Can one of you guys from BSW give us a breakdown on the setup for an aftermarket amp with your Stage 1? I have a Pioneer Z1 installed. I had plan on buying an Alpine MRP-F240 (or 250) to drive car speakers. I was going to buy your Stage 1 for this amp. Now I understand that the mid-ranges will not work with this amp. So if I only have the tweeters and mid-bass hooked up, wouldn't there be a big hole in the music? Are you saying I need to find another mid-range speaker?

Just when I thought I had everything figured out...

Dblock was ken able to assist you?

Shooting you a PM.

Hope I am not beating a dead horse by resurrecting this one. The way I understand it, if you were to amp the BSW upgrade you would need to install a crossover network. Most crossovers will give you a 2 way setup (mid and tweeter). There should not be any "gap" in the frequency response b/c your mid will handle up to 3500 Hz (or so) and the tweeter takes everything higher. That being said, you have a 5.25 in the door panel (low and aimed downward) and a tweeter in the sail panel. This represents "off-axis" mounting. This may result in some odd reproduction.

I would like to see an ampable three way set up utilizing the 2.5" mid. Send sub 800 Hz to the doors, 800 to 5000 to the mids, and everything higher to the tweets. This would essentially recreate the stock setup but with more power and better drivers. This should raise the soundstage to where it needs to be. However, everything I have read recommends against placing speakers on the dash. I would like to think that the engineers that designed our vehicle chose the dash location for a good reason. Other than just because they fit nicely on the dash.

I can say this, my wife's bone stock system in her 325xi beats the snot out of mine. The 325 has both mids in the doors and tweeters in the sail panels. I believe this provides better imaging.

Halston, care to tell us the specs on the BSW mid? I.e. power handling and frequency range?

The reason we don't offer an ampable 3 way configuration is simple: cost. It's expensive to produce a good passive 3 way crossover network and so far out of the budget of most of our customers that it doesn't make good business sense for us to go down that road.

Additionally, you can get WONDERFUL results using a very nice 2 way configuration installing a tweeter in the midrange location provided it has a relatively low crossover point to keep the image high and in front all the time. We've done this with Dynaudios with excellent results (I know el.duderino on these forums has as well and will tell you the same thing I have about how it sounds).

Your concept is a good one, but as usual, the practical aspects of business prevent it from coming to fruition. We do, however, genuinely appreciate the feedback.

For fun, here are specifications on our midrange:

Nominal Impedance = 4 ohms
DCR = 3.6 ohms
Qms = 1.5
Qes = .37
Qts = .29
Vas = .00875 Ft3
Sensitivity = 86 dB/1W/1 meter
Resonance = 160 hz
Effective Freq Response = 400-10K Hz
Rated Power = 20 watts
Motor = Neodymium
Diaphragm = Treated paper pulp
Surround = High-loss polymer

So with the 2 way install you are eliminating the tweeter in the sail panel? I think that would make good sense. I played around with tweeter positining in my previous ride (97 Saab 900). In the end I had tweeters cut into the door panels as well as a CDT upstage kit on the dash. It sounded real nice. I will not be cutting the door panels of my X5.

Yes, in most cases that's what we'll do with a 2 way system -- but it's important that the tweeter plays low into the frequency range for it to sound right.