I have a 2009 R57 with the standard basic audio system. I am going to wire up an Audio Control Lc7 to an Alpine pdx-5.

My questions are...

1. Is there enough output (is it amplified) out of the X9331 connector to provide enough signal to the Lc7?

2. There appears to be an amp (Not sure if it actually is one though) under the drivers seat. If it is an amp, should I tap into the output of the amp instead of the x9331 connector to drive the Lc7?

Any advise is greatly appreciated.

 

You already have the alpine amplifier installed? How did you do that?

The speaker level inputs for the LC7 would come from the X9331, and you do not have any amps under your seats.

First thing is provide more info as to how your system is configured now.

 

Thank you for the reply. I should have been more specific. I have not yet installed the PDX-5. I will be installing the Lc7 and the PDX-5 at the same time. What is the silver box under the drivers seat then? Is the factory head unit amplified and just feeding the 6 speakers directly? If so great. I just want to make sure that I feed the Lc7 and amplified input and not a preamped input. Sounds like the lines from the X9331 are amplified, so I should be good.

I am installing 2 pair of Boston Accoustic SPZ 60's front and rear with a single Kicker Solo baric L7 10" sub in a false floor. All hooked up to a single PDX-5. I was going to go with two amps, a 4 x 150 way for the Bostons and a mono 600 for the Kicker but the Boston Crossovers are so large that I could not fit four of them in the car and the second amp. I hope the system is not under powered. Has anyone run a similar setup?

 

In the R56 Coupe, the head unit is amplified. I would assume the R57 is the same. So, the signal at the X9331 connector is speaker level. With standard audio, I would not expect to find a separate amp. Only the HIFI and H/K audio systems have an amp outside the HU (at least on the R56).

The siver box under the passenger seat could be satellite radio.
http://www.realoem.com/bmw/showparts...67&hg=65&fg=05

 

Interesting. I didn't purchase satellite radio as an option. The only options on this 2009 R57 are cold weather package, Ipod/bluetooth, and Premium. I wonder if they made a mistake. Although satellite radio does not show up as a menu option on the radio.

I will take a picture of the box this weekend when I have the car apart again and post it. It is hard to tell from the rendering link that you posted. The silver box in my car had rounded corners.

Great to hear that the x9331 plug is amplified from the HU.

Robin, thanks for your help Very much appreciated.

 

Did you already buy the TWO pair of Bostons? I would do a SINGLE pair and definitely give them more power...rear i would either do nothing or just throw some decent fill speaker in there. But no i would not think that 75 "alpine" watts would be enough power for just a nice speaker.

 

Here is what the HIFI amp looks like in the R57. Seems that it goes under the driver's seat.

http://www.realoem.com/bmw/showparts...10&hg=65&fg=25

 

MiniSQ- I have bought both pair but I have 26 more days to return them for a full refund. I was contemplating the same thing that you have suggested. Since no one is ever in the back seat and my sitting position is almost with the seat all the way back, I was thinking maybe i should just bridge the amp 150 x 2 and only do front stage. Either disconnect the factory rear fill or leave them in and power them with deck power (although I think I would just disconnect them.

Robin - The box under the drivers seat is definitely not the amp pictured in the last link you sent. I am thinking it may be the alarm system that comes with the convertible? Not sure. I will take a picture and pull the part number off of it tomorrow so that we can solve the mystery.

Thank you both for your help and advise. This was my first post on the site and your responses were extremly helpful. Look forward to contributing once I learn a bit more about this car.

Have a great weekend.

 

I would return them, and bridge the amp. Then "fade" the rear speakers out entirely.

THEN...if you find yourself missing something you can experiment by fading them back in slightly...but i bet you will be so blown away by the fronts with $150 watts and the punch from the sub that you will not miss having rear speakers.

There is something that the rear speakers do if you have some back up extra feature for your car...Robin knows more about that than i do.

 

If you have the Park Distance Control option, the beep alerts only play through the rear speakers.

