[Damn Dirty Ape]

Originally Posted by bri1042

I'm glad your pictures turned out better than mine did. That little ratchet is brilliant, isn't it?

You can pick that exact ratchet up at harbor freight for about 2.99 too.

[hyou]

Thanks guys for the info! I'm curious will this void the car warranty? Or only part of it? Thanks!

[hyou]

Or actually what exactly does BMW warranty work? Say, the free checks and oil change/brake change should still work right? Will this affect an engine failure etc?

[Casualvic]

They are on sale right now. 600

[Fronzdan]

Originally Posted by Casualvic

They are on sale right now. 600

Everything is on sale. One hell of a deal. I'm waiting on the tweeters to arrive.

[stonefocus]

Nice review!
I ordered only front speakers (3 pairs of mid-bass and twitters) due to my budget.
But is there any stock sub-woofer?

[bri1042]

There isn't a subwoofer with the Bavsound kit. Your under-seat subs will be more noticeable with the Bavsound setup. If you need them louder, then you are looking at adding an amp to your system (my stock under-seats are doing fine off of the Helix Match DSP/Amp and sound pretty decent), or adding an amp and replacing them (there are a few choices there), or adding a trunk sub (which will need it's own amp and a good deal of professional work).

If you have the HK setup, adding an amp to the system is much more complicated due to the fiber optic link from the head unit. There are a lot of posts about it, and more in the e90 section. Adding an amp for the stock HiFi speakers, or the Bavsound speakers when you started with HiFi, is relatively easy with Technic's harness and doing it yourself, or by buying a kit from musicarnw.com.

[bobbydigital]

Out of curiosity does this upgrade essentially negate the HK option you bought originally? Or does the HK option give you a better amp, etc aside from
Upgraded speakers?

[bri1042]

You still have more speakers in more locations than a HiFi/Bavsound car (questionable value depending who you ask or if you use the Logic7 features), the HK subs, and the HK Amp vs. the HiFi amp. Oh! And an actual, useful EQ in your iDrive.

[F48_Driver]

I am in the market for these...seems like they are having another sale.

Have you guys seen it cheaper than this?

http://www.bavsound.com/Stage-One/ @ $497 now.

[Larry Chijner]

Get a sub in the back and amp and it will sound 10 times as good.
The other option is Focal or Earthquake Brand under seat subs. I did everything you did and added a 12 JL Audio 12 Thin line enclosure and amp and it is night and day. Good luck and enjoy!
Larry Chijner. IASCA Sound Quality World Champion 1995-2005
Pro Class

[963mw]

Wait, do people with H&K go for this upgrade too? Why would they?

[djrobx]

Originally Posted by russellsdad

It is definitely improved over HK, but can still sometimes be tiring on my ears. It just takes longer to get ear exhaustion as compared with HK.

I found exactly the same to be true. I've experienced similar issues with other car audio component speaker sets, even higher end ones. Usually you can get some relief by adjusting the crossover network to attenuate the tweeter, but these seem to have a simple capacitor doing the crossover work (as the factory system does).

I found that for me, the fatiguing frequencies are the 2K and 5K bands in the EQ. Interestingly, the Bavsound speakers (or perhaps the L7 amp) got very unhappy when I tried to just leave those adjusted way down. The tweeters would crackle at higher volumes. Not good. I decided I'd try to alter the crossover frequency and try a higher frequency by changing the passive crossover capacitor. I figured I'd measure the size of the current capacitor with a DMM, it showed around 5uf, which for a 4 ohm speaker is around 8000hz.

A-ha, so the frequencies that are bothering me are in the overlap between what the midrange and tweeters are supposed to be producing. Before ordering something different, I did have an extra set of Bavsound capacitors (they're a separate device in some cases). I figured, what the heck, lets try stacking the two crossovers to see what the result is. I was hoping to steepen the slope but leave frequencies over 8000hz alone, and that seems to be exactly what happened. I'm sure some electrical or audio engineer will jump in here and tell me that it's all wrong (capacitors are generally not placed in series), but I was surprised by how effective the result of the experiment was.

Now I could adjust those bands back up in the EQ. The music is amazingly better for me. I can listen to rock music for long periods, and the guitars are beautifully detailed but no longer grating on my ears. I'm sure things would sound even better with a properly designed crossover network, but I think I'm happy enough with the result to leave it be at this point.

"Tweeter fatigue" only seems to impact some people, but I wanted to share my result since you seem to be one of them.

[djrobx]

*Update*

While I was definitely happier with the sound of the double-high pass filter experiment, wondering if I could do better, I went ahead and bought some full fledged crossover networks. I still found the extreme highs to be a bit on the bright side (particularly with 80's music for some reason), and I was having to EQ the 10khz band way down.

I grabbed some inexpensive "Ampire" crossover networks from eBay based on their specs and features. They offered a high-ish crossover point (4000khz) with a steeper 12db slope, and had selectable tweeter attenuation (0, -3, -6db). These turned out to be a worthwhile purchase. The sound is smoother and more natural, and it finally sounds great even with the EQ settings set pretty flat. For the first time, the my car sounds excellent with the L7 surround option turned off, which makes the system's behavior overall more consistent from track to track.

So I think I'm happy with the high end, finally. The only remaining problem is that the midbass sounds a bit "boxy" on some tracks that used to sound really good in my previous G37. This might not be easily solvable, I suspect it's due to the small size of the midrange drivers that depend on the far-away and indirect underseat woofers for sound below around 200hz. I dynamatted my doors but it didn't seem to make a big difference. An RTA also shows a bit of a narrow spike at 1khz. Despite there being a 1khz slider in the EQ, attempts to to correct it (either by reducing 1khz, or increasing frequencies around it) cause other, worse problems with the sound.

I really envy people that are happy with the HK system out of the box, LOL.

-- Rob