Exile MKII ZLD [Archive]

mmandley

06-09-2014, 05:48 PM

Got my new ZLD in and wanted to give my thoughts, likes, dislikes on it.

First, like all Exile products shipping was fast,

If you never owned a ZLD then this next section won't matter, but owning one and having it pre mounted this next section is interesting.

First having the original one mounted, I was thinking hey Plug and Play, swap RCA's swap power ground remote block, unscrew a couple screws and I'm done.

yea not so much...

First the Case is designed slightly different, the side mounts are wider apart, also the new brackets don't allow a back and forth slide adjustment to make it easier to flush mount it. The holes are drilled and no adjustment is available.

Second the new power plug is much smaller then version 1, power, remote, ground are the same location but you must change the wires over. Also the new block has really small jewelers flat head screws, not the same size as the old one. This caused me to have to get a second screw driver as my normal one to tune the amps was too big.

Third is the nomenclature on the new ZLD is different. It is listed as Cabin, Tower, Sub due to the true zone control it has, when changing RCA's I had to guess which is my cabin and tower, old ZLD said Front, Rear, Sub.

I set the Main and AUX gains on the ZLD to 90% as recommended by Exile.
I have not turned my Amp gains down yet as I am going to get the system re-tuned anyhow.

After getting these thing changed, I used the old brackets that are adjustable to allow it a flush mount where mine is mounted under the dash.

On to the unit's functionality.

Main Volume dial is large and easy to use, I don't like that there is no DOT or Hash, or bevel to allow me to easily see what volume level I am at. I will need to paint a Dot or something to know the volume. I like to use 3 settings basically, low, 1/2 and 3/4 are my main volume points and with no markings I was constantly going to 0 then back up.

Cabin, Tower, and Sub are true separate volume controls now. You can turn each zone off, turn one up louder then the other or lower. This is all dependent on the main volume of course.

For me I don't mess with my Cabin level. I set it to 75% and then use the main Volume knob.

I personally use the Tower volume the second most, I don't like that its next to the main volume because it's a pretty small dial. i would have been happier is they mounted it farther away in the Sub position. I also use my Sub volume a lot to make sure I don't over drive the sub on heavy bass tracks, also sometimes the music has so much base everything is vibrating off the dash, such as my phone lol.

Once I got used to the new volume locations for my tower and Sub everything was ok.

Sound,

When I first fired it up the biggest thing I noticed was my Sub was really pounding now. It has always pounded but not at 25% volume. So I know I have to watch it now LOL.

Over all the sound quality is much better, best thing I noticed is no light noise from my tower. I have had this since we moved into the HLCD market, my wires are all good, gains are down, its just a noise I have always had when nothing is playing. its very feint and most don't notice it, but I do lol.

Also now when i turn the unit off I don't get this annoying Bass thump. It was due to the ZLD being an instant off and sending a signal or something to my sub amp and making it thump.

Old Exile amps used to do this too, Exile went back and installed a resister on the shut down side of the amp to stop this noise, I assume the first gen ZLD didn't have this slow power down function and the new one does.

Though out the day yesterday the stereo was loud as normal, a couple times we got to loud and caused the towers to pop a little, and then we had to turn it down some, this is due to the amp gains not being turned down enough. I want to say my amp gains are about 20% right now, so going to have to go to 105 or even 5%.

Overall though I think Exile did a great job on the new MK II ZLD.
Talking to them they are already working on notching the main volume, and making the brackets with a slide adjustment.

Few pics of the Old, and the changes with the new, also a pic how mine is mounted because another Mojo owners was curious. I didn't snap a pic of the new installed because its the same as the old position.

Mounting location

http://i639.photobucket.com/albums/uu114/mmandley/Stereo/Mojo%20Stereo/IMAG0207_zpsc7qgn3jt.jpg (http://s639.photobucket.com/user/mmandley/media/Stereo/Mojo%20Stereo/IMAG0207_zpsc7qgn3jt.jpg.html)

Mounted right unto the fiberglass with screws. Its thick enough for the screws to bite, never has loosened up.

http://i639.photobucket.com/albums/uu114/mmandley/Stereo/Mojo%20Stereo/IMAG0212_zpsdehteqkl.jpg (http://s639.photobucket.com/user/mmandley/media/Stereo/Mojo%20Stereo/IMAG0212_zpsdehteqkl.jpg.html)

New ZLD bottom side.

http://i639.photobucket.com/albums/uu114/mmandley/Stereo/Mojo%20Stereo/IMAG0208_zpsz8bcm9q7.jpg (http://s639.photobucket.com/user/mmandley/media/Stereo/Mojo%20Stereo/IMAG0208_zpsz8bcm9q7.jpg.html)

moombadaze

06-09-2014, 06:05 PM

little threadjack,

Mike what are the xtra ballast switchs for

mmandley

06-09-2014, 06:09 PM

little threadjack,

Mike what are the xtra ballast switchs for

Thats ok lol.

