Thinking about an audio upgrade

[aaronu]

I'm not up on the latest stuff and I'm not into DIY audio right now.

I'm just curious what y'all think about this.

I worked out an audio system for my 325 with a local shop. It is not top of the line but it's not complete crap either -- I don't think. I spend a lot of time driving, so I'd like good audio but I'm not out to win awards or rattle the neighbor's windows. This is for my 2001 325Ci, which has the Business CD. Two way components in the front, 4" speakers in the back and no sub.

Kenwood KDCX589 (although I looked at a nicer one I may go with -- stealth faceplate, etc.)

Diamond D651 5.25" two way component speakers in the front doors.

Diamond D341I coaxial 4" speakers in the back

Diamond D3 sub in a custom down firing enclosure, located in the trunk.

4 channel amp for the fronts and the sub -- 50W RMS to the fronts and ~ 200W RMS to the sub. Rears get driven from the head unit with crossover set to block bass.

StreetWires 4 gauge power cable and fuse to the amp; stock speaker wires used for the front and rear speakers.

Optional adds:
$175 to add and install steering wheel controls for the head unit
$200 for Dynamat treatment around the sub and front speakers.

Before the options, total with installation is $1666.

Whaddayathink?

Thanks,

[el_duderino]

Let's see:

1) I don't think the Kenwood will look right in your car. Not many will, but I'd consider the Nakamichi CD 400. No pookie lights.

2) I personally think that rear speakers add NOTHING for sound quality, but detract from the budgetary amount available for better front speakers, where the sound quality comes from, or from custom installation.

I personally find the Diamonds to have an immediate impression of detail, but after much listening in a car I find them etched and hard sounding in the treble, and somewhat fatiguing to listen to. I would consider a/d/s/ or DLS or Morel for soft dome tweeters with smoother sound without the peakiness in the treble. The DLS MS5 is a great sounding speaker, and for a little more you can get the UP5 which is amazing. But hey, some people like that sound.

3) You didn't say what size your sub would be.

4) A wooden box takes up a lot of trunk space. Have you considered a custom-made fiberglass enclosure in one corner?

If you brought your car into my shop and had $1650 to spend for a system, we would want to use:

Nak CD400 (with sub control)
DLS CA31 amp (50x2 and 200 x 1 for sub)
a/d/s/ 245ix 5.25 components
DLS W310 or Reference 10" sub
fiberglass box in corner of trunk, oem-look upholstery.
IXOS signal cable

I wouldn't worry much about the sound damping. We install a LOT of it... but that's to make Honda's SOUND like BMW's when the door is closed. If you end up with any rattles, go after them one by one.

[BillP]

el_duderino,

Your advice is consistent with my experience. What shop in Portland are you with?


Bill

[el_duderino]

www.avincar.com - mine : )

[aaronu]

Wow, thanks for the thoughtful feedback, el duder sir.

Your impressions of the Diamond speakers are exactly what my in-store impression was -- detail heavy. Some of the demo music sounded harsh but that was at volumes far beyond what I could tolerate with the tweeters two feet from my ear.

The reason I was thinking of rear speakers is to keep them similar to the front speakers. Sort of like matching fronts and surrounds in a home theater system.

Oh yeah -- The sub is a 12". A Diamond D312D4. There were two amp choices: A Rockford Fosgate 4x50RMS or a Kenwood 4x75W RMS. The sales dude thought that I'd get 50W/channel in the front, run the rears from the head unit and the sub would get 200W RMS. For the Kenwood amp make that 75W to the front and 300W to the sub.

I told the sales dude I had $1000 and wanted head unit, component fronts, coax rears and more bass than the stock system. The higher number ($1666) is where we ended up.

[el_duderino]

If the system is oriented towards sound quality, I'd make a couple of changes:

1) I'd go with a 10".

2) I'd not use Kenwood amps. There are TONS of amps out there that outperform Kenwood amps.

