I really love my Suzuki Jimny. It’s a top of the range 2015 Jimny Sierra Land Venture (JB43W), a tiny but seriously capable Japanese 4x4, and there are few things I love more than this car.
I’ve been on a journey to upgrade the sound system. I started with a new head unit, the Kenwood, and then upgraded the front speakers in the footwells. Even though they were quite decent speakers, I just couldn’t get good sound coming through, with them hidden down in the footwells and all. So I’ve kept going, upgrading the system to a level I’m satisfied with, and this post outlines that journey.
Contents
The system
What I’m going for is sound quality, not volume. I want the full range: deep bass I can feel, and clear, detailed mids and highs on top. But nothing should overpower anything else. The bass should sit underneath the music, not drown it out, so it all sounds natural and balanced.
Up front it’s an active front stage: each tweeter and midbass (the 4” speaker that handles vocals and punch) gets its own amp channel, and the DSP decides which frequencies each one plays. The midbass are Morel carbon-fibre units in the kick panels, and the tweeters are Audison Voce on the dash. There are Focals in the back, an active sub under each front seat, and a 10” active sub hidden in the boot.
Everything runs from one Match DSP amp hidden in the glovebox. It takes its signal from the Kenwood’s speaker outputs and lets me tune every speaker for where it sits in the car, so it all comes together as one proper system. The front and rear speakers are tiny, just 10cm, but the tweeters and subs fill in the top and bottom.
| Part | What it does |
|---|---|
| Kenwood DMX8021DABS | Head unit |
| Match UP 6DSP MK2 | 6-channel amp with a 7-channel DSP. 130 × 130 × 46mm, so it fits in the glovebox |
| Morel Virtus Nano MW4 | 4” midbass in the footwell kick panels |
| Audison Voce II AV 1.1 II | Tweeters on the dash |
| Focal ICU 100 | 4” coaxials in the rear |
| 2 × Harman Kardon Feel 700 | Active underseat subs, 125W RMS each, daisy-chained |
| Kicker Hideaway HS10 | 10” active sub, 180W RMS, hidden in the boot compartment |
| Audiotec Fischer URC.1 | Remote knob for sub level |
flowchart TD
HU["Kenwood head unit<br/>front L/R speaker outputs"] --> AMP["Match UP 6DSP MK2<br/>in the glovebox"]
AMP -->|"A/B"| TW["Dash tweeters"]
AMP -->|"C/D"| MID["Kick panel midbass"]
AMP -->|"E/F"| REAR["Rear speakers<br/>factory wiring"]
AMP -->|"Line out"| SUB1["Feel 700 #1"]
SUB1 -->|"daisy chain"| SUB2["Feel 700 #2"]
SUB2 -->|"RCA out"| HS10["Kicker HS10<br/>in the boot"]
Power and wiring
Power
At full volume the amp can draw 35A, the two underseat subs 28A between them and the boot sub 15A, so 78A in total, just under the 80A main fuse.
- 4AWG cable (about 21mm²) from the battery positive to an 80A fuse, within 300mm of the battery.
- Through the firewall to a 4-way fuse distribution block under the dash. I made a hole in the existing rubber grommet on the driver side and fed the cable through it.
- Three 8AWG (about 8mm²) fused branches from the block: 40A to the amp, 30A to the underseat subs and 30A to the boot sub.
- The second underseat sub takes its power from the first sub’s POWER OUT block, so one feed serves both.
- The boot sub’s 8AWG runs about 5m back to the boot, with Kicker’s 15A in-line fuse at the sub end.
I used 100% OFC (oxygen-free copper) cable throughout, not the cheaper CCA (copper-clad aluminium). It costs more, but CCA has higher resistance, so it would need to be thicker to carry the same current.
flowchart TD
BAT["Battery +"] -->|"4AWG"| FUSE["80A main fuse<br/>within 300mm of battery"]
FUSE -->|"4AWG, through firewall"| BLOCK["Fuse distribution block<br/>under the dash"]
BLOCK -->|"40A fuse, 8AWG"| AMP["Match UP 6DSP MK2"]
BLOCK -->|"30A fuse, 8AWG"| S1["Feel 700 #1"]
S1 -->|"POWER OUT block<br/>+12V, ground, remote"| S2["Feel 700 #2"]
BLOCK -->|"30A fuse, 8AWG"| HS["Kicker HS10<br/>15A in-line fuse"]
HS -->|"8AWG"| GND
AMP -->|"8AWG"| SPLICE["Crimped splice"]
S1 -->|"8AWG"| SPLICE
SPLICE -->|"8AWG"| GND["Seat bolt ground<br/>bare metal"]
HU["Kenwood blue/white lead"] -->|"remote"| AMP
AMP -->|"REM OUT"| S1
AMP -->|"REM OUT"| HS
Day one: bonnet up, doors open, kit on the driveway.
