Stock Audio Questions

[firejackal]

So my next order of business is refreshing my audio system. The car is a 2000 328ci. The option that came with the car was S676A HiFi speaker configuration. Some prior owners changed out the speakers with the wrong ones. So I'm trying to figure out what in missing, amplifier included.

* Front doors has a larger speaker on the bottom (mid-range?), and one tweeter at the top.
* small speaker under the steering wheel on the bottom cover next to the obd2 port.
* Side rear speakers (tweeters?)
* rear deck speakers.
* No woofer under the front seats.

Amplifier wiring looks fine, i cross referenced the color codes with the diagrams.

The amplifier in is an Alpine 65.12-8 378 436. I can't find any information for this on bmwfans. It comes up with a different hifi amplifier for my car.
The car also came with a spare "Utloewe High - Power" 65.12-8 368 230. I tested it out and it sounds the exact same as the Alpine unit.
Does anyone know anything about the Alpine unit?

The current issues I have is the output of the rear speakers. The rear side speakers are coming out as mid-range, and the rear deck speakers is only outputting low frequency/bass. So maybe these amplifiers have a different pinout?

I'm going to attach pictures of the amplifiers. I took them apart go look at the circuit boards. The Utloewe looks like its been through a lot. I also took them apart to clean them up, check for bad traces and to redo the thermal paste.

Any information of gratefully appreciated, thanks.

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[MarcoZandrini]

Go to www.realoem.com and enter the last 7 characters of the car’s vehicle identification number. Hit enter and bookmark the page. Scroll down to audio. That’ll show you which speakers came with the car when it left the factory in Reggensberg, Germany. The amp receives 4 full frequency audio signals from the head unit: LF, RF, RR, LR. The amp then splits those signals into frequencies required for each individual speaker. It then amplifies those frequency “bands.” That way the tweeters get only high frequency signals and the woofers get only low frequency signals. Next, go to www.crutchfield.com to see what fits your car.

[randy72877]

The Alpine amp is for a coupe (e46/2) and and the other one is for a sedan (e46/4) the different body styles have different speaker configurations. Use the one that matches the car and sell the other.

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[firejackal]

Well i opened up that Alpine amp again since it had the pinouts marked. And it does indeed have some big differences compared to my car's wiring.

I'll go over them now.
* Pins 1 and 2 is for a rear left woofer.
* Pins 24 and 25 is for a rear right woofer.
* Pins 13 and 21 (rear right tweeter) polarity is swapped.
* Pins 8 and 16 (rear right from radio) polarity is swapped.
* Pins 9 and 17 (front right from radio) polarity is swapped.

So that explains why I'm only getting bass out of the rear deck speakers.

Thanks for the replies. I'll have to decide on what to do from here. Either buy the proper speakers for the Alpine amp. Or i might just do a custom sound setup with amps and crossovers.

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[randy72877]

The Alpine amp in the picture is for a coupe as it's labeled e46/2. It has a production date of 30/99 meaning it was built the 30th week of 1999. This matches with your '00 328ci and is probably the amp it left the factory with. Is the wiring modified at all near the amp or behind the radio? In the picture of the top of the circuit boards the one on the right has significant water damage. Is that the Alpine? The other one is for a sedan (e46/4) and not correct for your car. If it is the Alpine amp that has water damage, you should check for a water leak which is probably the sunroof drain tubes. Once that is done buy another similar amp without the water damage from eBay, junkyard, or a part out. Must be from a coupe. That's the cheapest and fastest way to get it working properly. Removing everything and replacing with aftermarket will take a significant amount of time and money to do right.

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[firejackal]

Just to update here and what I did. The sedan one does work perfectly, water didn't damage a lot, I cleaned it up and replaced all the components that was a little corroded. Also this one was not from my car, I got it from a junkyard. I am keeping the e46/2 amp if I ever sell the car and wanted to revert my setup.

So one of the differences with the sedan and the coupe is the rear side speakers. On the coupe these are tweeters, on the sedan it's mid-range.

So I did several things.
* Fixed the wiring order, for some reason two channels was flipped with their polarity.
* Replaced the rear side speakers with bmw mid-range speakers.
* Running the sedan e46/4 amp to power ONLY the front tweeters & mid-range and rear mid-range.
* Installed 5.25" full-range speakers in the front woofer spots and rear deck woofer spots.
* Running a secondary aftermarket 4-channel amp to power those full-range speakers. (bought this amp a while ago, just never used it till now.)
* Installed an 8" sub into the rear middle seat (that was some work.)

And it's perfect, better than any of my other car sound systems at the moment that I've designed, well minus my custom subwoofer enclosures.