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Thoughts and reccomendations on this system

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ztune
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Thoughts and reccomendations on this system

Postby ztune » April 25th, 2013, 1:52 pm

OK guys,

I looking to upgrade the audio system in my car (BMW).
Stock: 1 four or six channel amplifier feeding four 5.25", a pair of tweeters and four 2" mid-range which are all distributed from a circuit board on the four corners of the car. All speakers and tweeters are Nokia.

Some used but not abused SQ equipment were presented to me in a bundle:

-1 W6 JL Audio 12 in enclosure tuned for low bass, however the suspension needs changing
-1 V1/2 JL Audio 500.1 mono
-1 Rockford Fosgate Punch 600.4
-distribution block and relevant wiring.

What are your thoughts and recommendations on this system?
I will be replacing the 5.25" speakers with the same size speakers, the question is, which ones should I get?

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Re: Thoughts and reccomendations on this system

Postby southside connections » April 25th, 2013, 2:00 pm

First things first, what model and year bmw do you own?

If it's a new model, then you would need a canbus/can 2 bypass system, avalible from tripple r electronics to integrate the new system, or you can get an factory spec upgrade system from Mobile Audio Concepts or sr on this forum

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Re: Thoughts and reccomendations on this system

Postby ztune » April 25th, 2013, 2:01 pm

it's a 1997 E39.

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SR
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Re: Thoughts and reccomendations on this system

Postby SR » April 25th, 2013, 6:15 pm

nice car

you will need at least a 12' sub ported in the trunk due to how well the trunk cavity is sealed from the cabin

recommend a good small footprint 5 channel and shallow depth 5.25" speakers
change the head unit as well
if your car came with the changer in the trunk the jl xd or hd series amp fits with a slight mod but totally concealed

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Re: Thoughts and reccomendations on this system

Postby southside connections » April 26th, 2013, 12:52 am

sr, this car din't come with the under seat subwoofers?

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Re: Thoughts and reccomendations on this system

Postby SR » April 26th, 2013, 5:54 am

no

taken from a bmw forum

quote

With the BMW E39 5-series, you have 5.25"/130mm speakers in the parcel shelf on DSP cars and in the rear doors on most non-DSP cars.

In the front, you have a 5.25"/130mm woofer in the door - inside a molded ABS sealed enclosure (rare in door speakers - more on this in a bit). You also have a 1.5" dome midrange (looks like a big tweeter) near the door handle, and a small (0.75"?) tweeter inboard of the side mirror.

In the back DSP cars have a molded sub enclsoure under the deck, venting through two small openings, with 5.25 nokia made woofers. Sounds like ass.

The BMW amplifier has 10 or 12 channels - front woofers, front mids/tweets, rear woofers, rear mids - and internally, each amplifier channel is filtered to only "push" the band of notes that the OEM speaker is supposed to play. This causes the upgrader a problem (as it does with all BMWs of this architecture, but yours is worse than the X5 and E46 cars). The BMW small dome mid plays an odd band of frequencies. Not only is it hard to find a speaker that plays that particular band of notes correctly, but it's darn near impossible to find one that will fit. The dome mids from Dynaudio, Morel, DLS, Hertz, Eclipse, etc., are too large to fit in the provided location. A tweeter can fit there (but not all of them : ) but then you wouldn't have any speaker playing the midrange notes, and those are the most important notes of all for humans due to how we hear.

Once the sound gets filtered through the OEM amplifier, it can't be readily re-combined without lowering the signal and running it through another amplifier - which is tortuous relative to simply replacing the amp.

Bavarian Soundworks sells aftermarket speaker kits and some instructions on how to bolt these midwoofers and tweeters into your car. They don't have a midrange replacement for the E39.

I believe pretty firmly that without an amp upgrade, you are only getting 1/2 to 2/3 of the sound quality your speakers could be capable of by performing such an upgrade. I do believe that that is a path that sounds better than stock to some degree.

