[bladeomatic]

I'm a former Recording Engineer and Record Producer, who knows a lot about audio theory and has spent over a decade in front of some world-class listening systems. I'm slowly moving towards finally getting my 2014 M235i's HK system into shape. This will be a slow process with subjective tests along the way. I'm going to try and get the best sound possible out of this daily driver without dropping $10k or more. I listen to a wide array of music...from Big Band to boombox stuff. Above all, I'm looking for clarity, accuracy, punch and detail. No earth-shattering rumble needed...unless the track contains that. :-)

I welcome any thoughts from any of those that have gone on before me.

Initial Assessment
The stock HK system is disappointing. There's a lack of cleanliness/quality in all of the components. The back deck speakers are some of the thinnest sounding I've heard. I still can't believe they wouldn't try to get a proper 6" coax or 6x9 back there to add some depth. The door speakers sound better but there's only so much you can do with a 4", cheap-quality driver. The center channel dash speaker causes a lot of blur. For those of you who are impressed by a 17-speaker system...don't be. Two, quality 6" coaxes can slay a car full of cheap speakers that are all phase-cancelling and blurring the soundstage of each other. Aside from the lack of quality, my biggest disappointment is the lack of a solid low mid-range. There's plenty of highs and high-mids, but the 200Hz-400hz of the low mids feels almost gone. The under-seat subs try to help here, but it's pretty dismal. Fundamentally BMW could have done a bit more work to provide better spaces for speakers to work in.

Mod #1 Subwoofers
The first thing I've done is replaced the under-seat "subwoofers" with a pair of the BavSound replacements. The process was pretty easy. 30 min for the 1st one, and 15 min for the second. Much higher quality frames, baskets, cones, etc. Well-built and quick to deploy. They've been in there a few months now and are fully-broken in. They are certainly much tighter than the stock, though I don't feel there's more than 15% improvement. Given the abysmal amount of space in these tiny, under-seat cavities, it's not reasonable or even physically possible to generate sounds in a true subwoofer range. My next steps in this area will be reassess these after additional amplification is visited. If still not significant, I'll look at the Focal or Pyle under-seat replacements, or perhaps a 10" or 12" in a box in the trunk, if it comes to that.


Mod #2 Speaker Replacements, etc.
I had the door and shelf speakers replaced, disconnected the center channel and applied Dynamat to the doors.
Doors received the Focal ES 100k Speakers. These are separates and come with a passive/adjustable crossover (-3db/flat/+3db switch). We kept the crossovers out of the mix and stayed with the stock BMW leads from the doors. Will revisit using the crossovers after new amplification. The shelf speakers were the cheaper Focal ISC 100 Coax.
Verdict:
a) Center channel remove. Do it! Greatly improves the stereo soundscape and imaging between the front two speakers. Nice, cheap improvement.
b) Shelf speakers. Better, but still deeply disappointing. Though more clarity than the stock speakers, they simply can't generate anywhere near the bottom end as the front speakers can...which is not much. Again...this expected from a 4" speaker, but hoped the trunk cavity would have lent a bit more punch to these improved speakers. Will likely wait until after amplification mods and re-evaluate. Possibly look at stiffening the rear shelf or eventually cutting the crap our of it and dropping some 6" coax or 6x9's in there.
c) Door speaker. Big difference. High-quality sound, much better clarity, depth and localization (also helped by removing the center channel). Still not getting that warm low-mid that I'm looking for, but it's better. These are not broken in fully yet, so I may update with any changes in a few weeks.
d) Dynamat helps. Quieter road noise at highway speeds and a generally tighter sound from the front of the car. If you're ever pulling the door panels, I recommend doing this.

Next up...Amplification.
Definitely working the stock unit too hard as the volume has to be at about 3/4 to generate some of the bass needed. Likely going with a Bimmertech amp and will see if that simply blossoms all of my existing speaker mods, or whether more work is needed.

More later...

