E38 replace DSP "subs"

[rkbaseball]

Hello,
I am looking for more low end in my 2001 740iL with DSP. I am wondering if there is a cheap sub upgrade that I can do without losing DSP. Can I hook up an aftermarket sub to replace the "subs" in the back? Do I need a powered sub? If I ran one sub is there a way to combine the power output of all four subs currently in there into one? Not extremely experienced with car audio.

I am looking to spend $100 or less. I want bass that will have presence and add fullness to the overall sound. Thank you very much for any insight!!

[mooll]

im looking into putting 2 12" subs in the trunk of my '98 w/dsp. would be leaving the speaker deck since ill still be using the 2 6.5" subs that i replaced the 4 blown stock 5.25" speakers with. juss my .002
check this out too, seems like the easiest way ive found so far :
http://www.bimmerforums.com/forum/sh...DSP-Cars-Only)

[Staszek]

I put in a ghost sub. It is a bit pricey but it mounts like stock in the rear and sounds amazing!

It mounts under the rear deck, you just remove the old DSP deck, it ties into the speaker wires that came off the DSP amp to the rear deck speakers. Very clean and sounds really good.

http://www.bavsound.com/Subwoofer-System/

[cyclops2]

What a lot of people do is remove the entire "sub-woofer tray" from the rear parcel deck and put a powered sub-woofer in the trunk. This approach requires a dedicated AMP for the sub, but still uses the DSP for the "system". I am no a/v expert and had my system (as described) installed by a shop which I've since tweaked recently. My system will vibrate your skull, which is good achieving my goal of making up for not having one in high school 35 years ago!!

Here is a couple pics of what I have going on.

hmmmm.... I don't have any pics.

It is an enclosed dual 12" sub with a 1000w amp. that works! I'll be optimizing it in a month after I get my engine back together. Very important feature for the next owner.... my 17 year old nephew!

[GWalker]

I did what you want to do. I spliced into the dsp's wiring, added a sub and amp. No interference with stock system at all

[asianvenom]

My DSP sub...

[rkbaseball]

My DSP sub...

Did you need to put an aftermarket amp in as well as the sub? How did you wire it?

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I put in a ghost sub. It is a bit pricey but it mounts like stock in the rear and sounds amazing!

It mounts under the rear deck, you just remove the old DSP deck, it ties into the speaker wires that came off the DSP amp to the rear deck speakers. Very clean and sounds really good.

http://www.bavsound.com/Subwoofer-System/

If I had the money to do this I would love to. I've heard a lot of good reviews about this but am working with a small budget.

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im looking into putting 2 12" subs in the trunk of my '98 w/dsp. would be leaving the speaker deck since ill still be using the 2 6.5" subs that i replaced the 4 blown stock 5.25" speakers with. juss my .002
check this out too, seems like the easiest way ive found so far :
http://www.bimmerforums.com/forum/sh...DSP-Cars-Only)

How are you wiring the subs? Are you splicing into the current wires? And how are you leaving the current subs in? Thank you.

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What a lot of people do is remove the entire "sub-woofer tray" from the rear parcel deck and put a powered sub-woofer in the trunk. This approach requires a dedicated AMP for the sub, but still uses the DSP for the "system". I am no a/v expert and had my system (as described) installed by a shop which I've since tweaked recently. My system will vibrate your skull, which is good achieving my goal of making up for not having one in high school 35 years ago!!

Here is a couple pics of what I have going on.

hmmmm.... I don't have any pics.

It is an enclosed dual 12" sub with a 1000w amp. that works! I'll be optimizing it in a month after I get my engine back together. Very important feature for the next owner.... my 17 year old nephew!

Which sub did you buy? Is it powered? How much did it cost you for your setup? Which amp do you have hooked up to your sub? Thank you.

[asianvenom]

250 for the sub, 250 for a used jl 500/1 amp and couple of hours to build the enclosoure and a whole day of work pulling the interior to sound deadening...oh and i pull the stock "sub" and its in good condition if anyone wants to buy it for 50 bucks.

I used the stock sub wiring to feed the jl amp...you not gonna achieve anything with $100 budget.

Bare minimum is sub and amp...unless you trying to source a replacement sub to replace the stock ones...but then again you're not achieving anything...

[MJ DOOM]

My DSP sub...

Nice, post more pics when done.

[asianvenom]

It's considered done...just need some finishing touch...

[MJ DOOM]

It's considered done...just need some finishing touch...

Thats a nice infinite baffle set up. How does it sound? Is that a 12 or 15 incher?

