2025 Ford F150 Platinum Plus B&O Unleashed (the leash broke again) - System Upgrade - The Sequel

[Sonnie Parker]

Yep... I remember a couple of systems ago I said that was it. But then I broke the promise to myself and upgraded my 2023 F150. While I did skip upgrading my 2024 Ram Limited, here comes the 2025 F150... the sequel to the 2023. Just one more time... just one more time... just one more time... this is it, the final chapter of car stereo system upgrades.

I've got all the goods ordered. I went back to Jon at All Things Aquatic for the bulk of what I need. I already have all the acoustic treatment material from ResoNix. I've ordered some door panels from SoundSkinz for additional treatment, as I liked those I used on my previous F150. The sub box for under the rear seat is coming from MTI Acoustics. I've used one of their boxes in the past. I was not all that crazy about it, but I think it had more to do with the wrong drivers. It was okay, but I always felt the JL Audio Stealthbox was better. This time around, I'll try the Hertz MPS 300 S2 Mille Pro Series 12" shallow-mount 2-ohm drivers in the MTI Stage 1 box and hope for the best.

This is a before and after pic of my Carbonized Gray 2025 Platinum Plus. Second pic is after removing rear blocks to lower the rear some (too much rake)... and OCD Tinting and Wraps wrapped it in the Xpel Stealth Matte PPF, as well as tinted the windows with the Xpel XR Plus ceramic tint.

I have all the acoustic treatment, so I'll be starting on that part of the install soon.

I'm a huge miniDSP/Dirac Live fan, but this time around, I'm going a different route. I'll be using the Audison Forza AF M12.14 bit DSP amplifier. This will power the three dash speakers, the front and rear door speakers, and handle the DSP duties. 160 watts to each front door speaker and 60 watts to each of the other speakers. I don't plan to use the tweeters or the overhead speakers. The rear door factory speakers will be used for rear fill. The M12.14 includes the bit Drive 3.0 software with the Accordo 2.0 program similar to what Dirac Live does. It will no doubt be interesting how it compares. The one extra feature this system will have is the ability to create a center channel, thus, no more tuning for only one seat... both front drivers enjoy a tuned front stage. We'll see how it turns out.

Audison Forza AF M12.14 bit DSP Amp

The Audison Forza AF M1D Amp will be a companion amp to the M12.14 to provide 1200 watts to the Hertz subs. This will be connected using the Audison link cable.

The Audison DRC AC will allow adjustment of master volume, subwoofer level, and DSP presets.

The PAC AP4 FD32 will pass off the factory system to the M12.14... connected via digital optical cable. No RCA cables in this install.

The Blam MEDIUM S 3.55 wideband mids with a frequency response of 200Hz to 27kHz will be mounted across the front dash. These are the same as what I used in my 2023.

For the front doors, the Helix Ci5 S200FM - 8" Shallow Midbass drivers will be installed using a custom 3D designed adapter (by Jon at ATA). I'm eager to see how these work on the front doors, although from what few I've learned were using them, they performed very well.

I'll include more photos and details after I get started in a few weeks.

 

[Sonnie Parker]

The dash brackets allow me to know exactly what to trim in the dash. Remove the dash speakers, attach the brackets and trim the factory dash with my Dremel.

 

[Sonnie Parker]

Like a kid at Christmas!




Got the front of the amp board finished... mounting the PAC on the back.



Ferrules... great accessory to have handy for all this wiring.

 

[Sonnie Parker]

I ended up changing up the distribution in the back with the amps. This was some kind of tight fit here. I would probably have been better off using the full amp board across the back and mounting the amps a little lower on the right side instead of trying to cram it all in on the left side like below, but it all worked out in the end.



Here are some of the doors with the CLD, Guardian, SoundSkin, and block-off plates. I also put more of the sound absorption material in the back of the door panel where possible... as well as applied CLD to the rear and stuffed holes except for the vented area in the back (didn't want to mess up my AC and cabin pressure).



Blam dash speakers mounted - left side and center. Drop in except the center grill had to be removed from the speaker for the center cover to go back on... and on the right dash I had to remove part of the heat duct and reseal it. Maybe could have heated it and shaped it, but I was too worried about the heat melting some of the dash accidentally. I was able to control the Dremel tool much more easily.



Sub box. Secured with screws thru the back of the seat brackets on each side and the middle.

 

[Sonnie Parker]

I'll share more about the bit Drive software with Accordo and how it compares to the miniDSP and Dirac Live a bit later when I have time to write it up appropriately.

 

[Sonnie Parker]

I could not get satisfaction with Accordo, so I've ordered a miniDSP C-DSP 8x12 DL. IMO... Accordo is just not ready for primetime. It made things worse with my setup.

I uploaded the files here... you can see the REW .mdat file, my bit Drive config files, and some other files I uploaded.

Index of /accordo

Accordo is different from Dirac Live in that it only uses one mic measurement before processing, and it is, no doubt, low resolution. Therefore, the mic did not move at any time during the beginning of the process to the end.

At first, I set the distances for each speaker, but did not attempt to level-match the speakers, nor add any PEQ filters. I let Accordo do the work. However, it was all over the place... imaging was off, speaker levels were off, and it sounded blah. I am assuming it is level matching based on the raw response, with peaks causing issues in the leveling. So... I backed up and knocked down the major peaks, which only required one to three filters for each front door and dash speaker, none for the rear door speakers and subs. Then I level-matched them myself before running Accordo. Below are just a few examples of the process, but I'm not going to take time to show everything, as it's really not eventful.

Below is a graph of how I knocked out the peaks with the left front dash speaker. This required only 3 filters.


Below is what Accordo did to the corrected response. I'm not sure why it did what it did at just above 10kHz, but it didn't smooth any of the response.


For the front right dash, I set 2 filters. The graph below shows my corrected response and level-matched with the Accordo response. As you can see, Accordo made it worse.


The graph below shows the left and right dash speakers after Accordo. Imaging is absolutely going to be off when the left and right speakers are not frequency-matched to at least a few dB of each other.


Below are the left and right channels with subs combined. This does not include the rear speakers, as they are used only for rear fill, excess delay and lower levels.


You can download the .mdat file and compare the before-and-after for each speaker, or any combination thereof. The only speaker Accordo didn't mess up was the subwoofer, because it doesn't do anything EQ-wise to the sub channel. Of course, it didn't need anything done to it anyway. Neither did the rear doors, but Accordo managed to mess those up, too.

Having shown and said all this... It's not just horrible-sounding. It is better than the factory system, but mainly because of the subs being included. What resemblance of imaging there is, it's smeared across the front stage. It did not leave the bass up front like I am used to with Dirac Live. I realize I can manually adjust some of this, but I don't want to have to do it, especially when the miniDSP and Dirac Live can do it with near-perfect accuracy for me.

Unfortunately, I cannot recommend Accordo. I did attempt to contact Audison through their website to discuss this with them and get set-up instructions for the center channel (have not found any), but they never responded.