Forever MX-5 Magazine

Tune Up Your Miata’s Stereo with Clearwater Audio

Posted on 06. Jul, 2009 by jeffz in Products, Tech

Late Breaking News - Clearwater has brought out new speakers for the 2006+ MX-5:

Clearwater Audio has announced  a new set of  loudspeakers for the 2006-2009 MX-5. With the addition of this set, Clearwater now offers replacement loudspeakers for all Miatas.

Glenn Stasky, President of Clearwater Audio, says that this was a difficult project as the new car has space limitations that prevent the use of traditional designs.

The new loudspeaker system, Model CWC-9/9B is available now for the retail price of $399.00.  Two models are available, one for the standard Miata audio system, and one for use with the Bose® audio system.

Order yours by phone at (916) 852-7029 or visit www.clearwateraudio.com.

Now back to your regularly scheduled story:

By Scott Fisher, Forever MX-5 Lifestyle Editor

I love music.  All kinds of music, from traditional Celtic to Gypsy-punk to classic West Coast jazz and Baroque chamber music: music stirs something deep in me, takes me by the imagination and doesn’t let go till the last echoes have faded from my ears.

I love cars.  All kinds of cars, from Sixties musclecars to modern Japanese all-wheel-drive rally machines, from classic British roadsters to sophisticated Italian all-alloy masterpieces: cars reach a place in my psyche that nothing else touches.

So it’s something of a surprise to most of my music-loving friends when I admit that I had never upgraded a car-stereo component.  My car-loving friends know why: when I would add up the cost of all the components that go into a really top-end stereo like the one in Project: Survivor, I start thinking about how many sets of race tires, coil-over shocks, exhaust systems, and other go-fast parts I could get for the same stack of Franklins.

But it doesn’t have to be that way: you don’t have to dip into the racing budget to make a serious upgrade in the quality of music in your Miata.  We recently replaced the speakers that came in my ‘96 Brilliant Black when I bought it with a pair of Clearwater Audio speakers (typical retail price $199).  For about half what I spent on the Spec Miata lookalike rims that were the first upgrade I made on my car, the sound is richer, clearer, and has a full, solid quality that stands up to top-down driving at even moderate highway speeds.

The design of these speakers includes built-in crossover electronics that split the incoming signal to power not only the woofers, but also the built-in coaxial tweeters.  Yes, that’s right: you don’t have to cut holes in your door panel to run quality tweeters.  The Clearwater components include them in the center of the high-quality cones of their woofers.  And you save a little weight over a separate crossover (like the ones we ended up taking out of my car) because the circuitry is all built in.

The accompanying photos show the simple installation process.  It was an incredibly easy process; if you can manage an oil change on your Miata, swapping the door speakers will be a walk in the park, once you learn a couple simple tricks we’ll share.

Step 1: Remove the door hardware

My ‘96 Miata has manual windows, so I was faced with removing the window crank.  Now in my old British, German, and Italian cars of the Sixties and Seventies, there’s usually a set-screw that holds the crank in place.  But the Miata has no such thing.  What to do?  Simple: turns out there’s a spring clip (shaped like a Greek omega) that holds the crank onto the splined shaft.  To remove it, you can buy a nifty tool from the dealer… or you can do what we did, and slide a red shop rag between the door and the crank, and pop the spring clip off in a jiffy.  (The rag doesn’t have to be red, but it does have to align with the opening in the spring.)

Next, on my ‘96, I removed the door pull and armrest; three Philips-head screws hold this in place, the uppermost behind a plastic trim plug that pops out with a little leverage from a sharp pick.  Be careful not to scratch the visible surface (or your finger!), then remove the screws.

Last, you’ll need to remove the door cup behind the handle.  Just the cup, which is held in with a small Philips-head screw.  Once you remove the screw, gently manouever the door cup out from behind the door pull; it’s easy, you just have to tilt and twist it (don’t use any pressure, it will just lift out easily once you align it).

Step 2: Remove the door panel

On my car, I simply levered the door panel carefully off the frame, using caution not to split or break the nylon clips that hold the door panel into place.  The top edge of the panel slips into a slot near the door window, so lift it up to remove it.   The main thing to look out for here is the wiring for any existing speakers; since my car had 2″ tweeters installed above the window crank, and since I knew I wasn’t using them, I cut them to facilitate removal.  I unscrewed the woofers from the inside of the door panel, but left the wiring intact till we had the new woofers in place.

