Simple door speaker replacement?
 

Has anyone done a simple door speaker replacement? Just enough to improve the sound without going crazy with the stereo system? I have the Business CD, non-DSP system. I just installed an OEM 6 CD changer (ebay purchase) in the trunk last night. So now I'm running 7 CD's (which I'm finding very convenient) through the very THIN sounding speaker system.
Any recommendations on speakers? Perhaps changing the door speakers won't make a noticable enough improvement?
Thank you.

Here's the kink:

The front has 6" woofers, 2" mids (in the dash) and 1" tweeters (in the mirror sail).

The back only has woofers and mids.

The BW amp has dediated channels for each speaker, and only sends each speaker a dedicated range of notes that that speaker is supposed to play.

NO ONE makes a 2" midrange replacement speaker at this time that will play the notes that BMW has assigned to the 2" speaker. Most evveryone makes 2-way woofer-tweeter kits, and if you used one of those the midrange gets left out.

Midrange is the most important part of the sound.

Bavarian Soundwerks has a tweeter-woofer replacement kit that uses the factory mids, and I don't like that approach either. The factory mid isn't very good either.

In my experience the best option is just to replace the BMW amp with a small (40x4 or 50x4) aftermarket amp and then you can get really good speakers.

I would suggest a DLS CA41 50x4 and avincar 6.5/tweeter components in front and 6.5 coaxials in the rear (which have been well reviewed here). That's about $700 in parts.

Are you refering to this BSW kit?
- Front Speakers: 5.25" Component set
- Rear Speakers: 4" Midrange w/ integrated 0.5" Tweeter - Coaxial set

If you replace the amp, don't you loose DSP and steering wheel control?

That is a kit that requires use of the OEM mids.

Replacing the amp does get rid of DSP (which is a good thing - if DSP were so good you wouldn't be looking to upgrade. That echo room crap is maybe good for playing orchestral productions, but as far as I've been able to tell, it's just not very good sounding across the board.

You retain steering wheel control.

So are there any special tricks to replace the amp and speakers w/o loosing steering wheel/nav control on an 05 X5 w/ Nav & DSP?

Why would you recommend the Avincar's over the BSW's other than the fact Avincar's are your private label speaker?:)

Actually, I'm not recommending any avincar speakers over any of the speakers that BSW sells.

I'm recommending replacing or eliminating the OEM dash midrange. At the moment no one has a replacement. I've found one that can fit but I want to hear it with replacement woofs and tweets before I make any decisions.

I am *working* on a kit that would replace the dash mid and the other two speakers. It is not finished yet, because basically I haven't heard these drivers in the car yet.

But let's say that you eliminated the DSP amp with a respectable aftermarket 50W per corner amp, and then got any of the speakers which BSW sells - Rainbow, Dynaudio, etc. Any of those would sound great and sound MUCH better than if you connected them to the OEM amp channels and retained the OEM mid.

The avincar speakers are good speakers, very well made, but I don't say that they're better than Rainbow or DLS or Dyne or Morel.

(I'd put them up against Ed tho :)

No, if you know how to bypass the DSP, you'd have to go to a lot of work to lose the steering wheel controls. I don't know how, in fact.

I have a thread on here on how to bypass the DSP...

Too bad you are so far north, I'd let you test them in my X5.

What is the link to the DSP bypass?

hey guys, i've just installed some 6.5" pioneer front splits to my x5 and it made a whole lot of difference to the sound. i've still got the stock speakers on dash tho. unlike your systems, mine didn't come with a factory amp and front tweeters:( . all i need now is a sub and an amp, which is quite a problem i might add cause i dont know where to get the speaker signals for the amp :dunno:

[IMG]http://xoutpost.com/gallery/files/2/7/2/9/10jan049.jpg[/IMG]
[IMG]http://xoutpost.com/gallery/files/2/7/2/9/10jan048.jpg[/IMG]