[clumsy]

Hello,
I am looking for more low end in my 2001 740iL with DSP. I am wondering if there is a cheap sub upgrade that I can do without losing DSP. Can I hook up an aftermarket sub to replace the "subs" in the back? Do I need a powered sub? If I ran one sub is there a way to combine the power output of all four subs currently in there into one? Not extremely experienced with car audio.

I am looking to spend $100 or less. I want bass that will have presence and add fullness to the overall sound. Thank you very much for any insight!!

If you're looking to add cheap low end you can find an Infinity Basslink on craigslist for around 80 bucks. Not a perfect solution but it is a relatively easy solution to install. Amp and speaker in one enclosure.

[ryanpeter]

Here is my install, roughly $350-400 all items were purchased/won on eBay. It sounds really good at low to mid volume, somewhere just below mid volume and higher the bass rolls off or goes away. My signal to feed my amp was pulled from rear door speakers at dsp amp, maybe that is the issue? As soon as temps warm up, im going to switch to the rear sub signal to see if that helps. I know it's kind of goofy to pull an already filtered signal to feed an amp, but PO had it already tapped so I re-used his wires coming from dsp amp. Maybe it doesn't matter(where signal is pulled), I'm no expert. My amp gains are turned almost all the way down, and like I said it sounds awesome at lower volume and makes you think it would sound even better turned up but it doesn't.

Rear shelf removed.

Used zapco ag350 running mono 4ohm/350watts.

New JL audio w3v3-4 10" and used JL audio truck enclosure.

[kapone]

15" JBL W15GTi

[asianvenom]

Thats a nice infinite baffle set up. How does it sound? Is that a 12 or 15 incher?

It's my first IB set up, and it sounds amazing...thanks to BMW god's give of a nice seal trunk, and a ski-pass. They're 15", I wanna do epic 18", but I doesn't look like it would fit.

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15" JBL W15GTi

Show off...! I "heard" JBL w15GTi is a nice IB set up too...but have you heard of Acoustic Elegance? ...which is what I have...your thoughts?

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Here is my install, roughly $350-400 all items were purchased/won on eBay. It sounds really good at low to mid volume, somewhere just below mid volume and higher the bass rolls off or goes away. My signal to feed my amp was pulled from rear door speakers at dsp amp, maybe that is the issue? As soon as temps warm up, im going to switch to the rear sub signal to see if that helps. I know it's kind of goofy to pull an already filtered signal to feed an amp, but PO had it already tapped so I re-used his wires coming from dsp amp. Maybe it doesn't matter(where signal is pulled), I'm no expert. My amp gains are turned almost all the way down, and like I said it sounds awesome at lower volume and makes you think it would sound even better turned up but it doesn't.

Rear shelf removed.

Used zapco ag350 running mono 4ohm/350watts.

New JL audio w3v3-4 10" and used JL audio truck enclosure.

I love that Zapco Amp...now you gotta knock down the ski-pass...and flip that sub around so it blow through the ski-pass...you'll be amazed...

[ryanpeter]

I love that Zapco Amp...now you gotta knock down the ski-pass...and flip that sub around so it blow through the ski-pass...you'll be amazed...

Yea, I'm a fan of zapco. I used to have the ag750(2 channel) and the ag650(6 channel) years ago when they first came out. Great amps, for me anyways. Thought I'd stick to something I'm familiar with.

[cyclops2]

OK, trying to dig up some info on what my system is and how it is connected.

I got this amp and sub package. 1000W dual 12's in an enclosed box. Years back a guy was selling them and getting attention of guys on bimmerboard.com. So I bought one and had it installed (2006). It was probably around $200 - $300 for sub/amp. A cheapo, but works pretty well actually.



A couple years ago, I started looking into my system a little closer to see if it could be optimized. In addition to this sub/amp package, I have MB Quart mids and tweets in the doors. I kept the BMW tweets in the front doors because I thought they sounded better. The mod I made to the door enclosures was to drill many holes in them since most aftermarket speakers want an infinite baffle (open air behind). This helped.

I then started looking at the wiring quality for the sub connections. I found the wire supplied with the cheapo sub/amp package was inadequate. I went with a 4 awg power and ground cable to the amp and that helped a lot. Here is a picture during test mode (which I never left haha, I mean I still have to reassemble everything permanently)




Next I figured I better look at the speaker wires. They were TINY! so, I think I went with 10 awg wire from amplifier to the speakers. Fortunately, I thought to take part the subs to see what was inside the box. TEENY TINY WIRE! the wires were tiny plus they "fell" off the terminals when I touched them. The speaker terminals on the enclosure were also cheap junk, so I went direct. I soldered 10 awg (or maybe 12 awg, I don't remember at the moment) directly to the speakers and wire nutted them to wires coming from the amplifier. Not elegant, but adequate....and this was testing anyway. Here are some pictures off the speaker wiring effort:









So next I started looking into the configuration of the speaker wiring on the amp end. My amp had the ability to wire the subs in bridge mode, which in simple terms ties the dual channel together doubling the power. If your amp isn't capable of handling this wiring configuration the amp may fail or blow fuse or overheat.... or all of the above.

