advice wanted on audio upgrade

[bmwmotorrad]

hello all,

my 1989 320i currently has stock speakers, no premium sound, and a period looking blaupunkt miami beach cd player that i like. i am considering component 5.25's in the front and 6.5's(will they fit?) in the rear deck. i also would like to add a four channel amplifier such as an old school a/d/s.
i like to turn it up every once in a while but usually listen at sane levels. budget wise, $500 or so for amp and speakers.

thanks,
rob

[NOMAD]

BMW premium speakers are fine if you are on a budget. 5.25 component, big magnet, rubber surrounds, lightweight cones, perfect fitment and inexpensive. If you don't like them then you can always change to big buck speakers.

From all I hear, you're not going to want 6.5 in the rear as it'll make it too rear biased as the rears overpower the fronts as it is. Just stick with OEM rear speaker housings and such, super easy, no cutting.

A small sub will fill in the lows. I'm ready to install my system, just have no time. Same goals as you. premium all around and a 12" in the trunk, not a lot of power in my system but enough to bring out the front stage

[robspeed325i]

Ya, id just scrap the rear stage and focus on quality speeks up front and a sub in the trunk. For $500 budget you can afford some very nice front component speakers (buy some premium tweet pods off ebay and install your component tweets there), a nice system amp (like a 50x2 for front and 100x2/200mono for sub) and leave it at that. an amp with a built-in crossover designed to run a front stage and sub would be great. even better would be one you could use to run the front stage in active mode (active crossovers instead of passive) and then a sub to boot. basically this would be either a five or six-channel amp with built-in crossovers. that would make for a very nice sounding system and a decent bottom end. depending on how important the sub is to you you can either go cheap like me ($30 (inc shipping) scosche box from amazon.com), or wait until luke builds more V1 boxes. I cant really vouch for the scosche box approach yet since i havent actually tried it yet (amp and sub on their way from cali still)....

[StereoInstaller1]

Yes, you can fit 6.5's in the rear deck.

If you are running a 4 channel amp you can turn them down to combat the dreaded "rear speaker drown out" that E30s suffer from, as was mentioned earlier.

If you aren't too concerned about the car, you can do 6.5's in the doors, too. Late model doors have quite a bit of room available. I did a set of Momo 6.5's, which are like 4" deep, just HUGE mounting depth by today's standards.

Early doors have the window mechanism right in the damn way, bastards.

But yeah, GL on finding the old ADS amps. Did you see the install on James Crivellones' car?

ADS lovers unite!:http://www.r3vlimited.com/board/showthread.php?t=118472

Luke

[E30Eric]

I got my stereo install done. Big thanks to Luke. My box is similar Luke's box design, Just bigger and longer ports to facilitate the Type R 12. I didn't expect it to be as loud as it is. My god, for one sub, it is loud. Granted I was not going for SPL, just clean bass..

[bmwmotorrad]

thanks everyone for the advice so far. i am set on front component 5.25's in the kick panels and 6.5's in the rear deck. any particular brands and models y'all prefer for this application? what about powering with an old a/d/s pq10 or 20?

btw luke, nice install of the a/d/s amps and rear speakers. thanks for the link.

rob

[357]

any particular brands and models y'all prefer for this application?

I've found its hard to go wrong with Infinity Reference equipment if you're on a budget. Esp. when paired with a sub to fill the low end, they can sound quite good.

[bmwmotorrad]

Alright, bringing back a 2 year old thread here. Other projects got in the way until I recently found a "premium sound" donor at the local pick and pull that has rekindled my interest. I was able to salvage the rear speakers and housings along with the front tweeters/pods, but only one front driver. Unfortunately, the other one had an open circuit. I will keep the one good driver from the front as a back-up in case one of the rears fail me.

I installed the rear speakers including replacing the cross-over caps as they were dead from the Florida sun. The problem now is that my Blaupunkt head unit (4x15 rms) will not drive them without distorting even at sane listening levels. I also removed the door panels to find the tweeter wiring and installed the tweeter pods. They currently not hooked up as my car was not "premium sound" from factory and has some cheap Sony coax speakers in the front.

So, I am now in need of 5.25 components for the front and a mild 4 channel amplifier. A local audio shop has recommended the following:

1) Rainbow slx 230 components for the front, $175
2) JL J2 320.4 amp to drive the four channels, $150

What are your opinions of these products? Am I going in the right direction?

[nrubenstein]

The rainbow components are nice. I have a pair of slc230s on my rear deck. If you can find a Kenwood X4R, I HIGHLY recommend it. It has a lot of built in DSP, but was unfortunately discontinued because apparently no one was smart enough to want that.