P38 harmon kardon stereo dilema no more :)

i have worked out a solution to replace the std clarion diversity unit for an aftermarket one without chopping of any wires.

All you need is a 10 pin iso, a speaker iso plug and 4 2 way cross overs.

basically take off the door card, unplug the amp and remove from door. bolt the cross over where the amp should go, few bits of sleaker wire. goto the 10 pin iso and find out which colout goes to which door, go from the plug in the door to the cross over, then from cross over to the woofer (remove to find out wire colours), and from cross over to the mid and tweeter as this is how is wired from the amp and hopefully hey presto. i am going to do this the weekend, will take pics and let you all know how i get on.

how did it go?

took about an hour, sound excellent. much better than std clarion or apine units. if you get really stuck ill be happy to help anyone do this

swwrob said:

i have worked out a solution to replace the std clarion diversity unit for an aftermarket one without chopping of any wires.

All you need is a 10 pin iso, a speaker iso plug and 4 2 way cross overs.

basically take off the door card, unplug the amp and remove from door. bolt the cross over where the amp should go, few bits of sleaker wire. goto the 10 pin iso and find out which colout goes to which door, go from the plug in the door to the cross over, then from cross over to the woofer (remove to find out wire colours), and from cross over to the mid and tweeter as this is how is wired from the amp and hopefully hey presto. i am going to do this the weekend, will take pics and let you all know how i get on.

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swwrob said:

took about an hour, sound excellent. much better than std clarion or apine units. if you get really stuck ill be happy to help anyone do this

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Can you confirm what issues you have been getting. I have replaced the radio in my RR and the sound is crystal clear until I give it some welly, then it sounds like I'm overdriving the input on the Amp/Amps??

It'll annoying me that I can't turn it up, but all my musuc is on a USB stick so it's been a compromise between music I like or blowing my ears off, but changing CD's all the time.

turn the bass down, lol only issue i have is every now and again i get a buzzing noise when the stereo is off in thr driver door. other than that, sound puka

swwrob said:

turn the bass down, lol only issue i have is every now and again i get a buzzing noise when the stereo is off in thr driver door. other than that, sound puka

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Got the bass all the way down, the radio has a built in cross-over and i've even changed the frequency going to the door speakers to limit the lows. This is what's making me think that I've over driving the inputs on the Amps some how.

Was that the problem you were getting before you took the amps out?
Did you have to run any cables back to the radio when you removed them? And now is it loud?

reason i took the amps out is so i could run an aftermarket unit on the harmon kardon setup. once the amps were powered without the std unit plugged in, a constant buzzing noise was there, so out they came and cross overs in. is yours the harmon kardon? alpine or clairon unit?

swwrob said:

reason i took the amps out is so i could run an aftermarket unit on the harmon kardon setup. once the amps were powered without the std unit plugged in, a constant buzzing noise was there, so out they came and cross overs in. is yours the harmon kardon? alpine or clairon unit?

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I've got an aftermarket unit installed but can't tune it up loud as it starts to distort at not a high volume. The unit taken out is an Alpine and the speakers are harmon kardon.

I've installed a Blaupunkt unit with a USB port, I had it in my last car and had no problems. It's about 4 months old and has the standard ISO connectors on the back inculding the amp out, identical to the alpine unit removed.

It's just bugging me why I can't turn it up.

sorry chap, dont know what that could be

Sidds said:

I've got an aftermarket unit installed but can't tune it up loud as it starts to distort at not a high volume. The unit taken out is an Alpine and the speakers are harmon kardon.

I've installed a Blaupunkt unit with a USB port, I had it in my last car and had no problems. It's about 4 months old and has the standard ISO connectors on the back inculding the amp out, identical to the alpine unit removed.

It's just bugging me why I can't turn it up.

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just the same as mine!

I have been swapping the old unit with the new one and gradually changing the 'default' volume on the old alpine unit (this sets a volume on the main DSP) then testing the volume on the new unit!

If you turn the DSP's volume to low, then try the new unit. you get distortion at a lower sound level

and if you turn the DSP's volume high, then you get ear piercing music with madd distortion on any bass notes!

Has anyone come accross this?

(ive also gotta send back the lead i bought from Nexxia, i didnt even need it after all!)

Chaps

I'm having a nightmare with this f**king thing....

OK, I have (had) a clarion head unit with the KH amps in the doors and the sub woofer in the boot.

So, I purchased an after market Kenwood with pre-outs for Front L+R, Rear L+R and Subwoofer L+R and also a 4 channel amplified output for Front L+R and Rear L+R.

After trying every combination known to man including and excluding gadgets from nexxia (PC-09) and ground loop isolators I have worked out where my best sound comes from, but there is still a humming sound at low volume and turning it up full blast is probably around 60-70% of the top volume that the original clarion had.

My set-up is basically that I've routed the pre-outs to the pink plug directly, ignoring the amplified outputs on the new head unit (these thrashed the amps badly and distorted even at 25% full volume - kind of expected as you're shoving an amplified signal designed for speakers to an amp expecting a low signal from a pre-out).

So, how can I get rid of this low level hum? I've already got ground loop isolators on the pre-outs and that helped alot, but it's still there.

A poster previously suggested that putting the old head unit back to set the DSP volume has an effect - is this true? and how did you get on with that?

Many thanks, Jamie.
(Nearly in tears after 10 hours sat in a greenhouse rangie in the Australian sun fiddling with a stereo that refuses to behave itself... )

Are you feeding the amplifiers from the speaker output of the head unit? If so, this would cause distortion. The amps are expecting a low level "phono" input.

