club.liberty.asn.au

Hi all,

My McIntosh amp was making some buzzing noises every so often for about six months, and then we suddenly lost all sound.

I pulled the amp out today, and found the following...

Once removed from the car, some surface rust is immediately visible on the arm that holds it up off the air-con vents:



Once removing the "security tape" which covers several of the screws required to remove the cover, corrosion could be seen on the screws themselves, as well as a small amount of surface rust on the casing:



Finally, after removing the casing, corrosion and damage is apparent on the PCB (visible top left and top right of the image - the top right area is right below the rusty section of the casing, which is also where the worst corroded screw was:



Topsound quote $800+ to repair the amp - I'm going to try to find a way to run a better replacement...

Subaru stealership wants $1552.55 to replace it with an OEM replacement - there's none in country, so 6-8 weeks at best, assuming they even have one. Or I can get a MUCH better amp (currently considering Audison AP8.9 and AP1 combo) for considerably less...

Manaz wrote:Subaru stealership wants $1552.55 to replace it with an OEM replacement - there's none in country, so 6-8 weeks at best, assuming they even have one. Or I can get a MUCH better amp (currently considering Audison AP8.9 and AP1 combo) for considerably less...

There are usually plenty of people selling their stock amps as they've upgraded. I don't see how $800 or $1550 would ever be an option over $50-200?

There should be plenty of spares around.
My wagon sub is in storage as I've upgraded to a sedan amp with the resistor mod on the sub channel.
It runs a Polk mm840 w/ 1" spacer in the stock location, the grille needs standoffs & trimming to fit over...

See svxdc's posts on LGT and nasioc for the lowdown on sub upgrade harnesses.

alexeiwoody wrote:

Manaz wrote:Subaru stealership wants $1552.55 to replace it with an OEM replacement - there's none in country, so 6-8 weeks at best, assuming they even have one. Or I can get a MUCH better amp (currently considering Audison AP8.9 and AP1 combo) for considerably less...

There are usually plenty of people selling their stock amps as they've upgraded. I don't see how $800 or $1550 would ever be an option over $50-200?

You'd think so - but I can't seem to find any at present. And there's no guarantee that they won't have similar issues - mine would be most of the most recent ones on the road (it's a very late MY09 build)...

All post faces are the same, there's message Louisa she might have one.

I've decided to take the plunge and order the Audison AP8.9 bit. Doing some work with Marty from FHRX, we've estasblished that the front doors have their own crossovers in them, so a separate channel isn't required for each door speaker (given there are four speakers per front door, I'd either have to run a 4-channel amp per door, or introduce a crossover in each door myself).

I'll be bridging two channels for each front door, run each back door off a single channel, and will bridge two channels for the sub. I'm not going to bother with the centre speaker at all - from what Marty has said, the McIntosh headunit/amp combo just synthesises what belongs in a centre channel anyway (given there's no centre channel information provided by any media my headunit can play. Worst case, if we find I do need the centre channel, we swap the centre speaker for the sub, and I grab the AP1D to drive the sub).

the AP8.9 bit isn't just an amp either - it also has its own DSP built in, and it was designed by Audison for OEM integration to start with.

In addition to the amp, I'm also grabbing two boxes of Focal BAM XXL (each box has a roll 50cm wide and 3m long, so 6 square metres). I'll be focusing on front doors and parcel shelf to start with, and then other areas of the car as Marty suggests (he's already mentioned wheel arches). The BAM does two things - dampens vibrations, but it also cuts noise coming into the car (Marty mentioned as much as a 6dB decrease in outside noise, depending how much of the stuff you use). Each box weighs less than 3kgs, so the weight it adds to the car isn't significant. With the BAM and a decent amp (we discussed some options other than the Audison, but this seems the best option at this stage), Marty said the stock speakers actually do quite well.

We'll see how things sit once it's all installed.

The Audison 8.9bit is great. Takes the factory feed fine, provides a really clean output. I've had it installed in the boot, hidden away from view, with a USB port available for connection to a PC for tuning.

I've got it installed as follows:

Channels 1&2: Bridged for front left
Channels 3&4: Bridged for front right
Channel 5: Rear left
Channel 6: Rear right
Channels 7&8: Bridged for the sub.

The centre speaker (in the dash) has been disconnected.

Sound is good. It isn't loud, this won't win any dB awards - but it's clean and well controlled. I'm very happy.

Glad your new amp is going well.

If it I'd of seen this sooner, you could have just had my spare Mac amp for free. If anyone needs one, drop me a line...

That's Hottt
http://www.pasmag.com/car-audio/test-re ... ier-review