So just got my c6 has all the bells and whistles including npp, but want a better stereo (maybe backup camera). Don't want gaudy as long as it works with my iphone I am happy. Would like something that looks like it belongs not 100 lights and switches. Any recommendations (2008 with cashmere interior not that it matters)

 

https://www.corvetteforum.com/forums...lectronics-20/ You can search a lot of info here.

I called Crutchfield and spoke to the techs there, they are very knowledgeable and are priced very well, they know exactly what you need for a C6.

I was very pleased dealing with them, plus you get tech support for life, for free. I went with a Kenwood 9706S.

Good luck.

 

Crutchfield is a great option. Lots of choices. Get one with Apple Car Play and you and you phone wiill be happy

 

Third for Crutchfield. I've used them in the past. I bought a Kenwood DMX907S and the other parts to connect it up.

That free tech support? They aint kiddin'. I got everything to work except for the steering wheel controls. Called them up and a guy helped walk me through what I did.
Found nothing wrong. Swapped out the PAC for free and it works fine now.

 

I'm cheap, I purchased from ebay a Kenwood Excelon DDX 9904S "FACTORY REFURBISHED" That functions perfectly when compared to many of the hiprice units its only missing wireless hookup but at %50-%75 the price of a brand new unit I can live without wireless. I've also heard good things about 2020 ATOTO HEAD UNITS.
Bottom line you don't have to spend large sums of money to get excellent sounds. having owned 6 corvettes in which the OEM stereo units where replaced with aftermarket '' C4s where all replaced with 2nd hand Alpine head units with 0 problems" my C6s Kenwood Excelon + 0 problems

 

In the same boat. My ‘12 goes in tomorrow for a new Kenwood DD head unit, wireless CarPlay and rear and front cameras because apparently I’m not good at gauging the distance to curb stops. We’ll add a controller that will switch the front cam on when the car is going forward under 7mph, and rear cam of course when the car is in reverse.

I expected a major gut job just based on prior experience with Bose car set-ups but I was pleasantly surprised at how good it is, especially the mids and highs. It could use a sub, so I can pull some of the very low stuff out of the door woofers, but other than that I’m just doing the Kenwood, 2 HD cams, the controller, steering wheel control adapter and faceplate kit.

Because Bose uses an unusual 2 ohm speaker set up that will not get along with most aftermarket head units or amps (they’ll run hot) we’re using a harness that will take the line level outputs from the stereo and run them through the existing Bose amp, which is built for a 2 ohm load.

I’ll post a write up once it’s done, probably early next week.

 

the audio quality in the corvette will never be great. The speaker placement is pretty bad, the rear window does something to bass to change it, etc, etc. I have upgraded every component in the car (head unit, aftermarket amplifier, morel speakers, and JL stealth subwoofer) and in the end it sounds "okay"

Others have recommended Crutchfield and it's not a bad way to go. If you're going to do it yourself, Crutchfield's prices are okay (you can usually do better on amazon/ebay). But what you pay a bit more for at Crutchfield is there experience, they will tell you the first itme all of the stuff you need to make it work and either include it for free or give it to you at a good price.

If you're going to replace the head unit, consider upgrading the speakers, the speakers in the door are 3.5" and the rears are 5 1/4". Also there is a center speaker in the dashboard and most people have said if you disconnect that it makes everything sound better. You should be able to get good aftermarket speakers for the four positions for under $200 and a decent apple car-play radio for another $400, add another $200 for the accessories required to make it all work and $50 for a camera. The net result won't win any awards, but you'll probably be very happy with the outcome

 

I read so much bad press about the Bose in the C6, while researching mine, when I was test driving them I never bothered to turn the system on. But since I found “the” car 1200 miles away and drove it home a couple of weeks ago I had a chance to play with it and I was pleasantly surprised.

I’m pretty picky about audio. My last three cars (W205 C Class with a Burmester, a W221 S Class with Harmon/Kardon, a 3 Series with base audio) got extensive mid four figure upgrades with Audison DSP amps, Focal or Morell speakers, and JL Subs. These were not “competition” systems, just what it took to overcome whatever deficiencies I found in the factory set up.)

