[jmciver]

Originally Posted by NealfromNZ

Bills spot on with his post. I remember ready that top hifi will run to 110db , hifi 98 db remember and base audio ( uk market ) was around 96 db. These maximum figures are all in the bass frequencies with the 110 db measured at 40 hz on top hifi with 125 watts on bass duties.

In my previous system ( e46 ) with 100 rms x 4 on 5.25 components maxed out a bit over 100 db ( at 68 hz ) and the sub ( 13 inch sub and Xmax of 22 mm ) with 600 rms was low 130s ( 30 hz ) with cabin gain. For normal listening levels the amps had considerable headroom and had plenty of power for music transits without getting into amp clipping or running out of mechanical travel on the speakers which both lead to adding extra distortion.

With my f80 build I’m not expecting as much volume from the door midbass due to size of the 100 mm drivers and the limitations they have.

I currently have bass audio ( Uk spec F80 )which on the plus side is easier to upgrade due to limited number of speakers. I don’t have to concern myself with Centre or Parcel shelf speakers.

However, there are limitations for increasing power to mid basses ( BMW speaker wire at 0.75mm ) is roughly 18 gauge so at 4 ohms it starts to choke the power levels above 120 watt peaks .

This is fine for all factory BMW audio options , but it changing out mid bass speakers and amps to say GB40s , Morel Hybrids a with 100 watt plus amps then power loss will occur in the wiring . Running new speaker wire can help but then there’s the MQS pin connectors are rated for a max of 7.5 amps of current. Basically the door options are limited to roughly 130 watts at 4 ohms

The BMW wire gauge to the underset wonders however is a reasonable gauge even for running 2 ohm at 100 watts plus. ( must do some calculations)

For my front stage I’m going Active ( new mid bass and tweeter dedicated amp per speaker ) and will add 16 gauge wiring for the mid bass, some new pins into the door connector. I did look at 14 gauge , but no point due to the MQS connector pin limitation.

Amp options will be a bit over 100 watts which is more than will be needed but should give clean power.

Funny you should post this particular discussion topic as the research I was doing when I found those stock speaker specs is regarding possibly going full active for my front center stage, but using the existing door harness connector to get the additional speaker wiring to the doors to support this. Looking at the wire diagram for the door plug, there should be up to 11 unused spots in the connector (depending on your vehicle configuration, there could be more).

If I were to do this, I would only run an additional set of wires for the tweeter in each door, using the same 18 gauge wire that the factory uses (due to the limitation of the pin terminals in the door connector as you pointed out). I would keep the existing factory wiring for the mid range speakers in the doors. To make this work with my UP10DSP, I would take the two channels needed for the tweeters either from the rear door speakers or the rear shelf speakers (but probably the rear door speakers since I think rear fill would sound better coming from the rear shelf speakers).

While the 18 gauge factory speaker wiring clearly has power limitations, the UP10DSP only puts out 65 watts RMS per channel. Even listening at “modestly loud” levels with typical power peaks from music, I would think the 18 gauge wiring going to a set of tweeters should be more than adequate (which makes install integration easier - I am not sure if 16 gauge would work with the BMW MQS pins). Of course, if you are looking for competition grade high SPL levels, and the corresponding higher power requirements, then upgrading the speaker wiring to a larger gauge would definitely make sense - but obviously make the install more challenging.

[NealfromNZ]

Originally Posted by Billfitz

Where subs are concerned cabin gain is key. It's what's responsible for the silly numbers seen in dB competitions. In half-space, which is when the sub is outdoors on the ground away from buildings, a sub with 90dB/watt sensitivity would require 10,000 watts to reach 130dB. 600 watts would only give you 118dB. The good news where cars are concerned is that thanks to cabin gain you don't need massive power to go louder than you should.
I haven't bothered to check the gauge on mine, but I wouldn't overdo it. The H-K woofers are 8 ohms, and there's only one logical reason for that: if they were 4 ohms the wiring would be taxed. Rather than have to use a different wiring harness for the higher power H-K amp they would have realized the added power by increasing the amp voltage output into the higher impedance load, which keeps the current level within the capacity of the wiring.