3) As far as front and rear go, ask a deeper-level question: "Why are there rear speakers in a car?"

The answers are:

1) In many cars the bigger speakers fit there so you could have bass. Irrelevant to a sub owner.

2) More speakers allow more volume without a bigger amplifier - saving money. Sound quality is NOT a consideration. Irrelevant to an aftermarket amp owner.

If you go check out http://www.dlcdesignaudio.com/ and click on "Services" on the left and then "Audio Performance Reports" on the bottom, you'll notice what David's reference is - two speakers in front of you. Fascinating reading if you like to geek out.

Check the wikipedia - stereo is two speakers in front of you.

If you have the same sound coming from in front AND from behind you, the localization info in the recording gets messed up at your ears. The stereo image is never created. The steeo recording has more info in it than most systems ever get to reveal - don't emss that up with a set of $100 coaxes.

Not that I have an opinion.... : )

[el_duderino]

If you're in Marysville, where are you going? Everett? You might need to go farther south. Consider Benchmark in Bellevue.

[aaronu]

Yes I'm in Marysville but I work in Redmond. My 325Ci is my commuter car.

I had a local shop do my last stereo install but I wasn't super impressed. The quote mentioned above was from the Everett Magnolia Audio/Video. I've bought electronics there in the past and gotten decent prices and service, but I've never done car stereo through them.

By Benchmark I take it you mean Benchmark Motoring (http://benchmarkmotoring.com). I don't know if their site is up to date but they mention they're currently working on a DB9 and a Continental GT? Sheesh I should go down there just to LOOK. Turns out they're not far at all from my office.

I have a Kicker 6.5" powered sub with a 6.5" slave in separate enclosures. They do OK in my truck and I'm tempted to try and use them in my car to cut down costs. It should be simple to set up some quick disconnects if I ever wanted them back in the truck...

Then again looking at some other threads, maybe I should update the speakers and sub, and get it to work with the stock head unit.

Heck I'm half tempted to try to work with Avincar if I decide to go through with an audio upgrade. I have inlaws/relatives in Battle Ground (Just north of Vancouver). My wife would just love an excuse to go down there and visit, and it would be cool if your time answering questions led to some work for your business. Looks like the shop is right off of I5 and 405.


Cheers,

Aaron

[el_duderino]

Thanks for the kind words. Visitors are always welcome : ) Yes, we're right off of the freeway and next to the trolley line into downtown and Powell's. Just give us a heads up, because we're a two-man operation and if we're dropping off or picking up a car, we'd hate to miss you.

Looks like their site hasn't changed for a while. The guy that managed their site internally is now starting his own home theatre biz, I hear. I don't know any of the salespoeple personally, but the owner is the former owner of Innovative Audio in Bellevue. They did Myhrvold's and Allen's cars back then, I know, and I was their manufacturer's rep for some gear for a while.

Magnolia is now owned by Best Buy and they've cut their pay for 12V sales and install people. As a result they've lost a lot of their best staff. I foresee them bailing on the category totally at some point and just existing as kiosks inside BB stores, unfortunately.

[el_duderino]

Oh, you can email me at kenw at avincar.com if you have any specific questions.

[aaronu]

They did Myhrvold's and Allen's cars back then, I know, and I was their manufacturer's rep for some gear for a while.


I can only imagine. Some of the stuff I see on campus is pretty amazing. A guy used to park his F50 next to my plain jane little commuter car "back in the day". Lots of folks still have the good stuff but the cool car / plain car ratio went way down when the stock crashed.

:mad:

Thanks for the email. I may have specific questions at some point. I'm thinking more and more that I may have to dust off my skills and put something together myself if I want to fit a good system into my budget. I need to pull a door panel anyway and that's at least 0.001% of the battle,right?

Two quick questions:

1. Do you have any knowledge or experience about the components used in the Bavarian Soundwerks subs? They offer single and double 10" and 12" sub systems.