Write ups on the S & C Class here:

http://www.w221audio.wordpress.com

http://www.w205audio.wordpress.com

The 3-way components in the C6 (woofer and mid in the door, tweeter in the dash) to my ear were only deficient in the low bass (around 50-100hz). It’s clear the designers intended the large door woofers to pull double duty as both mid-bass drivers and almost-sub woofers but they’re better suited to the former. I’ll be adding a Stealth box sub and a mono amp at some point. (We’re pre-wiring for it now to avoid opening the dash twice).

The rear panel speakers do a decent job of filling in the mid bass as well, if you’re faded to dead center.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with the head unit if you’re not bothered by the 8-Bit graphics, outdated maps and the lack of Bluetooth Audio. It’s nice that a 3 band tone control is built in. My 12 has a USB input that recognizes my IPhone 11 (as an IPod) but let’s me play Spotify and Tidal through it. Spotify has a good 7 Band EQ that’s user-assignable and great for fine tuning. I don’t get Playlist control on the HU but the steering wheel controls do change tracks. Not sure if other model years got the USB/Aux In.

Any DD aftermarket head unit would be fine. The stuff that adds cost would be CarPlay (wired or wireless), inclusion of an optical drive, Navi, cam input(s) and how robust the DSP (digital signal processor) is.

 

The doors have two sets of speakers - 3.5" tweeter and a 10" mid-range/bass.

 

I don't think you can replace the 10" speaker. Most folks either pull both out and replace both speakers with a component 2 way with a 1" tweeter replacing the 3.5" and a 6.5" replacing the 10". A kit is available that provides the templates to screw in the appropriate speakers. Other fancier systems will look to a 3 way design and graft 1" tweeters into the a-pillars but that requires custom work.

If you're not going to install an aftermarket amplifier, most recommendations are to replace the factory speakers (I believe they used to call this the "kicker upgrade" as a forum vendor used to sell Kicker speakers that worked well in the environment). They also disconnected the center speaker in the dashboard. The signal put out by the radio is flat and the separation of signal happens down stream in the bose amplifier.

In my case this is the setup I went with.

Kenwood double din receiver
Morel components in the front door (6.5")
Morel coaxial in the rear panels.
A Kenwood 5 channel amplifier
JL stealth-box.

The Kenwood's front four channels are bridged together to two channels powering the components through the Morel provided cross-over. The rear speakers are powered off of the headunit directly.
The subwoofer is powered by the 5th channel of the Kenwood amplifier.

It sounds "okay" At one point in time I had some FLAC content on a USB thumb drive and with the appropriate content it sounds pretty good, but since I usually prefer somebody else to develop my playlist I find myself using Pandora, siriusXM through a phone app and bluetooth. As a result of my laziness I am probably feeding garbage to a mediocre system leading to my somewhat disappointed opinion of the results.

That being said, the corvette has other advantages in terms of sound (big v8) that I don't get from my other cars.

 

This is what I went with. Made a huge improvement (I am not an audiophile with a trained ear though).

The KAC-001 is an accessory relay controller marketed towards off roaders. It allows you to use the touch screen to control relays. I am using it for nitrous. It switches ground, not power so you have to wrap your head around that in the diagrams. The only issue I have found is there is no visual indication you pressed anything. I wired in LEDs to activate to alert me to the system arming and bottle heater (blue became arm and red for heater)

• Alpine ILX-207 w/KAC-001
• Polk Audio DB 522DB+ 5.25” mid panel
• JL Audio C2-350x 3-1/2" 2-way Speaker upper front door
• JBL Club 3020 3.5” center dash

Everything was purchased through Crutchfield except the head unit. I got a smoking deal on it from the C6 parts section. It came with the PAC, etc stuff and was prewired since it came out of a C6.

Sorry for the shaky video
The clicking in the first video is the relay being activated via ground. I had it in my lap as I was testing it. You cannot hear the clicking or the electronic noise when the car is running.

