2011 VW Jetta sound system upgrade.

The owner of this vehicle loves his music and knew from the first time he drove this 2011 VW Jetta off the lot that he was going to need to upgrade its audio.  However, he was quite fond of the factory radio and wanted to make sure that he could upgrade his sound without having to change out the radio.

To do this, we used an Arc Audio SRI factory integration module, which takes the speaker outputs of the factory radio and converts them into a connection that the new amplifiers can use.  From here, the signal is fed two the two Audison amplifiers, SR4 and SR1Dk which were mounted to the underside of the rear deck in the trunk via a custom made steel rack.  The SR4 was used to run almost 100 watts to the new Hertz Hi Energy 6 1/2″ component speakers in the front doors as well as the Hertz Deici 6 1/2″ component speakers in the rear doors.  The SR1Dk was used to run over 800 watts to a Hertz Hi Energy 12″ subwoofer in a custom built and tuned ported enclosure. We ran the Audison subwoofer level controller up front and custom mounted it just in front of the gear shift for easy access.

A system this serious just wouldn’t be all it could be without a solid foundation to build upon.  For that reason, we applied 36 square feet of Second Skin sound deadener products to the front doors and trunk area, as well as 18 sq feet of Luxury Liner pro to the floor boards of the vehicle.  These two products work to silence vibrations and airborne noises alike that would take away from all of this great sound we added.  We also added a secondary battery in a custom made steel rack to help stabilize the voltage to the amplifiers during demanding musical passages.

Here are the Audison SR4 and SR1Dk amplifiers mounted to a custom steel rack. You can also see the Hertz Hi Energy subwoofer in the background.

Since the rack is mounted with hinges, it can easily be swung out of the way after adjustments are made.

Here is the Arc Audio SRI factory integration module tucked into a pocket behind the radio.

The gray knob in the middle allows the user to control the level of the subwoofer, discretely.

We welded up a rack to hold this secondary battery nice and secure behind the factory molded carpet panel.

Here you can see one of the 3 bolts used to mount the battery rack securely.

We applied some vibration damper product to the plastic door panel to keep it from buzzing.

We also applied vibration damping products to the sheet metal door frame as well to prevent it from ringing.

We solder our speaker wires to the speaker terminals and protect them with heat shrink for the most reliable connection.