So after 3 hours of EQ and time correction adjustments, I'm very happy!

The P-DSP is a nice piece of gear (it outta be), and has been huge in getting all of this dialed in. The sub remote **** has been nice too, for control between different types of music.

For my money spent and effort invested, I'm pushing what I consider to be 8.5-9/10 sound, using just the inexpensive Focal IC 100s. It's hard to imagine what it would be like with a set of their nicer components!

The hole in the middle is pretty much gone. Really strong sound from Vampire Weekend to Boom Jinx to Radiohead and the Rolling Stones. Even with all windows down, sunroof open, at near highway speeds.

My main lessons learned:

A nice LOC / processor will integrate nicely with the Mini audio system as a substitute for an aftermarket HU. Need one with AUX in though for sure. It will allow for great sound from decent aftermarket speakers.

Time correction is awesome in the car. I've been a believer in calibrating this for HT, but was shocked at how much it improved imagining and sound staging in the car. Really, really nice. Focusing the audio like that seems to yield more perceived volume for the same wattage.

The seats are easy to get out of the way to allow disconnecting the subs. Recommended if you are replacing all 4 door speakers and adding a real sub.

I'm sure I'll tweak more, and clean up the aesthetics of the install, and will share the results.

 

Cleaned up install. Sounds fantastic. Might move / secure the Helix differently, but I think this is how it will stay for a while. The amp is stacked on a small iprov stand, adding about 1.5" of clearance to the floor for airflow. I positioned it so that it can radiate heat easily with the load floor open, for those hot summer days. I still may add a small fan. I think the smaller guage stock speaker wiring adds enough impedance to make it a tad bit warmer than I would prefer.

 

Looks great. So when you spent the the time to EQ the setup was your goal just to get a flat response when using pink noise? I'm hoping that's what I'll get from the clean sweep and it's configuration CD.

Did you installer only tap into the speaker level outputs for the Helix at the X9331 connector? Are both signals full range at that connector? Or is the rear signal already crossed over at that point?

Did you keep your crossover point at 100Hz? Or did you adjust that when you were tuning it in?

Where did you mount the sub control ****? I've ordered it for my amp as well.

 

Thanks! Lots of time and effort...

Yes, flat curve with pink noise. Mainly to address any limitations of the IC 100s, and the acoustics of the door panels and car. I can't overstate the impact of the time correction, though. Huge difference.


Yes, at the x9331. I believe the rears are filtered from the HU at ~100Hz. I'm really not 100% sure about the fronts. It was my understanding that they were full band, but somehow are feeding the subs too. Not sure if that is a crossover or just a parallel setup. I do know that the fronts sprung to life when I dropped the stock sub connection. I'm still summing front and rear with the Helix to rebuild a L/R from the HU. It didnt sound right with just one or the other. Again, it all just acted like a pseudo 3-way crossover setup. I'm honestly not too concerned about the HU feed anyway, except for handsfree calls and audible alerts from the Mini.

I'm still playing with this actually. I'm all over the place 80-150, with different slopes. This is going to be a subjective adjustment for sure, and will be different with your nicer Focals. I'm having to wrestle with the freq curve a lot more than I would expect to with better speakers.

Right now, both the AUX in and sub control are running from the boot between the seats and up near the center armrest. The sub control runs up into the back of the armrest, then through it, then hangs out at the front lip where I can adjust easily. I think I'm going to mount it permanently just above the USB / AUX in ports below the shifter.

Check out my cooling solution for the amp...should be perfect. I'll either add a power port under the load floor, or just plug into the outlet on the right side of the cargo bay.

 

That's a great idea for an rack/cooler. I'm look forward to see how it works out.

 

What ever happened to the speaker splice harnesses? Can we buy some cheaper than that mini website in the UK?

 

I know....I have some sample components, but they took so frickin' long to arrive I became a little unsure of how good a supply chain i could set up with out stocking tons of inventory.

In this Amazon prime age - would people buy something that was a good savings over the UK version - say 40% if it meant taking 3-4 weeks to arrive?

 

I hear you, I ordered the connectors and pins (13 male/female in case I screw one up) from http://parts.bmwofsouthatlanta.com/ for $43.27 shipped to my door. Shipment date is 10/30 which is 5 days from now. Guess that gives me time to figure out what I want to do with it

 

I'm kinda bringing this thread back from the dead. It has the most information so far is completing an aftermarket audio installation using the factory head unit.

Do any of you have a picture of where you are tapping into to get the factory head unit signal (high level outputs). I'd like to "see" where you are getting this from please. A picture is worth a thousand words

Also, color codes for the factory speaker wiring.

 

Here's another good thread on the CM aftermarket Audio ............

https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...tall-pics.html

 

If you do trigger the airbag warning by powering up with seats disconnected, you can clear it without a dealer trip. You'll need a BMW K-CAN USB cable ($35 or so) and the INPA software. Hit the R56 or R60 coding threads for links to buy a known-good cable, software download, and instructions.

