In Need Of A New Complete Stereo System

[215RobDiesel]

I got a 1997 BMW 328i (Black) . My speakers are blown out, but im looking to replace every speaker for not too much but a mid price... I want something really worth the money. anybody got suggestions for each part ? i also am getting subs & all that too, a new headunit also... im from the philadelphia/ south jersey area

[Pik Masta]

I got a 1997 BMW 328i (Black) . My speakers are blown out, but im looking to replace every speaker for not too much but a mid price... I want something really worth the money. anybody got suggestions for each part ? i also am getting subs & all that too, a new headunit also... im from the philadelphia/ south jersey area


I have had several audio systems in my older cars and thru experience i'd go with pioneer, kenwood or Alpine for the deck or speakers. when it comes to subs I went with MA audio. There hard to find nowadays, but a lot of ppl win SPL sound off's with MA audio so you know their quality is top notch.

[Pik Masta]

I got a 1997 BMW 328i (Black) . My speakers are blown out, but im looking to replace every speaker for not too much but a mid price... I want something really worth the money. anybody got suggestions for each part ? i also am getting subs & all that too, a new headunit also... im from the philadelphia/ south jersey area


I have had several audio systems in my older cars and thru experience i'd go with pioneer, kenwood or Alpine for the deck or speakers. when it comes to subs I went with MA audio. There hard to find nowadays, but a lot of ppl win SPL sound off's with MA audio so you know their quality is top notch.

[Pdwight]

I have ordered new 5 1/4" for the kick panels, 4Inch for the door as well as new 1" tweeters for the doors. I have a 6X9 adapter plates for my rear and new 6X9 speakers for the rear. I think I am going to pull new wire to the rear to bypass the amplifier and drive it direct from the head unit. I chose a Pioneer DEH-7300BT for a replacement. You can get these for about $110 bucks factory refurbished from Amazon, Bluetooth is already built in and the power rating looks good enough. I hate my OEM stereo , it sounds like a 1960's transistor radio turned up too high. PS the Pioneer unit has infinite number of colors so you can match your interior lighting scheme.

PS when looking at speakers look at the sensitivity rating , it should be 90db at least ...preferably 92 or higher. I stuck with name brand speakers but did not spend a fortune on them....you should be able to do this nicely for $250 if you install everything.

[gardar]

My vote goes for alpine, they are good bang for the buck!

[Ramroids55]

Alpine for the deck, hands down. Not ungoldy amounts of money, and high quality. As far as subs go, i run JL Audio's in my cars. Dont remember which brands the highs/mids are.

[Pdwight]

I have very good luck over the years with Alpine, Kenwood and Pioneer...I shy away from Dual and Pyramid

Now where did I put my Craig Power Play Road Rated AM/FM 8 Track ;-)

[fast84gti]

If you want to invest less money, and get better sound quality...
Don't install rear speakers.
Unless you are going to do full surround sound with DVD player, you don't need rear speakers.
Rear speakers will help a little with volume level (if that is what you care about) but can harm imaging a bit.
Consentrate on front speakers.
Qlogic makes kick panels for the E36. This will allow you to put in a 6 inch speaker and a tweeter with better angle for better imaging. It's a good route to go if you want better sound and don't want to fabricate kick panels.
6 inch will give you a little better mid bass.
Don't worry about sensitivity so much. With high sensitivity, comes lack of bass response. You need the fronts to go down to at least 80 Hz... A 5 inch speaker with high sensitivity will have issues doing that... seriously...
You may be able to fit a 6 inch with some trimming.. I had thought about it in my car, have not tried. I took my stereo out :D
If you are brave and have mechanical/bad skills, you can make your own kick panels. The factory panels are rather large and easy to work with.
You'd be amazed at the sound quality you can get with just a pair of components up front, and single sub (10 works great with 6" components). 4 chanel amp bridged to 3 chanel, or a 50 to 75 watts per chanel amp for fronts, and 200 to 300 for sub (depending on sub).
For me , it's more about proper install, set up and settings than brand...
I have had components ranging anywhere from 100 bucks to 600...
Pay as much as you can afford.
If I get another car in the future, I am going to build it for SQ, not SPL.
It's too bad that there are so few pre-amp only head units out there.
I think the new high-end $1500 dollar pioneer is the only one :(

