E53 Speaker Passive Crossover?
 

My 2004 E53 came with a Pioneer head unit and the factory DSP and amps all removed. I have no idea what OEM system this had, but it's a 3.0 M54 with a 6 speed manual (who-hoo). The Pioneer sounded just ok but looked bad in my dash so I replaced it with an Xtrons OEM look head unit and replaced all 6 front speakers at a later time (dash and door) due to terrible sound and age :-). I went mid grade on all. Of those speakers, I recently dropped 6.5" coax speakers in the front doors and it appears there is a passive crossover somewhere upstream that is not pushing a full signal because my tweeters in there are not tweeting and I just have the midrange sound. Any ideas on where I can look? My concern is that something is tuning to the OEM head and speakers giving me a muddy/less than optimal sound overall. I searched the web and found some scant info on the X3s from this area but not a solid lead on the E53. Thanks!

The factory tweeters have crossovers as far as I remember, so if those are still hooked up might be your problem.

in the e46s and e83s there is a combination of both active as well as passive.

The amps will have some crossovers built in to filter our the mid bass/mid range and there is a cap to filter the tweeter from the mid range.

I'm assuming the e53 will have something similar but if your amps have been removed then you should only be dealing with a full range signal coming from the Xtron.

Do you have any amplifiers or the speakers just straight wired to the Xtron?

Is there any crossover settings in the Xtron you can adjust?

Well, maybe I need to dig around more in the trunk and see. All I have is wires and the enclosure where the Amp and DSP go is empty. There is no amp in this setup (unfortunately) now. The Xtrons has the treble pushed all the way up. The new 6.5's in the door have no treble but I have a decent amount in the new tweeters. (Trimmed the new 6.5's with tin snips and mounted in the original plastic enclosures with clear silicone). If there is not a passive crossover upstream the only thing I can think of is that the previous owner has the speakers out of phase which is not likely due to the sound quality. I am advanced-beginner skill level with car audio.

There's no reason you should have the treble all the way up just to get highs.

Easiest way would be to run a "jumper" wire from the Xtron to your 6.5 and see what that sounds like. If you have highs then you know there's something going on with the vehicle wiring or you have a hidden passive xover somewhere maybe :dunno:

What is your VIN so we can see what the setup originally had? That will tell us how it is wired.

I forget the specifics but a buddy just went through this same thing and corrected it. I'll check with him and see what the deal was. His was HiFi and was either getting no signal or no highs to the tweets.

VIN is 5UXFA135X4LB09009. Thanks!

On the other post, that is a good idea about jumpering to speaker directly but will probably show that something upstream is affecting sound quality.

Toledo blue eh. Cool x5. The VIN comes up as an automatic though. Was it swapped at by a previous owner?

At any rate, VIN shows it was originally equipped with option 609 Navigation System Professional and 676 HiFi Loudspeaker System. So that explains why you aren't getting sound from your tweets. Let me put in a call and see what my bud did to rectify the situation.

Awesome!

Stock system components except for the speakers were 100% yanked by the previous owner and the aftermarket Pioneer appeared to be installed by a "professional" but not one probably familiar with BMWs.

I love the blue. If someone did a manual swap it was impeccable as the cluster is does not have the readout for PRNDL and the trim does suggest that (clutch pedal/master cylinder, shifter, etc)! :-)

Until you mentioned it right now I would have not thought about the cluster without the PRNDL.

Now I'm curious what that looks like