[M Fifty]

Spec the HiFi option (mid-way between ASD and HK, but UK only it seems), and then change the amp.

But again: This is not the environment in which to be listening to anything more than Traffic News...

[3t3p]

It's a shame that if you want to upgrade HK you gotta spend loads due to its digital optical out setup.

If you had the hi Fiona variant you'd be able to save a fair bit more on the upgrade process from what I've read.

[Dirtboy]

Originally Posted by 3t3p

It's a shame that if you want to upgrade HK you gotta spend loads due to its digital optical out setup.

If you had the hi Fiona variant you'd be able to save a fair bit more on the upgrade process from what I've read.

The HK in the M2 does not use digital optical. It uses differential balanced analog.

[bri1042]

Originally Posted by MR.

What is the easiest to do this?

MR

I just took it out. The grill pops off easily, and then it's just a question of unscrewing the speakers and plopping them on a shelf in the garage. To keep the wires from flopping about, I stuffed some foam in the speaker socket.

[bri1042]

Originally Posted by Dirtboy

The HK in the M2 does not use digital optical. It uses differential balanced analog.

Yep, thought the differential balanced analog output is not supported by every third-party amplifier that you can buy, so you have to be careful. The JL XD's are a good, reasonably priced choice if you want a plain amp (though the XD800 I have sitting around is big enough that I don't that it would fit anywhere in an F22/87 trunk).

[MZWIE]

Did you buy the car to drive or sit in it.....what a waste.

[bri1042]

Originally Posted by MZWIE

Did you buy the car to drive or sit in it.....what a waste.

Weird.

[Dirtboy]

Originally Posted by bri1042

Weird.

Agreed

[bri1042]

If all goes well, tomorrow is speaker install day. I was hoping to log off of work a bit early and make one more run at adjusting the current tune, just to have a tune file that I was happy with, but it isn't likely to happen.

What I ran for the last couple of weeks needs the rears turned down a bunch, and the mid-range needs to be fattened up a bit. I think I could have gotten it a good bit better, but I'm going to proceed with the speaker swap instead and then start tuning for them. I didn't mess with it thanks to the flu that my SO brought home. I barely managed to work and sleep.

[bri1042]

Yesterday was a a bust. My Morel crossovers are too big to fit anywhere in the doors. My Hybrid audio mid speakers are too big to fit. The adapters I bought from Technic work for the mounting depth into the door, but not for the door panel space. I have some old Bavsound stuff that also didn't fit. At the end I was just going to swap in the Bavsound tweeters to get rid of the awful HK tweets, but the old Bavsound tweeters aren't cabled with standard BMW connectors...and I didn't feel like cutting them apart to put BMW connectors on them (I have a few spares).

It was pretty fun to dig in and see what I was working with, so it wasn't a waste of time, and the door panels come off and go back on easier than F30 panels, so that was nice.

I'm not positive what I'm going to do at this point. I ended up making some tune changes that produced some seriously good results. I cut off the rear speakers at 6k with a 24 dB Linkwitz filter and the reduction in harsh treble in the cabin really helped. Rear deck tweets are such a questionable thing since the front seats are so far off-axis for them anyway.

I may drop my Hybrid Audio's into the back, mostly to use them for something. It's kind of a waste for speakers that expensive but since I already have them, I may go ahead and put them in.

[bri1042]

...and they don't fit under the grilles in back, either. OK, I'm done except for more tuning tweaks. I can't do anything else without spending more money somewhere. I probably will not spend more money other than just waiting until summer and having MusicarNW do whatever they can do.

[bri1042]

A few minor tune tweaks accomplished to adjust for basically being down to two tweeters and the sound is actually quite good. All things considered, I'm very pleased with what I'm getting out of this thing now. Woo.

[Dirtboy]

Originally Posted by bri1042

Yesterday was a a bust. My Morel crossovers are too big to fit anywhere in the doors.

Which Morel crossovers do you have? The crossover for my Hybrid 402 fit behind the door panel.

[bri1042]

I don't recall the model off the top of my head. They look like the same ones you have (I looked at your pics), so it's totally possible they would have fit in there somewhere but I didn't see a spot that would work when I had the door off.

Turned out to be irrelevant since my mids didn't fit. If I ever go back to doing this, I may have to get more info from you about where exactly you put the things.

[RocketBoots]

Can you detail exactly how the Hybrid L4SE's didn't fit? This is very surprising to hear.
Those should be shallow enough to fit with no problems. It sounds like you're saying they stuck out too much, with the adapter, to put the door cards back on?? Perhaps you had a different adapter that was the wrong size?? This truly puzzles me...

If the Morel 402 mid fit, the L4SE should also fit, as it is smaller. I'd guess your crossover is the same one as used in the Hybrid 402; that is the only viable option from Morel for components in newer gen BMW's.

[M Fifty]

What are you doing to prevent the water that kills many, many amps in the stock location from getting to your Project?

[bri1042]

Originally Posted by RocketBoots

Can you detail exactly how the Hybrid L4SE's didn't fit? This is very surprising to hear.
Those should be shallow enough to fit with no problems. It sounds like you're saying they stuck out too much, with the adapter, to put the door cards back on?? Perhaps you had a different adapter that was the wrong size?? This truly puzzles me...

If the Morel 402 mid fit, the L4SE should also fit, as it is smaller. I'd guess your crossover is the same one as used in the Hybrid 402; that is the only viable option from Morel for components in newer gen BMW's.

The HAT's went right up against the rolled-down window with no adapter. With the adapter I have, they poke out too far. It's still possible that a perfectly sized adapter might work, but I don't have one (I'm a geek, not a random-thingy fabricator so if a different adapter would work, I'll need someone to make me one).

