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

Okay, here's what he said. His situation is different and doesn't help you much. He retained his HiFi amp so it is driving all of his speakers (aftermarket). He had to disconnect his component tweeter in the front from the crossovers and run them off BMW's stock tweeter input from the HiFi amp.

So, what I think is happening in your case is that the aftermarket head unit is trying to drive 8 pairs of speakers... which is not good, obviously. Unless they were 9ohm speakers for the fronts.

Can you take a picture of the OE amp harness in the left side compartment of the truck? And another of the radio harness plugged in under the spare tire. We need to figure out how all these speakers are wired.

Thank you so much for these tips. I learned some interesting things and took good pictures.

As a BMW noob (2 years with my E53) I mistakenly thought 100% of the radio system was in the battery compartment. I found the amp connected and sitting loose by the left compartment. There is a silver box with the purple plug in Photo 2 just outside the left compartment - what is that/is it related to the audio system?

At this point, I am thinking it may not be practical to disconnect the amp without major surgery and that it has the crossover in it? Or there are other remnants I didn't understand I have?

There are tons of plugs plugged into nothing in the photos.




1) Inside of the Left Compartment
https://hosting.photobucket.com/imag...mpartment.jpeg

2) Just Outside of the Left Compartment
https://hosting.photobucket.com/imag...mpartment.jpeg

3) Amp Sitting Loose Inside Left Compartment
https://hosting.photobucket.com/imag...rtmentamp.jpeg

4) Amp
https://hosting.photobucket.com/imag...stock/amp.jpeg

5) Battery Compartment High Level Shot
https://hosting.photobucket.com/imag...mpartment.jpeg

6) Head Unit Harness
https://hosting.photobucket.com/imag...unitcable.jpeg

7) The Blue Cable Was Added By The Previous Owner and Goes To The Head Unit With Speaker Wires, Power, Ground, Etc.
https://hosting.photobucket.com/imag...bluecable.jpeg

8) Manual Trans Cluster At Night (someone asked :-))
https://hosting.photobucket.com/imag...k/cluster.jpeg

9) Put The Hammer Down!
https://hosting.photobucket.com/imag...k/shifter.jpeg

Your factory amplifier is still in place. Hmmm. You should be getting highs to your tweeters then. You aren't using components up front are you?

The tweeters on the door and the mids in the dash were replaced and sound just-ok and not as bright as I'd like. So I bought coax 6.5's for the front doors a test and their integrated tweets have no highs which is what started the journey that something was cutting the signal to things.

Does the amp have an integrated crossover or do I still have a DSP or other component controlling that (and don't realize it)?

(Just edited my above post; was having a problem with photos and it was cut off)

Interesting. They used speed wire, which is nice, to make the extension harness up to the front of the truck. Yes, the HiFi amp does not send a full range signal to the door mid driver. What tweeter are you running?

In installed these tweeters in the doors:
Rockford Fosgate Punch P1T-S Tweeter Kit
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

And the 6.5's I used these (trimmed the metal ears with tin snips and used clear silicone to the oem plastic housing; does not rattle at all)
Skar Audio TX65 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1 Admittedly I cheaped out a little here.

The tweeters are mounted in the oem position behind the OEM grille and I used the Rockford crossovers (mounted behind the door panel). Maybe the Rockford crossovers need to come out?

That's where I would start. The factory HiFi has is own high pass xover in the amp. My bud is running his infinity reference silk domes directly to the factory tweet wires.

I will start there, but is it a safe assumption that removing/replacing the factory amp would be pretty impractical/resource intensive due to how deeply it is embedded in the factory wiring to the speakers?

I wouldn't say so at all. If you wanted to retain the factory head unit it then I think it would be a challenge.

BMW generally didn't mess with the wiring it was directly connected from point A to B. However the signal coming from their amps they've usually manipulated, but since you're bypassing them that shouldn't be an issue for you.

My general rule of thumb has always been to tear out all the factory BMW audio. Even the best option they offer brand new from the factory was pathetic so no reason to try to make the drive through speaker sound its best.

The factory amp setups had weird xovers and their speakers had non standard resistance...which isn't that big of a deal but still. Weirdness for no reason other than German :rolleyes:

I like to keep things as simple as possible and it seems like you're more than capable to play with the wiring so here's a few things you can try

First off double check you have the correct wiring. Physically look at the wiring that's connected to the speaker in the door. Seeing someone's been in there before let's assume it's been tampered with.

When checking wiring I like to use a AA battery and make sure the driver actually moves. This way I know for sure I have the right wires. You can also check the phasing this way.