Left is my IBS pump, I have a dedicated pump, I did not piggy back off my hard tank.
Right one is my X link pump, it allows me to drain 1 bag to the other for faster switch over times. I don't use though because it messes with the fill timers on the fill and drain and eventually I have to hit the switch over and over to fill or drain a bag to get it to say 100 or 0 again lol. Now its more of a back up LOL

moombadaze

06-09-2014, 06:11 PM

understood. always wondered if the X link would do that.

threadjack over

KG's Supra24

06-09-2014, 06:12 PM

Zond Line Driver?

As always, nice write up. I know someone who was hoping for a simple swap but it doesn't sound too bad to switch from the old to the new.

MLA

06-09-2014, 07:07 PM

I set the Main and AUX gains on the ZLD to 90% as recommended by Exile.
I have not turned my Amp gains down yet as I am going to get the system re-tuned anyhow.

How can there be an arbitrary "90%" gain stage? The head-unit, music source, amps, battery voltage, chnls wired at 2 or 4 ohm, etc, etc, will determine where the EQ's gain is set. Why the need for adjustable gains, if they will all be set at 90%????

Any explanation yet for the benefit of an on the fly need to change the sub phase?

Since the EQ has a redundant low-pass cross-over, how did you tune the sub when the sub chnl is low-pass only?

Woody929

06-09-2014, 07:51 PM

Zond Line Driver?

I thought the same thing when I unboxed mine last Tuesday.

csm

06-09-2014, 11:02 PM

mmandley

06-10-2014, 02:52 AM

Is there a reason why you wouldn't just set the ZLD to 75% volume at all times, and then just use your remote for the stereo to adjust the volume? This is what I've done with my EQ's in the past, wondering if I'm missing something.... I just know that I don't want to go over 35 on my radio's volume remote, and my EQ is always set to the same volume. I just find it easier to hit volume buttons when in a boat than turning a knob.

Obviously this would only be if running your input through your stereo, and not directly through the aux in for the ZLD, in which case, ignore me.

If you use your head unit that works.

I only use my phone. My head unit isn't even plugged into my stereo system.

Same in my Vette, I only use my phone. You look into it (convertible) looks factory Bose system but I am running an Exile set up in it.

Cigars n scotch

06-10-2014, 09:46 AM

Zond Line Driver?

As always, nice write up. I know someone who was hoping for a simple swap but it doesn't sound too bad to switch from the old to the new.

I thought the same thing when I unboxed mine last Tuesday.

This is where Exile needs to step their game up and I mean seriously. Every email I get from them is littered with a bunch of incorrectly spelled words and grammar errors and it just looks really unprofessional. Someone on WW had mentioned the last email blast they sent out and said that Exile needs to hire a new marketing head or even a recent undergrad fresh out of college who would be more than willing for some work just to proofread their stuff and I totally agree. Where's the QC on those products? They are shipping out product with misspelling of the word Zoned, come on! Not a big deal in the grand scheme of things to some, but it is if you think about Brian trying to build his brand. Companies who build a brand successfully weed these little things out. Just my $0.02 and I'll get off my soapbox now.

Thanks Mike for the write-up.

Woody929

06-10-2014, 09:53 AM

Cigars n scotch

06-10-2014, 10:08 AM

If it is in fact "Zoned" then I'm ok with the spelling. I've just always seen it referred to as "zone". I think the spelling is intentional since it shows the long ō. It was the "d" that threw me off.

You know you make a good point. I don't know whether it's Zone or Zoned, and maybe it's a marketing gimmick to use Zond, but I still stand by my thoughts on the email grammar. Maybe Brian will let us all know.

KG's Supra24

06-10-2014, 10:19 AM

I made my original post kinda thinking along the same lines as C&S because I've seen their website and emails but I agree with Woody. I think it was intentional spelling because of the line over the o (however you make your keyboard do that). Perhaps zone level control is proprietary?

bergermaister

06-10-2014, 11:07 AM

That's why they pay us marketing guys the big bucks. We normally just take 2 words and squish them together to be all fancy like, and keep the 2nd word capital. Or throw a small "i" on the front of it...

