[Bimmerstyle]

Hi to all. I'm Tom. I live in Belgium and for about a year now I'm driving a 2010 525das. I've been a BMW enthusiast for most of my life. In the past I've owned an E30, an E36, a couple of E34's, an E39 and an E61. As you can see I've become a 5-series lover so when it was time to let the E61 go the logical step would be a F10/11.

So after quite a long time searching the ads I finaly found what I was looking for. A Havana brown 525das with Zimt leather interior. It had the specs I was looking for. Comfort seats, Navi Pro, adaptive xenon, sunroof, comfort access, black headliner, EDC, iPod/USB connection, bluetooth and some other little things that made life more pleasant. It was completely stock with no modifications done to it but so were all my previous cars. I am however a modder so it wouldn't stay stock for a very long time.







In the past year I've been busy. Slowly modifying the car to my liking. Here's what's done so far, more or less in the order that it's been done:

- Breyton Race GTP wheels in 8,5x20 and 10x20 with 245/35 and 275/30 tyres
- Eibach Pro Kit springs on stock EDC dampers
- Gloss shadowline wrap
- Black/chrome M5 look kidneys
- M-body kit (replica)
- Performance Lip (replica)
- Trunk lip

And these are some pictures of how it looks now:









The exterior is pretty much the way I want it to be. Nothing much is gonna be done to it anymore. Next up is tackling the audio. It had the stock Hifi option when I bought it (standard audio in the US). This isn't too bad compared to other stock systems I have had in the past but it isn't really good either. I've allready swapped the doorspeakers with the mids and highs of the Audio-System X-Ion 200 BMW set I had in the E61. The subs of this set however won't fit the more shallow boxes of the F10. So these are still stock for now. Another thing changed is the center tweeter. It was way to harsh, especially compared to the more laid back sounding tweeters of the Audio-System door speakers. So the center tweeter has been swapped with a DLS T25 I had laying around from previous builds.

Next on my list is the Bimmertech Premium Audio amplifier. This has been ordered from Bimmer-Tech and is on its way from Poland as we speak. It should arrive on Monday. Next weekend I will be installing it.

After that's done I probably will be ordering some speakers to replace what's in the car now. Especially since the subs I have won't fit. I'm not sure yet what speakers to buy. I'm looking into the Audiotec-Fischer Match series for BMW. From what I've read online they seem to be pretty good speakers for my taste. They are reasonably priced and good to come by over here in Europe. Since the Bimmer-Tech amp basically is a modified Match amp, everything would be of the same manufacturer which is nice and clean.

But again. I'm not yet sure of the speakers. I'm also looking into DLS, Gladen and even Dynaudio, although these last ones are a little on pricey side. We will see. Getting the amp installed is my first priority now. Who knows, maybe I like it so much that I won't be needing new speakers...

Anyway, this is my car in a nutshell. Hope you guys like it.

[sqeezed]

wow this is really a lovely car, what a huge different you have done to the car. man I love the 5s they are sexy cars

[lsturbointeg]

She's a beauty! Love the wheels and the double slat grills! This guy also has the same color I think and it's a Beast!

[ALPWhite]

Those double slat grills REALLY stand out in a good way! Great looking car

[.BMW.]

Beautiful F10, I like your mods!

[Jet in Oz]

Very nice. I enjoy hearing someone say they are happy with how the exterior looks and that they are moving on to the interior. Sounds like you know what you want in terms of the audio quality. I hope you find audio nirvana.

[lsturbointeg]

I've read some pretty good reviews for those Gladen Extremes for the BMW. a lot of those guys will pair it with the Mosconi amps. What's nice is the Gladen's also have a 8" sub that comes with the set. I've seen there prices on there website for us USA guys would cost be $640 but I'm not sure if I'm reading that correctly as I was quoted $1k here? I'll have to check out dyna audio as I've never heard of them. Nice amp selection from Bimmertech but I think imma go with the JL XD800v2 with Technic's pnp harness

http://www.germaniks.com/speakers/gl...7x-e8x-e9x-fx/

http://www.jlaudio.com/xd800-8v2-car...plifiers-98259

[remmib]

Wow, your car looks so much better with all those mods, especially the front.