If you have a volt meter, check the ohms of the speaker. Usually it will read 3.4-4 ish ohms for a 4ohm speaker. Whatever that reading is shouldn't be much different when taking a measurement from the back where the speaker wire originates. It should be sliiiightly higher because of the resistance from the wiring, but nothing drastic. If you have a noticeable variance that could suggest some xover in line somewhere.

Most head units won't have outputs for tweeter, midrange, midbass. It will be front L and R and rear L and R so if you are connecting your speakers to the outputs from the head unit you WILL need a crossover between your tweeter and mid, so that's where the rockford xover should come into play.

Xtron speaker front output -> rockford xover -> interfacing with the factory speaker wiring in the back -> split signal from xover to tweeter and mid -> factory wiring to tweeter and mid respectively

I hope I'm making this simpler for you

Given the number of speakers you are dealing with here... I'd avoid replacing the HiFi amp unless you were planning a full aftermarket (multiple amps) install. The HiFi gives you all the channels of output you need (8). While aftermarket 8 channel amps exist... they are big and expensive. Couple that with needing to splice into the factory amp's speaker harness and I think sticking with it is the best option.

Now, if you are a car audio enthusiast, that changes the equation. I am going full retard on mine. 2 JL Audio 500/5 slash v1 amps and 1 JL 1000/1 slash v1 amp. Just picked up a DSP processor for it as well (DM-810). Total waste of money and effort... except that it tickles me in all the right places to go crazy with it. :D

Unless I'm reading this wrong, the OP just wants proper sound out of the coax speakers and tweeters. Not necessarily to use all the factory speakers

You don't need an 8 channel amp or multiple amps at all unless you want active control for each channel. You can do everything easy and cheap with passive xovers, just like BMW did using a cap to filter the highs for the tweeters.

I'm my opinion, the factory system components suck and there's no good reason for it to be a 3 way system anyway.

You can improve the factory sound easily with just a tweeter and a 6.5 in the factory door and then go from there as you need.

I am with you 100% on the car audio enthusiast side. I've been out of the game for a minute but this summer I finally put together a little system in my e46 convertible from some equipment I had lying around.

An observation...but it doesn't seem like the price of audio gear has gone down AT ALL!!

Seems like electronics in general are worth a fraction of what they did when they came out as new technology...not so in car audio.

Even the used equipment is expensive around these parts

He replaced all of them with aftermarket so I assumed he wanted to use them all. :dunno:

I agree. A good component set is a world of improvement over the stock HiFi gear. Especially paired with an aftermarket amp. But the HiFi amp does not sound bad either with a set of components (you don't use the included passive Xover for the tweet). I was impressed with my bud's setup who is running stock HiFi amp with stock dash and Infinity Reference components. Avin 4 for the head unit and 10" sub in the side compartment w/ small mono amp. Really not shabby.

Been out of it for a bit too. But got the itch to build my "dream" system from when I was young and into it but couldn't afford higher end gear. I agree with you, vintage/classic gear is going up in price, not down. It's not back up to MSRP prices... but it's definitely not cheap. The 1000/1 v1 is up to ~$500 used.

That said, some of the newer gear is incredible with the footprint they have while still maintaining decent power and acceptable THD. Some of the audiocontrol amps have DSP built in, clipping detection, bass restoration for OE integration, EQ's, and other stuff. Just crazy. :wow:

I wasn't even talking about the vintage audio gear going up in price, which makes NO sense to me at all. More so the price point to get into a system with an amplifier, sub and component speakers is still much higher than I would have thought.

My line of thinking is say a laptop which was $1000 for an entry level option can be bought today for $200. A smart phone used to be at least $400-500 and now you can buy one for $50. Maybe it only makes sense to me, but shouldn't we at least be getting amplifiers with a full touch screen to set our xover points? :D

Now that I think about it...Not much other technology out there you could be peddling nowadays that old and still be getting good money for it.

I saw a JL amp the other day that made me drool. Digital everything, tiny, powerful, built in DSP. VX400 I think it was, SUPER nice. COME ON BLACK FRIDAAAAAY!!

They done what i done which is connect the speackers str8 to the head unit with out need to use the DSP AMP .https://audiotechdirect.com/blog/ran...os-obstacles-/ Check that out i say they done the same i did . which give you sound but yer dont expted lound or rich type .

Correct. I installed components and after installing, found that the signal is not full range going to the mid-drivers. I had to wire the tweeters off the factory wiring points in the door instead of the aftermarket crossover.