SunSport
PerfectPass
WetSounds

iAnything

:p

Woody929

06-10-2014, 11:41 AM

KG, you do it like this ō or Ō. Very similar to the way you would do ö ;-)

mmandley

06-10-2014, 11:44 AM

On the original ZLD its also spelled ZOND in the Rev2 MKII they make it grammatically correct with the characters.

trayson

06-10-2014, 11:52 AM

I really don't want to start a WetSounds vs Exile war, but I was on Mike's boat and played with his Exile zone controller a little and I have a WetSounds 420-SQ in my boat. I think that the pop up buttons on the exile are interesting and make for a sleek, sexy looking product, but I found that when two buttons are popped out at the same time, even my small fingers would have trouble adjusting the knobs are there's not as much space between the knobs are you'd really want. The wetsounds has the little knob with the bigger knob around it. because of their design, I find I can adjust the knobs from the top of the knob, so the spacing isn't as much of a problem on the WS.

Of course the WS has a built in PA system and while some might consider this frivolous, I have used it to bark directions to a surfer, or to yell at people going too fast in a no wake zone! haha!

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't see any evidence that the Exile unit has an auxillary output on it like the WS unit does. This Aux out is designed so that you can take a long 3.5mm cord from my WS420SQ and plug it into the source of any other boat that has a 3.5mm input (which would be pretty much about anyone) and I could provide the source music to their system as well. So if two boats were rafted together, I could be playing music on my boat system and feeding music to the other boats system as well so we could both be providing the tunes. Necessary? No. But kind of a neat feature in my opinion for the few times I'd use it.

I'm sure that the sound quality of the Exile unit is top notch. Looking at it, I'm wondering about the EQ. It appears that there are 4 buttons to adjust your EQ:

Bass
Mid Bass
Mid
High

While that's great, it seems like those adjustments are going to tweak the levels to the entire system. On the WS420SQ, there are TWO knobs for each of the four EQ freqencies. You can adjust Cabin bass, and tower bass. Cabin mid bass seperately from tower mid bass.

This is a huge feature IMO. When I was on Mike's boat, we were CRANKING the music and we started hearing some popping and I could see the cabin speakers visibly suffering from over excursion. I told Steve to turn down the Bass on the boat speakers, but I believe what happened from the way the unit is designed is that both the cabin speakers AND the tower speakers had their bass turned down.

There's no way you can convince me that a 6.5" boat speaker can handle the same amount of low frequency as an XL9. It's just not possible. But yet, you're robbing the XL9 of bass or even mid bass by not having independent EQ's for the two different zones.

Now, like Mike said, if the Exile unit took away the white noise when the system is turned all the way down, that's fantastic. My WS suffers from white noise from the tower speakers when the volume's all the way down. Not a deal breaker for me, but a weakness of the WS and it sounds like the former XLD.

I do think that the phase control button on the Exile is a waste of space and a button. If someone can educate me why I would ever want or need to change the phase of my sub on the fly, let me know.

Also, the WS420-SQ has the choice of blue or red illumination. Not sure about the Exile.

All in all, the Exile MK2 is a good, solid unit in my opinion. But it costs the same amount as the WetSounds and the WS has a handful of extra features and I haven't yet found anything the Exile unit offers that the WS doesn't that I'd really care about. (i.e. I don't need to adjust my sub frequency or phase so that's wasted on me). Maybe I don't get the advantage of being able to configure the gains of each input on the Zone contoller as Exile offers... I have gains on each of my amps. So why do I need another set of gains to adjust on the zone controller? seems redundant.

Anyway, I know this forum has huge support of Exile and I think their products are fantastic. But as someone that's used the competing product and had a chance to play with the new Exile product, I figured that I could give some informed feedback of the strengths and weaknesses from a user perspective of the two units.

And to give a contrast of the controls.

Exile:
http://exileaudio.com/store/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/8e2dc49e413f406e6702068f7262e566/z/l/zldmkii.624.ss.jpg

WetSounds:
https://wetsounds.com/media/products/ws420/images/02.jpg

Woody929

06-15-2014, 12:05 PM

So how is everybody mounting these? I was under the helm yesterday, and the options are very limited. Best I can think of is to screw a small piece of 2X4 to the back of the dash, and screw into the bottom of that

kaneboats

06-16-2014, 09:38 AM

I hung some L type brackets from the back of the studs used to mount the gauges. There are pics on here somewhere of the many different ways guys have installed these.

Woody929

06-16-2014, 10:50 AM

I just used 2 small pieces of 2x4.

motosno963

06-16-2014, 04:08 PM

I mounted mine on the sub box since there was nothing I could mount mi e to under the dash