Speakers everywhere! Has anyone installed a legitimate aftermarket system at this point? If so, are there any learning curves or gotchas vs. ICE cars? Is it even possible to find good speakers to replace every single type in the model 3?
aftermarket sound system info thread
Drizzle
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Possibly. Can't really tell what I'm looking at.
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Yes. I found that it sounds better if I flip the polarity (invert the phasing) from the stock sub.
I am liking the way it sounds more than the stock set-up.
But now I need to think about HVAC air exit ! Maybe need to put a new vent somewhere else in the seats.
Or put one of the seats down on hot days...
The picture I just posted was of the "immersion" speaker at the top of the A pillar. Same ratings as the door tweeters, but different part number. They might be the same speaker inside different packaging.
Regarding your subwoofer in the sub-trunk, are you afraid of damaging the subwoofer when you place items in your trunk?
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The box sits in the sub-trunk compartment, lid fits right on top.
Edit:
Some of this information has been improved or corrected. Please check out this more-recent post.
Some of the rear speaker signals contain the car control sounds (turn signals, navigation instructions, alerts) and some do not. I'll probe those sometime soon to find out which ones do.
Also, I misstated, the data going into the trunk amp is A2B, not CAN.
Here's the original post:
I'm planning on using a signal processor to un-equalize the speaker signals in my car, so I did some investigating to figure out how that should be installed. Long story short, it looks like the easiest thing to do is recombine the five signals from the subwoofer, the two front door woofers, and the rear dash mids, all of which are easy to tap into via the trunk amplifier.
As others have explained, the 15 speakers are split into two groups powered from two different sources.
All the small speakers in the front of the car are powered by something in the front of the car (I don't know what). That includes
- the three midrange speakers in the front dash,
- the tweeter in the front dash,
- the two tweeters on the front doors, and
- the two immersion speakers in the A pillars.
The rear and large speakers are all powered by the amplifier in the trunk next to the subwoofer. That includes
- the trunk subwoofer,
- the two woofers in the front doors,
- the two mids in the rear doors, and
- the two mids in the rear dash.
None of these speakers operate full-range. Each of them only gets a portion of the audio signal. So if you want to reconstitute a complete signal, you'll need to combine several of them together. But there isn't a single processor on the market that has 15 inputs, so you need to know which ones to use. Since the front of the car has separate mids and tweeters, the front mids have a very narrow frequency spectrum. Since the rear half of the car doesn't have tweeters, the rear mids go all the way from bass to high end.
Here's a spectrum analysis I did:
![]()
As you can see, the rear dash mids have the broadest range, going all the way from 150Hz up to 18kHz. They start to attenuate at ~14kHz, but I can't hear anything above 17kHz and 1/4 power at 18kHz is still usable for a signal processor. If you combine those with the two front door woofers and the subwoofer, you can reconstitute a complete stereo signal. And conveniently, all of those signals are available via the trunk amp.
The trunk amp has three connectors going into it:
- White: eight wires that give power to the four mid speakers in the rear doors and the rear dash
- Black: two wires for CAN bus, this is how the computer supplies audio signals to the amp in digital form
- Grey: ten wires that receive 15VDC power and give power to the subwoofer and the two front door woofers (the subwoofer is dual-coil)
Here's a pinout diagram:
![]()
You can tap into these wires anyway you'd like. You can use tap-in connectors on the wires themselves, you can put jumpers in between the connectors and the amp, whatever works for you. But you have to leave the amp in place. It has to have 15VDC power from the grey connector and CAN bus data from the black connector, or all of the other signals disappear. So even if you throw away all of the speakers that are powered by the amp, if you want to use any of those signals, you have to leave the amp installed and connected.
Alternatively, it should be possible to pull a complete audio signal out of that CAN bus data so you could just feed that into your own DAC, and if that's true then that would be the best option, but I haven't tried that. Yet. I might.
My plan for my car is to replace all of the front speakers and the subwoofer. I'll probably leave the rear speakers in place. Based on what I've found here I plan to supply my signal processor with the speaker signals from the subwoofer, the front doors woofers, and the rear dash mids, and I can install that neatly in the trunk well. I'll keep everyone updated as I learn more.