 

Actually your system spec is what I originally planned to do (and may still do) Morel Elate 2 ways (or Hybrids) in the doors, Morel Integra coaxials in the rear panels, and the JL Stealthbox. I planned on using an AudioControl 6 channel DSP amp and running the fronts 2-way active.

I ended up getting the top of the line Kenwood Excelon DD mainly to be able to run HD cameras front and rear but kept the factory amp and speakers.

I have to say it sounds really good. Lots of powerful DSP features in the Kenwood that the factory HU lacked add up to make a big difference. Plus I like how I can save multiple audio configs and recall them with a button. Lets me build a separate EQ profile to use when the roof is off.

I like the Bose 3-Ways (shockingly). The 10” is never going to “hit” like a sub but there’s plenty of mid bass and a hint of the low stuff.

I also like a center channel in the dash. It’s really hard to get the snare drum sound right and that speaker does put out just enough signal to trick your ear into placing the snare right dead center in the soundstage.

Not sure how much incremental improvement I could expect from an outboard amp and the Morels after deleting the mid ranges, the factory dash tweets and the center.

My system wasn’t exactly cheap ($2200 installed) but I think most owners would be very satisfied with it. A sub is probably in the offing and then I think I’m done with the audio.

 

There is a few key differences,
I used Morel's entry level speaker; the maximo i think.
I also used the Kenwood 801-5. Bridging the front two speakers I am only getting 150w to the fronts and 300w to the subwoofer.

I think I could have used more power. The ARC audio 6 channel would have been an upgrade and would have had the power that would have drastically improved the sound.
Also, the subwoofer in the rear corner makes for a somewhat Boomy experience, it doesn't have the clean deep sound, this is probably equal parts source as it is system.

 

I use FLAC on USB. Had tried satellite and Pandora and lost everything I enjoy to hear - crisp cymbals, pluck of a guitar, mellow vibration of a sax, the tight thump of a bass.
But I agree. Once I start the car with the NPP exhaust I'm enjoying another type of sweet music.

 

Just so you know. I did some digging into this for my C6 as well. I wanted to keep the HU due to the Nav in the HUD. But i looked at a JL Audio 8 Channel amp with DSP. Takes line level inputs and also has an RCA out for my Punch 400 sub amp. Hertz makes a kit that includes a 8" shallow sub. Im looking at this to replace the 10's in the door and get great mid bass. The entire install will run ~3500 ish at a shop here in Houston when im ready to pull the trigger. NOt everyones cup of tea as the amp is $1100 in and of itself. But the Hertz speakers are something to at least look into.

 

If you go digging you can find RCA level inputs from the factory head unit. At one point they even made a harness that would do it (not sure if it's still made). The radio in the head unit of the corvette is flat (i believe it's 2 channel). The line level inputs would not be a great idea for this car. The rear is mono, the front is blended across the 3 channels in the front; etc. Do some searching on this page and find the way to get a flat signal out of the head unit which will bypass the bose setup entirely. At that point you can put a DSP on the audio and get what ever you want out of it. The car is physically capable of a 3 channel front stage (center speaker in the dash). The best systems I have ever heard usually put a 3 way (woofer, mid, tweeter) in the doors /w a custom tweeter fabricated into the a-pillar.

one thing to remember about the C6 is that it's a Chevrolet from the early 2000's. This means the interior quality is not great. The corvette is a world class supercar wrapped in Chevrolet Cavalier clothing.

 

Any idea why Crutchfield website says the DMS907S does not fit a C6.

 

No idea. It was there at the time when I selected it from the list that fit fine.
The gear that came with it is the Metra 95-3304 Dash Kit and the PAC RP5-GM11 Wiring Interface (this one retains steering wheel controls).
If you really want that one you could order that way.

Two things I do not like about this stereo -
1) FM radio is a second or so behind. Found this out at a drive-in. Very annoying.
2) I like USB and FLAC files. A folder can only have 999 files. Random Play only randomizes a single folder, not all.