2.5 mm / 14 gauge cabling on the underseat woofer. Good for 560 watts at 2 ohms 😀

Imagine one your pro sound bass cabinet designs with cabin gain. Reckon windshield would be popping out with the SPL. 😀

[NealfromNZ]

Originally Posted by jmciver

Funny you should post this particular discussion topic as the research I was doing when I found those stock speaker specs is regarding possibly going full active for my front center stage, but using the existing door harness connector to get the additional speaker wiring to the doors to support this. Looking at the wire diagram for the door plug, there should be up to 11 unused spots in the connector (depending on your vehicle configuration, there could be more).

If I were to do this, I would only run an additional set of wires for the tweeter in each door, using the same 18 gauge wire that the factory uses (due to the limitation of the pin terminals in the door connector as you pointed out). I would keep the existing factory wiring for the mid range speakers in the doors. To make this work with my UP10DSP, I would take the two channels needed for the tweeters either from the rear door speakers or the rear shelf speakers (but probably the rear door speakers since I think rear fill would sound better coming from the rear shelf speakers).

While the 18 gauge factory speaker wiring clearly has power limitations, the UP10DSP only puts out 65 watts RMS per channel. Even listening at “modestly loud” levels with typical power peaks from music, I would think the 18 gauge wiring going to a set of tweeters should be more than adequate (which makes install integration easier - I am not sure if 16 gauge would work with the BMW MQS pins). Of course, if you are looking for competition grade high SPL levels, and the corresponding higher power requirements, then [...]

I popped off the rear door connector as they are similar to the front doors and wanted to see what the options were. The audio area is at the end of the connector and there were two spare slots. There were other slots spare in other parts of the connector.

I checked to see if the audio part could be removed ( like I did on my e46 install ) but short of drilling it out there isn’t a tidy way to add aftermarket cable . Was thinking of running 4 core pro speaker cable in 14 gauge as it’s only 8mm in diameter.

However no way of returning to stock if I went down that path.

So will add pins for active front speaker setup using 16 gauge and will just cut down the stands to fit the MQS connectors. Loss point will the 7.5 amp connector rating rather than the entire length from amp to speakers.

[jmciver]

Actually, there is another potential option. The front door connector is different than the rear door connector as it has an additional spot for the all-around camera that is on the exterior mirror if you car came with that option. If your car does not have that camera option, then there is a nice sized “blank” spot there that could easily be drilled out to accommodate speaker wires (I saw a post on the forums that did this).

I actually popped off my front door connector to take a look. But the speaker wire routing option I mentioned above is not available to me since my car came equipped with the cameras…

Also, why go up to 16 gauge if the MQS pins can only carry the max current of the factory 18 gauge wire? Looking at the back of that door plug (on the car side) I am not sure a 16 gauge wire would fit in an available slot. Look at the door plug pics in the first post of the thread below to see what I am talking about…

https://f30.bimmerpost.com/forums/sh....php?t=1347604

[Billfitz]

Originally Posted by NealfromNZ

Imagine one your pro sound bass cabinet designs with cabin gain. Reckon windshield would be popping out with the SPL. 😀

It's been done.

They've also caused concrete foundations to crack.

[NealfromNZ]

Originally Posted by jmciver

Actually, there is another potential option. The front door connector is different than the rear door connector as it has an additional spot for the all-around camera that is on the exterior mirror if you car came with that option. If your car does not have that camera option, then there is a nice sized “blank” spot there that could easily be drilled out to accommodate speaker wires (I saw a post on the forums that did this).