@Ingineer By any chance do you know where the front speaker signals are generated? Is there a front amplifier under the dash somewhere? Or do those come directly from one of the computers? Also, the 15VDC supply for the trunk amp, do you have any way of finding out what the current limit is on that line? Thanks.
@JWardell Sorry, I haven't had time to read through the entire thread, do you know if anyone has looked at the CAN bus that goes to the trunk amplifier, and do you have any idea how to pull audio signals out of it? It runs at 47619kbps and I'm guessing it carries either a stereo audio signal or an already-equalized 7-channel audio signal. Thanks.
Some of this information has been improved or corrected. Please check out this more-recent post.
Some of the rear speaker signals contain the car control sounds (turn signals, navigation instructions, alerts) and some do not. I'll probe those sometime soon to find out which ones do.
Also, I misstated, the data going into the trunk amp is A2B, not CAN.
Here's the original post:
I'm planning on using a signal processor to un-equalize the speaker signals in my car, so I did some investigating to figure out how that should be installed. Long story short, it looks like the easiest thing to do is recombine the five signals from the subwoofer, the two front door woofers, and the rear dash mids, all of which are easy to tap into via the trunk amplifier.
As others have explained, the 15 speakers are split into two groups powered from two different sources.
All the small speakers in the front of the car are powered by something in the front of the car (I don't know what). That includes
- the three midrange speakers in the front dash,
- the tweeter in the front dash,
- the two tweeters on the front doors, and
- the two immersion speakers in the A pillars.
The rear and large speakers are all powered by the amplifier in the trunk next to the subwoofer. That includes
- the trunk subwoofer,
- the two woofers in the front doors,
- the two mids in the rear doors, and
- the two mids in the rear dash.
None of these speakers operate full-range. Each of them only gets a portion of the audio signal. So if you want to reconstitute a complete signal, you'll need to combine several of them together. But there isn't a single processor on the market that has 15 inputs, so you need to know which ones to use. Since the front of the car has separate mids and tweeters, the front mids have a very narrow frequency spectrum. Since the rear half of the car doesn't have tweeters, the rear mids go all the way from bass to high end.
Here's a spectrum analysis I did:
As you can see, the rear dash mids have the broadest range, going all the way from 150Hz up to 18kHz. They start to attenuate at ~14kHz, but I can't hear anything above 17kHz and 1/4 power at 18kHz is still usable for a signal processor. If you combine those with the two front door woofers and the subwoofer, you can reconstitute a complete stereo signal. And conveniently, all of those signals are available via the trunk amp.
The trunk amp has three connectors going into it:
- White: eight wires that give power to the four mid speakers in the rear doors and the rear dash
- Black: two wires for CAN bus, this is how the computer supplies audio signals to the amp in digital form
- Grey: ten wires that receive 15VDC power and give power to the subwoofer and the two front door woofers (the subwoofer is dual-coil)
Here's a pinout diagram:
You can tap into these wires anyway you'd like. You can use tap-in connectors on the wires themselves, you can put jumpers in between the connectors and the amp, whatever works for you. But you have to leave the amp in place. It has to have 15VDC power from the grey connector and CAN bus data from the black connector, or all of the other signals disappear. So even if you throw away all of the speakers that are powered by the amp, if you want to use any of those signals, you have to leave the amp installed and connected.
Alternatively, it should be possible to pull a complete audio signal out of that CAN bus data so you could just feed that into your own DAC, and if that's true then that would be the best option, but I haven't tried that. Yet. I might.
My plan for my car is to replace all of the front speakers and the subwoofer. I'll probably leave the rear speakers in place. Based on what I've found here I plan to supply my signal processor with the speaker signals from the subwoofer, the front doors woofers, and the rear dash mids, and I can install that neatly in the trunk well. I'll keep everyone updated as I learn more.
