Need a little Harman Kardon help please!

I would like to change the stereo in my 2001 Vogue, primarily to get rid of the useless cassette player (I have no cassettes)! To that end, I "borrowed" the Blaupunkt DAB stereo from my wife's TVR. (She won't mind - what's the point in a stereo when you have 106dBA from the exhaust? )

My RR has the Harman Kardon stereo & satnav upgrade, with a single amplifier in the boot. I have looked up the wiring diagrams in RAVE and my system seems to match the contents, but there are a couple of wires that do not featured in the diagram. I assume these are leftovers from the lower spec stereos I don't have, so I am not worrying about them.

I would like to keep the amp and all the original speakers in place at least for the moment because they all work quite well and I don't really want to take the car apart too much or buy loads of stereo stuff when I have other expensive projects demanding money.

Both the new Blaupunkt and original Alpine head units have ISO standard connectors, but it's not as simple as just swapping the connectors.

These are the problems along with some solutions:

1. The changer (blue mini ISO connector) is not compatible, but that's OK since it will be replaced with a USB hard disk for MP3s.

2. The wheel controls look to be a simple resistive ladder, but the stereo requires a variable duration pulse input. I knocked up a simple microcontroller with internal ADC to sample the buttons and output pulses into the stereo. This mostly works, but needs a bit of refining. (Any pointers appreciated)

3. Speaker connector looks to be ISO standard but arent because the Alpine stereo has high impedance outputs and I therefore need attenuators/matching networks. Rangerovers.net supplied a guide to making these, so this problem is solved.

4. I can't decide what the yellow mini ISO connector does (4 wires):

It turns out that the orange wires are the sub output for the "high line" system. I have the "premium" system so they aren't connected at the other end. The yellow wire is the road speed dependant volume control and the black wire is a ground connection. These seem to vary according to the trim level of your Range Rover. I need only connect the speed dependant control to the new stereo.

5. I can't decide what the green mini ISO connector does:

It seems the one wire in the green connector controls the "dsp amplifier" somehow. I plugged an oscilloscope into this wire, and it mostly shows a +12 voltage level and occasionally it looks like the stereo sends a serial message to the amp, or maybe they both communicate with each other over this as a half-duplex system? Is there any info about this comms protocol? It doesn't look exactly like RS232, but it does appear to be 9600 baud.

6. With the Blaupunkt stereo connected it is always as if the amp has unity gain except in the following strange circumstances:

The Alpine stereo is connected and working and the volume is turned up to near full. It is then disconnected and the Blaupunkt is immediately connected. The new stereo and HK amp then work mostly (but not completely) correctly.

If anyone has solved any/all of these problems or can point me in the right direction please let me know.

Thanks

Holy **** batman, this guy knows a thing or two about stereos

I think you're on the wrong end of the help equation!! I've never heard of anyone else managing to save the steering wheel controls. Don't tell anyone how you did it, knock up a kit and you're minted!!

Do a trawl through the HK threads, I remember a while back someone with your level of knowledge discussing how they successfully got the sub working with a new head unit. Get heads together with that fella and ye might be on to something. I've a vague memory that Wills is good on stereos or is involved in refurbing the head unit. Try trawling his posts too, I'm sure he won't mind

I always thought there were individual amps in the 4 door speakers and that's what made the stereo so hard to change out. Is that not true of the HK system?

I'm changing mine and keeping all other fittings, fitting a JVC head unit.

This web site will give all and I mean all, the info you require plus they have all the cables, connectors, facia & head units

More Information - Range Rover Harmon Kardon systems

Good luck

I managed to sort my HK stereo out couple of weeks back. But never managed to keep the steering wheel controls. I had normal problem of stereo sending the incorrect freq to turn on the door amps and power. Was going to make a high low converter but thought id try the easy fix first. So I put a couple of scotch locks from the thick red(pink) and white from your power connector to the grey and black wires on same block (these are 2in1 slot on same connector). Traced them they are the amp wires. So this now acts as the remote on for the amps and works for me. I also managed to get the sub working but only by a bodge. I just hooked it up to the rear speaker feeds and adj the levels on the head unit. As i say this worked for me. Only issue is when stereo is turned off while ignition is on get some feed back hiss although not a problem as no feedback if you just turn the volume all the way down when not needed. Hey any stereo is better than none!!