[randomy]

Check the link in my sig for achieving quality sound in an E36

[randomy]

Check the link in my sig for achieving quality sound in an E36

[93BMWE36]

Look at one of my threads I started. I changed all my speakers with Rockford fosgate. Got them off eBay for an awesome price and it sounds AMAZING. I can't stand pioneer or kenwood IMO. I am running:

RF power 5.25" in the kick panel
RF Power 4" in the rear deck
RF Punch 1" tweeter in the doors
RF Punch 3.5" midrange in the doors too
All connected to factory amp (upgrading to a RF T400-4 amp soon)
I love!! the way it sounds. And for bass I run 2 10" JL audio W6. I got all RF speakers for about $250 maybe less

[buffalobrown]

you might want to check out partsexpress.com

Also, madisound.com You might be able to find raw drivers that are drop in replacements for a fraction of what might find in the car audio market

More than likely, any top of the line car audio speaker is going to be made by vifa, audax, or scanspeak anyways.

I think weight might be a consideration with subs as well. The bigger the sub(s) the bigger the box=more wood. MDF is heavy. You can look into neo-mag subs with a fiberglass box. If you are a diy guy, seriously consider going that route.

I used to run 15's and 12's back in the day when space, performance, and gas werent an issue. All I got now is a single old school idq 8" in this small ported box. 150 watts off a cheap kenny amp. It may not go boom boom, but it sounds good and clean. plenty loud.

Hell, these days you can pick up a high performance 8" sub and it'll blow your head off in a ported box. So you can have loud and save on space and a little weight.

Install is key. You don't need mega bucks or mega watts to sound good.

[215RobDiesel]

can y'all list the parts brands & prices cuz I'll need 6 speakers (4 upfront /two on each side& two in the back) and also the sub/s please & thank you

I want something that's loud as hell but also sounds good

I listen to hiphop rap & rnb

[215RobDiesel]

Bump

[Pdwight]

I just replaced all my OEM Speakers. For the front kick panels 5 1/2 inch drivers, the doors 4 Inch for mid and 1" for tweeter. For the rear you have two easy options a 4 inch driver can be installed in the OEM Box or you can purchase adapter plates and install a 6X9 (this is what I did). Everything I did looks OEM from the outside, no new covers or grills....I can also put it back OEM in half a day if I chose to. Don't spend big bucks on speakers, you don't need to if you are using the OEM wiring in the car. I got out with a new Pioneer head (Including bluetooth) and speakers fro just over $200 and it sounds 1000% better.

Do a little searching , there are hundreds of threads on this and what fits. I read for weeks before I started ordering components.

Dwight

[paniolo]

If you want to invest less money, and get better sound quality...
Don't install rear speakers.
Unless you are going to do full surround sound with DVD player, you don't need rear speakers.
Rear speakers will help a little with volume level (if that is what you care about) but can harm imaging a bit.
Consentrate on front speakers....etc(


Check the link in my sig for achieving quality sound in an E36

Follow these two posts. You don't need a bunch of speakers. 3 speakers get you all the sound you can handle. Rear speaker fill is only needed for surround sound or so rear seat passengers get better mids/highs.

Get the biggest mid range you can fit in front. But if you want to save $ or not fabricate kicks some quality 5.25's will work. Think about sound stage (the music comes from in front of you like at a concert) and imaging (being able to differentiate the L & R channels). Mid components are ideal, put the mid in the kick and the tweeter mounted on the A pillars (ideal) or in the door locations. But a 2 way is perfectly fine. Actually, I would probably lean towards a 2 way than a tweeter in the door location.