@Ingineer By any chance do you know where the front speaker signals are generated? Is there a front amplifier under the dash somewhere? Or do those come directly from one of the computers? Also, the 15VDC supply for the trunk amp, do you have any way of finding out what the current limit is on that line? Thanks.
@JWardell Sorry, I haven't had time to read through the entire thread, do you know if anyone has looked at the CAN bus that goes to the trunk amplifier, and do you have any idea how to pull audio signals out of it? It runs at 47619kbps and I'm guessing it carries either a stereo audio signal or an already-equalized 7-channel audio signal. Thanks.
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Tesla Model 3 Long Range 1st Production PUP EAP Deep Blue Metallic
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Awesome job with all the speaker and amp sleuthing!
CAN is not suitable for large data like audio signals. I'm sure control signals and volume commands are sent through the CAN, but the audio should be transmitted separately, probably just analog from the computer, or some cars use a plastic fiber optic connection. Maybe take a scope to each of the pins?
Edit....or maybe it isn't CAN but one of the ethernet busses. Then that could contain both commands and audio stream.
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Thanks for following up on that... I must've been looking at a sticker that was scratched off or obscured to get the 2W rating :-/
Either way, these speakers really don't have much output at all. I'm not going to mess with them.
Okay, I thought CAN buses were fixed at 1MHz, but I read a lot of weird stuff online. Whatever this is that I'm reading in the trunk, it's switching at just below 50MHz, and that's most likely where the audio data is coming from because there are no other wires. I'll probably open up the amp and see if I can learn anything else there.
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So here is some info on the architecture of the sound system:
The audio is generated in the ICE (integrated car computer) located on the firewall behind the glovebox. The ICE contains the guts of the MCU and also the Autopilot computer (APE). It's liquid cooled by the glycol loop. It also contains an 8 channel audio amp which drives (assuming premium sound): The 3 IP speakers, the 2 headliner speakers, the 2 front door tweeters, and one channel reserved for the pedestrian alert function. (Some newer cars have this already) When non-premium cars start coming out, the ICE will be the only amp and it will drive the lesser count of speakers all by itself.
It also is the master of an A2B bus (see HERE) that sends audio to the rear amp stopping off at the overhead panel to pick up the mic signals for the handsfree system. It is NOT CAN!
There is no easy location to derive an analog line-level signal unfortunately. It would be technically possible to build an A2B receiver to replace the rear amp that could generate line level or even digital signals, but I'm probably not going to be the one to tackle this as the market is still too small to payback the NRE costs.
I do not recommend you attempt to take the ICE apart to try to hunt down pre-amp signals. If you want to do this, try it on the rear amp instead, way less chance of bricking your car. The ICE is too dense with a complex multi-layer board. The amps are very clean, so using a speaker to line-level converter is probably the best way right now if you need line level.
The audio is generated in the ICE (integrated car computer) located on the firewall behind the glovebox. The ICE contains the guts of the MCU and also the Autopilot computer (APE). It's liquid cooled by the glycol loop. It also contains an 8 channel audio amp which drives (assuming premium sound): The 3 IP speakers, the 2 headliner speakers, the 2 front door tweeters, and one channel reserved for the pedestrian alert function. (Some newer cars have this already) When non-premium cars start coming out, the ICE will be the only amp and it will drive the lesser count of speakers all by itself.
It also is the master of an A2B bus (see HERE) that sends audio to the rear amp stopping off at the overhead panel to pick up the mic signals for the handsfree system. It is NOT CAN!
There is no easy location to derive an analog line-level signal unfortunately. It would be technically possible to build an A2B receiver to replace the rear amp that could generate line level or even digital signals, but I'm probably not going to be the one to tackle this as the market is still too small to payback the NRE costs.
I do not recommend you attempt to take the ICE apart to try to hunt down pre-amp signals. If you want to do this, try it on the rear amp instead, way less chance of bricking your car. The ICE is too dense with a complex multi-layer board. The amps are very clean, so using a speaker to line-level converter is probably the best way right now if you need line level.