2. You suggest a 10" sub rather than a 12". So bigger is not necessarily better. Why?

[el_duderino]

1. Do you have any knowledge or experience about the components used in the Bavarian Soundwerks subs? They offer single and double 10" and 12" sub systems.
Why?

I have no hands-on experience with their subs. I have some opinions/prejudices.

They seem to use MB Quart subs. Those are not considered "top-of-the-line" on the market and were made as I understand it by Rockford subcontractors in China. I expect their supply of these to dry up at some point with Quart's soap opera of woe, and they'll probably switch to something else.

I would rather lose one "ear" of the trunk to a fiberglass sub box than lose the entry height of the trunk opening to the undershelf approach. It's a personal preference - if I were 6'5" and an avid golfer, that might be a different preference for me. But at 6' and an occasional golfer, bah.


2. You suggest a 10" sub rather than a 12". So bigger is not necessarily better. Why?

This is actually a really cool question.

How LOUD a woofer CAN play is a function of the displacement, kind of like engine displacement. The "bore" is the cone area and the "stroke" is the linear excursion in both directions ("xmax" is linear excursion in one direction).

How loud the woofer DOES play adds in a few more variables: sensitivity (often called efficiency), amplifier power, and then the tough-to-predict room modes of the car.

How LOW a woofer plays is a function of its mechanical resonance and the characteristics of that resonance, and the stiffness charactersistics of its suspension. All things being equal, a heavier cone has a lower resonant frequency than a lighter cone, and if a bigger cone (a 12") weighs more than a smaller cone (a 10"), then it has a lower resonance and the 12" plays lower.

In the last 10 years these rules of thumb have been all fouled up. I can make low bass sound great now with an 8" or a 10". (I've ALWAYS avoided 15"s).

Woofers with VERY long excursions have allowed 8's and 10's to play louder than before. Since the 10" cone is often lighter than a 12" cone, it is more responsive to small signals (the amp can overpower the momentum of the cone and reverse its direction, which translates to tighter and more accurate bass).

Woofers with lower resonant frequencies (OK, one way to get that has been cone mass, slightly negating the paragraph above) allow 8"s and 10"s to play notes that only 12"s would play well earlier.

So, given my set of values, I'd rather have a 10" that plays as low as I need, and plays as loud as I need, and lets me keep tight, accurate bass without buying as powerful and expensive an amplifier as I would need to keep a heavier 12" tight and accurate and under control - especially since the 10" is more likely to take up less room in the trunk and allow better cosmetic and functional integration.

Sure, a bigger amp and a 12 that's good and a box that's right CAN be better - but on a budget, that's the decision I'd make - the 10".

[aaronu]

Here is an update on Aaron's Search For Audio Truth...

I went to Benchmark Motoring on el_duderino's recommendation. What a place. I'm sure you audio geeks have seen stuff like this but this ol' hillbilly ain't never seen nuthin like that afore. The shop is all about custom audio work and clean integration of components (including factory stuff).

- They had a Mustang in the shop with $135,000 worth of A/V work up to and including displaying night vision on the nav system.

- They had a 357 Magnum. As in 3 door 5.7 liter Magnum. Take a Hemi Dodge Magnum, weld the rear driver side door shut, then cram the interior with so much electronics that it takes three strong men and a mule to get the doors to close.

- E55 AMG Wagon. Looks factory. But wait, the grill on the right side rear panel is bigger than it ought to be. There's a whole lotta subs behind it, too. Lift up the spare tire cover and there's a 3' x 4' custom panel with cooling cutouts for the array of amps and other electronics. That also tilts out to allow easy access to the spare. The HU is a replacement but it looks exactly like the factory one sitting in a box behind the car. I was given to understand that it's possible to get stock factory parts from Europe, where the rules are different. Except for the custom grill in the back, the car looks completely stock.