The door gives really poor imaging. The l/r balance lets you get good imaging for one seat, but the other front seat is screwed. If you set it up to sound balanced in the driver seat, the passengers right channel is overpowering. Tweets down in the kick location give a slightly low soundstage, but the imaging is good in both seats. (especially if you angle the mounts back a bit). Best location is A-pillars. Good staging at ear level (mid sounds are not nearly as directional as highs) and the distance to both seats ears enable you to set a balance that sounds good in both seats. If you want to test this, just take some string and measure it from the proposed locations to your ears in both seats. Just disconnect the stock door speakers and leave them there so you don't have to worry about filling the holes.

Then put a single 10 or 12" sub in the trunk. Ski pass firing is ideal and looks nice, but just removing the rear deck speakers and having a trunk sub box is a bit cheaper. I prefer small sealed boxes for SQ and trunk space.

Get a 4 channel bridgeable amp and bridge the back two channels for your sub and the head unit of your choice (or stock). Make sure to filter out the lows to the fronts so they only get the high freqs (hi pass) and a lo pass to the sub. Should be built into your head unit or the amp.

You will be able to crank with the best of them ... or at least 90% of the best of them. Way louder than you can carry on conversation, and have good quality.

[215RobDiesel]

I just replaced all my OEM Speakers. For the front kick panels 5 1/2 inch drivers, the doors 4 Inch for mid and 1" for tweeter. For the rear you have two easy options a 4 inch driver can be installed in the OEM Box or you can purchase adapter plates and install a 6X9 (this is what I did). Everything I did looks OEM from the outside, no new covers or grills....I can also put it back OEM in half a day if I chose to. Don't spend big bucks on speakers, you don't need to if you are using the OEM wiring in the car. I got out with a new Pioneer head (Including bluetooth) and speakers fro just over $200 and it sounds 1000% better.

Do a little searching , there are hundreds of threads on this and what fits. I read for weeks before I started ordering components.

Dwight

What brand do you think I should get for the speakers?




Follow these two posts. You don't need a bunch of speakers. 3 speakers get you all the sound you can handle. Rear speaker fill is only needed for surround sound or so rear seat passengers get better mids/highs.

Get the biggest mid range you can fit in front. But if you want to save $ or not fabricate kicks some quality 5.25's will work. Think about sound stage (the music comes from in front of you like at a concert) and imaging (being able to differentiate the L & R channels). Mid components are ideal, put the mid in the kick and the tweeter mounted on the A pillars (ideal) or in the door locations. But a 2 way is perfectly fine. Actually, I would probably lean towards a 2 way than a tweeter in the door location.

The door gives really poor imaging. The l/r balance lets you get good imaging for one seat, but the other front seat is screwed. If you set it up to sound balanced in the driver seat, the passengers right channel is overpowering. Tweets down in the kick location give a slightly low soundstage, but the imaging is good in both seats. (especially if you angle the mounts back a bit). Best location is A-pillars. Good staging at ear level (mid sounds are not nearly as directional as highs) and the distance to both seats ears enable you to set a balance that sounds good in both seats. If you want to test this, just take some string and measure it from the proposed locations to your ears in both seats. Just disconnect the stock door speakers and leave them there so you don't have to worry about filling the holes.

Then put a single 10 or 12" sub in the trunk. Ski pass firing is ideal and looks nice, but just removing the rear deck speakers and having a trunk sub box is a bit cheaper. I prefer small sealed boxes for SQ and trunk space.

Get a 4 channel bridgeable amp and bridge the back two channels for your sub and the head unit of your choice (or stock). Make sure to filter out the lows to the fronts so they only get the high freqs (hi pass) and a lo pass to the sub. Should be built into your head unit or the amp.

You will be able to crank with the best of them ... or at least 90% of the best of them. Way louder than you can carry on conversation, and have good quality.