If you try this and it doesn't work. . . I live in Mexico and called Pedro So dont blame me!! ha ha

Scotty

Thanks for the vote of confidence SpudH The wheel remote would have been easier if there weren't errors in RAVE!!

The early HK stereos were as you describe - an amp in each door. Mine is a late 2000/2001 model so has only one (looks to be 5 or 6 channel) amp located behind the sub.

lac500 - the link describes the older stereo - with 4 channels output from the stereo for the door amps and a separate sub out. Mine is the later one with only 2 channel output directly into the HK dsp amp, and a strange separate control wire.

ScottyB - tell me more. Is yours an early or late HK system? When my amp works it drives all the speakers properly (even on the new stereo) but it whether it works or not seems tied up with my mystery serial message.

An update:

I have written some code to go on a small AVR microcontroller to translate the wheel buttons into something the Blaupunkt stereo can understand. This works quite nicely.

If anyone has this issue then I may well be able to supply a low(ish) cost solution if a small run of robust PCBs is not prohibitively expensive.



The Harmon Kardon amplifier issue is proving a little more difficult. I have translated the serial messages:

They seem to be inverted RS232 style comms (naturally with the wrong voltages) running at 9600 baud, even parity and 1 stop bit.

The messages themselves seem to be the following bytes (in hex):
0x68 0x03 0x6A 0x6A 0x01 0x00

I have no idea whether the comms are stereo to amp only or bidirectional yet.
The next step is to construct a circuit to replicate the messages and play them to the amp to see what happens.

Hi,

How did you get on with wiring up your head unit ? I'm dabbling with mine at the moment. I have the little green connector, but it is a blank just filling in the hole, it has no wires in it. Mine is a 2001 DHSE and thus has the DSP amp same as yours. The only difference other than yours being a petrol and mine a diesel is that you have the Nav which I don't. Maybe the little green block is Nav related ?

I completely rewired the speaker system after one of the factory tweeters blew, i had to completely rip out all the wiring for the old stereo as i kept getting interference.

Each door had its own amp, tweeter, mid, an low range speaker along with a sub an amp in the back. it was a nightmare of a job! Now all after market stuff wired up to a 2000W 4 channel amp, and a 15" Vibe on a Slick A7 amp with a KD-AVX44 Headunit an two screens sounds lovely!lol

I came to the same conclusion as you p38dub , best thing to do rip out the hk system and start again. looking to use the factory fit speakers but put a 6 channel amp in the boot where the changer came out and use 3way crossovers to power the front door speakers. use the spare channels for the rear doors and sub.

Nice let me know how it goes, an good luck.Lol

Excellent post dnb2001. Im looking to connect a clarion sat nav to a year 2000 Vogue, not sure if its high line or premium (whats the difference?) Anyway I need to tap into the cars speed pulse for the sat nav, can I confirm this is indeed the yellow wire next to the black on the mini yellow ISO? Also I'd like to keep the original steering wheel control so do let me know if can make one cheaply as I'd definately be interested in buying one mate. Cheers

Update, the yellow wire is indeed the speed pulse, so THANK YOU dnb2001, you really have been very helpful with you're post!!

I have bought a new head unit for my 2000 model P38 Range Rover with the harmon kardon. All working well around the normal in car speakers.



I just need to know how to connect the sub in the boot to the sub pre out of the radio unit. Does anyone know where I can get an adaptor or how to wire it.

Also how can I get the steering controls to work, as there is a wire from the headunit to do this but not sure which wire to attach to etc and how



Also the head unit has a flip out screen with DVD player, it seems that I need to wire the screen activation to the handbrake so it knows the brake is on and show the picture. Does anyone know how easy this is or better still if there is a way around it so the picture can always be on?



Thanks for your help