Nissan Murano Forum banner

Hacking The 06 Base Stereo

41K views 83 replies 15 participants last post by  Zero Cool  
#1 ·
I am new here. I just picked up a new to me 2006 Murano S AWD and immediately I was disappointed with the audio system. I am an audio design engineer and have done considerable work reverse engineering Nakamichi and Mazda car audio devices and have designed a number of products for them based on that work. So I couldn't resist the chance to crack open my head...unit and see what mysteries lie inside.

What I found...Looks almost exactly like the layout inside my Nakamichi TD-45Z car stereo! but there was also a small surprise!

Inside we find a Sanyo LC75412 Multi channel volume controller IC. this handles all the volume, fade, balance, tone, switching and loudness functions. this is the heart of the system right here!
The Nakamichi TD-35/45Z series uses a Sanyo ic much like this with the exception of an added Mid-Tone control as well. But basically these are the same chips.

And the layout of this board around this chip is STRAIGHT off the Sanyo data sheet. mistakes and all! there is much room for improvement!

one small change that can be made relates to how the tone controls work. MOST tone controls work as a "Shelf" filter. meaning that when you turn up the bass control. it turns everything from the controls center frequency(100hz) and down. up or down...THESE tone controls are "peak" controls. meaning that they work more like the controls on a graphic eq instead of a real tone control. when you turn the "bass" up, it will raise 100hz up with the width of the peak about 1 octave. but that does not raise the point where the bass (20-60hz) really is up much. same goes for cut.

On the Nak decks I was able to change the center frequency of the control and convert it to a true shelf filter which turned an otherwise useless control into a real bass control! The treble control works the exact same way! So I will dig into the datasheet and see if i can perform the same type of alterations here.

Now the real interesting thing here is that little board tacked on to the main board upside down. The second I saw that I knew what it was. so i couldn't resist unsoldering it and flipping it over. Yup! Its a vehicle specific EQ board.
 

Attachments

#82 ·
Nice Zero Cool. I had a 2005 with the bose system and removed the bose amp went into a PAC oem1 and that went into a 4x75 amp to pioneer components Now I have a 2011 and it has bose system and a center speaker. the front stage sounds good but lacking in bass. I have my sub from the other MO but did not install yet. A tech told me bose has 6 volts always on the speakers. If i do not use a crossover on my amp i will damage the amp. If i change the front speakers the 6 volts will in time blow out speakers. Is this all true? Thanks great stuff!!
 
#81 ·
Sorry I haven't been around in a while.

The Soundstream ref series amps have a small connector on them that looks like a computer mouse/keyboard port. this is the balanced input plus +15 and -15 volts so b careful. there is a wiring diagram someplace. I will have to figure it out again. BUT.

Balanced outputs work the same way 220Vac works in your house. there are 2-phases, both hot one we will call Positive and one we will call Negative. Ground can be skipped all together due to the fact that balanced I/O is self noise canceling. But using the ground is always a good idea.

The output from the Bose-O radio has a + & - output for each channel. you will have to look at the wiring diagram for the wire colors. you tie those lines to the + & - inputs on the soundstream amps and walla your done! you do not need a converter to do this. but you will need to find some old keyboards or something to hack the cables off from to make the adapters.

The soundstream amps are bigger than the stock bose-o amp, you will have to do some mods to get it to fit/work etc.

Just be DAMN careful you do not tie into, or short the +15 or -15 volt lines on the soundstream amp or bad things can and most certainly will happen. so go slow, check your work, take your time. do it right...


Zc
 
#83 ·
Sorry I haven't been around in a while.
Welcome back! :29: It is good to see you are back on top of this information-rich thread.

-njjoe
 
#80 ·
Zero Cool, thanks for this great thread! Now I have a question for you, you said that a Soundstream Reference Amp is compatible with our Bose system, now do I need to use a PAC OEM-1 to be able to install this amplifier or not needed?

And since you've already taken the stereo off of a MO, will the Soundstream Amp fit in the same place of the original Amp?

I'm looking to install the Soundstream Reference 4 chan 400Watts
 
#78 ·
EQ board by-passing project

Finally I got a chance to by-pass the EQ board in my 2007 Murano Base radio HU. Thanks Zero Cool for your valuable information and illustration!