Be careful when peeling back the plastic waterproof liner; the black goo that holds it in place sticks to everything it touches, including fingers, clothes, and cats.  (Don’t ask how I found that out…)

Step 3: Remove the external crossovers (if applicable)

The previous owner of my Miata enjoyed tunes, it appears; in addition to a decent Kenwood CD player, I found a set of Infinity Reference speakers, with an external crossover to drive the separate 2″ tweeters.  (A tough act for the Clearwater units to follow, I thought at the time, but as it turns out nothing to worry about.)  These were held into my car with double-faced tape, so it was just a matter of a good grip to pull it from the inside of the door.

Step 4: Connect the Clearwater speaker units to the audio wiring

On my car, the installer had used what appeared at first to be identical black wires.  On careful inspection, we determined that the positive lead had a lighter colored stripe down the middle, so we identified the positive terminal on the speakers and added the right-sized connector to the positive and negative wires, respectively.  After that it was a simple matter to scrwe the speaker units back into the door panel and installation, as they say, is the reverse of removal.

Well, pretty much; the only subtlety on the installation is that it’s easier to see how the window-crank circlip slips into position when you can hold the window crank in your hands.  We still used the red rag to pop it back on, but from the other side this time.  Then just slide the door panel over the window slot, line up the nylon clips, tap them home with the heel of your hand, and install the hardware.

And the Winner Is…

Once we finished the installation, I popped in a Fratellis CD and cranked it up.  Compared to the Infinity Reference woofers with separate tweeters, the Clearwater units sounded richer and more resonant; if they were an engine, I’d say they had good midrange torque but still sang all the way to redline.  (No, they won’t bounce the car like the monster subwoofers in Jeff’s Survivor, but there are those who think that’s mostly for use in the paddock, at car shows, and the like.)  Bass and drum sounds are clear, voices sound good, and the high notes come through without distortion or buzz.  If I had to pick a single word to describe these speakers, it’s “lush.”  Later, when listening to some John Coltrane while taking my son to his sax lesson (this story shall the good man teach his son, indeed), we enjoyed the clarity and richness of the classic jazz quartet of sax, piano, bass and drum.

So all in all, the Clearwater Audio door speakers are a complete win: easy to install, great sound, and about the price of one good high-performance tire.  What more could you want?

Headrest Speakers, Of Course!

It turns out that while my base model ‘96 did not come with headrest speakers, it was wired for them.  Yours may be too; to check, look under the seat.  If there’s a nylon connector that comes out of the carpet just behind the front edge of each seat, the Clearwater headrest speakers are simple plug-and-play.

The Clearwater kit (typical retail $129) includes wiring with a built-in connector that fits the standard Mazda piece like it was engineered for it (which it most certainly was).  It only goes in one way, so you can’t mismatch anythina.  The instructions that come with the Clearwater speakers suggests using a hook to pull the wires through the back of the seat upholstery, but we found that there was enough slack in my fabric seat to manage without having to dip into the Grand Theft Auto toolkit.

Once the speaker ends of the wires were up by the headrest, Clearwater jumped to the top of my list of Companies That Do It Right.  I’ve bought components where you had to guess which wire went into which plug; I’ve bought kits where there was a color-coded diagram, and some of them were even legible and written in something closely approximating English.

The Clearwater kit has different-sized connectors for each speaker.  Again, you can’t get it wrong.  I like these guys.

We had to do some minor surgery to the seat foam to get the speakers to fit, and unless you’re replacing original speakers, you will too.  It’s not hard: you’ll need to cut an access hole for the wires to go into the back of the seat and come out into the speaker slots.  And you’ll have to enlarge those speaker slots to get the Clearwater speakers to fit.  Any reasonably sharp knife will handle the task, just be careful not to cut yourself.

I still have a bit of tuning to do on my installation to make it really right; I left too much foam in place around the speakers after the first installation, so the sound is attenuated.  But that’s my fault; pay attention to details, learn from my mistakes, and you’ll be loving these headrest speakers.

Online Extra: Not Your Average Car Audio Guy

Now this isn’t something you’d see the guys from Car Toys or Best Buy doing: sitting in a racing suit, on the car that finished 2nd in the final Spec Miata race of the season at California’s Thunderhill Raceway Park last year.  But Glenn Stasky, president of Clearwater Audio, obviously has as good an ear for a racing exhaust as he does for the music system. Glenn is clearly passionate about cars, as should be obvious from the well-used driving suit and the fast Spec Miata behind him. That’s Tom Matano at right, admiring Glenn’s handiwork in Tom’s personal Miata.

In addition to a hot race car and very cool door and headrest units for the NA, Glenn let me know that they’ve just added headrest speakers for the 2006-08 NC MX-5.  “This was a unique challenge as the space required for this speaker is very small,” Glenn says, “but the sound is good and the improvement quite startling.”  Based on how much I’m loving my Clearwater speakers, I’d say the man knows what he’s talking about.

(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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Tags: audio, Clearwater, Products, speakers, Tech