I actually popped off my front door connector to take a look. But the speaker wire routing option I mentioned above is not available to me since my car came equipped with the cameras…

Also, why go up to 16 gauge if the MQS pins can only carry the max current of the factory 18 gauge wire? Looking at the back of that door plug (on the car side) I am not sure a 16 gauge wire would fit in an available slot. Look at the door plug pics in the first post of the thread below to see what I am talking about…

https://f30.bimmerpost.com/forums/sh....php?t=1347604

Thanks for the link and the option. Amp wise the one I’m looking are roughly 75 rms / 130 peak or 6.3 amps at 4 ohms .At the 130 watts there will be 4 watts of loss at 18 gauage. It’s half that at 16 and allows other choices further down the line. (Like using 100 rms speakers and use my old A/B amps ( 110 rms ) again on the front mid bass driver)

The camera connector slot could be an option as I don’t have 360 view and unlikely to retrofit. Pro speaker wire is typically compact and round compared to figure 8 regular speaker cabling. Thinking it would be easy to remove outer insulation and twist the four stands through the camera connector for active front speakers. Leaves the factory wire intact for returning to stock later.

Rear door speakers are of less concern as will only run at rear fill volume so will only be doing a few watts.

Thanks for the info

[jmciver]

Originally Posted by NealfromNZ

Thanks for the link and the option. Amp wise the one I’m looking are roughly 75 rms / 130 peak or 6.3 amps at 4 ohms .At the 130 watts there will be 4 watts of loss at 18 gauage. It’s half that at 16 and allows other choices further down the line. (Like using 100 rms speakers and use my old A/B amps ( 110 rms ) again on the front mid bass driver)

The camera connector slot could be an option as I don’t have 360 view and unlikely to retrofit. Pro speaker wire is typically compact and round compared to figure 8 regular speaker cabling. Thinking it would be easy to remove outer insulation and twist the four stands through the camera connector for active front speakers. Leaves the factory wire intact for returning to stock later.

Rear door speakers are of less concern as will only run at rear fill volume so will only be doing a few watts.

Thanks for the info

After your discussion about speaker wire gauge I decided to research a bit more and came across this article which discusses the audio signal losses associated with different wire gauges:

https://www.bestcaraudio.com/lets-ta...-requirements/

It was an interesting discussion about just how perceptible (or not perceptible) the actual audio signal loss can be when using different speaker wire gauge sizes, at different power levels, versus the speaker being used (i.e. sub vs mid range vs tweeter).

In my setup, I am getting up to 65 watts per channel and with my current speakers (Bimmertech Alpha Ones) using the stock 18 gauge wiring. I can get it loud enough to the point where I can hear the speakers distort (which is still pretty loud, IMO). But I am interested to see how things may change as far as sound quality is concerned when I replace the Alpha Ones (the front and center channel) with speakers that can handle more power from the amp - all with the stock wiring.

[NealfromNZ]

I might be chasing diminishing returns with thinking about cable loss, but if I’m going to run new cabling it might as well be on the thicker side.

I think for the match / fisher range the 18 gauage is at the upper limit you’d want to use for the mid basses with 4 ohm. Mind you this only applies if your cranking the volume ( which I tend to do sometimes)

This site has some useful calculators for doing the calculations on wire size versus amp power verse speaker load ( ohms )
https://geoffthegreygeek.com/category/calculators/

And this article is quite interesting although more applicable to home audio. Although the author goes on to say that they run 10 gauge, but that clearly isn’t workable in a car other that running a 1 or 2 ohm subwoofer at 1000 watts plus.

https://www.audioholics.com/audio-vi...ker-wire-gauge

Edit

The article you’ve posted is basically saying don’t worry about the effects of 18 gauge at the frequency the midbasses will be playing at the power levels we are typically going to run. Looks like I’m over thinking it.

[Billfitz]

Power loss through undersized cables is seldom a problem. Too much current can be, especially with low impedance speakers. BMW, and I'm sure others, are treading a fine line there, as they want to minimize car weight as much as possible.

As for using 10 gauge in the home, that's nuts. I've never used heavier than 12 gauge, and that's in professional use, at power and dB levels that you'll never find in any home. Always take cable advice with a truckload of salt. High priced cables are the biggest scam in the world today. The absolute best performing hi-fi speaker cable is zip cord.