Since I don't have advanced soldering station, I used an alternative method to remove the EQ board (see pic1) -- I used a rope to go under the board, melted the solder simultaneously on all connections (3-4) at one corner, and pull the string to force it to separate from the pin. Once separation was observed, I moved on to the next corner, since I could only bend the corner of board so much. So in summary the goal here is to slightly bend the corner and repeat the action for all corners until the whole board comes off.

It turned out the pulling was much harder than I thought, although I still managed to remove the board. Running the rope under each corner did take lots of patience. A caveat is if you are pulling hard, you have to make sure the solder on the main board does not come off or even loose, since the pin itself is a good conductor of heat. So it is best to use high temperature and melt the solder and pull the corners the least number of times and as quick as possible.

I have to warn you that this method does not save the EQ board since the pulling could easily peel of the copper on the board, making the EQ board useless. This is because the PCB board is double-sided and the copper lines are extremely delicate. Anyway who wants the EQ board if you have decided to get rid of it anyway? However, this method does result in a clean pins on the main board and that's what matters. (see pic2).

Next step is straight forward -- I followed the labels on the EQ board to by-pass each channel with wires. In my case I used color coded ones and marked the channel names on the caddy for in future reference.

Another caveat: If I were to do it again, I would definitely use much thinner by-passing wires -- it would make the job a lot easier. Or maybe bundled signal wires with a ground shield would be the best.

From the sound test after the HU was put back in the MO, I did find the bass to fade a little bit, but the gain on the mid- and high- ranges turned out to be satisfactory. This confirms Cool Zero's EQ charts. Now I feel confident to move on to replace the speakers. Another reason I like the level / unpolished sound is because I listen to lots of classical music. Bass is not a big issue for the genre.

Overall I spent about 2 hours for the job including removing the HU from the car and learning the screw positions and disassembling order. The outcome is certainly worth the time.
 

Attachments

#77 ·
The shop is heated but the MOP isnt! LOL! well i have to warm place to work on it. next step is to mock up some pre-outs and do some in vehicle testing. the biggest issue is proper grounding. if it is not done right a ton of alternator noise will be heard. so you have to isolate the ground to reduce the ground loop currents so i need to play with that a bit.

now that the holidays and such are over i can start getting back to it. in the meantime i have been working on a subwoofer project for the MO. i picked up a pair of Tymphani LAT subwoofers. a LAT500 and a LAT700. turns out the 700 is way to big to fit but the 500 should be a nice setup!
 
#72 ·
There are actually 4 radio models for the 1st gen Mo's. Most seem to have the Base PN-2529H or Bose PN-2530H but there are 2 other models that have the AUX port on the back. I haven't figured out what version of the MO get's these radios. or IF the Mo's even get these radios. this same chassis PN# is used in several vehicles with different face plates apparently.

The radios that have the aux port just need a simple adapter cable to get audio into the radio. and these must be the radios without the CAT button etc.

and now that I have a workign display I can do some experimenting with the Bose-O radio and try removing the cassette section and rework the cass input as an aux input. the biggest issue is that there is a reel pulse that tells the MCU that the tape is playing ok. if it doesn't see this pulse it will eject the tape or give an error message maybe.

and I want to experiment with swapping a single disc cd player for the 6 disc trouble prone changer.
 
#71 ·
All of the BOSE radios have the NAV clock setting displays, non NAV vehicles don't do anything with it. I think the clock is driven from the NCU/GPS in a NAV vehicle, where it is driven from the DCU in non NAV vehicle (with color display). I also think NAV specific DCUs do not support a clock if installed in a car without NAV. I have one of these DCU on the shelf....
 
#69 ·
I managed to purchase a display connector for a reasonable price from a very nice eBayer! I got it all hooked up and i now have the display working and learned a few things...which i didn't expect...I have 2 radios here in the shop. a base model radio and a Bose-O radio. it seems that the MO that the Bose-O came out of must have had Nav. or maybe all Bose-O radios have nav or something as the settings menu in the Bose-O stereo shows things like GPS-clock setting etc that the base system doesn't have. so there must be some commands stored in the faceplate from the Bose-O system that are different...hmmm very interesting.

Now that i have a working display. I can play around a bit more with some ipod adapters
 
#68 ·
Volume Steps - The digital volume control IC inside has a certain number of steps. each step increases the volume a little bit. each click of the volume control is one step louder. each click corresponds to one number higher on the display as well. so 7 clicks up = 7 bars shown on the display.

