C5s have been around for very long so almost anything possible has been done about them in all aspects (perfomance, looks, conversions, repairs, etc). But whenever a new Corvette owner wants to do something, this forum is probably the best source for information regarding any of this topics so today i'm just going to share the modifications a made to my C5 Z06 in the audio department.

When i purchased the car in 2014, one of the first things i noticed was the original head unit was gone and a single DIN JVC unit was in place:



At first i hated the looks but the unit was functional with bluetooth and AUX so i decided to keep it. As far as i knew, the rest of the audio system was stock. Years later the car was parked for an engine rebuild and this was taking more time than expected, so i took the chance to improve a little the sound system. I wanted a head unit with a screen (to use navigation apps) and a better bass. For the head unit, i read a lot about the 8.8" Joying which fitted in the C5 with a couple of mods so i gave it a try:




The first goal was to hack this thing as explained in one and another forum to root it and make it able to resize the screen to match the C5's bezel opening. The process was not very clear as a lot of people said a lot of things and the files were scattered in various websites so i decided to compile the walkthrough in a video to help other C5 owners interested in this unit:


For the subwoofer i purchased an active subwoofer (those which you can place under the seat).



At the end, i was very happy with how the Joying unit looked in there. But the subwoofer was a fail. The trunk was eating almost all the bass. I had this same Rockville in another car (under the seat) and the bass you can feel is pretty decent but in the Corvette is was worthless. Besides, the output for the speakers coming out of the Joying was definetely inferior in power and quality. The C5's Bose speakers sounded noticeably worse than before. I was so frustrated that i decided to go "all-in" with a 5 channel amplifier, a real subwoofer on it's own ported box and a set of new speakers.

REAR SPEAKERS AND FRONT TWIDDLERS


FRONT COMPONENT SPEAKERS (Mid-Range and Tweeters)


10" SUBWOOFER (The Largest subwoofer i was able to fit with a correctly ported box that fitted on the C5's FRC trunk)




5 CHANNEL AMPLIFIER


I made all the wiring myself. Before, i had a trunk partition, but after the subwoofer i fabricated two individual partitions to cover both sides of the subwoofer. The final result in my opinion is a very neat setup and the sound quality / power is now awesome. I'm very happy with the result. The whole write up for the process would take a lot of time to write and to read so i made some time ago detailed videos on this. Here's all the process but if you want to see the final result you can check FINAL PART video @ 12.56





I hope audiphiles or anyone working in any of the sound components find any of this material useful.

 

I thought the parts looked familiar, I just watched the series a couple days ago.
Nice install, I like that you can remove easily.

 

Im looking into doing this, I'll likely utilize the pax box as Im not so concerned with making it the best , it would be hard to hear over the car

 

Thanks for taking the time to document the process you went through to improve your entertainment system on your C5.

 

Full AUDIO upgrade. Ok, I should read a little more carefully.