[Beartato]

You should check out this thread for some other user's inputs on various sound mods.

http://www.2addicts.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1236238

[matt@bavsound]

We're glad to hear you're enjoying the GhostSubs! I couldn't agree more with your analysis of the stock system, and with your choices thus far. Of course I'd rather hear that you have our speaker replacements as well, but Focal makes an astounding product, so definitely a good move.

Have you looked into the Audison processors or any amplification yet? I recently did an M5 with our speakers all the way around, added one JL audio flat 10" woofer in a slim enclosure mounted under the rear deck, a JL Audio HD 900/5 and an Audison BitTen. Incredible results. I'm a big fan of processors in cars as they help to take the car environment (naturally not conducive to great sound for a number of reasons) out of the equation as much as possible and give you such much more control than the "Bass," "Mid" and "Treble" adjustments car manufacturers give us.

Would love to hear your thoughts...

[robman23]

Great thread bladeomatic. I installed the Bavsound subs and then went with the Focal 100s in the doors. Did you install the Focal 100 in the rear deck?

[Viffermike]

bladeomatic A thought: if you're going to go the trunk-subwoofer route, it may help if you replace the Ghosts with dedicated low-mid woofers (Jehnerts come to mind as an option) under the seats to fill the gap between the in-door Focals -- which, as I'm sure you know, aren't known for reach and impact in the low-mid area -- and the true bass frequencies that really should be covered by a separate amp/enclosure anyway.

That way, you'd have below 125 Hz or so covered by the trunk sub, the low-mids (which are still somewhat omnidirectional) covered by the drivers under the seat, and everything else covered by the 4" drivers/tweeters elsewhere in the car.

[seansurfn2]

geezus so much time and money to invest in minimal gains.. no thanks

[Hekler]

Originally Posted by seansurfn2

geezus so much time and money to invest in minimal gains.. no thanks

So captain obvious, tell us how you did it to improve greatly with little to no time and money here??


To OP, great topic....where did you end up at??

[seansurfn2]

Originally Posted by Hekler

So captain obvious, tell us how you did it to improve greatly with little to no time and money here??


To OP, great topic....where did you end up at??

buy another car which doesnt have an amplified system and like 12 speakers.
these cars its best to just leave as is. i used to be old skool worked at circuit city lol
i built systems.. im not some pro but just sayin.. the time and money for minimal gains= uf you want to waste money go ahead.. or get a diff car.. or no hk etc

[Navdeepasi]

nice thread, never thought about taking out the center channel

[matthewcassity]

Question.. Can you do these upgrades from the stock sound system? Not even from the H&K upgrade?

I had a previous m235 with H&K audio, and I didn't hate it. It did what I needed it to do. I am about to get back into a m235 as my previous one was involved in a serious accident and I have found one without the H&K audio upgrade and I'm trying to find the best route to upgrade the factory stock system when I receive the car.

Any thoughts and plans are appreciated!!

[OldCrow7xx]

Hey I am also an audiophile and am highly disappointed with the HK system. Its one of the worst I have ever heard with no enjoyment in the mid range. I dont know as much about speakers but I mostly work with high end headphones and DACs and tube amps. I used to download all my source material in lossless codecs but now I am lazy and stream Spotify at 320.

I was wondering how you disconnect the center channel speaker, if you have to unplug to battery to do this, and if it changes the way the DSP/CPU does the thinking of what frequencies it sends to what speakers and why?

It seems to good to be true that you can just unplug one of the components from the system and it just basically "heals" from there but it would be awesome if thats the case. The on screen menus for sound processing are so painfully limited in this car I really dont know what is doing what. I also have to turn the volume up and down wildly based on my input source. SXM is loud and clear while my iPhone needs 50% power to be heard.

I just cant live with the piercing highs and flood of low end anymore lol and to make it worse I am coming off the L7 system in my old m335. That was one of the finest car audio systems I have ever hood. It was truly astonishing.

I was also wondering if simply upgrading the door speakers will create more warmth / mid range sound, or if its more about the processor and amplification built into the car?

