Issues to bring up with the dealer next time I’m in for servicing:
TSB 19-051 for the collision mitigation braking system going offline randomly which has happened to me a couple times. not a big deal, goes away when you restart the car but still mildly annoying https://www.driveaccord.net/threads/collision-mitigation-braking-system-problem-warning-light-see-your-dealer.502402/
TSB 17-006 for rear deck rattle that I need to have done as well:
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Thus far I have successfully disconnected the ANC module that was buried in the dash. I managed to only break one clip pulling off the panels. The hardest part honestly pulling the fucking plug out (didn’t realize there was a release button on it because of how it’s oriented lol).
I think this alone helped but it’s still very anemic, particularly in the lower registries. Planning on adding a better sub soon. I don’t want a “sub in a box” in my trunk, I want something that fits in the space where the current shitty sub is at so it fires into the cabin. Trying to figure out if I need a LOC to an amplifier to the sub, or if just dropping in a replacement sub speaker and using the existing wiring will be enough. Either way I’ll probably do that first since it’s easiest and the LOC stuff makes my brain hurt a little bit (I’m not totally sure what the advantage of this would be given the signal to the existing sub is already crossed over and amplified as far as I can tell).
I also tried turning off a mysterious “PS” option in the audio settings via a developer menu but I don’t think that did shit. To get to the developer menu hold Home+Power+Source for 6 seconds until beep, tap Detail Information & Setting (lower option) on the screen, then hold Home for 6 second until beeps again, select Audio Setting, then turn off PS Setting option.
There looks to be some fun non-audio related shit in that developer menu i’ll probably play around with some day
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Oh another dumb thing I did in the head unit that I honestly think helped was turning off the volume compensation function that would increase volume at higher (louder) speeds. Also turned off some weird processing called Neural Surround.
As I’m learning more about how this all works it’s more frustrating they didn’t engineer it in a more upgrade-friendly manner and simultaneously obviously didn’t put a lot of effort into the system. Like Honda please just pay one of the big audio engineering companies to outfit you cars with a decent audio system. Everyone hates your audio systems.
The radio interfaces with the oem external amplifier via an RS485 connection and as far as I can tell nobody has reverse engineered it or is marketing a harness to connect to it. It maybe wouldn’t matter if they had because now a day a lot of other inputs come in and get mixed into the radio audio signals via the external amplifier (things like chimes, warning sounds, navigation voice alerts, etc). So because of that we have to use the lines coming out of the amplifier, not before it. Which is theory shouldn’t be too big of a problem even though there are literally 10 discreet channels coming out of this thing (because there are 10 speakers – 2 front tweeters, 2 front woofers, one front center, 2 rear tweeters, 2 rear woofers, 1 rear subwoofer). In theory you takes these lines, feed them through something called a LOC (line output converter) to convert the signals back into a “preamp” type signal that you THEN send to your own amp and then out to the speakers from there. It’s more complicated than that (and the wiring sounds like a fucking nightmare), but that’s the gist I think.
However the more I learn about this, the bigger a pain in the ass it is because apparently Honda has “aggressively EQ’d” these signals. From what I can tell this means they have manipulated the signals in such a way to try and compensate for natural nulls that result from the interior structure/architecture of the cabin (i.e., soundwaves bouncing off the interior at certain frequencies nullify each other causing it to sound weaker than it should). but apparently they did a real shitty job of it and there are a bunch of nulls anyway. Also you can manipulate the timing/phases to optimize the audio depending on precisely where your head is located in the cabin (i.e. depending on your height and seat positioning). And also there are crossovers and rolloffs to consider in which only certain frequency ranges are sent to the various speakers depending on their frequency response curves (and again, apparently they did really weird shit with this like crossing the tweeters over insanely high).
So basically that means not only will I need LOCs and an amplifier, I’ll probably also need a DSP to unfuck all these timing/frequency issues. And not only that you have to know how to set the DSP up and that takes specialized equipment to make the right measurements I think.