I have the base stereo running in the shop right now with the EQ board removed. you just have to be handy with a soldering iron to be able to remove the board and then solder 4 wires to 8 pins to bypass the internal eq.
 
#64 ·
I managed a few minutes at the shop this evening while waiting on a customer to arrive. I made a CD with a 1khz 0dbfs (max volume) test tone on it and measured the RMS output level of the base system from the output of the volume controller IC. I measured a maximum of 1.6vrms and 20mv at 7 volume steps, 98mv at 15 volume steps and 758mv at 25 steps.

7-15 volume steps seems to be about the normal listening level with 25 steps being about the loudest before distortion with the base system.

So using those numbers, we can determine if that is enough to drive an amplifier to full power. Looking at the Soundstream amp i plan on using. i see the input is adjustable from 200mv-2v and 500mv-5v in 2 ranges. what they don't tell you. is what does that mean? is that 200mv for full output?? or 200mv for 1 watt output?? there documentation is not real clear. So I will have to do some testing of the soundstream amp to find out what input level it takes to get full output.

IF the amp can be adjusted for full output with a 1vrms input. that would be a pretty good match as a simple unity gain buffer driver could be used. adding a 6db boost wouldn't be hard at all, but it adds more parts to the board. couple more resistors is all. but that takes up board space.

I also measured the balanced outputs from the Bose-o headunit. 38mv@7steps, 75mv@10steps, 243mv@15 steps, 2.54v@25steps, and 5.4v at max volume. which with balanced outputs is about what i expected.

info to chew on...all for now.
 
#66 ·
7-15 volume steps seems to be about the normal listening level with 25 steps being about the loudest before distortion with the base system.
ZC-

When you say "steps" are you referring to the numbers that appear on the MO's information screen as you change the volume?

Thanks for all of the great "discovery" work you are doing on the radio.

-njjoe
 
#63 ·
Haven't had much shop time lately. But I did manage to get my Bose-O 6 disc changer working again. I bought this unit off eBay from a junk yard. when it arrived it was immediately obvious it came from a badly wrecked vehicle. the whole chassis was tweaked and the cassette and cd didn't work. there was evidence that someone had tried fixing it and gave up.

I disassembled the whole unit and cleaned up the tape deck section first and managed to get the motors working and now it will load tape and play. then i removed the CD section and disassembled the top half and carefully straitened all the bent metal pieces inside. man this thing must have been SMACKED HARD! everything was bent. but now it works and will load and play cd's.

These things are REALLY fragile. lots of moving parts, cheap stamped metal, crappy tolerances, and just not a great...thing... the single disc really is a much better choice for reliability.

I was hoping this was one of the models that played MP3 cd's but when it arrived i realized it was an 04 and does not play MP3's.

it "might" be possible to swap a single disc into the Bose-o head unit with some main board modifications. I might look into that if i get real ambitious...

Here are some bench photo's. Note the connection of the Display controller to make the stereo work.
 

Attachments

#58 ·
Also. I found that the display controller for a Bose-O system will connect and work with a base system and allow either to function on the bench. I have not seen what the display does yet but it should be fine.

Also. there are several different versions of Base and Bose-O headunits. not all are the same The units I have here are the 2007 PN-2529(base) and a 2004 PN-2530(Bose) systems. The electrical plugs are identical on these units.

You CAN swap a these units. as long as you address the amp/speaker wiring issues.

Swapping a Base stereo into a Bose-O equipped vehicle is the easiest. swap headunits, remove Bose-o amp. cut the plugs off the input and output side of the Bose-o amp and wire together to bypass amp. replace speakers and done.

Putting a Bose-o headunit in place of a base system is a bit more difficult only because the front outputs are on the same plug as the power. so you would have to by a set of aftermarket plugs from Scosche or metra etc. and make a "T" plug that plugs into the back of the radio and plugs into the stock harness and splices the power between them. then run audio lines from the HU to an amp located elsewhere and speaker lines back from the amp and splice them into the harness plugs...its messy. and still replace the speakers.
 
#55 ·
Yup, those look like they would work out well. The correct way would be to buy a mini din plug and make your own cables but that is a huge pain and those connectors melt easily. Keyboard ps2 cables will be a little thicker and easier to work with. Keep the cable short and it Will work ok
 
#54 ·