Cheers mate

Originally Posted by bladeomatic

I'm a former Recording Engineer and Record Producer, who knows a lot about audio theory and has spent over a decade in front of some world-class listening systems. I'm slowly moving towards finally getting my 2014 M235i's HK system into shape. This will be a slow process with subjective tests along the way. I'm going to try and get the best sound possible out of this daily driver without dropping $10k or more. I listen to a wide array of music...from Big Band to boombox stuff. Above all, I'm looking for clarity, accuracy, punch and detail. No earth-shattering rumble needed...unless the track contains that. :-)

I welcome any thoughts from any of those that have gone on before me.

Initial Assessment
The stock HK system is disappointing. There's a lack of cleanliness/quality in all of the components. The back deck speakers are some of the thinnest sounding I've heard. I still can't believe they wouldn't try to get a proper 6" coax or 6x9 back there to add some depth. The door speakers sound better but there's only so much you can do with a 4", cheap-quality driver. The center channel dash speaker causes a lot of blur. For those of you who are impressed by a 17-speaker system...don't be. Two, quality 6" coaxes can slay a car full of cheap speakers that are all phase-cancelling and blurring the soundstage of each other. Aside from the lack of quality, my biggest disappointment is the lack of a solid low mid-range. There's plenty of highs and high-mids, but the 200Hz-400hz of the low mids feels almost gone. The under-seat subs try to help here, but it's pretty dismal. Fundamentally BMW could have done a bit more work to provide better spaces for speakers to work in.

Mod #1 Subwoofers
The first thing I've done is replaced the under-seat "subwoofers" with a pair of the BavSound replacements. The process was pretty easy. 30 min for the 1st one, and 15 min for the second. Much higher quality frames, baskets, cones, etc. Well-built and quick to deploy. They've been in there a few months now and are fully-broken in. They are certainly much tighter than the stock, though I don't feel there's more than 15% improvement. Given the abysmal amount of space in these tiny, under-seat cavities, it's not reasonable or even physically possible to generate sounds in a true subwoofer range. My next steps in this area will be reassess these after additional amplification is visited. If still not significant, I'll look at the Focal or Pyle under-seat replacements, or perhaps a 10" or 12" in a box in the trunk, if it comes to that.


Mod #2 Speaker Replacements, etc.
I had the door and shelf speakers replaced, disconnected the center channel and applied Dynamat to the doors.
Doors received the Focal ES 100k Speakers. These are separates and come with a passive/adjustable crossover (-3db/flat/+3db switch). We kept the crossovers out of the mix and stayed with the stock BMW leads from the doors. Will revisit using the crossovers after new amplification. The shelf speakers were the cheaper Focal ISC 100 Coax.
Verdict:
a) Center channel remove. Do it! Greatly improves the stereo soundscape and imaging between the front two speakers. Nice, cheap improvement.
b) Shelf speakers. Better, but still deeply disappointing. Though more clarity than the stock speakers, they simply can't generate anywhere near the bottom end as the front speakers can...which is not much. Again...this expected from a 4" speaker, but hoped the trunk cavity would have lent a bit more punch to these improved speakers. Will likely wait until after amplification mods and re-evaluate. Possibly look at stiffening the rear shelf or eventually cutting the crap our of it and dropping some 6" coax or 6x9's in there.
c) Door speaker. Big difference. High-quality sound, much better clarity, depth and localization (also helped by removing the center channel). Still not getting that warm low-mid that I'm looking for, but it's better. These are not broken in fully yet, so I may update with any changes in a few weeks.
d) Dynamat helps. Quieter road noise at highway speeds and a generally tighter sound from the front of the car. If you're ever pulling the door panels, I recommend doing this.

Next up...Amplification.
Definitely working the stock unit too hard as the volume has to be at about 3/4 to generate some of the bass needed. Likely going with a Bimmertech amp and will see if that simply blossoms all of my existing speaker mods, or whether more work is needed.

More later...