My O2 Zen Life

• Jan. 20, 2008 - Stereo refit project complete

The stereo project was completed last week.  I decided to replace the very good quality Eclipse receiver unit with a Pioneer system.  The advantage of the Pioneer is that it gives me the ability to have access to blue tooth (for hands free cell), satellite radio, iPod controller and a plug in auxiillary option (to accommodate the GPS audio).  Plus, the whole thing is controlled by remote.  The new system was taken out of the glove box and moved to the space under the passenger seat.  This gave me my glove box back.  In addition, in order to overcome the missing low-end bass, I put in a custom subwoofer enclosure.  The work was done at River Oaks Car Stereo here in Houston.  Here are some pictures of the completed work. on the left is the 'before' trunk.  on the right is the trunk after the subwoofer enclosure was added.  It was covered in the same grey elephant skin as the existing trunk panelts.  Worked out pretty well and still plenty of room in that big 'O2 trunk. Here's the new Pioneer DEH-P7900BT installed under the passenger seat.  On the right is the remote control unit. Since the head unit is hidden, and the remote control is not ideal for driving, we decided to add the direct controls of the audio system to the center console.  There are two clusters of buttons.  It almost looks like the interior of a 747 cockpit but its easy to use.  The left cluster is volume up/down and mute.  The right cluster is channel selection up/down and a source selection button.  So, I can control the volume up/down with the left side buttons, and choose the audio input source (e.g. satellite radio, local am/fm radio, iPod, bluetooth for cell phone, GPS audio input, etc..).  I can then navigate through the different stations or iPod songs with the channel selection button.  It actually works pretty well and can be easily managed while driving with minimal distraction (no need to take eyes off road). The microphone for the hands-free bluetooth cell is located just above the AC center console.  Next to it is the IR for the remote control.  The mic is sensitive enough to overcome the loudish ambient interior road noise. The GPS is a Garmin Nuvi 750.  It has a direct audio out which is plugged into the Pioneer unit.  I can control it with one of my red source bottons on the center console.  So when we're driving through the hill country on one of our bimmer drives my nice GPS lady's voice comes through the car's stereo speakers.  Of course if the phone rings, no matter what is going through the audio system the phone immediatly cuts in!

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