When Outlander vehicles got in touch, he had a vision of a simple Bluetooth audio system to complement one of his latest builds. Over the course of a few months, we toyed with several ideas. We eventually came up with the idea of using a simple Bluetooth audio receiver, adding volume and tone controls, then using a compact amplifier to power the system up.
The Bluetooth receiver we sourced and lightly modified works well and after testing, with our Audison Bit Tune it was clear that an adequate level of volume was achievable with this receiver without distorting the system.
Audio quality is, of course as ever crucial in this build, but aesthetics are key. So we worked hard on the electronics side of things, whilst Outlander vehicles took care of the aesthetics, he had a Single-DIN sized plate made up in Aluminium with the required inscriptions.
We installed Audison Prima AP4 woofers in the lower dash with some new APG4 Grilles, along with some AP1 Tweeters at the top of the dashboard with some special aluminium tweeter rings (ideal for this Outlander!). To power the system, we installed an Audison SR4.300 under the driver's seat; this is an ultra-compact, efficient but also a pretty powerful little amplifier.
Back to the aesthetics, this vehicle hasn't got the usual rubberised matting up to the seat base; this presented a little problem of its own when it came to cable runs. Usually, on a land rover, we would run the cables around the side of the transmission tunnel and into a grommet on the battery box (under the passenger seat). But this was not an option on this vehicle, so we had to think again. The solution for the cable routing problem was to use special conduit and take the wiring through the same grommet as the dash wiring, under the dash and follow the factory loom routing into the fuse box.
The bass is taken care of by an Audison APS8R subwoofer that was very neatly installed into the rear of a custom made armrest/cubby box; Outlander takes excellent care in everything that the craft and the cubby is no exception.
We love doing out of the ordinary, and this was an interesting project.
For more information on OUTLANDER see them on Instagram.