[remmib]

Originally Posted by lsturbointeg

She's a beauty! Love the wheels and the double slat grills! This guy also has the same color I think and it's a Beast!

Nope, that M5 is darker, and the paint is Jatoba Brown.

[lsturbointeg]

Originally Posted by remmib

Nope, that M5 is darker, and the paint is Jatoba Brown.

you're right! didn't know there's more than one brown color

[Bimmerstyle]

Thanks for the positive response guys.

Gladen speakers are indeed good. Over here in Europe they are very popular. Price here for the extremes is about 650€ for the set. Essentially Gladen is derived from Audio-System. When I bought my Audio-Systems back in the day Gladen did not yet excist. One of the owners of AS started his own brand called Gladen. At first they took AS speakers and rebranded them. Afterwards they did some improvements to them but in the end Gladen speakers are still very close in sound and quality to the old Audio-Systems. The newer Audio-Systems are a little lower in quality. They are now the more affordable range while Gladen are the upper range.

Dynaudio is Danish. I've always been a fan of speakers coming from Northern Europe. For some reason I like the way they sound. I've had DLS (Swedish) in my car in the past and my home audio mainly consists of Jamo (Danish). The problem with DLS and Dynaudio is that they don't make specific BMW speakers. They have nothing in 8" that would fit the underseat boxes. So when going that route I would have to put 6,5" speakers under the seats combined with a trunk sub. I don't know if I really want to do that. I like the fact that in current BMW's it's possible to get a pretty decent low end without having to use a trunk sub.

But again. Nothing is decided yet. I have to think about it some more.

BTW: That M5 is indeed a very sweet car but it's an LCI and Havana was only available before the facelift. This is indeed Jatoba Brown just as remmib said.

[lsturbointeg]

Originally Posted by Bimmerstyle

Thanks for the positive response guys.

Gladen speakers are indeed good. Over here in Europe they are very popular. Price here for the extremes is about 650€ for the set. Essentially Gladen is derived from Audio-System. When I bought my Audio-Systems back in the day Gladen did not yet excist. One of the owners of AS started his own brand called Gladen. At first they took AS speakers and rebranded them. Afterwards they did some improvements to them but in the end Gladen speakers are still very close in sound and quality to the old Audio-Systems. The newer Audio-Systems are a little lower in quality. They are now the more affordable range while Gladen are the upper range.

Dynaudio is Danish. I've always been a fan of speakers coming from Northern Europe. For some reason I like the way they sound. I've had DLS (Swedish) in my car in the past and my home audio mainly consists of Jamo (Danish). The problem with DLS and Dynaudio is that they don't make specific BMW speakers. They have nothing in 8" that would fit the underseat boxes. So when going that route I would have to put 6,5" speakers under the seats combined with a trunk sub. I don't know if I really want to do that. I like the fact that in current BMW's it's possible to get a pretty decent low end without having to use a trunk sub.

whoa! thanks for all the info! learned something new today! keep us posted on what you end up doing in the end as far as audio!

[Patrys@BimmerTech]

Great looking car! Sporty and classy at the same time

[Bimmerstyle]

@lsturbointeg: No problem, and I will.

@Patrys: Thanks. Looking forward to adding your amp to the mix.

[Quicksilv3r]

Originally Posted by remmib

Wow, your car looks so much better with all those mods, especially the front.

This. Well done.

[Bimmerstyle]

Thanks Quicksilv3r.


