


----------



## quietfly (Mar 23, 2011)

much like the car the system is a work of art....


----------



## SUX 2BU (Oct 27, 2008)

PerformanceAudioLVNV said:


> Tom builds those phone cradles. They're a work of art!


Wow.....really. That's impressive!


----------



## wilcofaniam (Feb 6, 2014)

I like how the iPhone cradle, subwoofer enclosure and Mosconi amp rack all blend into their environment. Thank you for sharing this build.


----------



## rdubbs (Sep 26, 2012)

I have no idea how I missed this thread! That is fantastic work, and I agree with everyone, that iphone/ipad cradle is awesome!


----------

