Good news from Kevin at Integral Audio.

He asked me to share the following email with the NAM community:

It looks like we are on schedule to have product shipping sometime in August. If you happen to be going on the MINIs to the Point run later this month you’ll be able to hear the prototypes in Walter's (the organizer) MINI, which will be installed in a couple weeks.

I don’t have final pricing from my suppliers yet, but I’m still shooting for $800-$1000 for the 2-way upgrade to the Standard 6 speaker stereo, and about $100 more for the 3-way upgrade to the HiFi & h/k systems. That’s the speakers, crossovers, 4 ch ARC amplifier ($400 retail alone), true plug-n-play speaker wiring harnesses, speaker mounting plates, hardware – everything.

I am really looking fwd to this. I will be the first in line to get this speaker upgrade.

 

I can understand the advantage of this for people with the base stereo, but to those of us with the HK, why would we need to replace the HK amp with the Arc?

 

Thanks, captain buzzkill.

Coming from a lot of custom builds and the upgraded G37 coupe system (among the worst), I feel the HK system in the Mini is probably the best factory system I've ever listened to. It is very good but not quite as clear or tunable as I would prefer. If I take the time to upgrade speakers and defeat all the built in DSP of the factory amp, I'm going to want more power in it's place.

I guess all that means you don't *need* to do anything.

 

I'm one of those lowly HiFI units ('09 MCS), and this upgrade sounds fantastic. If only I had the scratch laying around...

Thanks for the info!

 

Thought I'd chime in here....

The Soundstage upgrade will bypass the HiFi & h/k amps, and use the ARC amp instead. There are two primary reasons, 1) the HiFi & h/k amps are very underpowered, and 2) they have electronic crossovers built in that aren't at the right frequencies.

The HiFi amp runs the 6 front speakers on 4 channels. It delivers less than 3 watts to the tweeter & midrange, which share a channel, and get all frequencies above about 100Hz. It delivers less than 12 watts to the 6" door woofer, which gets everything below 100Hz.

We started developing an upgrade package that used the existing amp, but it's pointless. The amp is poor quality, underpowered, and the frequency division is all wrong. Developing a speaker system to work within that setup would have been nearly as expensive as the amplified setup we will be offering, and it wouldn't have had anywhere near the performance. It just didn't make sense.

 

any idea how much wattage the new HK amp outputs to each channel? I was thinking about replacing the hk speakers with low end focals.

 

Great and all but....do you have the 1101S out yet?

 

I haven't done the testing on the new h/k amp, but I doubt it is much different. I've been testing Harman's BMW products for years, and they are all similar. My guess for the new h/k is about 20-30% more power than the HiFi, at most (based largely on the minimal increase in power wire gauge from HiFi to h/k). For perspective on that, keep in mind that the smallest difference in loudness most people can discern is 3dB, which would require a 100% difference in power.

I wouldn't recommend trying to upgrade the HiFi & h/k systems by dropping in aftermarket speakers - see posts here & here. That recommendation holds especially true for Focals - both because you'd be spending a significant sum already, and would be buying speakers that really need some real power.

 

Thanks for bursting my bubble!


I know the focals can take tons of power. I used to feed my PKs 140w RMS/ch. Was hoping maybe the low end ones would be more sensitive since the power rating isn't as high.

I may end up just getting your sub and calling it a day.

 

I realize nobody "needs to do anything" ignitionmodule, I was just wondering what the advantages of the amp replacement were to us with a separate HK amp already. Thank you Kevin for your answer.

 

Yes...finally!

R56 Hardtop: http://www.integralaudio.com/index.p...er-system.html

R57 Convertible: http://www.integralaudio.com/index.p...er-system.html

 

Sorry about that!

Depends. Speakers are one big series of trade-offs. One of those trade-offs is between bandwidth (frequency response) and efficiency. Generally speaking, if you are holding the price constant for a given speaker, you will be giving up something in one of those areas to gain something in the other. If you are lowering the price, you will be giving something up in both, or a lot in one or the other. There are a lot of levers that can be pulled in the design, and it all depends on the choices the engineer made.

If you can hold out for a few months longer, our Soundstage upgrade will be ready. It will solve all your (audio) problems!

 

Just ordered the sub and will probably get the sound stage early next year (depending on how annoyed I get at the H/K system. )

 

When you say ARC amp are you referring to Arc Audio or is this some other amp I'm not familiar with? If it's an Arc Audio amp, which model is it?

 

We will be using the KS 125.2 & 125.4 MINI amps in these kits - the 125.2 for sub-only or soundstage-only upgrades, and the 125.4 for the sub & soundstage package.

 

I can see where you need to market another kit - The soundstage ready subwoofer kit. It would be the subwoofer with the 125.4

That way someone can add the sub first and then later upgrade the sound stage without having had to buy two separate amps.

 

It's a good point, and we will almost certainly be doing that. In the meantime, we will be offering a retrofit kit/deal to add the Soundstage upgrade to our existing Subwoofer Systems. Not sure on the details yet since the Soundstage design isn't finalized, but we will make it as easy as possible.

 

KEVIN.
is there anything for Clubmans?

thanks

 

The Soundstage upgrade will be available for all 2nd gen MINIs - Hardtop, Convertible, and Clubman. A subwoofer system for the Clubman is on the drawing board, but we haven't had a chance to start development yet.

 

What speakers will you be using for this?

Are you are getting one of the speaker companies vifa,scanspeak etc to put out some speakers to your specs and making a crossover.

Or are you using a component kit that already exists?

 

These are being built for us, to our specs.

 

Can you tell us

What material the tweeters are made of ?

 

Slight change in plans... I just couldn't schedule it before my run - they'll be in the week after. My plan is to show the car at MINIS on TOP.

Of course, if you're in my neck of the woods, I'd be happy to let you have a listen.

 

I'd be happy to, though I have to say that I am always hesitant to answer questions like that since this response will be read by others. Many folks have strong opinions about tweeter materials and those opinions are, for lack of a better phrase, basically wrong.

The tweeter domes will most likely be cloth, but to be honest telling you that doesn't really tell you anything of any value about the tweeter. A lot of folks believe that Aluminum dome tweeters (or metal in general) are overly "bright" (a qualitative term that also is pretty useless) but that isn't true. SOME aluminum tweeters are "bright". The reason is that Aluminum is a pretty good tweeter diaphragm material - lightweight and rigid - yielding efficient tweeters. If those tweeters are low-quality or poorly designed, then you end up with a more efficient low-quality tweeter...one that reproduces inaccurate response at a louder level - you get the idea. On the other hand, lots of folks think or assume that paper is a crappy mid or woofer cone material (it would be more accurate to say they have been mislead to believe paper is crappy by BS marketing). The truth is that paper is still arguably the best composite cone material available - you can do things with paper that you just can't do with other materials. Go to your local high-end home audio store and pull the grilles off of every $10,000+ speaker you can find and note how few AREN'T paper...

The bottom line is that there are almost no hard and fast rules in audio regarding materials, despite what advertisements or the guy at the stereo shop try to tell you. In the end what matters is the quality of three things - the materials, the engineering, and the manufacturing.

 

Now that I've added a sub to my H/K system, I feel like I have a set up that is a 90% improvement over what I had. I feel like I'd be 100% happy if I simply had the ability to EQ the system in a more comprehensive fashion. Hell, if the factory system at least offered the option to independently adjust mid-range frequencies it would be a significant improvement.

How will your new soundstage upgrade address the H/K system's utter lack of customization when it comes to system EQ? Will there be the ability to dial in via the amp? If so, will the be in an easy to access location?