Man I love my Z but I forgot how much I loathe doing audio work in it. It's cramped to work in for anything other than the world's tiniest midget, the plastics can scratch if you so much as look at them funny, and I would rather eat glass than fish speaker wire through the door grommet/harness again (seriously, I'm never doing it in the Z again no matter what). And for the icing on the cake I just went out to monkey around with the new head unit a bit and realized that at some point along the way I threw a CEL that I'll have to investigate tomorrow. Super Duper!
I've always enjoyed good car audio but in 20 years of doing installs in every one of my vehicles today is the first time that doing it has ever made me feel old. I doubt I would ever rob myself of the satisfaction of doing it myself but man it would have been awesome to hand someone else the keys this afternoon!
Now having vented a bit...
On the other hand in fairness having done this once already in my first Z I knew what I was getting into, and ultimately it's totally worth it. I only managed to get halfway through the job today but things are starting to come together, so it wasn't all doom and gloom. I didn't have any nasty surprises with any defective gear (beyond a broken MHL adapter) that I needed to troubleshoot, and programming the ASWC was surprisingly painless this time around. Actually it was even kind of fun doing it from a cell phone.
I've never been a huge fan of class D amps but wow Arc hit a home run with their newest XDi amps. It's not
quite perfect, but for the size and power output I'm not sure I've ever heard a class D that presents itself quite this well. I was a little hesitant to go with something untested, but all doubts have been completely put to rest. For the time being I'm not running active but even with a passive setup my Hertz speakers just came to life with minimal tweaking. I might just save myself the money on a processor.
There will have to be some serious sound deadening done that I'm not especially looking forward to but otherwise I think the worst of my trials and tribulations are behind me. Please, Lord, let them be behind me!
Today has been nothing short of a pain in the ***, but I'm not gonna lie I can't wait to have everything worked out and dialed in! After suffering with the stock system for the last few weeks I'm not sure how anyone who actually listens to the thing lives with it on a daily basis. I'm thinking that it might be therapeutic to use the factory speakers for some much needed target practice.
