Premium Hi-Fi questions
 

Hello everyone! So happy to have found this wonderful site. I am a brand new X5 owner (4.4i 2004) and will be picking up my vehicle this afternoon...SOOO excited!!!

My question is about the premium sound system and what this allows me. I have a rear mounted 6-disc CD changer. Does the premium sound include a surround sound environment? Is this what DSP denotes? Can I play surround sound cd's or am I just relegated to regular cd's? I wanted to purchase some new titles for my initial drive and just wanted some info.

If you all don't mind, I'll have many other "newbie" questions in the coming days on all sorts of issues. You guys/gals are SO knowledgeable. I appreciate your advice. Thanks!

:xoutpost:
Congrats on your purchase. There is a lot of info on this site that will be very useful to you as an X5 owner.

I am sorry to say that the premium DSP stereo is not surround sound. The changer will play regular audio cd's... you will need to go after market if you want to play DVD-A or SACD audio discs, or DD5.1/DTS DVD movies. The X5's audio system is not the greatest OEM system out there, but there are some relatively inexpensive upgrades available for the X5 sound system which improve it quite a bit.

Get us some pics soon of your new ride :thumbup:

Thanks so much for the prompt reply! Should I want to add a surround sound feature, would I have to replace the entire system or can I add to my existing one? Would it be the cd changer that I would replace to support the cd formats played? One last question (sorry, I'll be full of them)...will my existing changer play mp3's? Afraid to hear the answer. But alas, I did get the satellite radio installed so at least I'll have some choices! Thanks again. And yes, I will most certainly post some pics of my new little gem!!

If you wanted to go with surround, in my opinion, you would be wasting your money trying to integrate that with any of the factory electronics. Your car stereo dealer can show you some much better equipment from Alpine, etc, that can handle surround formats. For true surround you would need a center channel installed somewhere in the dash, another channel of amplification, a source that can play DVD surround formats, and a properly crossed-over sub for LFE. It would be much easier and sound WAY better to do that with aftermarket equipment. Just my 2 cents.

I don't think the 2004 OEM changer played MP3's, BUT I could be wrong. You can easily swap the changer for one that will play MP3's or better yet, get an IPOD device and skip CD's all together.

Try searching the Mobile Electronics forum if you want to dig deeper into the X5's audio system to learn more about MP3/CD capability, DSP modes, etc. This isn't really the best forum for audio discussions.

Good luck and have fun picking up your car ;)

I could be wrong too, but I think 2004 and newer play mp3s. you might as well just try it out being that blank cds cost so little.

Ninchs, you may be right. I thought it was early 04's could not play MP3's. I haven't used CDs is YEARS so I am no expert on that. You're right, a 50cent CD-R will be all it takes to find out.

you are probably right about the early model year 2004 not being able to play them, bmw is known for switching parts in the middle of a model year. IE the ECU on early 2002 will work with the ctp8000 phone module, but late 2002 the ECU can only work with the ctp9000. and of course the headlights being able to be opened or not.

:xoutpost: I think 2005 and up play mp3...I've never tried on my X5 :confused: (2005 model)

My 2004 4.4i plays CD's that I burn just fine (it's made in later 2004 when they added the panaramic sunroofs). I don't have the changer though, just the single CD player.

~Ryan

yeah they all play regular burned cds that will hold about 20 songs. but we are talking about burning MP3 cds, and putting about 150 songs on one disk.