[AG17]

Forgot to note I had my tone settings from the head unit at 0 for treble and +3 for bass. I was listening quite loud approx. 80% when the burn smell came up. Would it be helpful to reduce the tone to 0 and increase the bass from the dsp?

Thanks!

[Encanto]

You need a trunk sub and a mono amp.

Originally Posted by AG17

Forgot to note I had my tone settings from the head unit at 0 for treble and +3 for bass. I was listening quite loud approx. 80% when the burn smell came up. Would it be helpful to reduce the tone to 0 and increase the bass from the dsp?

Thanks!

[AG17]

Originally Posted by Encanto

You need a trunk sub and a mono amp.

I wont be able to get the desired bass by tuning the Bimmertech amp DSP using 0 bass and treble tone settings? If doing so will cause my subs to smell, then i guess i would need to upgrade my subs to something more advanced.

[antah]

Morning, everybody,

Look what I encountered with my F31 LCI OEM amp:



It doesn't have 4 bolts anymore, but just 1. There are 3 weird pins. I take it, you suppose to "move" bracket of the pins in order to remove, but I tried hard and no success. Any quick suggestion on technique how can i take it off, please?

[6spdcoupe]

Originally Posted by antah

Morning, everybody,

Look what I encountered with my F31 LCI OEM amp:

Attachment 1647651

It doesn't have 4 bolts anymore, but just 1. There are 3 weird pins. I take it, you suppose to "move" bracket of the pins in order to remove, but I tried hard and no success. Any quick suggestion on technique how can i take it off, please?

You take out the one bolt and slide the assembly forward.

[antah]

Originally Posted by 6spdcoupe

You take out the one bolt and slide the assembly forward.

Great advise! Helped me. I tried it harder today and moved it.

Another question (I already asked bimmer-tech, but maybe you can answer quicker) - I can hear quite interference noise from speakers when open up the car with bimmer-tech amp.

Is it possible that it is caused by mode switches? I didn't touch them, but i think they are not all off?

[devil84]

my car has bmw advanced loud speaker on a f36. will this work? what marginal benefit should i expect?

[6spdcoupe]

Originally Posted by antah

Great advise! Helped me. I tried it harder today and moved it.

Another question (I already asked bimmer-tech, but maybe you can answer quicker) - I can hear quite interference noise from speakers when open up the car with bimmer-tech amp.

Is it possible that it is caused by mode switches? I didn't touch them, but i think they are not all off?

Not uncommon really. The car is waking up so the amp is turning on bit there's no music to it yet.

[antah]

Originally Posted by devil84

my car has bmw advanced loud speaker on a f36. will this work? what marginal benefit should i expect?

Hi! If advanced = Harman/Kardon, then this upgrade is not for you, i'm afraid. But relax, you already got decent sound then

[devil84]

Originally Posted by antah

Hi! If advanced = Harman/Kardon, then this upgrade is not for you, i'm afraid. But relax, you already got decent sound then

no bmw advanced is middle of road.

base
bmw advanced
Harmon Kardom

[antah]

Originally Posted by devil84

no bmw advanced is middle of road.

base
bmw advanced
Harmon Kardom

in this case, yes, this amp is your solution, like mine!

You asked for benefits: to be honest, there was no WOW effect when I plugged it in, however, there are tonns of settings you can play with and if you are great in all equalisers - you can achieve great results.

What I was surprised with - mic measurements can't set proper time adjustment! You still have to use tape measure to check it.. what a shame!

[devil84]

hi guys does anyone know if the oem hifi amp is removed it causes any issues with bmw software updates to the car? as I want to get mppk fitted which will include recoding to the ECU.

[twodoor]

devil84 - no, there's no correlation between the amp and software updates.

[BMW3DK]

Hi,

I'm new to the F generation BMW, but not to tuning the Helix/Match DSP products and I must admit that I never used rear channel signals in the centre channel.
Out of curiosity I must ask why?

// Chris

Originally Posted by Drew46

I should add that I started with a freshly reset profile (Reset All, cleared routing) on V3.11c and manually added back the routings. Please see attached screenshot.

[DYH]

Question for you audio pros. I replaced my stock tweeters. Since i didn't replace the center channel i just muted it in the amp so the lesser tweeter wouldnt affect the sound. All remaining speakers are stock. Was this a good solution to remove the center channel?

[JneneJ]

Will this amp work with out the standard hifi? What is the difference between this amp and bimmertech amp?

[BEM-S4]

Originally Posted by JneneJ

Will this amp work with out the standard hifi? What is the difference between this amp and bimmertech amp?

You need a mounting bracket, wiring harness and tune.

[silentkiller.by]

Hey guys, I ordered this amp from Bimmertech, should arrive this week. I read the whole thread and also original Helix manual, asked Bimmertech support but still didn't get an answer for one question.

In the manual there is a config with front/rear speakers + match PP sub (I suppose 4 channels are used in the mode one channel per coil, there are two woofers with 2 coils each so it makes sense to me).

In current harness config channels F-G are used for woofers, is there a possibility to drive them by rear channels so A-D channels will drive the front completely. What I want to do is a classical setup of front speakers + trunk sub from one amplifier. I don't need center/rear speakers and to me it looks like a possible setup with this amp (of course the harness should be re-wired for this but should be very easy).

Is there any problem with this configuration? Did anybody try something like this before?

Cheers from Munich,
Alex

[Maciej@BimmerTech]

Hi Alex,

I checked our inbox for any emails that might have been from you with the stated questions but couldn't retrieve it. I do recall talking to someone about a similar matter but at the time I believe the questions were different or I understood them differently so I don't know if it was you or not.