I can't post more pictures, so I'll post a follow-on with info on the bridge configuration and look at where, and how, the installer tapped the signal from the DSP to the amp.

[cyclops2]

OK, so as I was saying, next I looked into the bridge wiring configuration. Here are pictures:







So wired the amp in bridge config with subs wired in parallel. Bridge configuration connects both amp channels providing 1000 watts RMS to the subs (doubling the power). The subs wired in parallel change the impedance from 4 ohm to 2 ohm. Most amps cannot handle this and have to be 2 ohm "stable". Mine was running HOT in this config. So my final changes are to relocate the amp from inside near the CD changer where the installer placed it (too HOT) and to mount it on the sub enclosure along with cooling fans. I will be building this setup in April and will share more info about it on my build thread (see my signature below).

Now the final piece. I didn't research this so I don't understand it in a way to explain it. But where and how did the installer tap into the signal from my existing DSP system. They used a line level converter (PAC SNI-35) which taps signal wires near the CD player and sends that signal to the amp with rca cables. see pics below.






Anyway, this thing hammers and I was pushing it hard with some dubstep which uses megabass. The problem I had was heat; this configuration runs super hot and in fact, won't work on many amps. I am sure I am pushing the edge and over time the amp may not hold up, I don't know. The next thing I am doing will be to clean all this up, add adequate fusing and most importantly add a fan and improve cooling (even redoing the heat sink compound on the amp heat sinks).

Now my disclaimer - I am not an a/v guy. I don't know if this is right, best or even optimized. I read a lot and posted questions at bimmerboard to get this far.

Final comment that just came to mind. how to orient this? I tried facing forward (driving into the rear seat) and rear facing (driving out of trunk) and I felt that rear facing was best. But this would be different for everyone and should be tested. I think rear facing looks "cooler", but it also leaves the speakers vulnerable to damage!

Also, installing big subs in the trunk to impact the trunk storage space substantially. I don't think my golf clubs would fit back there any more.

Good luck and hope some of this helps.

[E83bmw]

Sorry to bring up an old thread, but I’m looking to replace my factory subwoofers with a small upgrade. Are they out there that someone can recommend? I don’t want a 10-12” box. Just simple 5.5 or 5.25 replacement that are good enough. My 200 e38 has the DSP. I know monsoons are the cheap upgrade but they’re coming hard to find. I’m opting just to replace the foam itself. As a last resort can anyone recommend a good subwoofer where I can just plug and play or just reform?

I know stock subs aren’t up to par, but I’m not a fan of those huge subwoofers. Just want it stock looking clean with good bass. Thank you..

[MMMMM5]

Sorry to bring up an old thread, but I’m looking to replace my factory subwoofers with a small upgrade. Are they out there that someone can recommend? I don’t want a 10-12” box. Just simple 5.5 or 5.25 replacement that are good enough. My 200 e38 has the DSP. I know monsoons are the cheap upgrade but they’re coming hard to find. I’m opting just to replace the foam itself. As a last resort can anyone recommend a good subwoofer where I can just plug and play or just reform?

I know stock subs aren’t up to par, but I’m not a fan of those huge subwoofers. Just want it stock looking clean with good bass. Thank you..

Bavsound recently released subs for the e38. I know a few people here have bought them, waiting on impressions and such.

[setconstr]

Personally after my original MKIII going out then my MKIV going out and replacing the monitor screen I just gave up on the whole thing tore it all out and replaced it all with a pioneer system ( amp , 10" subwoofer , all door speakers and a single din stereo with bluetooth ) I saw a place in Jacksonville that mounted the single din recessed behind an iPad so I have all the parts to do the same thing just haven't done it yet ....... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KykvA0ZWNGE

[E83bmw]

I’m just looking for a simple upgrade of the stock sub. The foam on mine deteriorated and figured since it needs to be replaced or repaired is get some suggestions on replacements. I’m not looking to shatter my skull or make a lot of noise. Just a better version than stock that bolts on to factory mounting.

[yuchalee]

I bought them. Bass is better than the original. However, there is little to no mids

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I have bought the whole set from bavsound. Significantly better than the original set. However, it is still not as good as the Bose stereo in a W220 S350.