So yesterday my Bimmertech amp arrived from Poland. I didn't have much time left but managed to put it in the car. All in all this was a pretty straightforward job. I know my way arround cars and this wasn't the first time I was tinkering with the amp so I allready knew how to take apart the trunk lining. I took a while however figuring out how Bimmertech wanted me to mount the supplied bracket. After some time I figured out that I would have to remove the OEM bracket and put the new one in place with the amp and the rear view module on top of it. Once I figured this out everything was smooth sayling from there. In about 45 minutes total my amp was installed.



Time to turn on the radio and take a listen. To be honest, I was a little bit underwhelmed. I really didn't like the sound coming from the speakers. Way too bright, harsh even for my taste. But it was time to go to work (I work nightshifts) so no time for tuning it. While driving to work I had turned the treble down and the bas up a bit and it was sounding better but still not anyway near the way I like it.

Today then, it was tuning time. First I had connect my laptop to the amp. Yesterday I routed the supplied USB cable in the storage compartment underneath the trunk floor. Today I ran a USB extension to the rear seat from there. The cable is tucked under the trunk floor and when not in use it sits in the storage compartment in the center armrest.













Time to hook up the laptop and take a look at the supplied tune. To my surprise it was actually tamed down a bit on the higher end. I thought the highs would be boosted a bit but they were not. Perhaps it's the combination of my Audio-System speakers and the tune that didn't work. Strange since the AS speakers are more tame on the high end than the stock speakers. Time to put on some pink noise and plug my trusty Dayton Audio iMM-6 into the phone and take a look at what we've got. It isn't the best RTA mic out there but it's pretty acurate. This confirmed what I was hearing. A pretty straith curve but boosted a bit on the high end an quite tame on the low midrange.

So now it was time to use the stong suit of the amp. The customizability of it all. I put on some of my favorite tunes and started playing. Everything above 2,5khz was toned down one or two notches and the area around 400Hz bumped up a notch or 2. Also a lot of the harshness was coming from the center speaker. It was filtererd quite high, around 400Hz, so I set the high pass at 160Hz and also bumped the lower mids on the center a bit. The subs remained unaltered since I really like how they sound. Much tighter and defined than before with the stock amp. I listened for a while with these settings but some songs still came out a little harsh so I ended up bumping down the area around 7KHz a little more...

Finally a played around with the little red dot in the graphical staging interface. I know, in SQ it's prefered to have the center stage in the center of the car. Personaly however, like the center more above the steering wheel, straight in front of me. So after moving the little red dot a tiny bit to the right and back I had what I was looking for. Center stage in front of me.

I have to do some more listening while driving the car but for a first short tuning session I have something I really like. Music sounds better than it ever did before in my E61 and there was a lot more money spent on that one. The tune Nelson provided perhaps wasn't entirely my taste but it was a very good starting point. Especially the low end is amazing. Never thought those stock subs would sound so well.

Yesterday I had my doubts but after some tweaking I'm amazed with how good this little amp sounds. I definitely do not regret buying it. I was planning on swapping out the speakers as well but at the moment I really can't find a reason for doing this. The stock speakers combined with the Audio-Systems in the doors really sound very good with this amp.

One negative note to end this little review however. It has nothing to do with the quality of the amp but with the supplied bracket. I feel it is a bit too flimsy. When you don't have a rear view camera it would probably be no problem but when you have a rear view camera, like me, the module has to bet bolted to the new bracket and when mounted it feels a little bit bouncy. The steel of the bracket is quite weak and thin and when you put the weight of the module on it it acts like a spring. I probably will try something to reinforce it so it's a bit more sturdy. But this really is the one negative I can say about my purchase.

[lsturbointeg]

Appreciate the review! Everybody listens to music differently so yes lots on tuning and tweaking involved! Surprised how you like the stock subs as most people think it sounds too muddy? I'm thinking because you have the capabilities to make adjustments with the labtop it makes all the difference in the world! Good to hear you have no ragrets! Not even one letter?