Thanks for the info

[215RobDiesel]

OK SO HERES WHAT I PICKED OUT SO FAR...
So a few questions. Is this website reliable & pricewise low & worth it ? Or is there somewhere else better ? sonicelectronix is the site
AMPS !!! I didnt pick one out because I have no idea what the hell to pick out for my stuff... Info please ?
Also I went to a shop today & they said that i shouldnt replace the bigger speaker on the door because of tight space and limited choice of speakers and theyll sound fine, is that right ?
How much would it cost for a place to install all of this for me ?
Will all of this be compatible in my car ? And are these items good ?
Ill take as much info and advice as possible, thanks.

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Sonic Sub Box: 1SV12 (Gray)
Availability: Limited stock
$59.99

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Pioneer TS-W309S4
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Rockford Fosgate PRIME R1T-S
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[Pdwight]

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004CLYOGO

for 100 bucks it has built in Bluetooth. Yo9u cant change the face colors which sucks....but Bluetooth was important to me

[paniolo]

OK SO HERES WHAT I PICKED OUT SO FAR...

Sonic Sub Box: 1SV12 (Gray)
Availability: Limited stock
$59.99

12" ported ... takes up a lot of space. As long as you want it real boomy and can spare the space.


Rockford Fosgate PRIME R1T-S 1" Tweets for the doors? This duplicates the tweets in the 6.5" & 5.25" below?


Kicker KS60 (11KS60) 6.5" coaxials. Where are you putting these ... they will take custom work to fit in your kicks. Note they include tweeters too.

Pioneer TS-G1343R 5.25" Co Axials. These will fit in the stock kick location. Note they also include tweeters.


Are you really meaning to get both 5.25 and 6.5" speakers? Where are you putting them?

[bud4days]

that website is good they are super cheap and i trust them a lot

[215RobDiesel]

Are you really meaning to get both 5.25 and 6.5" speakers? Where are you putting them?

Well I thought my speakers in the back were 6.5 I think thats what a salesman told me at a shop . Then the 5.25 for the front . But they come w the 1" speakers too ?

[Pdwight]

The larger speaker or Driver in the back is actually a 4 Inch

[paniolo]

Well I thought my speakers in the back were 6.5 I think thats what a salesman told me at a shop . Then the 5.25 for the front . But they come w the 1" speakers too ?

Stock rears are 4". Which suck for generating bass. In general larger speakers run with more power generate the best bass. If not going for a 10" or 12" sub in the trunk most people seem to go with a 6x9" mounted with a commercial adapter to the 4" mount. You could also do a 6", but I am not aware of a commercial adopter. Wouldn't be hard to fabricate one up with some wooden mdf though.

You seem to maybe need some basic understanding. I apologize if the following is too basic ... no offense intended. A co-axial speaker actually contains 2 speakers (a tri-ax has 3). The larger one is the diameter listed, in this case 5.25. Then there is a bracket spanning that speaker with a tweeter in it ... it may be 1" or other size. If you get a speaker set listed as "component" that will only have the single speaker in that size. So a 5.25" Component would just have the single 5.25. If sold as a component set it usually would also include a separate tweeter, probably somewhere around a 1" but that is not a standard.

As I alluded to above different size speakers have specific sound ranges they work best at reproducing. Human ears hear from roughly 20 hertz(hz), or cycles per second, to 20,000 hz as kids and usually shrinks as we age. Bass is at the low end and treble at the high end. Bass to the human ear is very un-directional, you have a very difficult time telling where it is coming from and a single speaker is fine. Which is why trunk spaces are a great area for sub-woofers. 10", 12" and even larger speakers that require higher power and more space to move their large cones to generate those large sound waves work best for the low bass around 300hz or so and down.

On the other hand, mids and especially highs are very directional, our ears do a very good job of identifying what direction they come from. Our brains are very good at recognizing the very slight time differences those frequencies hit our right and left ears and using those clues to establish direction. So the length of those frequency paths are critical to enabling both front seat passengers to have a good listening environment. The standard for these is to try and duplicate the effect of a live concert where the sound comes from in front of you. Soundstage refers to this imaginary stage in front of you. Imaging is the ability of speakers to make the lead guitar come from say, the right side, the keyboards from the left and the vocals from the center. Tweeters of 1" or smaller are best at the highs from say 8,000hz and up. And mids in the 5.25" to 6.5" handle the rest, generally bigger is better, within reason, for mids.