- No 3-ers in the work bays but there were two brand new 5 series cars in the shop and a very well done 5 series with lots of AC Schnitzer stuff on it out in the parking lot.

It's sad and funny when some dumb kid you know puts a $1000 stereo in his rusted out $600 beater car,. All the elder friends and relatives get a chuckle out of it -- the kid put more money into his stereo than his whole car! But it's different when people do that with $50k, $200k and beyond exclusive automobiles.

The sales guy was super nice and spent a lot of time with me, even after it was made clear that I would be on the low end of his customer list, if I bought anything at all. He demo'ed a pair of Focal component speakers that run $4,000 a set. Apparently there is beryllium in the cones and that is somehow really cool...? They sounded great but to my less than golden ears they weren't better than the $1000 Focal components I listened to for reference.

One more observation about Benchmark -- the sales guy in addition to being a hella nice guy, was super respectful of my car. More respectful than I am, probably. And I like my car. Ditto for the techs. These guys are obviously professionals. All of them.

So here's what Benchmark Motoring recommended for an E46 coupe on a $1500 audio budget. Are you ready? Are you sitting down?

Add subs.

Keep everything else.

Apparently they have enclosures that bolt up under the rear package tray speaker grills. The enclosures are matched with JL Audio 8" subs. There is room between the subs for a 400W amp on a special amp rack. The rear audio feed will go to a high level to line level converter and into the sub amp. The sub assembly looks factory when it's done. The sub enclosures are bolted in but can easily be removed if one were to sell the car. The subs fire through the grills and load off the back window into the passenger car.

According to the sales dude here's the magic: This allows them to tune low frequencies out of the front speakers and the stock HU amp and direct them only through the subs. This takes a huge load off the factory HU so it does a far better job with mids and highs. They'll calibrate the audio system with an oscilloscope to balance the subs with the factory drivers and HU at every volume setting. The fader control gives an indirect way to change bass levels. Supposedly they've done a lot of cars this way.

The salesman also thought that a sub loading into the trunk and *then* into the passenger compartment (say through some ports under the rear deck speaker grills) would in effect be playing into a resonant chamber. That's great if you only want to hear bass at the frequency of resonation (like, say, 59 Hz).

I'm tempted -- but I'm still looking around. I'd hate to put $1400 into a system and find out I *still* aint happy with the sound of the stock speakers or HU.

Cheers,

Aaron

[el_duderino]

Very nice writeup!

Yeah, they are specifically targeted towards a demographic that isn't as large in Portland, and I'm still learning how to reach it, honestly. Benchmark is known by lots of the high-income guys from their days as Innovative Audio, and they're benefiting from that - nd the fact that thre's just an amazing demographic bump there.

It sounds as if they are inserting an electronic crossover on the OEM amp and high-passing it. If so, they are lowering the distortion of the amp during bass peaks and probably smoothing its sound out a good bit. There's some risk of noise, but if they've learned how to correct for that then they should be productizing the system pretty well. I don't beleive that BMW is using an internal-to-the-HU-amp in that car - if they were, there's almost no way that they'd be able to high-pass it without making permanent mods to the HU - I think it's an external OEM amp.

On the other hand, if they're not pre-filtering the bass from the signal, then what the guy said is a lot of hooey. You can't take the bass out of the front signal WITHOUT using some kind of filter - preferably a crossover, but you could use an EQ as well. Audio Control tells me that Benchmark is using a lot of their gear for OE integration.

Yes, venting a box into the passenger cavity is essentially going to give you a peaky response. It can work but there's either some dumb luck or a LOT of calculation that I don't feel confident in hitting perfectly on the first try (and I'll do a lot of things: )

I use the fader that way in OEM systems as well. Using the o-scope is pretty much for gain setting, and doesn't help overcome really drastic dynamic equalization that varies with volume... but that car isn't subject to that in my experience.