The kit, before starting.
The 4AWG run from the battery, before routing and tidying.
80A main fuse, close to the battery.
The distribution block with the amp and sub fuses.
Fitted under the dash, where the fuses stay reachable. I didn’t really need such a big distribution
block, but it’s out of the way, so it’s fine.
Ground
The amp and sub grounds join in one heavy crimped splice and go to the front bolt of the driver’s seat, sanded to bare metal on both faces. The boot sub’s ground runs back to the same bolt on its own ring terminal, rather than a second ground point in the boot. Using one ground point for everything helps avoid alternator whine, and I haven’t had any.
I planned to upgrade the battery-to-body strap to 4AWG too, but on the JB43 the factory strap is very short and already sized for the starter motor, which pulls far more than 78A. So I left it.
The ground at the seat bolt, with the amp and sub grounds joined in a single heat-shrunk splice.
The factory battery-to-body strap is short enough to leave alone.
Remote turn-on
Remote turn-on switches the amp and subs on and off with the head unit. The Kenwood’s blue/white power-control lead goes to the amp’s REM IN, and the amp’s REM OUT switches all three subs. There’s no splicing into the car’s wiring.
Signal
The Match amp doesn’t take RCA inputs. It’s designed to take high-level speaker inputs instead, straight from the head unit’s speaker wires, which suits a car like this.
The Kenwood’s wiring harness plugs into the car’s ISO connector. I cut only its 8 speaker wires, which left two loose ends:
- The Kenwood end goes to the amp’s inputs. Only front left and right are used, and the DSP makes every other channel from those two.
- The car end is fed from the amp’s midbass and rear outputs, so the factory wiring still carries the signal to those speakers.
The tweeters are the only speakers with new wire, since there’s no factory wiring to the dash.
flowchart LR
HU["Kenwood"] -->|"front L/R<br/>harness, Kenwood end"| AMP["UP 6DSP MK2"]
AMP -->|"A/B, new wire"| TW["Dash tweeters"]
AMP -->|"C/D, harness car end"| MID["Kick panel midbass<br/>factory wiring"]
AMP -->|"E/F, harness car end"| REAR["Rear speakers<br/>factory wiring"]
All the joins are crimped butt connectors. I didn’t cut anything on the car’s own loom, so fitting a new Kenwood harness would put it all back to standard.
Head unit out. The speaker wires on the Kenwood’s harness got cut behind here. It’s an absolute
mess back there, I did my best to tidy up.
Mid-install: head unit pulled out and wires everywhere while I connected the amp.
The amp in the glovebox
Why the Match: it’s a good DSP (digital sound processor), and it lets each speaker have its own crossover, level, delay and EQ. It’s Class D, so it doesn’t get very hot, and it’s small enough to fit in the glovebox. The Kenwood head unit on its own didn’t have the power to drive the speakers properly.
I planned to mount the amp behind the glovebox, but the space back there was too awkward to work in. So it went inside the glovebox on heavy-duty velcro, with the cables fed through the existing gap at the back. Nothing was drilled, and I can still reach the USB port for tuning. The velcro keeps it mounted really well and provides a bit of padding.
Before tidying: everything comes together in the glovebox.
The amp’s plug-in harnesses, ready to be wired to the head unit harness.
Mid-install. The amp’s harnesses come with bare wire ends, so nothing needs terminating at the amp.
Behind the glovebox. The cables come through the gap at the back.
Mounted. The glovebox still opens and closes freely, but can’t be used for storage any more.
Here’s a video from install day, explaining why the amp ended up in the glovebox.
Speakers
Front speakers
The front stage is Morel Virtus Nano MW4 midbass and Audison Voce II AV 1.1 II tweeters. The MW4 is from Morel’s high-end range, with a carbon-fibre cone and a neodymium magnet. The AV 1.1 II is a soft-dome tweeter that plays up to 40kHz.
- The MW4 is only 17mm deep, which suits the Jimny’s kick panels.
- The AV 1.1 II can cross lower than most tweeters (down to 1.8kHz), which lifts the vocals from the footwells up to the dash.