One of the reasons that BMW uses the dome midrange is that they want to elevate the stereo image towards eye level. They also could have accomplished this with a more robust tweeter and a two-way architecture, but they were probably trying to make the system impossible to damage through misuse.

Two other aspects of the E39 to be aware of:

The door speakers are in those molded enclosures because BMW was trying to get more bass out of them. For years, a 5.25 speaker was the biggest speaker in many BMW models, and those can't play low notes with any kind of authority at all. When you put a speaker in a sealed enclosure, you allow it to be driven harder in the bass above a certain note, and you filter out bass below a certain note. (This is why sub enclsoure building is harder than it looks : ) If you are making a speaker intended for non-sealed use, it will probably have certain characteristics that don't fit well with small sealed enclosures - and this is what happens with many aftermarket speakers in the E39. The lower mids - especially make voices - sound congested and overemphasized, and the bass sounds thin. It's almost something that a home speaker driver should be used in, but then finding a matching tweeter can be an issue. Most car-specific 5.25 comp sets will have this problem.

When we do an E39, we are pretty careful about which speakers we use. Fitment is also an issue - many speakers won't fit. The tweeter has to be very flat and small in diameter if it's going into the OEM mirror-sail location - the Dynes don't fit and the DLS chambered tweeters don't fit either. The two sets I like the most at the moment are the Hertz HSK130 and the DLS UP5. With either speaker, best results are honestly obtained by using an amp with internal equalization and filtering - like the Zapco Digital Reference - to cut the mid notes a bit and boost the bass notes a bit, while filtering out the lowest notes that these 5.25 speakers won't play no matter what we do. The DC series amps have a USB plug on the side and a DSP chip on the input. You can fine-tune the sound for your car like you wouldn't believe - plug in your laptop, start the free SW app, change on the fly while listening, then save your settings in non-volatile memory. I usually believe firmly that picking the correct speakers obviates any kind of equalization. Your car is a special case.

The rear speakers don't help for bass either. The rear deck speakers are especially disappointing in this regard - most rear deck speakers use the trunk cavity below them as a speaker enclsoure, but BMW essentially made small cavities in the rear deck for the rear speakers, and they play mids and no bass. Honestly, I hate the rear deck speakers, and in general I feel that rear speakers are a Communist threat to our American way of life. The rear door speakers can sound so much better (or at least do far less harm, as the rear deck speakers really do a job on your stereo image and front stage, messing it up quite effectively).

I'm going to describe three levels of sonic upgrade.

Level one is to replace some speakers and leave the OEM amp. I'm not a fan of the results of this method in an E39, but it can be done. Personally, I'd probably rather you went to Bavarian Soundworks on this one.

Level two is to upgrade the fronts with a two-way component set and add an aftermarket amp. Since the rears don't help with sound quality, I'd leave them stock and apply the budget towards the fronts, getting the best fronts you can, before diluting your efforts with rear speakers and rear amp channels. This approach runs from $400 for a decent basic 50-watt-by-two-channel amplifier and decent components from DLS or avincar, to $600 with a similar-powered amplifier in the DC series and a set of Hertz separates, to $900 for a set of DLS UP5 components and a 100 watt-per-channel variant of the DC series. All those prices include basic, but quality, wire and cable. Installation at our shop runs about $350-400, and the amp is mounted underneath the rear deck (you can't see it without sticking your head into the trunk and looking up). So, installed, $750 to $1250, with $950 being smack in the middle.

Level three is to add a sub. BMW didn't give us any other way to get better bass. We can upgrade the sound in an X5 or an M3 without a sub and make it sound pretty darned decent, but the E39 doesn't help us out much on the speaker provisions. The sub we made for a 2003 530 has 10-inch woofer in a fiberglass molded enclosure. The carpet is pretty darned close to a perfect match, and it mounts to the battery door with a couple of removable screws. When in place, the door can be used to access the battery or the taillight bulbs, and the spare sub-floor sill lifts out just fine. The subwoofer speaker costs from $100 to $190, the enclosure is a good bit of shop time and adds up to $500 of time and materials, and the delta on the amplifier cost (you'd want a 4-channel amp to run the fronts and the sub) is between $150 and $400, depending on how much amplifier we pick. So, installed, $1500 to $2350, with $1900 being smack in the middle.