Firstly nothing is impossible. Rewiring the harness will be possible. Cars that don't have an amplifier at all do have the woofers wired in with the front midranges and you could do that but it would pretty much kill any benefit of using a DSP amp. Secondly the tonal balance might be off or almost certainly would.

The whole point of a system based on our premium amp is to have active crossovers on the woofers, front, rear and center speakers with time alignment and EQ. If you sacrifice that to install a trunk sub with four coils then you'd be defeating a lot of the benefits that our amp has to offer.

On top of that wiring in a four coil woofer you'd need to be extra careful not to wire one of the coils out of phase which wouldn't be hard to do even if you're paying attention. I'd be checking that with a mic or scope for sure.

You'd be much better off getting a dedicated sub + mono amp fed by the RCA output of our amp that does have DSP on it to enabling you to tune such a sub perfectly. And it would be a reasonable solution that has been done millions of times before because it's the way to go when you want seismic bass . I understand that urge and have a German made Audio System 12" woofer box lined up for installation in my car any weekend now . It cracks my spine just thinking of picking it up. But it's the right thing to do when matched up with some DSP and a 700W monoblock

There are many options out there - the one you proposed sounds doable but in my opinion just feels plain wrong that's why I'm against it. I hope others will agree.

Originally Posted by silentkiller.by

Hey guys, I ordered this amp from Bimmertech, should arrive this week. I read the whole thread and also original Helix manual, asked Bimmertech support but still didn't get an answer for one question.

In the manual there is a config with front/rear speakers + match PP sub (I suppose 4 channels are used in the mode one channel per coil, there are two woofers with 2 coils each so it makes sense to me).

In current harness config channels F-G are used for woofers, is there a possibility to drive them by rear channels so A-D channels will drive the front completely. What I want to do is a classical setup of front speakers + trunk sub from one amplifier. I don't need center/rear speakers and to me it looks like a possible setup with this amp (of course the harness should be re-wired for this but should be very easy).

Is there any problem with this configuration? Did anybody try something like this before?

Cheers from Munich,
Alex

[silentkiller.by]

Originally Posted by Maciej@BimmerTech

Hi Alex,

I checked our inbox for any emails that might have been from you with the stated questions but couldn't retrieve it. I do recall talking to someone about a similar matter but at the time I believe the questions were different or I understood them differently so I don't know if it was you or not.

Firstly nothing is impossible. Rewiring the harness will be possible. Cars that don't have an amplifier at all do have the woofers wired in with the front midranges and you could do that but it would pretty much kill any benefit of using a DSP amp. Secondly the tonal balance might be off or almost certainly would.

The whole point of a system based on our premium amp is to have active crossovers on the woofers, front, rear and center speakers with time alignment and EQ. If you sacrifice that to install a trunk sub with four coils then you'd be defeating a lot of the benefits that our amp has to offer.

On top of that wiring in a four coil woofer you'd need to be extra careful not to wire one of the coils out of phase which wouldn't be hard to do even if you're paying attention. I'd be checking that with a mic or scope for sure.

You'd be much better off getting a dedicated sub + mono amp fed by the RCA output of our amp that does have DSP on it to enabling you to tune such a sub perfectly. And it would be a reasonable solution that has been done millions of times before because it's the way to go when you want seismic bass . I understand that urge and have a German made Audio System 12" woofer box lined up for installation in my car any weekend now . It cracks my spine just thinking of picking it up. But it's the right thing to do when matched up with some DSP and a 700W monoblock

There are many options out there - the one you proposed sounds doable but in my opinion just feels plain wrong that's why I'm against it. I hope others will agree.

Hi Maciej, thanks for your reply. I got a response from Nelson before.

To be honest I'm not sure I understand what you mean. Rear amp outputs have the same crossovers and configs so I don't see a problem to use them to drive the woofers under the seats. I also planned to use Match subwoofer designed for this app, I don't know if they use all four channels or only two. I believe they use all four, otherwise it just doesn't make any sense to me.
I installed the amp, configured to my taste but not impressed that much so far. Without additional subwoofer the difference is not really serious so I'm thinking how I can do this easily and with less investments. Just don't want to cut any cables until I get some confirmation that my idea is completely stupid and technically not feasible with this amp.

I am 3 times champion of my country in SPL competitions so I have some idea, so to say. But there is not enough information about this amp, even Helix manual has very limited amount of information to make some conclusion. That's why I am looking for practical experience here

[Maciej@BimmerTech]

Nice talking to you earlier today Alex.

After a quick chat it became apparent I previously somewhat misunderstood what Alex is aiming to do which is to unhook the rear speakers and center, hook up the under seat woofers to the channels that were previously driving the rear speakers, and use the remaining E,F,G,H channels to drive the four voicecoil Match sub. It's a bit weird, but technically feasible.

Here is the main connectors pin assignments to allow rewiring:



I don't have a pinout for E,F,G,H but knowing German engineering I bet all of the positive polarity outputs on those channels will as well be on the side where the clip of the 8-pin molex plug is. Hopefully I'll be able to get a pinout schematic next week.

I think I posted it recently but anyway here are the standard channel assignments:
A Front Left midrange (all cars) and tweeter*(if you have them)
B Front Right midrange (all cars) and tweeter*(if you have them)
C Rear Left midrange (all cars) and tweeter*(if you have them)
D Rear Right midrange (all cars) and tweeter*(if you have them)

E is for center channel (if you have one)
F is for Left Woofer under seat
G is for Right Woofer under seat
H is not connected


Let us know how it turns out. Maybe you'll start a trend.

[6spdcoupe]

Not needed if using a Match subwoofer but may still be helpful ..