[Julian2]

I wasn't quite satisfied with the punch the Match 10 gave the underseat woofers and tried something.
I tested different sound setups for the underseat woofers but always had the issues that I got drone if the punch is decent and if I remove the drone, the kick is too weak. ( RTA with SetEQ and slight changes afterwards).
The Subwoofer that I have in the trunk is powered with a Kicker CX800.1 Amplifier. The Sub is wired for 4 Ohms meaning the amp should be able to output about 300wrms. This is absolutely enough for me.
I decided to connect the underseat woofers to the amp in series (2x 2Ohm). Meaning they get the same 300wrms the trunk sub had. I used the setup that didn't have drone.
The difference is huge. I finally got the punch I expected from the underseat woofers with the Match 10 in the first place. So much for the 2x160wrms with the Match.
The remote from the amp is mostly at 40%.
It's likely that I will remove the trunk sub and keep it this way.
Maybe this is helpful for some people that want more bass but don't want a trunk sub

[Billfitz]

With equal voltage input the woofers would give the same result.Your Match is capable of delivering 160w/2 ohms into each woofer. That's 18 volts each. The Kicker is capable of 300w/4ohms. That's 34 volts, but as the woofers are wired in series that's 17 volts each. That means you'd get the same output with either amp if the gain staging was the same. Since the Kicker is louder that means the gain staging isn't the same.

[Julian2]

You are absolutely right, it should be the same since the rated power is identical. The cables are also identical so there is no issue there.
But somehow this isn't the case. I even tried and turned up the channel gain but I didn't get anywhere near the bass the kicker amp got me.
The only thing I got with the Match was the output level bar turning red because of distortion. I turned it down after that.

[Billfitz]

It could be frequency content too. If the Kicker is giving more power in the upper end of the passband it will sound louder. Get this app for your phone:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/d....audioanalyzer

Set it to Spectrum Analyzer, 1/3 octave bands, C weighting, slow weighting. Playing the same song see if there's a major difference between the two amps. If there is you should be able to use the Match DSP to make them the same.

[Julian2]

Thank you, I will give it a try.

[NealfromNZ]

One other thing to try is the time alignment setting on the match for the kicker sub in case your getting a massive phase shift occurring at the crossover point between sub and underseat woofers. If the timing is out too far this can cause a cancellation or dip in your bass resonate as well.

Check the distance under your match settings to see if it looks reasonable. If it’s not change the toimg to reflect the correct distance.

If the setting looks reasonable do try moving the distance setting down in small increments and see if that changes the perception of punch. If no change return the setting to the original and try increasing the distance in small increments and see what happens to the bass. If no change to the underseat perceived volume return settings.

But by doing this at least you’ll have tested for the effects of a large phase shift cancelling out a range in your bass.

[Billfitz]

Phase sourced low frequency cancellation in a car is quite rare. It requires two sources separated by a half wavelength playing the same content. A half wavelength at 60Hz is roughly 3 meters.

[Julian2]

Originally Posted by NealfromNZ

One other thing to try is the time alignment setting on the match for the kicker sub in case your getting a massive phase shift occurring at the crossover point between sub and underseat woofers. If the timing is out too far this can cause a cancellation or dip in your bass resonate as well.

Check the distance under your match settings to see if it looks reasonable. If it’s not change the toimg to reflect the correct distance.

If the setting looks reasonable do try moving the distance setting down in small increments and see if that changes the perception of punch. If no change return the setting to the original and try increasing the distance in small increments and see what happens to the bass. If no change to the underseat perceived volume return settings.

But by doing this at least you’ll have tested for the effects of a large phase shift cancelling out a range in your bass.

You assume, that the underseat bass is lacking while the trunk sub is playing I guess?
The underseat bass is lacking all the time in my opinion. Even with the trunk sub turned all the way down on the remote it is too little punch from the underseat woofers. After switching to the Kicker amp the underseat bass is how it should have been all the time.

While testing the underseat woofers, I mute the Subwoofer in the trunk within the software. A cancellation isn't happening. I thought of this too but it's not the case.
The two underseat woofers aren't playing against each other. I have checked this as well.

