Anything's possible, but that grille seemed to be about the same size (and construction) as the current grille. I'm still skeptical about the performance of this new system. Guess we'll have to wait and see

 

I would have thought Infiniti's most important users are the masses of people the buy / lease thier vehicles and leave them alone, not the "Johnny Ricer" that wants 10 - 20 more HP or the person who wants a DD upgrade. The G35 is a very popular car, look at ones in a parking lot, most are relitively stock (wheels & tires are the most common exceptions). Seems to me that if you want to make money you produce a product that appeals to the masses of the market you are targeting, not a handful of enthusists.

 

I have to agree with this!

 

Well that is true of all cars except the Scion lol.

Now, we still are infiniti's most important customers because the car gurus do tend to mod their vehicles and we are the people that our friends and family look to for advice in purchasing a vehicle.

Infiniti can do some things to appeal to us, the "marketing hubs" that would cost them little to nothing based on their economies of scale, and wowuld make a huge difference to us while not directly affecting the opinion of the non-modders at all. The people you are referring to wouldn't notice whether the DDin unit was changeable or integrated, but we would. For us it is a defecit value for them it makes no difference either way accept that it may affect the advice they get from us modding car experts.

just my 2 cents, and this is how they tend to operate in the JDM market

 

Just asking, but what sonic advantage is to be gained by having 10" woofers in the doors? Since low frequencies have low-directionality, I would think that a smaller, quicker, more accurate 5-6" would be superior there. Keep the lows (under 80 hz @ 18-24 db/octave) on the rear deck me thinks. But then again, this is Bose and they know best.

 

There can be benefits only of designed correctly - and bass is Omni-directional. The doors themselves will have to be "acoustically" designed in such a way that there are no dead-spots. This is common among applications that used bass drivers in the doors. It is much easier to obtain an acoustic bass signature from the rear desk, as that location is better suited for bass enclosures. And lets keep in mind that these doors better be insulated completely, for there will be some serious harmonic frequencies associated w/a 10" woofer enclosure, and we all know the rattle trap that this vehicles is w/out this system.

What I do not know if the door system is a sub-mid-tweeter array or a woofer-mid-tweeter, and they are locating the sub-woofer on the back deck. I did see in one of the official pics what looks like a center speaker - it's faint but if you looks closely at the attached photo it looks like a center speaker.

Nevertheless, this is still a Bose system, and they have already slapped the marketing name "Studio on wheels" - which means, once again that probably this is all show and no go. Real systems speak for themselves w/out having to slap marketing labels on them, IE: Mark Levinson.

 

OK, a few things. First, since you guys don't know me from adam being that I'm new, a little background. I'm a former proffesional installer and 15 year car audio enthusiast. I love car audio and enjoy the challenges it presents as well as the results you ultimately get out of you work.

That being said, All of my experience has lead me to a couple of conclusions about car audio and especially where it is going in the future.

1. The ideal way to design a car audio system would be from the start at the factory because it allows you to address a number of issues that become more difficult to address after the fact.

2. The closer to stock you are able to keep the vehicle, the better off you will be in the long run.

With these concerns in mind, I look at this infinity system and see a lot of potential. 10" woofers in the door is entirely possible and in fact is a great way to achieve a good soundstage. People will tell you that it is impossible to locate lower bass sounds anyway so it does not matter where you put the subs. To a point that is correct, but not entirely. The flaw in this logic is that lower bass sounds are not pure and like all sounds create resonances that are at frequencies we can easily locate and therefore you can usually still locate the subwoofer within the vehicle by ear. It is very difficult to achieve a "bass up front" illusion with the bass driver in the rear of the vehicle. Placing the woofers up front is the ideal way to solve this problem, but it is extremely difficult to do in most vehicles as they are not designed with space to accomodate large enough speakers in fron of the driver. Another issue many people tend to ignore is the fact that to achieve this illusion at all, you need to filter the subwoofer to very low frequencies only(generally accepted as 80 HZ or below), leaving your smaller midrange drivers to cover territory down to frequencies they cannot effectively reproduce at high volume levels due to simple physical limitations. This leads to an unbalanced sound spectrum with a dip in the lower midbass region of sound just above the subwoofers range which is very important in creating the impact of most purcusion instruments. If you look at really good sounding home speaker systems, they most often have a woofer that plays up through the lower midrange and covers this gap. (It is important to note that the only difference between a "woofer" and a "subwoofer" is their frequency range. A "subwoofer" is simply a woofer that has been filtered to only play extremely low frequencies, there is no fundamental difference in the raw drivers themselves. The woofer in this application will still play those extremely low frequencies, it just also plays slicghtly higher frequncies that can be easily located. this is not a problem since the speaker is in the correct location anyway) So the approach Infinity has taken to this sound system is in my opinion a very good one. Provided the execution and quality of components is there, this could be a great sounding audio system. That being said, if you are looking for rap-style throbbing bass that you can hear a mile away, this is not going to cut it for you.

To elaborate on what I said earlier about being better off by maintaining stock.