However, I agree that while the subs do make the most dramatic diff, the mids and highs aren't going to get THAT much better - so if you fundamentally don't like the way they sound, an incremental improvement may not be your solution (no kaizen here: )

I'm sending you a PM...

[el_duderino]

Or they might just be inserting capacitors on the speaker leads to filter low notes. Keeps them from popping but doesn't decrease the amp's strain much.

[aaronu]

Or they might just be inserting capacitors on the speaker leads to filter low notes. Keeps them from popping but doesn't decrease the amp's strain much.

I think your first assumption is correct. They're using crossovers at least in the doors to filter low frequencies there. I'm not sure what the guy had in mind for the subs 100% but he specifically mentioned using a line level converter, and that part of the installation and tuning process is to make sure there is NO engine noise, etc. in the system.

I like the subs he spec'ed out. They aren't large (2 x 8") but they look factory and play directly into the passenger compartment without lots of modifications. Taking el_duderino's explanation above, I'm sure that they'd do fine. My truck has two 6.5" subs and they sound great. Benchmark carries 130mm subs for installation in cars with no room for larger subs (primarily Ferrari) and I heard those while I was there. Based on my observations (simplifying what el_duderino said) it isn't the size of the subs as much as how much air they can move and how crisply they can respond.

Kevin (the guy at Benchmark) addressed my chief complaint (lack of low frequency playback) because that's all that my budget would allow there. I have decent stereo gear at home. The front speakers are flat down to 30Hz and the sub down to 22Hz. At home or in my (sub equipped) truck I hear bass notes that just don't exist when I listen to the same stuff in my BMW.

But that doesn't mean I wouldn't like better component speakers in the front. Right before telling me that I would really like the sound in my car after installing the subs and tuning bass out from the fronts, Kevin let me listen to some pretty nice component sets and there *is* a big difference between them. I just don't know if I can spend that much. Originally I was supposed to stay under $1,000. :eek:

I guess I've bent your ears enough. Hopefully the conversation's been useful to someone out there. If/when I get any work done I'll post about it and maybe share a pic or two.

Thanks,

Aaron

[el_duderino]

OK, finally curiosity got the better of me, so I called Kevin myself. He cleared up for me how they're installing the subs, how they're filtering the bass in the OEM system, and how they're correcting that in the subwoofer amp. They are not inserting an external filter per se, they are using the bass control internal to the HU to cut the bass, and then correcting for that on the sub signal using the bass eq in the JL sub amp.

It's not a sub box like the bsw box - it's the JL Audio version for IB installation.

So now I can scratch my head about other things.

[el_duderino]

So, Aaron, what did you finally decide?

[aaronu]

I've decided that I have trouble making up my mind. :dunno:

A local place in Marysville sells JL Audio and can put the same subs in that Benchmark offers plus a/d/s/ front component speakers for the same price Benchmark wants for subs and amp alone. The difference is the $175 converter that Benchmark uses, amp rack & wiring. Benchmark will do a much cleaner installation and it will sound great, but I'm not convinced that it would be better than if I changed out the front components at the same time.

Then there's the avincar system you suggested. I like the idea of using an ear of the trunk for a sub box, as long as I can get to the battery and spare no probem. BUT -- my inlaws just moved from Battleground to Chemult (somewhere near Crater Lake) so I don't have anywhere to hang out if I were to take my car to Portland for the work. Short story, it's a lot of hassle to go that route.

Last up is Bavarian Soundwerks. They do a sub, amp and replacement speaker deal with instructions. It's been a while, granted, but I do have work experience in mobile electronics installation. I'm confident I could do a decent job since I have all the tools and it's essentially a plug and play deal.

But now there's a spoiler. Turns out my lil' ol' family is growing to five. The 325Ci worked OK to haul the brood around in a pinch, but that's not the case any more. I may trade it in for a larger car. I'm looking around for something that'll hold a family of 5 but that still offers the fun factor of my 325Ci.