[Jet in Oz]

Originally Posted by Bimmerstyle

Time to hook up the laptop and take a look at the supplied tune. To my surprise it was actually tamed down a bit on the higher end. I thought the highs would be boosted a bit but they were not. Perhaps it's the combination of my Audio-System speakers and the tune that didn't work. Strange since the AS speakers are more tame on the high end than the stock speakers. Time to put on some pink noise and plug my trusty Dayton Audio iMM-6 into the phone and take a look at what we've got. It isn't the best RTA mic out there but it's pretty acurate. This confirmed what I was hearing. A pretty straith curve but boosted a bit on the high end an quite tame on the low midrange.

So now it was time to use the stong suit of the amp. The customizability of it all. I put on some of my favorite tunes and started playing. Everything above 2,5khz was toned down one or two notches and the area around 400Hz bumped up a notch or 2. Also a lot of the harshness was coming from the center speaker. It was filtererd quite high, around 400Hz, so I set the high pass at 160Hz and also bumped the lower mids on the center a bit. The subs remained unaltered since I really like how they sound. Much tighter and defined than before with the stock amp. I listened for a while with these settings but some songs still came out a little harsh so I ended up bumping down the area around 7KHz a little more...

Finally a played around with the little red dot in the graphical staging interface. I know, in SQ it's prefered to have the center stage in the center of the car. Personaly however, like the center more above the steering wheel, straight in front of me. So after moving the little red dot a tiny bit to the right and back I had what I was looking for. Center stage in front of me.

I have to do some more listening while driving the car but for a first short tuning session I have something I really like. Music sounds better than it ever did before in my E61 and there was a lot more money spent on that one. The tune Nelson provided perhaps wasn't entirely my taste but it was a very good starting point. Especially the low end is amazing. Never thought those stock subs would sound so well.

Yesterday I had my doubts but after some tweaking I'm amazed with how good this little amp sounds. I definitely do not regret buying it. I was planning on swapping out the speakers as well but at the moment I really can't find a reason for doing this. The stock speakers combined with the Audio-Systems in the doors really sound very good with this amp.

One negative note to end this little review however. It has nothing to do with the quality of the amp but with the supplied bracket. I feel it is a bit too flimsy. When you don't have a rear view camera it would probably be no problem but when you have a rear view camera, like me, the module has to bet bolted to the new bracket and when mounted it feels a little bit bouncy. The steel of the bracket is quite weak and thin and when you put the weight of the module on it it acts like a spring. I probably will try something to reinforce it so it's a bit more sturdy. But this really is the one negative I can say about my purchase.

Props to you Bud - You must have ears on you like a Bat cos my F10's stock Harmon Kardon delivers a sweet sound (and I think I'm pretty fussy with B&O throughout the house!!). I'd love to listen to your finished system adjustments to hear the difference.

[lsturbointeg]

not to thread jack but since were talking about audio my audio upgrade was going to be my project for next year and i'm still doing some research for the best way to go. i do want to run a sub in the back but nothing too crazy like i had in mind. i planned on going with the Bimmertech amp like Bimmerstyle did but i would still have to run another amp for the subs. with some thread searching i came across a couple of guys who instead went with the JL XD800v2

•Eight-channel Satellite Amp: drive four pairs of speakers with 75 W x 8

but for my setup i could run it in 2 different configurations depending if i want to eliminate rears as they are just fills anyways!

•Six-Channel System Amp: drive front and rear satellites with 75 W x 4 @ 4Ω, plus two 4Ω subwoofers with 200 W each

or

•Four-Channel System Amp: drive left and right speakers with 200W x 2 @ 4Ω, plus two 4Ω subwoofers with 200W each




i got a hold of Technic for his PnP harness and he sells them for $75


but for the sub in the trunk i thought about the weight factor as my car sits sooooo damn low on these coilovers that i decided i can't have too much weight so i was thinking of going with something like this:


But thanks Bimmerstyle for the great review you did on this as it still gives me ideas with the Bimmertech amp setup. since i don't have the EQ setting on my factory head i'm hoping this XD amp with all the adjustments on the amp itself will suffice

