Haha its totally cool, it gave me time to do some research and I ended up getting a Stormy Blue from Belco Rolfe Mazda last Wed! Its done 300km so far

OK, the plan is this (and Patrick is gonna kill me! He hates this crap LOL.

* G4 with Centrafuse (they've just released it with full support) - just ordered, should be in the shop by end of the week.
* Creative Audigy 2 NX USB sound card (to support 5.1 pre-outs and digital-if the DAC isn't good enough) - also has aux and digital in, so I can piggyback the CD700 and switch to it with a mod to Centrafuse.
* Belkin Bluetooth - purchased
* GPS - included in G4
* mobile internet ("3" seems the best choice so far) - TBD
* External 160Gb Drive - for uncompressed CD rips/jukebox
- Still looking for a tiny keyboard with trackball to put in the glovebox.

The logitech dinovo edge is an awesome keyboard that can run for something like 30 days on a single charge. You can just stick in the map pocket behind the passenger when you're not using it.

A bit pricey though.

Haven't seen my car for 2 days now, had to go interstate, can't wait to go and get a progress report later today. I estimate they'll have the car at least another 2 weeks! It's KILLING me!

So in the interim, here's a couple more photos. One of the g4 unit running windows (the front panel at least), and one of the audigy card that arrived today.

sniff...

Well, it's taking shape. Sub boxes almost done, about 1.4 lt each, give or take. Amp mount comes a fair way further into the boot than I had expected. Pat left a gap in the middle of the boxes to both slide them in/out of the boot and to fit the jack and other crap.

We've decided to can the idea of cutting out the ski-hole panel and instead are modding the centre-piece on the back parcel shelf to include a mesh and speaker cloth. That way I will still get air movement, and use of the storage box, and the kids won't screw up the mesh. It's also look more stock.

Pat had a coronary about the G4. Oh well, were's the fun if it's not interesting and challenging?

Oh, and the amps have come back from the powder-coating. Looks good. The blue doesn't exactly match, but the new green light in the boot should help.

Got a photo of the door pod (not fitted or painted yet, but looking good!


I also have a pic showing the poor car covered in sawdust and stripped in the shop!

OK, not much progress on the car over the last 2 days.

But I received the bluetooth dongle and the 7 port hub. I went out today and bought the stereo 3.5mm plug to 2 rca socket cables required to pass the 5.1 out from the soundcard to the 6xs crossover (and then amps).

Now the cd700 has a coaxial out and unfortunately the audigy 2 NX only has optical input, so I bought a coaxial digital audio cable, a coax to optical converter (6V) and a short optical lead. So I just need to work out how to power the converter now. Couldn't be 5V could it! Buggers.

I've also been ripping my entire CD collection. I'm using EAC (Exact Audio Copy) to get as close to a bit-perfect copy I can, then I'm encoding with the lossless Monkey's encoder (*.ape, and tagging with APEv2).

This way I worked out I can get about 480 cds on the 160Gb drive (as they compress to about 300Mb per CD, give or take).

Next, I have to write a Centrafuse plug-in to allow me to switch to the Audigy Optical Input as an aux source for the G4 and it can decode the 4.1(? I guess it may be 2.0, or 4.0 if it uses the fader) digital signal.

I've been also trying to work out where I can put a dock for my iPhone (I got one from the states). I'm not really interested in audio, just somewhere to sit it and charge it. I don't like the clip-on crappy holders, I'd prefer something integrated into the dash or console.

Unbelievable

Can't wait to see the car finished

Will

PS. And a look at the iPhone would be great too

You and me both! The wait is killing me.

OK, so the amp looks good in the boot. I also took a few before pics of the 0ga power cable going in the bonnet (battery removed ready for my odyssey) and in the cabin.

Don't know if I mentioned we decided to turn the centre panel on the back parcel shelf into the speaker grill for the subs to have a air-path into the cabin from the boot. So I took a "before" picture of the panel as well.

Patrick is making a start on the new top centre panel for the cd700 now (included a shot of the cd700).

I am still ironing out the details on how it's all going to hook together and function properly. Will know more when I pick up my G4 carputer and start testing the bits and pieces.

Yay! Arrived today.

Ouch! That hurt my back pocket! Geesh.... Oh well...

So not much interesting, just the box and the unit. Will wire it up for a bench-test tonight with the soundcard, bluetooth etc to see if it all works.

It's taken me several days to rip all my cds. I've just about run out and only used 20 Gb or so! And that is lossless compression! I didn't realise I had so few cds...

From the research I've been doing, it also appears a seperate 5.1 decoder won't work, as the volume control won't be integrated with the G4, drat!

But I guess I had a bit of an epiphany, at least in the short term I can use the soudblaster, I'll get my plugin to not only change input to the optical, but also do any other funky stuff to set speaker config, etc, etc to hopefully get it to drive them properly.

Also, it appears the soundcard doesn't support 4.1! only 4 or 5.1. So I think I'll be setting it to 4 and pulling sub off the fronts. I don't want to miss the centre channel information as I will if I go 5.1 without the speaker in there (there is no phantom mode).

Ha, just realised you got a fuzzy reflection of the iphone when I took that last picture with it.

OK, gutted an old PC to test out the unit. A couple of things were a bit strange, and it's taken a bit of work to get things going the way I want. I have an issue with decoding the sound. The Soundblaster USB seems to work better on a cheap non-powered hub better than the belkin 7-port, not sure why.

The OS pairs ok with the iPhone, and picks up automatically, plays the audio through the system, everything. But I asked the guys at PhoneControl how I can set up a profile for it and they said it can't be done! Weird, as I can hook up to the computer, so what's the issue? I need to look for another solution.

Hibernate has issues when playing music, have a workaround and the guys at FLUX (Centrafuse) are looking into it.

Can't get the artist/album to load correctly, still working on this.

Something else I hadn't counted on: The digital input is stereo and the audigy usb card doesn't upmix this to 4 channel, so if I use it the switch the input, I end up with only the front speakers for the NAK! I am having trouble working out a workaround for this. I am investigating using an external decoder that will auto detect the input signal and switch between dolby/dts etc, (and fix my 4.1 issue) AND a 4.1 stereo upmix (or dts:matrix, etc) on any stereo input. Then I'll be using fronts, rears, and sub all the time.

Of course, that means I need a separate volume control for the processor! Grrrrr.

Here's some photos of the unit powered up and bench-testing...

Dropped in to check it out again. Pat has started on the dash top mods for the Nak cd700.

So you can see the 2-din space for the G4 where the blose was, and the Nak will go in place of the aircon lcd, and we push the lcd back on the dash (as it's narrow).

And one more photo of the G4.

Holly shit it looks good and you know how to throw money away.. Do you live in your car

With that said you need engine mods so your car can do 0-100 in 20 seconds