 

Sat Radio is under the passenger seat.

Drivers side has the DCS unit I think. would have to look at the parts diagrams to be 100% sure but I can tell you it is Not the Sat Radio.

 

http://www.realoem.com/bmw/showparts...10&hg=65&fg=25

 

I am traveling today on business. I took pictures but didn't have a chance to upload them to my laptop. I will when I get back home on Friday. It was a Becker/Harmon part though. It has rounded edges and is about 4" x 6.6 " Not sure exactly what it was though. I just left in intack.

Now that I have installed the equipement (Again pictures coming friday), I turned the power back on to adjust the gains on the amp and lc7 that are mounted under the seat and now I have two warning lights on the dash (Airbag and Brakes). I think the first one is due to not having the seats plugged in when turning the power back on. I read a thread on how to reset the brake light, but I think I have no choice but to go back to the dealer for the airbag light? right?

Not really sure what I could have done to trip the Brake light. The car only has 100 miles on it so the brakes cant be bad yet

I am not all that impressed with the system yet. Needs a bit of tunning. The sub doesn't sound like its getting much signal and no matter how I adjust the lc7 and amp gains there is a hiss coming from the speakers. Maybe I have to change the source. Anyone else with this setup avoid the hiss. I have the Sum jumpers set on the LC7.

 

There should be no reason to be "summing" the internal channels. I believe that is a feature you might use when running oem speakers and amps.

HISS generally comes from having to over amplify a weak signal.

I don't believe you have identified the rest of your system...but can we assume it is aftermarket speakers in al 4 locations plus a subwoofer?

start by turning all the gains on the amps to minimum as well as the output levels of the audio control piece. actually all the levels on the audio control piece to minimum for now.

play some good loud dynamic music and turn the HU up to about 80%...for me on my 09 mini that is 23 clicks on the steering wheel control.


Does the audio control piece have any instructions as to how to set levels?

generally its going to ask you to raise the "input" level first until a light starts blinking....if not maybe turn that to the mid point.
Now when you raise the levels of the "output" side of the LC7 can you max them out with the amp gains set to minimum and not have distorted music?

Ideally i believe you would want the ouput side of the LC7 to be almost maxed...and the input gains to the amps to be set as low as possible and still have loud dynamic music.


To get there you may need to raise or lower the "input" side of the LC7.



Does any of this help? Or just confuse the crap out of you?

 

MiniSQ,

Your suggestion makes perfect sense and is exactly what I did.

The System details
Factory

 

Mini SQ

This makes perfect sense but I still have the problem I don't think I have enough output from the x9331 connector.

The system specs are

Factory 2009 r57 HU
LC7
PDX-5 bridged to three channel
Boston SPZ60 Front stage
No rear fill
1 L7 Solobaric 10" in an .8 cubic foot sealed box.

I summed the front and rear inputs from the x9331because I had read that the factory rear fill was cut off at 100Htz. Since I am using this channel as signal for the subs, I thought that I would need to sum the fron and rear to provide full range out. Then I used the PDX-5 crossover.

I have the gains on the amp almost all the way off and have adjusted the lc7. The Lc7 only needs to be adjusted to about 25%gain and the his starts.

The sub also doesn't seem like its getting signal down to 20 htz. I am going to do some testing with the fluke over the weekend, but I think that the problem is the signal strength out of the x9331. I am not sure why but maybe Mini made a mistake and amplified my car with the HK box under the drivers seat. I certainly didn't pay for it as it was not listed on the sticker.

I will post pictures and results. Thanks again for your help.

 

factory HIFI...or factory non-hifi??
If factory non hifi, then you would not want to be "summing".

you just take the signal from the HU side of the x9331 based on the pictures here and run front left an right pos and neg back to the LC7...then RCA's out of the LC7 and into the Alpine....then speaker wire from the alpine BACK up to the other side of the x9331 where you need to cut the wires on the other side and attach the speaker wire from the alpine to the speaker wire that you just cut free from the x9331. You can also make up a harness to go between the 2 halves of the x9331 , but you must break the connection between the wires that are feeding the LC7 and the car factory speakers.

still making muddy sense?