[Bimmerstyle]

@lsturbointeg : I don't have experience with the JL XD800v2 or any other JL amp for that matter. I would however advice in getting an amp with a DSP or a seperate DSP. In home audio, with decent equipment, a DSP isn't really necessary but in a car, wich has very poor acoustics in my opinion a DSP is mandatory if you want the best sound. Unless you are willing to sacrifice the look of the interior by placing some exotic speaker setup a DSP is needed to get the staging set properly. Furthermore a flat responce, as is reference in most home audio systems, usually doesn't work really well in a cars interior. There is a lot of glass in a car and it reflects mainly the high frequencies. In general these reflections amplify the high end a lot so toning down these frequencies is adviced. You can do this with a simple treble control but with a DSP with a decent equalizer it's far more precise and the end result will a lot better.

In my E61 I had the Audio-System X-Ion 200 BMW set hooked up to a DLS Ultimate A7 5 channel amp. In theory this was a pretty capable system. But it never did sound very good until a brought a Rockford 3Sixty.2 DSP in the mix. After adding the DSP and setting it up to the best of my ability the entire system came to life. It sounded way better then it ever did.

About the muddy subs in your previous post. Yeah, they do sound muddy driven by the stock amp. With some tuning however they sound a lot better. They never will replace 2 15" subs in the trunk but now they sound pretty damn good for what they are.

@Jet in Oz: I don't have ears of a bat actually. I'm actually not even a real audiophile. I just know what I like soundwise and try to setup a system the way I like it. It's possible that for everybody else in the world it sounds like crap. But I like it and that's the most important part.

I've started on a completly fresh tune actually. Didn't get Nelsons tune to sound the way I liked it so I started from scratch. I did use Nelsons settings for the subs but everything else I've done by my own measurements and ears. I'm still working on it but it's getting there.

[Bimmerstyle]

Ok, it's been awhile since my last post but I had some troubles with the amp. Until those were resolved I didn't want to post negative things about Bimmertech and await their responce. Nelson was very helpfull and in the end all the amp needed was a factory reset and new firmware loaded.

So after I got it up and running it was time to further upgrade the audio-components. First thing I did was deaden the doors. I used the generic bitumen stuff but made sure I didn't use it on parts of the car that would get extremely hot. For now only the doorpanels and subboxes were deadened. In the future I most likely will do the metal of the doors and floor as well. For those I will be using the more heat-resistant butyl material.







Next thing to go were the subs. Although they sounded a lot better with the amp, they still didn't sound all that great. Bass was stil somewhat muddy and not very defined. It was more a rumble than a thight bass. I've been looking at every aftermarket sub available but in the end I did decide on a pair of OEM Harman-Kardon subs out of an F2x. Why this choice you may ask? First of, sensitivity. Most aftermarket subs aren't very efficient. They are made to be powered with a lot more power than the Bimmertech amp can deliver. On top of that most of them have an impedance of 4Ohms. This would mean the Bimmertech amp would only deliver 55W to them, wich seems a little low.

So in the end OEM subs seemed to be the best solution. Usually they are very efficient and they are made to handle stock power. Problem is that most higher end BMW subs are 7 or 8Ohms (L7, Harman-Kardon, B&O,...) so those were a no go as well. On that impedance the amp would only have about 40W to power them. Only the F2x Harman-Kardons have an impedance of 2Ohms. They are also made to handle about the same power as the Bimmertech amp has to offer. They seemed to be the ideal choice.

So I looked on Ebay and found a used pair of them very quickly. Price wasn't cheap. A pair of aftermarket subs would be cheaper. I was still pretty sure they would be the way to go so I bought them. A few days later they arrived in prestine condition and very well packed.



I compared them to the Audio-System subs I had from my previous car, an E61 and they are way better made. A much bigger and heavier Neodym magnet, much stiffer cone and a voice-coil that is about 4 times as big. In total the HK's are 2 times the wheight of the Audio-Systems. The Audio-Systems looked like toys compared to them.