So that those individual speakers (also called drivers) are not swamped with frequencies they can not deal with well, typical systems will incorporate filters so that only the proper frequencies are sent to the correct driver. A low pass lets only low frequencies through to the large woofers. A high pass only lets the highs through to the little tweeters. Those filters are built into the two drivers in co-axial speakers and are usually separate devices on component sets. Head units and amps usually have a low pass built in, which may be called a sub out.

A short note on amps for the above set up. Making your speaker choices first will determine the power your system needs to deliver. A four channel amp would work great for the system I described above. Say a 4x50watt RMS. (always use RMS to compare different amps, is is a much more reliable measure) You could bridge the rear 2 channels from the amp to provide high power to the sub. Depending on the resistance of the speaker and how stable the amp is, those rear two channels could provide 200-300 watts of RMS power to your sub. That will provide as much sound level as you could ever want in a real life situation. The remaining two front channels are more than enough to generate clear and loud mids and highs from the front speakers from a very small package. You can get the same results from two 2-channel amps or a single mono amp combined with a 2channel amp. But it typically takes more space. You can even rely on the head unit to power your front mids/highs and just run a sub amp. For a more budget set up that would not have the same sound levels, a set up with efficient drivers in the stock locations a head unit only, with say 4x15w rms can work nicely.

Damn, sorry for the wall of text. Just finished my 2nd cup of coffee and went on a roll! :D Hopefully I didn't just confuse you more, or insult you by hitting basics. Figured I could bookmark this so I don't have to write it again!:)

[Pdwight]

An excellent post David...would make a good stickie

[osuwari]

I'm trying to put together a system myself as well. Very good info here. What do you guys think of these speakers?

http://www.dls.se/en/car/prod.html?produkt=en_76

[Pdwight]

Don't know anything about those....not that means anything. Unless you going to add a big amplifier I wouldn't spend too much on speakers. I put middle of the road Polks in front and Pioneer's in the back...I literally spent $100 bucks on speakers and another $100 on a good head unit and I couldn't be happier.

Now if your adding a big amplifier (s) let that be your guiding factor in choosing speakers.

[osuwari]

Well, like the OP I'm really just trying to upgrade the stock stuff. I'd like it to be as plug and play as possible. The only extra will be maybe a single 12" for some healthy bass.

[osuwari]

Well, like the OP I'm really just trying to upgrade the stock stuff. I'd like it to be as plug and play as possible. The only extra will be maybe a single 12" for some healthy bass.

[Pdwight]

All I did was a new Pioneer head with Bluetooth ($100)

New front and back drivers ($100)

A wiring harness adapter and antenna adapter ($10)

done, just putting in the new Pioneer changed it so much it was hard to believe using the old factory speakers....I mean the OEM head unit is like 4 watts

I could have my car back OEM in 20 minutes............if I wanted to listen to a 1960's transistor radio turned up too loud with 50% distortion and no lows or highs ....sorry but that is a crapy radio

[haleakala1]

old thread here but maybe it will work?
Just replaced totally fried rear speakers with Kicker 4" speakers.
I was able to save the factory housing, so the wiring harness at the speaker is being used. the old speakers had separate wires for high and low speakers. I cut them and twisted both + and - together figuring the new speaker will fliter appropriately. Problem= the volume has to be turned up very high with the fader all to the back to get the sound level high, if i leave volume up and fade to front to balance it out the front is almost twice as loud. worse though is the lows sound super shitty, very distorted. Highs are great.
The receiver is factory so is that the problem?
I will replace soon anyway but was hoping to use existing wiring and thus just a harness connector, and not rewire the whole freaking car.
Or can I not use both sets of wires?
thanks