I love my HK stereo, maybe too much. I usually play it at a pretty good volume, with the bass either in the middle or maybe one or two notches above middle. Lately the passenger door has beet rattling a lot because of the bass. Thats the smaller of my problems. The other day I was playing some Eyedea and Abilities (great hip-hop group) that has some decent bass. Suddenly my driver side speaker (not sure if it was the big one or the small one) started making this loud popping nose sporadically, maybe every 5 seconds or so. I turned down the volume (I had it up fairly loud, but not all the way or anything) and it stopped. Later I was playing some Atmosphere (another great hip-hop group) and the same thing started happening. It never happens when I'm playing anything besides bass-heavy stuff, and in fact those are the only two times I can remember it happening.

So my question is two part.

1) Should I make the dealer get the door to stop rattling? To me that seems out of spec, something that shouldn't be happening.

2) Are my speakers about to go? Shouldn't the H/K Stereo be able to handle a decent amount of bass?

I should note that I was playing this stuff through my iPod on the Aux port, if that matters.

 

Can you reproduce it consistently. How about with other music? Sounds an awefull lot like a blown speaker to me. Popping would be from you woofer not your tweeter. Any buzzing (not rattling)? Is it loud, low pitched, constant? A few adjectives might help point us to the answer.

 

All I know is that symptom occurs with my HK system as well. If the volume is up, the song has heavy bass, the speakers seem like they just can't handle it and they distort on some of the strongest bass hits. It's pretty retarded if you ask me, it shouldn't do this stock but it does. I have a solution for it though. Since the HK system is very strong with bass to begin with, putting the bass 1-2 notches down (to the left) is just enough for the speakers to not max-out and the bass is still very strong.

 

The system sounds great in all other cases. I can reprocude the popping by playing bass heavy songs at a loud volume. There's no constant buzz or anything, just the passenger door (or maybe its the speaker too) rattling on the correct frequency of low sounds. I seem to get a lot of rattling when I play Modest Mouse's latest album, and sort of a low vibrating sound, that I attribute to the door or the speaker housing being not fully tightened.

I don't think the speaker is blown, but I think it may be getting close. My brother had a blown speaker in his Honda Civic so I know what those sound like, and this speaker isn't there yet.

Basically what I want to know is am I justified in wanting this system not to do this stuff and should I take it to the dealer to be fixed?

 

Door rattles with music with more bass and buzzing from the speakers with all sorts of music are usually reasons to take your MINI to the dealership.

Rattles and buzzes are sometimes due to the resonance that occurs from playing certain songs or certain types of music at higher volume. You can elimate some of it with adjusting the controls on the HK or by turning down the volume just a little.

But you can also add sound deadening material like Dynamat extreme or Cascade Audio VB-2 or VB-max. However if you add the material to the doors then the dealer can blame any changes and noises to the aftermarket upgrade so don't do that yet.

Try changing music sources and see if the buzzes and rattles are there when you play similar music from the CD player and not the ipod. The music source from the ipod is not going to be as clean and when turned up is likely to have more distortion than from a CD orignal.

Another option is to take your ipod to another MINI with HK and play the same music and see if it rattles and buzzes with those same songs. If it does then the ipod is the problem. The music is played too loud for the recording source being played.