followup to Audi Gamma CD installation

[feb@febsun.cmhnet.org]

Hi,
Some of you may remember about a month ago I posted that I
had returned from Germany with a nice shiny new in-dash
Audi Gamma CD player and I was looking for front speaker amplifier
info for 1995 A6 Bose-equipped cars.  Well, here's a followup.

Remember - my problem was that my car does not have the Bose
package, and the new radio is meant to be used with a Bose-equipped
car.  My A6 has amplified rear speakers (amps in the trunk
piggybacked to each speaker) and non-amplified front speakers.
If your car has the Bose deal, this should be a direct drop in
fit.  I saw this same radio in operation in Germany in a '92 S4 w/Bose.


What I ended up doing was buying a Blaupunkt 20 Watt/channel
ampflifier from Crutchfield and mounting it in a space available
in the right front passenger footwell.  Ran the power wires from the
battery under the rear seat.  Ran line-level outputs and the remote
power on signal from the new radio down to the amp, and ran speaker
level output from the new amp back up to the new radio.

I tapped into the factory radio harness using some matching
harness connectors I bought in Germany.  I don't know if they
are available in the US.  I have VW/Audi part numbers if anyone
needs them.
 o  The speaker level outputs from the new radio inserted into
    one of these matching connectors which I then plugged into the
    car's speaker harness behind the radio.
 o  To get at the front line-level output from the radio, I had
    to remove two sets of pins from one of the replacement connectors
    I bought in Germany and insert them into the factory line-level
    connector.  Turned out to be real easy - the connectors are designed
    to allow extra pins to be added in.

The setup is working beautifully.  The CD sounds wonderful.
The tonal balance seems very good to my ears at least.  None
of my passengers have complained either (well, they complain
about the Neapolitan music I play all the time but not about
the sound quality of it.)

Skip resistance of the CD section is wonderful.
I've only been able to get it to skip by driving into a 1' deep pothole. 

If I've got anything to complain about, it seems like the volume
control is pretty non-linear.  It needs to be turned a lot to make
the volume come up, and when it does come up it comes up too fast.
There's a "knee" on the volume curve where it jumps up quickly.
I don't know if this is normal for this radio, or if it is because
the "Bose" amps have non-linear characteristics compared to the normal
amps I have, or because the GALA system is somehow causing an
interaction with the volume control even when GALA is off.


The RDS system seems to work fine, or at least it seemed
to work fine on the one local station that had an RDS signal
until that station suddenly turned off it's RDS signal.
(Does anybody out there have a list of Ohio radio stations
 that broadcast RDS signals?)
I haven't had a chance to do any out of town traveling yet
to look for more signals.


I thought the AM tuning section would be a problem because it
steps by 9kHz instead 10kHz, so it is usually off by a few
kHz when I tune to a station.  In practice, though, it seems
to be working fine.  Even when the displayed frequency and the
radio station are 4 kHz apart the radio still pulls in a clear
AM signal.  I don't understand why it works as well as it does.


If anyone has any questions I'll be happy to add more info.
If you're in central Ohio look me up and come by and see it.
If you want to try to buy one the Audi part number was
4A0 035 196 and the price I paid was 2066 DM ($1377 US),
including 15% VAT  (maybe $1200 if I get my VAT tax refund.)

--
Franco Barber				feb@febsun.cmhnet.org
95 A6Q w/Gamma CD mit RDS!		Columbus OH USA