Life is becoming more difficult for the audio enthusiast with todays vehicles. First off, it is increasingly difficult to integrate aftermarket components into modern cars. Gone are the days of the traditional single DIN headunit. The difficulty in replacing this key piece of the puzzle creates other problems as well, since higher-end factory systems are designed as a cohesive system they generally do not repond well to being modified as aftermarket equipment is not generally designed to work with the OEM equipment. Something as simple as replacing the OEM speakers can be complicated by a number of factors and often results in an installation that is very heavy on modification to achieve a satisfactory result. More modification means more money, and often more problems. No matter how good the installer, it is extremely difficult to reproduce the level of fit and finish achieveable by the factory and the simple fact is that these cars were not meant to be taken apart and will never go back together as solidly as they were. To cover this, installers often sound-deaden their installations to prevent the unwanted rattles etc. that come with heavy modification. This adds another concern... weight. It's not as if 20 pounds of sound-deadening are going to noticably affect your car's performance, but when you put that weight into the doors it can create other problems. Because doors are accelerated and decellerated when they are opened and closed, the effect of this extra weight is amplified, and tends to create issues down the road with things like door allignment, pop-fit connectors wearing out, etc. due to the fact that the designers of the car did not design the door and it's associated fasteners to withstand that extra weight.

All of these factors add up to mean that unless you are willing to invest either a lot of money in paying a truly first rate installer, or a whole lot of time and effort yourself if you have the required skill, you are better off in the long run having never taken the vehicle apart at all.

I love car audio installing, but it has gotten to the point where I truly believe that I would be happier with the overall result if the manufacturer would just invest a little time and energy to get the system right from the get-go.

Take it for what it is worth, but I think this has the potential for greatness.

 

feeshta,

Thanks for such a well thought out and excellent post.

As one who has always installed aftermarket stereo systems in practically everyone of my past cars, I agree that with the complexity and integration of today's stock stereo systems, I'd rather the mfg devote more resources to producing a truly high end stereo system.

 

No problem man. I just wish that they would let me design the systems for them. LOL! There is so much that could be done with modern digital equipment to improve the sound. Just imagine having access to equipment that would allow you to do things like creating an absolutely accurate baseline EQ curve. Custom tailored amplification, etc. From there you include a few slightly more advanced than normal controls as menu accesible options (say a three band true parametric EQ for tweeking) but also leave the traditional bass and treble ***** for those among us that don't care enough to figure out the more advanced controls. The key thing I would change though is simply using slightly better component quality. Especially amplifiers. There are cheap, high power, high efficiency, and clean sounding digital amplifiers available today that would be a huge step up over traditional OEM "chip" amplifiers, and almost all OEM speakers leave a lot to be desired in the quality department too.

The only other factory installed sytems that I have seen that might rival this one are the new VW Passat's optional Dynaudio system(part of a a $4000 option package) and the Ford GT's McIntosh system. (a $5000 standalone option, and you don't even get the glowing blue power gauges! WTF!?)

 

I completely agree with you. How are you going to integrate the sound of a small midrange driver to this huge 10 in. woofer. It's hard enough to do this in a conventional speaker let alone in a car environment where the bass frequency will be amplified much more than midrange. Just turn up your car stereo and close all your window and you will know what I mean. Basically all you will hear is the freaking bass and nothing else.

This is just another example of Bose crap -- all bass and nothing else. I feel sorry for the G being sabotaged by the crappy Bose sh**.

Why would you need a 10in woofer in the first place? Most people don't need a 10in woofer in their living room. I am currently using a 6.5in driver in my room and it is already more than enough. Too large a woofer the bass will dominate the music and the whole thing will sound like crap. But I guess this is perfect Bose philosophy: the more bass the better.

Bose sucks. Bose sucks. Bose sucks. Bose sucks. Bose sucks. Bose sucks. Bose sucks. Bose sucks. Bose sucks. Bose sucks. Bose sucks. Bose sucks. Bose sucks. Bose sucks. Bose sucks. Bose sucks. Bose sucks. Bose sucks. Bose sucks. Bose sucks. Bose sucks. Bose sucks. Bose sucks. Bose sucks. Bose sucks. Bose sucks.

 

Since I know a bit of audio system, BOSE is a bunch of marketing hype. You absolutely DO NOT need a 10in. woofer in your car. You will never need a 10in. woofer to create music in your car. IF you have a hugh living room in which you want to effective energize the base frequency then I agree a 10in woofer would help. But in a car which has a very small air volume, a 6.5in. woofer would do if done right. I am using a pair of speaker in my room with 6.5in woofer and the bass already is killing my head.

Why would you want a 10in woofer in a car is beyond me. The only reason is as I said a bunch of marketing hype from Bose. Surely a 6.5in would impress the unsuspecting victims. I guess a 10in woofer would impress ... let's see 10 divide by 6.5in equals about 2 ... ahh twice as much. So surely 2 is better then one. So let's stick a 10in. woofer in you car and we'll double the sound for your money.

Another point is that in a properly setup stereo system, in which the listener sits right at the center line of two speakers, then proper image can be achieve. But in a car in which the driver sits on one side, no matter how hard you try, you cannot have proper image.

 

I can't imagine a 10" in the door, the car is going to be an extreme rattle trap.

My M45 has 500 miles on it and I'm already ready to go balistic because of the passenger door rattling as soon as I get the volume up to 50%.

 

I agree 100% that you don't need 10 inch woofer in G35 or in any civilized production car. The new G35 will have not have just one but TWO 10 inch woofers on the front doors!?

But I don't care because I won't order one. $3K for the upgraded stereo? No thanks. I'll be more than happy with the stock stereo as I enjoyed on my 2004 G35 coupe.

 

Damn, 50%, what number is that on the volume?

 

...follow the bouncing ball