The midbass sit in the footwell side panels (the kick panels). Getting to them was simple:
- I undid the screws on the silver sill plate along the bottom of the door opening and lifted it off.
- The plastic trim underneath popped off.
- Then the kick panel popped off, exposing the speaker.
Fitting the MW4s was a big job. They come with small screws, and their mounting holes don’t line up with the Jimny’s existing speaker screw holes. I first made MDF spacer rings to bridge the two, but with the rings in, the kick panel wouldn’t fit back on, and I wasn’t willing to cut the panel to make it fit. So I drilled new holes in the bodywork instead, using a spacer ring as a template, as there’s very little room to work in the footwell.
One of the MDF spacer rings, test-fitted on the driver side. With the ring in, the kick panel
wouldn’t fit back on.
The MW4 in the driver-side kick panel, with the panel off.
The passenger side. The grey patches around the speaker are leftover sticky foam from the old
speakers, which I couldn’t fully remove.
The Voce tweeters are really impressive. Honestly they’re probably far too much for my small little car. They’re quite big too, so they stand out on the dash. I’ve had to turn them down quite a lot in the DSP, but they’re amazing tweeters.
The passenger-side AV 1.1 II tweeter on the dash at the base of the A-pillar.
The driver-side tweeter in the same spot on the other side.
Mounting the tweeters was fairly straightforward, but I had to take the A-pillar trims off first, to make space to push the wires down the side of the dashboard and across to the amp. The trims pulled off from the top once I’d peeled back the door rubber.
Rear speakers
The rear Focal ICU 100s were fitted by a shop quite a while ago, since getting to them means taking the rear seats out. If I upgrade them in future, I’d be tempted to do it myself now I’ve got more experience. There’s a good step-by-step guide here: Installation of the rear speakers on the Suzuki Jimny.
Subs
There are three subs, and they share the work. The two Feel 700s under the front seats give the punch, from about 40 to 90Hz. The 10” Kicker HS10 in the boot focuses on the deepest notes, below about 50Hz, where the small 7” Feel 700s run out of steam. Together they cover the low end without any one of them having to do everything, and without taking up any space in the cabin or on the boot floor.
Under the seats
The Feel 700 is 260 × 195 × 58mm and fits under both front seats. The second sub is chained from the first: power through the POWER OUT block, and signal through an RCA lead from the first sub’s output.
The supplied pigtails didn’t reach between the seats on their own, so I extended them with 27A cable (about 3mm²), red for +12V and black for ground, and ~1mm² hook-up wire for the blue remote lead. All the joins are crimped butt connectors.
The amp’s sub output is mono, with one RCA socket, but the Feel 700 needs a signal on both its left and right inputs. A cheap 1-female-to-2-male Y-adapter at the sub end sorts that out. Without it the sub plays quieter.
flowchart LR
AMP["Amp line out<br/>mono RCA"] -->|"one RCA lead"| Y["Y-adapter<br/>1 female → 2 male"]
Y -->|"L + R"| S1["Feel 700 #1"]
S1 -->|"RCA out → RCA in"| S2["Feel 700 #2"]
S1 -->|"POWER OUT pigtails<br/>joined red-red, black-black, blue-blue"| S2
S2 -->|"spare RCA out → Kicker KISL"| HS["Kicker HS10<br/>in the boot"]
The main power run comes in under the driver’s seat, where the amp ground joins the sub ground. These runs will get a proper tidy-up.
Wiring in progress. The seats stayed in.
Subs connected. They’ll be turned 90° to save as much space as possible.
Starting to tidy the sub wiring, running it over the centre console.
More work to make it neat over the centre console.
Mostly tidy. A few wires still show beside the console.
The finished sub, seen from the back seat with the front seat slid all the way forward. Rear
passengers can still get in and out without any trouble.
In the boot
For the deep bass I wanted a proper 10” sub, but without losing any space on the boot floor, so the rear seats still fold and the boot is still usable.
The previous owner in Japan fitted a lidded aluminium compartment on the boot floor, about 10cm deep inside, with the tools for changing a tyre underneath it. The Kicker Hideaway HS10 is a 10” sub with its own amp in a case only 8.1cm tall, so it just fits inside. It was a really nice coincidence that it fits so perfectly. The sub fills the compartment, so I can’t store anything inside it any more, but I can still put things on top of it, and from the outside you’d never know there’s a sub in there.
The compartment before the install. The lid is full of holes, which lets the bass out.