Also when swapping them the difference in quality compared to the Hifi subs was noticeble. Again. Much stiffer cone, a lot larger voice-coil an bigger magnet.





Fitting them to the car was a breeze. They fit the enclosure perfectly. Only the plug was a little different. On the plug there is a little plastic guide. On the Hifi's the hole for this guide was on the opposite side. Cutting away this plastic guide made the plug fit perfectly.



The difference in sound was night and day. Although I thought the OEM Hifi subs didn't sound terrible, the Harman-Kardons are completely in a different league. Bass is much thighter and deeper. They also handle low mids a lot better so I can cross them a little higher. The Hifi's couldn't handle anything above 100Hz. They became very muddy and uncontroled. The HK's now are passed at 125Hz 12dB and handle this very well. The result is a much better low midrange. The hole between the door-speakers and the subs I had before is gone.

Next up was the Helix remote. The main reason for this was the ability to create 2 different setups. One for myself when I'm alone in the car and a second one for when I have passengers. The drivers seat setup consists of a lot of phase adjustment and time allignment as well as different EQ-settings left and right. The result of this was that for the passenger all the sound seemed to be coming from the passenger side door. With the second setup I tried to create something that sound decent on both sides. Not perfect on either side but enjoyable.

I didn't want the remote to be visible so I've put it in the center armrest storage compartiment. I wanted to put it in the ashtray but it's to big to go there. So the storage compartiment was the next best spot. Holes were allready present in the bottom of it so I didn't need to drill any. The only thing sacrificed was the little rubber mat on the bottom. I had to make a little cut in it for the wire to pass through. The remote was fixed to the side of the compartiment using double sided tape. It sits very firm this way. In the end it looks nice and clean and is still easy to reach.





The cable for it runs under the carpet underneath the driver seat to the door sill and from there to the trunk.

The weakest link in the system now was the center speaker. It still was the OEM Hifi mid with a DLS tweeter connected to it. Not an ideal situation. So I started looking again for a replacement and again I found something that was OEM BMW. After reading a lot about them most people agree that the speakers of the E9x and E6x Indiviual High End sound system (Enhanced Premium Sound for the US) are very capable drivers and better then most aftermarket speakers designed specifically for BMW's. Another good thing about them is you can buy them a piece. Aftermarket speakers come in pairs what would mean one of them will be collecting dust in a cabinet somewhere.

So again I went on Ebay and found a 2 months old Individual center speaker in the UK for little money. So I went ahead and ordered it. A few day's later it arrived.

Again, difference in quality compared to the hifi speaker is apparent. Bigger voice-coil, bigger magnet (both Neodym) and specially the cone material. Paper for the hifi, two layers of kevlar sandwich a honeycone center on the Individual.



Fitted it in the car. Truly plug and play. The result is phenomenal. It simply is the best speaker I have in the car. Period. Better than the Hifi that was there first, of course, but better than the Audio-System X-Ion speakers in the doors. Midrange is a lot more open and defined. A lot cleaner at higher volumes. It truly is a very good speaker!



I was so impressed with the quality of this little guy I started looking at Ebay again. It didn't take me long to find a complete set of front Individual speakers. Door mids, tweeters, cables and crossovers and another coaxial center speaker. I went ahead and ordered this set. It's a set from an E6x originaly but speaker adapters are included that should fit an F1x as well. They should arrive in a week or so.





I don't need another center speaker so I will have one to many. The plan is to source another of those coaxials and put them both in the rear. This way I will have a complete OEM Individual/Harman-Kardon system connected to the Bimmertech amp. Maybe a bit of a weird choice but I think it will be a system that will perform very well.

To be continued...

[lsturbointeg]

NICE! i've dynomatt all my previous car but i've always wondered in the BMW world why are you guys doing the door panels and not the door itself?