I think you will find it's an impedance issue. Even using low level outputs from the head unit you still have to match the impedance to the amps. Your head unit will be 4 ohms ? And I believe the door amps are not.

Hi

No, I'm feeding the amps from the pre-outs on the head unit - I did try the speaker outputs but as you say, it was too much for the amps.

I presume that the leads from the likes of nexxia (PC-09) take care of the impedance issue? Though I found that when I use those in between the pre-outs and the pink plug (amp wires) then the distortion was just as bad and the sound even quieter than without.

I'm intrigued by the notion of attaching the old head unit and setting the 'default' volume on the DSP - I'll certainly try it but I'm surprised that the car has the master volume set by the DSP (with Clarion attached) rather than the head unit.

Now I'm confused. As far as I am aware DSP (digital signal processing) is a function on the later Audio systems that have the Alpine head unit and the single amp in the back.
If you do a bit of digging you will find many posts on this subject, I am sure your problem is a miss match issue between the standard amps and the output from the headunit. I think also it maybe to do with the amps being non grounded or something like that. You may find it's easier to forget the existing and go for aftermarket amps and cross overs. If I find anything I will post it up.

I'll battle on for another day and see how I go, if the re-attach and fiddle with the old unit doesn't work then I'll probably re-wire and ditch the HK gear.

If I try on this too much longer I'm close to just driving it into Sydney harbour and getting a push bike and an iPod just to make life simple again

Just by way of an update.... well, I've got near success....


Basically, I am NOT using the pre-outs on the head unit since I discovered that although the HK has built in amps, they do expect speaker level input (or at least much higher level than RCA preouts). So I am using the head units powered amplified speaker outputs, previously they blew the crap out of the amps even at half volume but the reason for this is that the speaker outputs are powered on BOTH the positive and negative side.

So, the trick is to supply the Rangies pink plug only with the positive sides of the 4 speakers, then route the rangies negative sides direct to ground (leave the stereos negative side attached to nothing).

This works beautifully, great sound range, no noise, no hum, no hiss, no distortion - same as the original clarion setup. Perhaps a little louder, but I put this down to the extra power in the head unit rather than mis-wiring. It doesn't distort until you go to stupid volumes which are unbearable anyway.

The only problem is that the sub also requires speaker level input and I'm powering mine from the RCA output of the new head unit (Because the head unit doesn't have a pre-amplified sub output) - so it doesn't have the grunt of the other speakers that are being feed speaker level input.

My possibly solutions to this are to 'borrow' an input from one of the speaker level outputs to give the sub the same level of input, but then I have no control over sub from the head unit as the sub is now essential speaker number 5.

The other option is to buy a new amp for the sub that has a gain on it (Thus bypassing the HK amp that is too quiet), then adjust volume to suit other 4 speakers. Of course I'll maintain the actual subwoofers themselves, just bypass the HK amp in place of a new amp with gain controls.

I suspect that others having humming even after trying everything may do well to just earth the negatives of the rangies pink plug wires (the striped ones) and supply only the positive from the head unit...... MAYBE, though this is only my experience on a 1996 4.6HSE with Clarion + HK original setup.

Just in the middle of replacing my head unit at the moment. I have 1998 4.6 with the clarion diversity and HK setup.

I bought a lead set from ebay but turned out to be a 10 pin plug and 2 rca leads soldered to 4 wires....not even inserted into the 10 pin plug!

Anyway, I'm hoping to go down the route of the last post, negative to ground etc. but as the Alpine unit i am using is pre ISO, I need to identify what the wires are in the 8 pin grey (Vehicle side) plug

I've sussed out enough to get the head unit powered up:
Black = Ground (-)
Purple = Battery (+)
White/Pink = Ign Switched power (+)
but I assume I'll need to connect some of the remaining wires to switch or power the existing amp? There is:
Red/White
Grey/Orange
Grey/Black (2 wires into same pin)

Can anyone tell me how these remaining wires need to be connected to get the sounds going as winter is fast approaching !

I have bought a new head unit for my 2000 model P38 Range Rover with the harmon kardon. All working well around the normal in car speakers.

I just need to know how to connect the sub in the boot to the sub pre out of the radio unit. Does anyone know where I can get an adaptor or how to wire it.
Also how can I get the steering controls to work, as there is a wire from the headunit to do this but not sure which wire to attach to etc and how

Also the head unit has a flip out screen with DVD player, it seems that I need to wire the screen activation to the handbrake so it knows the brake is on and show the picture. Does anyone know how easy this is or better still if there is a way around it so the picture can always be on?

Thanks for your help

varleypaul said:

I have bought a new head unit for my 2000 model P38 Range Rover with the harmon kardon. All working well around the normal in car speakers.

I just need to know how to connect the sub in the boot to the sub pre out of the radio unit. Does anyone know where I can get an adaptor or how to wire it.
Also how can I get the steering controls to work, as there is a wire from the headunit to do this but not sure which wire to attach to etc and how

Also the head unit has a flip out screen with DVD player, it seems that I need to wire the screen activation to the handbrake so it knows the brake is on and show the picture. Does anyone know how easy this is or better still if there is a way around it so the picture can always be on?

Thanks for your help

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I wired my Pioneer Sat nav screen to a ground instead of the handbrake so it thinks brake is on and in order to get picture always one. Nice thing with those reverse cameras.