Early on: the HS10 first fitted on bare MDF, with the wiring still loose.
The HS10 in the compartment, bolted to the board, with a handle either side for lifting it out.
The 8AWG power and ground, RCA and remote, joined to the HS10’s harness.
Mounting it
The sub sits on 9mm MDF, sprayed black, bolted through its own brackets, the MDF and the stock brown board with a washer at each end, so the three lift out together as one unit. The brown board’s jack clips poke up, so the boards don’t sit flat on each other, and there’s foam packed between them. Two T-bar handles screw up from underneath through both boards, which clamps them together on the foam and gives me something to lift it out with. Fitting them was a real struggle: the handles are thick metal, so the holes have to be exactly in the right place, with no play in the wood.
The board, sprayed black, with the handles laid on top to work out where they’d go, before fitting.
The board sits on self-adhesive EPDM rubber strip all the way round the ledge, so there’s no wood touching metal, and there are a couple of strips on the jack too. There’s also a strip along the top of the far end of the compartment, between the lid and the box, which stops the aluminium itself rattling. The board isn’t fixed to the car, but it’s heavy and sits snugly in the recess. To get to the tools I unplug the sub’s harness and lift the whole thing out by the handles.
The tool well with the board out: rubber strip round the ledge, and on the jack.
The grille ends up only about half a centimetre below the lid. Before bolting it down I pressed hard on the middle of the lid while sliding the sub around underneath, and it never touched. I kept the carpet on top too. I can still hear the low bass clearly through the lid and carpet, so there’s no need to open anything up.
Eye level with the lid. The grille sits just below it, without touching.
Finished. Lid shut, carpet on, and you’d never know there’s a 10” sub in there.
The HS10 takes its signal from the second Feel 700’s spare RCA output, through a Kicker KISL adapter that turns the RCA into the HS10’s wire input.
Tuning
I set up the DSP in Audiotec Fischer’s DSP PC-Tool. It’s Windows only, so on my Mac I ran it in a virtual machine, using the free VMware Fusion. I set the Kenwood flat first, with EQ, loudness and crossovers all off.
Tuning from the passenger seat, laptop plugged straight into the amp in the glovebox.
Input gain
This matches the amp to the head unit’s signal. With every output muted, so nothing actually plays, I put the Kenwood at about 90% volume and played Audiotec Fischer’s IGS test track. In PC-Tool’s Advanced Gain Setup I raised the input slider until the clip indicator turned red, then backed it off one step.
PC-Tool’s Advanced Gain Setup, with all outputs muted while the input gain is set.
Routing
Only the amp’s front left and right inputs are used. In PC-Tool’s routing, front left feeds the left tweeter, midbass and rear, front right feeds the right ones, and the sub gets an even mix of both.
The two front inputs feed every channel. The sub takes 50% of each.
Each channel then goes to its own output.
Crossovers
The crossovers are the filters that decide which speaker plays which frequencies. These are my starting settings, with every filter at −24dB:
| Speaker | Plays |
|---|---|
| Tweeters | Above 2,500 Hz |
| Midbass | 90 – 2,500 Hz |
| Rears | Above 100 Hz, kept quieter than the fronts |
| Subs | 30 – 90 Hz, with the boot sub only playing up to 50 Hz |
Where two speakers hand over, both use the same frequency with Linkwitz filters, a filter type designed so the two speakers blend without a bump. The subs take everything below 90Hz because the slim midbass has little cone travel.
Tweeters: highpass at 2,500Hz, set 10dB quieter than the midbass.
Midbass: highpass at 90Hz and lowpass at 2,500Hz make the “hill” shape, with the 30-band EQ
underneath.
Rears: highpass at 100Hz, set 3dB quieter.
Sub: 30–90Hz.
Levels
Each output has its own level, so I balanced the speakers against each other by ear, in 1–2dB steps with left and right linked. I used the midbass as the reference, then brought the tweeters in quieter (they’re more efficient and sit right in front of you on the dash), kept the rears well below the fronts so the sound stays up front, and set the subs to taste.
Blending the subs
My first mistake with the HS10 was expecting it to add lots more bass. With the gain high it overpowered the mids and tweeters, and on some tracks the bass almost disappeared because the HS10 and the Feel 700s were cancelling each other out. Flipping the HS10’s phase switch to 180° fixed the cancelling.