The Morel's that another member used were modified by MusicarNW to fit. Morel's or HAT's, I likely need their assistance on this, and I'm not likely to have time to bring the car to them until summer, or I'll need to have them treat me like a remote customer despite actually being in the same metro as they are.

I checked, and I have the same crossovers that he does, so they must fit in there somewhere and I just didn't see it. Note: I bailed on this part because I wasn't going to be able to put my speakers in anyway, so I never actually tried to mount them and put the door on.

I haven't posted in this thread in a while so I'll add an update here.

I'm on version 12 of my tune and it's really not bad at this point. I think I've gotten it as good as it can get, actually. I've been running the current tune for a couple weeks without any real desire to tweak it any further. Mid-bass is present, but not impressive, the mid-range is pretty good, and taking the system down to only two fully-active tweeters was seriously the silver bullet for making the system tolerable. Actual Bass is not great. The stock subs don't play low enough (not a surprise) and tones below about 80Hz are played but not played well.

I'm half tempted to just get a sub enclosure from Musicar and get my JL sub and Match sub amp running from the outputs on the PP86. The amp should fit fine in the right-side trunk space.

[bri1042]

Originally Posted by M Fifty

What are you doing to prevent the water that kills many, many amps in the stock location from getting to your Project?

I honestly don't know why folk have this issue. I've been driving F-chassis cars since 2013 and have never had this problem. I've seen reports of it on the F30 board a few times, but it's never been clear why some people have this bit of bad luck. I don't believe that it's a general issue or hundreds of thousands of cars would have soaked stock amps.

[GregoryK]

Originally Posted by bri1042

I honestly don't know why folk have this issue. I've been driving F-chassis cars since 2013 and have never had this problem. I've seen reports of it on the F30 board a few times, but it's never been clear why some people have this bit of bad luck. I don't believe that it's a general issue or hundreds of thousands of cars would have soaked stock amps.

Hey Bri1042. Care to share your tune so we can try it?

[damills]

Originally Posted by bri1042

Yes, I've had a PP82 in the past, and wanted to see what Bimmertech did with their tunes. I had some other reason from looking at the UP's specs, but I don't recall what at the moment (difficult night, haven't had much sleep). I think the UP 7 would have been a slightly better choice, at this point. I promised a summary post at the end of all this and I think there's a good chance my recommendation for a simple amp replacement is going to be the UP (plus, the name is adorable) vs. the PP86 variants.

I played around a lot with the tune I built from scratch, and I got the sound to a pretty good point. Yesterday, Bimmertech emailed me their actual F87 HK tune (my unit DID come pre-loaded with the wrong tune), and I've loaded that into the car. They took a very different approach than I did on the tune I built. I'll see how it sounds on the run to work today.

How do you build a tune, what equipment is involved. Is a tune no more than changing values on an equalizer making a different frequency curve and maybe the power to each speaker? Once done how do you load it into the amp or are you working on the amp while creating a tune.

I wished BMW would have just put in audio option 688 versus the option 674 audio system in the M2, 674 is also HK in my M3

Also wished BMW would allow some of their high end audio be fitted to all model range for people who like quality music can choose it if they want.

Interested to see you final instructions on the upgrade and you opinion on its quality

[bri1042]

To do it right, you need a pink noise flac or wav file, a good microphone sitting where your head would be, and a good spectrum analyzer running on your laptop and not your phone (the phone apps I've managed to find aren't very accurate and get confused by ambient noise).

I don't have a very good microphone. I should buy one, but I just haven't. My efforts have been done based on what I have handy and a previous tune that was done right with similar equipment, and my unreliable ears (all ears are unreliable...our audio memory is terrible). I have a few audio tracks that I've been listening to for 30 or 35 years and they are the only ones I trust for "does it sound right" references other than analyzing results with a pink noise file.

I can't say that I'm 100% satisfied that I've gotten the tune as good as it can get. I got it to the point where I found it tolerable, and then work turned into a ball of crazy for the last few months so I haven't played with it much since the first of the year.

I can say that I think I made a mistake with the PP86DSP. There just isn't enough power going to the underseat subs and trying to make up for it in the EQ isn't getting it done. If I could do it over again, I'd go with the UP 7BMW instead for the extra power to the underseats. I will end up compensating for the issue by putting my trunk sub in as soon as I can get a hold of an enclosure that fits the F22 chassis (I literally do not have time to drive downtown to MusicarNW when they are open right now...maybe soon, though).

[bri1042]

Thought I'd follow up with what I think I managed to improve with the PP86:

Note: This is fresh in my mind since my car had a bit of a personality problem and went to the dealership at the end of last week, and I've since gotten her back. I very quickly dropped the stock amp back in and pulled my ASD bypass cable so that there would be no chance of getting barked at about modifications (I also backed off the Legal Disclaimer coding and a couple of other things). I haven't put the PP86 back in yet.

1. Clarity. In stock form, the sound is not very clean. It is deeply lacking in general clarity, especially for the mids but also in the treble ranges.

2. Volume. In stock form, getting a decent amount of volume from the system means turning it up past 70 or 80%...and that just adds to the clarity problem as every amp in the world gets worse as you crank it.

3. Speaker Timing. Being able to time the speakers to my seat instead of just thwacking the balance over to the right is very nice. It works a lot better.

Additional note: The balance with the Under Seat woofers is better stock than I was able to get it. I think it ties into the volume issue. This is a 360 watt amp, which is utterly insufficient for this many channels. I'd bet a good dollar that there is a LOT more power headed down the sub channels than the rest of the channels on the stock amp. With how little volume is available from any particular mid/tweet pair, I don't think there's more than 20 watts RMS going to any of them, and it could be less.