The timing is set with the measured distance for each individual channel. I entered these values and they are correct.

[jmciver]

Do you have the URC3 control knob connected to your UP10DSP and one of the knobs set to control the underseats? Also, are your underseat woofer set to the “SubRC” output?

When I was experimenting with my setup, I was able to EQ my underseats to sound “ok” with the rest of the system - but definitely lacking bass for my tastes. But when I set the volume of the underseats to be controlled by the URC3 (by being set to the SubRC output), I was able to increase the volume of the underseat woofers to what was a more acceptable level of bass for my ears - but definitely more bass than prior to doing this….

[Julian2]

Unfortunately, I don't have the URC3 or any kind of remote for the Match.
Were you able to adjust the settings after hearing the improvement with the URC3 to get a better bass or was the improvement just with the remote turning up the volume?
Did you check the output level for the subwoofer after turning it up to check if it's not going into distortion?

[jmciver]

Originally Posted by Julian2

Unfortunately, I don't have the URC3 or any kind of remote for the Match.
Were you able to adjust the settings after hearing the improvement with the URC3 to get a better bass or was the improvement just with the remote turning up the volume?
Did you check the output level for the subwoofer after turning it up to check if it's not going into distortion?

When EQ’ing the underseat woofers, I had the URC3 volume set at about 1/4 or so as I wanted to have headroom to increase the volume of the bass if necessary once everything was done. I then EQ’ed the rest of the system to match the reference house curve I was going after, adjusting the gains for each channel accordingly, including the underseat woofer channel gain levels, to fine tune the frequency response. I did not detect any distortion coming from the underseats as I was tuning them the way I described above.

Once everything was done, the system sounded pretty good, but was still lacking some bass for my tastes. So I just turned up the volume of the underseat woofers (using the URC3) and also adjusting the bass in the iDrive EQ a bit to get them to sound more like I wanted. But then, I knew my underseats (made by Audison) were not going to be very bass heavy as I bought them with the intent to intergrate them with a trunk sub (which is still not in my system yet). Once my trunk sub is here, I plan to EQ my underseats to be more of a mid bass in my system and let the trunk sub handle all of the low stuff that my underseat are doing now.

Once my trunk sub is installed and I retune my system, I plan to adjust my target reference curve to have a bit more low end. I also intend to tune all channels, including the trunk sub, with the URC3 turned off this time. The idea is to get my system sounding as close as possible to how I want, including the low frequencies, without the URC3. Then, once everything is done, I can use the URC3 to either turn up (or turn down) the bass to fine tune the system on the fly while listening to it. At least that is the idea anyway….

[Julian2]

My setup was as you are planning to do yours. I had my subwoofer in the trunk for the low bass and the underseat woofers doing the mid bass. It works but the underseat woofers could have had more punch. Maybe I completely redo the underseat bass settings and try again. Could have been an issue on my side. But you also reporting having not so much bass makes me think my setup wasn't that wrong.

For the next few days I will keep my underseat woofers powered by the Kicker amp to see if this is enough bass or if I really need the trunk sub.

Just wondering if you could check how much of a difference it makes if you plug your Audison woofers into your JL Audio amp instead of the Match.
This would be very helpful for me.

[jmciver]

My JL amp is wired and ready to receive my trunk sub as soon as my enclosure gets here so I don’t want to mess with any of the wiring right now. But it sounds to me like you want to have more level (or volume) from your underseats. So you just need to figure out the best way to get that extra volume from them.

The UP10DSP puts out 160 watts RMS at 2-ohms per channel to the underseats, which should be more than enough to power any underseat woofer (up to a point anyway). To get that max output from them is a combination of tuning them and then using the sub volume control via the URC3 if you want more bass volume from them. So if you want the UP10DSP to power the underseats, I recommend you first re-tune them (using a more bass heavy target curve). Then if that is not enough bass, install the URC3 - which is not a bad idea anyway since most aftermarket subs have external volume control anyway to address more bass like what it sounds like you are after…