The real fix was giving the HS10 a different job. With its crossover at its lowest, 50Hz, it only plays the deep notes the Feel 700s can’t reach, and with the gain turned down to about 25–30% it fills in underneath rather than standing out. Bass boost is off.
| HS10 setting | |
|---|---|
| Crossover | 50 Hz |
| Phase | 180° |
| Gain | About 25–30% |
| Bass boost | 0 |
It doesn’t add more bass so much as the bass that was missing. It’s a sound quality sub, not a boom box, and the bottom end now feels complete.
Time alignment
Each speaker is a different distance from my head, so sound from the nearest ones arrives first. Time alignment delays the nearer speakers so everything arrives together, which pulls the sound to the middle of the dash. In PC-Tool’s Distance Mode I entered the distance from each speaker to my head in the driver’s seat, and it worked out the delays. The furthest speakers, the left midbass and left rear, get no delay. The sub, right under my seat, gets the most.
Time alignment in Distance Mode. The nearer the speaker, the longer the delay.
The remote
Day to day I use the URC.1 remote to control the sub volume. It has a single knob. It replaced the URC.3 I fitted first, plugs straight into the amp’s SCP port, and sits under the dash on the driver’s side, next to the centre stack, where it’s easy to reach.
The URC.1 under the dash, just right of the centre stack.
Close-up of the knob, below the cubby by the steering column.
The remote is set up in PC-Tool’s Remote Control screen, where I picked the URC.1 and gave it the subwoofer volume.
In PC-Tool, the URC.1 is set to control the subwoofer volume.
Staying safe
Now that I’ve tuned the system, with the input gain and sub gains set correctly and the tweeters turned well down, and with the power wires and fuses all correct, I’m fairly confident there’s very low risk of me blowing anything. The amp also has a protection mode that shuts it down if there’s a short, it overheats or the voltage goes funny.
How it sounds
Really great! Amazing. I get excited every time I take the car out. It sounds clean and balanced, and with the HS10 the bass goes really deep without drowning out the music.
I can’t really play it past about 60%, it’s just too loud. Certain bass frequencies make the bodywork rattle, which sound deadening should sort out (see What’s next).
What it cost
| Cost | |
|---|---|
| Match UP 6DSP MK2 amp | £549.99 |
| Morel Virtus Nano MW4 midbass | £529.00 |
| Audison Voce II AV 1.1 II tweeters | £349.99 |
| 2 × Harman Kardon Feel 700 subs | £509.98 |
| Focal ICU 100 rears | £109.00 |
| Kicker HS10 boot sub | £399.99 |
| Wiring, fuses, remote and tools | ~£500 |
| Total | ~£2,950 |
Not counting the head unit.
So yeah, a lot of money. Was it worth it? I absolutely love it, no regrets.
Looking back
It was more complicated than I expected, but it was a great learning experience, and the first time I’ve ever installed an amp. I did most of it in one weekend, and the rest spread out over many more. I had many frustrating moments, I had to contort my body into unnatural positions, and I dropped things into the bodywork that I’ll never get back (RIP speaker clip nuts). But I persevered, and I’m really proud of my work.
If I did it again, I’d put more thought into making it clean. I felt a bit rushed, just getting everything connected, when I could have had a better plan for running the wires so it all looks more stealth and OEM. I’d also use multi-core cable to connect the amp to the factory speaker loom instead of separate wires. There’d be far fewer runs to route and tidy.
What’s next
The boot rattles are mostly sorted now, apart from getting the compartment latches to catch again with the new rubber strip in place. The main thing left is the rest of the car. Certain bass frequencies make the Jimny’s metal panels vibrate and rattle. The fix is sound deadening: mats stuck to the inside of the panels that stop them resonating, which should also cut down road noise a bit. It’s the last piece of the puzzle. It’s a lot of work, taking off all the panels and door cards to fit it, and once that sticky stuff goes on, it’s never really coming off again. I do know a place in West Yorkshire that could do it for me, but I haven’t decided yet whether to do it myself.
Other than that, it’s a bit of cleanup, tidying the wiring under the seats and in the boot, and carrying on with the tuning, which is a lot of trial and error really.
Meet the Jimny
A few photos of the car itself.
Out in the hills, with the sheep for company.
Head on, with the bonnet scoop and chrome grille.
Side on, on a muddy moorland car park.
From the back, with the Land Venture spare wheel cover.
Full build notes
The full plan, with wiring tables, a parts list with links and a step-by-step DSP setup guide, is on GitHub: badsyntax/jimny-sound.
Finished. The amp is in the glovebox, two subs are under the seats and the third is hidden in the boot.