Like most of you, I found the standard HiFi system equipped F10 sound quality to be inadequate at best (lacking clarity and soul). However at this time, Im not willing or have enough justifications to spend a lot of hard earned cash to upgrade the sound system on an already expensive vehicle. One would think or expect a $50K plus vehicle comes with some decent audio setup (I dont mean BOSE). If you have not seemed the OEM speakers, you will surely be very disappointed on the quality of the speakers upon discovery (look at the size of the speaker magnet, they dont even make good refrigerator magnet).
Attachment 1059790 OEM Door and rear deck speakers
There are a lot of decent aftermarket speaker out there (Focal, MB, Gladen, BSW, Eton, and etc.), however they are a bit pricey and not all are available in the US. Frankly, you are not going to maximize the sound quality by just upgrading the speakers. We all know that the weakness link in the system is the OEM amp (rated at 2 ohm) and there is no point in replacing the 8 woofers without an amp upgrade. However that does not mean we cannot achieve high quality sound without breaking the bank. The goals for my design are as follows:
o Replacement speakers must be at least as efficient as OEM, (no loss of SPL from OEM amp),
o Tweeter and mid play nice together to eliminate resister padding,
o Low crossover component count to minimize cost and ease of installation, (first order preferred),
o No modifications or cutting of door panel or rear parcel shelf, (everything must fit as OEM), and
o All harnesses used will be plug and play (PNP) to avoid cutting factory harness and to be reversible if ever needed to go back to OEM.
The hardest part of the design is to find the tweeter and mid combination that meet the design goals. There are a few highly regarded 4 (100 cm) mid that have very nice specifications but the efficiency is just not high enough or the depth is too tall to fit the bill. For the door application, the speaker mounting depth must be less than 50 mm, not good but better than F30 which is 20 mm less. Through many hours of research, I found a 4 (100 cm) mid made in Italy that has high efficiency (90 dB) and less than 50 mm in depth. It uses the more expensive neodymium magnet instead of ferrite. Focal uses the same type of magnet in its speaker for BMW application. The cost for the mid is reasonable given the neodymium magnet used. The cone is not made out of exotic materials, but with decent treated paper with rubber surround and stamped steel basket. The OEM rear speaker is also a 4 mid but the mounting point is smaller than the door speaker; therefore you cant use the same mid in the door for the rear deck unless you want to hack up the rear parcel shelf which Im not willing to do. Lucky, the same Italian manufacturer makes the exact speaker in a 3 variety. This is no sonic difference going from a 4 to a 3 mid. Since there is no depth constraint for the rear deck, I use the ferrite version as a cost saving. The OEM tweeter is a 1 textile dome and is wired parallel with the mid. All of the 1 aftermarket tweeters have a slightly larger overall diameter and will require some physical hacking to the sail pane and rear mount in order to fit in the OEM locations. So for the tweeter, I went with a soft dome instead of the normal 1. Again there is no sonic difference between a and 1 tweeter, may even have better dispersion due to smaller dome. For the sail pane, simply pop out the OEM tweeter and hot glue the new tweeter in place.
Attachment 1059787 New Tweeter Hot Glued in Sail Pane
Any visible gaps will be covered up by foam backing. For the rear deck mount, you will need to remove the existing hot glue used to hold the OEM tweeter and re hot glue the new tweeter in place.
Attachment 1059792 OEM Removed from Tweeter Mount
Attachment 1059785 New Tweeter Hot Glued in Rear Decker Tweeter Mount
For the crossover design, I maintained the same topography as OEM, mid at full range and first order for the tweeter. This was done to reduce overall cost/complexity and simplify the installation. I used metallized film capacitor instead of the electrolytic, no reason here to save a penny or two for the capacitor. After many hours of listening and adjustment cap value, I settled on a crossover point that let the tweeter blends with the mid. HiFi equipped F10 also comes with a center mid and tweeter just like the one used in the rear deck, I just simply remove them since I didnt found it necessary to have a center channel for sound/stereo imaging effect. I made my own PNP wiring harness and CNC plastic speaker adaptors for the door and rear deck.
Attachment 1059791 Plug and Play Wiring Harnesses
The result is best described as fanatics; even other family members noticed the difference right away. The clarity on the vocals and individual instruments come through unlike the muffled sounds from the OEM speakers; you can hear the subtle details in the vocals and each string instrument in particular. The mid bass is much tighter than OEM, but dont expect very low since the OEM woofers are still handling that range of frequency. The results definitely justify the minor investment (price to performance ratio vs. other aftermarket offering). I can live with this new setup for a long time without feeling the need to upgrade the OEM woofers and amp. Be warned, crappy recording will sound even crappier in the new setup than in the OEM. Please PM me if you are interested in upgrading your F10 setup, I can put together a package for you, front only or front plus rear (speakers, adaptors, and wiring harnesses as shown).
Attachment 1059786 New Mid Installed (front door)
Attachment 1059798 New Mid Installed (rear deck)
Attachment 1059813 New tweeter and mid (front door)
Attachment 1059788 New tweeter and mid (rear deck)