If you have the factory HIFI...then i got nothing for ya because i totally have been confused to death by descriptions of the HIFI system.

EDIT: i wrote all of this while you were writing the last post...thinking that you had not yet put in the boston speakers...although most of it still should be valid.

I think you might be confushing "summing" and "bridging"...or i might be....but they are not the same thing. Let me digest this and see if i have anythign else to offer.

let me know what your XO pints are on the Bostons and the Sub.

 

I dont have the Hi Fi system just the base system

The only thing that I didn't as you have described is actually break the connection on the x9331. I wire taped the lines on the x9331. Do I actually need to leave the molex unpluged. If so which side do I need to tap into to get the signal (male of female)

 

I dont have the Hi Fi system just the base system

The only thing that I didn't do as you have described is actually break the connection on the x9331. I wire taped the lines on the x9331. Do I actually need to leave the molex unpluged. If so which side do I need to tap into to get the signal (male of female)

 

yeah you MUST break that connection....think about it for a second and it will make sense.

I am not sure how you are connected to the x9331 so i can't answer your question, but yeah i think i would want to have the x991 connected.

If you didn't add any type of harnes then I would leave it connected but on the speaker side you need to cut the 4 wires... you could cut the speaker side wire and run x9931 side of the cut wire to the LC7 and then come back to the speaker side of the cut wire and attach the alpine speaker wire.

make sense? this is where typing gets hard to explain

But in a nutshell you are running the speaker level signal from the HU into the LC7 and then running the amplified alpine signal into the wires that are attached to the speakers. So in rder for that to be a proper signal path the wire needs to be cut to separate the downsteam HU signal from the upstream alpine signal that is on its way to the bostons.

 

male or female....let me find that for you..butt when i took out my x9331 the part closest to me was HU side, and the part that you have to reach further into the car and what i would say is the back of the x9331 for is the speaker side...i kow you would like confirmation on that huh?

 

Thanks MiniSQ, Just landed in Chigao. its cold here. One kind of important peice of information I inadvertantly lefy out. Sorry. I removed the rear speakers and the 4 inch door speaker. I replaced the 6 in door speaker with the boston and arranged the component set in a coaxil mode. I ran all new 12 guage inside the doors and it connects to the new boston speakers to the boston x over and the x over directly to the pdx-5. Hard to describe in word and easier with a diagram. All of the factory speaker clips are disconnected. The reason I wire tapped the x9331 instead of disconnecting it was beacuase there were four other wire unrelated to the stero that I did not want to disrupt. I think, but am not positive that I have that part wired right based on this information. what do you think?

I am going to test the voltage coming from the x9331 taps at 80% volume and see what I get. If not greater than 4 volts, I might need to add a line driver, but that seems odd as I would expect the factory HU to output atleast that.

 

that all makes sense to me...

I am not sure i understand the capabilities of the LC7. Could you run JUST the front speaker wires from the Mini into the LC7 and have the ability to come out of the LC7 with RCA's to the front of the alpine and the sub of the alpine? Probably not or you wold have done that. I just hate the idea of the rear speaker wires of the mini rolling off at 100hz.

Does the LC7 summing some how eliminate the 100hz roll off? The cleansweep has that feature...i don't know how AC addresses summing.

For me i chose the Cleansweep over a LC7 ...i am into the cleeansweep with front channels only from the mini, and out of the cleansweep (2 channel still, and into an electronic XO. Then out of the XO to my amp.

I have tons of signal...although i do not remember what the voltage read.

 

Except that he does not have the HiFi system so there is no amp to be under the seat. Unless of course the OP is wrong about what system he has.

 

Yea, something is odd. Shaheen says there is an amp under the driver's seat, but claims not to have the HIFI...