"But what about the rear speakers?"

If this is on your mind, try this for me. Take your fader setting all the way forward. Play some of your favorite CDs for a few days. Notice if you hear more details, especially location details for instruments, than you have noticed before. Most of our clients who try this test - in their factory system before upgrading - report that they are surprised at the level of information that was being lost when the rears were playing. Worst case, we do have some great point-source speakers for the rear - including the finest coaxials in the world, from Morel of Israel. These run from $150 to $400 the pair, plus a pair of amp channels to drive them, so that's usually another $150 to $300 at least. A good bit of cost that I'm loath to spend if we haven't gotten all we can out of the fronts yet.

unquote

dls t25 tweeter will fit in the oem tweeter location
and the dls up series speakers will fit with slight mods to the mounting positions for the 5.25

dls also now makes a 4" component for the newer model bmw that bolts in oem

the other option for speaker upgrade is Bavarian soundworks
http://www.bavariansoundwerks.com/categ ... 0/Catalog/

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Re: Thoughts and reccomendations on this system

Postby ztune » May 2nd, 2013, 2:01 pm

SR, thanks for the info. Contacted BSW with regards to the use of their speakers powered by a 400.1 Rockford Fosgate Punch Amplifier. The following was the response:

Halston Pitman (BAVSOUND)

Our Stage 1 Audio Upgrade is not compatible with aftermarket amplifiers. That's because we've designed it from the ground up to work with the factory amplifier, power output, wiring, and built-in crossovers found in your vehicle. By eliminating the factory amplifier, you'll also eliminate the factory crossovers and change the frequencies and amount of power each speaker receives, meaning they won't be operating in their ideal range and are likely to be damaged, or at minimum sound pretty terrible. While it is theoretically possible to install an aftermarket amplifier and crossover configuration that would be compatible with our Stage 1, it is not something we would be able to provide information on or support in any way. It would also void our 100% satisfaction guarantee and the product warranty.

Best Regards,
Halston Pitman | Bavsound
Audio Solutions for Your BMW
web: www.bavsound.com
email: rhp@bavsound.com
phone: 404-381-1800
fax: 404.605.0525

I'll need to use their stage-1 speaker set up if I decide to stay in line with the existing system. If not, bypass the cross overs to use a different amplifier and speakers. The sub woofer they recommend is a "high" BSW powered 10" one so the JL Audio 12" should be on par or more than enough.

As for the head unit, I may use one of these for the time being http://www.bavariansoundwerks.com/produ ... ation-Kit/ or use a dynavin head unit which is android compatible.

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Re: Thoughts and reccomendations on this system

Postby SR » May 2nd, 2013, 6:41 pm

I have done a few of the stage 1 installs locally upgrade is a bit pricy however the sound is fantastic compared to the oem speakers and fitment was perfect

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Re: Thoughts and reccomendations on this system

Postby ztune » November 9th, 2013, 10:44 am

Installed the above mentioned equipment. With regards to mid range, I used a pair of 5 1/4" faital audio pro along with a pair of arc audio 1" dome and for the rear, a pair of re audio 5.25 re5 coaxial. Power bass pre amp 9 band included as well.

I'm very pleased with the system although some trunk space is lost.

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Re: Thoughts and reccomendations on this system

Postby ztune » May 29th, 2014, 11:28 am

It's been a while now with this current system, but now I'm in the market for an SQ 8 inch sub designed for a small enclosure. It must be able to handle the above mentioned bass amp rating, produce low bass and enough to keep up with the mid range I'm using. Space is the issue here.

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Re: Thoughts and reccomendations on this system

Postby kurpal_v2 » May 30th, 2014, 5:41 pm

Sundown sd-8 or alpine type r 8 IMO

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Re: Thoughts and reccomendations on this system

Postby nigel1977 » June 2nd, 2014, 7:18 am

Hybrid Audio Clarus 8".

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