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Holy Moly. I have always liked Analog Devices the company.
https://www.analog.com/en/education/education-library/videos/3832751027001.html
So can we install an A2B device anywhere off the bus and pick off the line level signals we need?
https://www.analog.com/en/education/education-library/videos/3832751027001.html
So can we install an A2B device anywhere off the bus and pick off the line level signals we need?
That's very useful information. Thanks. Unfortunately, I just realized that the rear speakers don't have car control sounds. No voice responses, no alerts, no dings. So the rear amp is useless for everything but subwoofer replacement.
And yeah, I don't plan on disassembling ICE. I'm adventurous, but not that adventurous.
Thanks for the help!
Edit:
I'm wrong again. Some of the rear speakers do carry the car control sounds. I'll probe those maybe tomorrow to find out which ones.
@eXntrc
After a bit of thought, I'm not sure how feasible it would be to tap into the line-level signals inside the amp or to convert the bus data directly to analog signals, bypassing the amp completely. I can't find any documentation on A2B and I can't find any information at all on the chip inside the amp, which is labeled AWD95153Z-21. The wires I read were switching between 4V and 6V at 50MHz, which matches the A2B spec, but that's all I've been able to find out. I would guess all signals are equalized and processed inside the ICE computer, not at the amp. A2B can carry up to 32 audio channels, and the amp only needs seven, so I can't imagine a reason why unequalized data would be sent there.
As for me, I'm leaving the amp in place so I'll just be tapping into the speaker-level signals on its output.
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@_Travis_ and @Ingineer , just curious if you guys have seen this:
https://www.analog.com/media/en/new...dia/en/news-marketing-collateral/product-highlight/Automotive-Audio-Bus-A2B.pdf
![Image]()
These appear to be A2B prototyping / evaluation boards.
I noticed that these board have 1/8" jacks on them.
Part EVAL-AD2410WBZ is labeled as "stereo in, stereo out, and stereo microphone".
Part EVAL-AD2410WGZ is labeled as "stereo in, stereo out.
Two of the board appear to include programmable DSPs.
There's also some kind of graphical configuration tool.
These probably aren't cheap. I don't see any pricing. But I at least wanted to link to them in case it's a starting point for a more pure Digital-to-Analog solution.
https://www.analog.com/media/en/new...dia/en/news-marketing-collateral/product-highlight/Automotive-Audio-Bus-A2B.pdf
These appear to be A2B prototyping / evaluation boards.
I noticed that these board have 1/8" jacks on them.
Part EVAL-AD2410WBZ is labeled as "stereo in, stereo out, and stereo microphone".
Part EVAL-AD2410WGZ is labeled as "stereo in, stereo out.
Two of the board appear to include programmable DSPs.
There's also some kind of graphical configuration tool.
These probably aren't cheap. I don't see any pricing. But I at least wanted to link to them in case it's a starting point for a more pure Digital-to-Analog solution.
Tesla Model 3 Long Range 1st Production PUP EAP Deep Blue Metallic
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Awesome information @Ingineer first I've heard of this bus and always thrilled to learn of a new serial bus technology! (Also, welcome back, haven't seen you in a bit!)
My first thought was exactly the same as @eXntrc there is probably easily obtainable eval boards from AD (sadly I don't see them on DigiKey or Octopart) that might be able to tap in. It probable depends on addressing though, and if there can be multiple receivers of the same signal. Need to learn more. If so I could always get in touch with Analog to get some eval boards.
On the contrary I think the Model 3 market alone would be enough to support development if this is relatively doable. I'm very happy developing my CAN display even if I'm the only customer, and there are always a number of folks who look to upgrade their audio.
My first thought was exactly the same as @eXntrc there is probably easily obtainable eval boards from AD (sadly I don't see them on DigiKey or Octopart) that might be able to tap in. It probable depends on addressing though, and if there can be multiple receivers of the same signal. Need to learn more. If so I could always get in touch with Analog to get some eval boards.
On the contrary I think the Model 3 market alone would be enough to support development if this is relatively doable. I'm very happy developing my CAN display even if I'm the only customer, and there are always a number of folks who look to upgrade their audio.
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