You don't actually have to code anything to clear it; you can reset the vehicle errors in under a minute without messing with NCSexpert.

 

I truly hope someone gets this thread back up and running again. There is NOTHING on the internet for the Mini Countryman and Custom Audio.

I'd like to experiement with some of the home equipment full range 4" drivers in my CM. With the 4" positioned way up high in the doors and a tweeter in the sill-plate, that's an excellent starting point for some very good front staging.

 

Finally got the Audison Bit Ten-D installed!
Regarding the x9331 harness adapter, here is a pic of my installation.
Yellow w/black, yellow w/brown are the front right, Black w/purple, black w/red are the front left.
As the connector is mounted on the kickpanel, the side facing the firewall is the speaker end, the end facing the driver seat is the HU end. The other pairs (blue/w black, blue w/brown - yellow w/red, brown w/orange) in the center of the connector are the rear speakers. I had to make an educated guess on polarity, but the Bit Ten-D lets me invert phase if necessary. I have only scrached the surface with the Bit Ten-D, but after doing the initial setup and de-equalizition it has made a world of difference. Now to do some audio analysis with REW and start making some eq adjustments. Then it will be done. Yeah, that's the ticket.

 

Almost two years later, I thought I'd post an update on my install.

WHERE THE HELL DID ALL OF THE 4" CAR SPEAKERS GO??!

Seriously, almost nothing worth a damn is to be found online anymore. I've decided that the IC100 Focals need an upgrade. After wresting with EQ and processing for months and months, my final assessment is that they are too bright and too fatiguing. You get what you pay for, I suppose. Anyone have any suggestions for alternatives?

I ended up replacing the speakers beneath the seats as well, and added a 2CH 70W amp to power them. Used decent home audio 6.5" drivers, and built custom enclosures for each to replace the stock drivers / housings. Functionally, everything is fine, but I don't know $%!@ about building speaker enclosures! Decent mid-bass I guess, but with a serious resonance spike around 140Hz (lame enclosures). This is still a problem area in the car. I'd like to take a 2.0 pass on re-doing them, but not sure how. Either engineer a better way to build enclosures, or cannibalize the stock enclosures and drop in new drivers.

I'm actually considering trading in my CMS for a '15 JCW CMS. But shudder at the idea of going through all of this again! Why must car companies make this so hard for us these days? No pre-outs on HUs, confusing wiring, inaccessible / odd speakers form factors, etc. ?

 

Rai1gun.
Check my thread/s on my recent upgrades in this forum (navigation/audio).
In short I used Focals from the K2 Power line (100 KRS) in the front doors and 100 CA1 from the Access line for the rears. Both are 4". I have been very happy with the results.
For the bass drivers under the seat I replaced the factory 6.5" with Earthquake SWS-8X 8" drivers. This is all using the stock enclosures, which I highly recommend. The SWS-8X were specifically designed as a drop in replacement for the BMW/MINI under seat drivers. I was very impressed with what BMW did with the enclosures in the MINI and the porting to the frame sills. A lot of effort goes into designing speaker enclosures, and I mean A LOT. You can have the best drivers in the world, but without a correctly designed enclosure they will sound like crap. I used REW software to analyze the responce curve of my system and was very impressed with how flat the bass drivers were from 30hz right up to my crossover of 200hz.
What are you using for EQ BTW?

 

How did you disassemble the enclosures to replace the drivers? I couldn't get mine apart. And did you install the new drivers up or down-firing? The stock driver fired down.

I'm using a Helix P-DSP for processing / EQ. Pretty awesome...

 

Check this thread:
https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...uake-sws8.html
In short, some prying with a screwdriver/chisel will get the old drivers out. They are glued in. The SWS-8X mounts upward facing. If you buy the Earthquake spacers you probably won't need to modify the enclosure like I had to.

 

I wish I knew exactly what seam you attacked with hammer and chisel. I attempted similar, but decided it was not coming apart easily. Have you got any pictures at all of that process?

I'm on the verge of possibly trading in my '13 CMS for a '15, so may be doing all of this again.

This time:

1) Focal components in the front
2) a nicer coax in the rear
3) drop new drivers into stock enclosures
4) HOME RUN NEW SPEAKER WIRES to trunk with amps and sub

I don't think I'm going to bother tapping into existing HU output at all, don't need it anyway. I'll just run all power to rear, and send all audio from there directly back to speakers (leaving stock wiring present but disconnected from speakers in the doors).

 

Sounds like you got the enclosures apart, but here are some pics anyway.
The enclosure is stiffer and thicker than the frame around the driver, so the driver should be the first to give when you start prying. And yes it feels like you are going to break the plastic when you pry and hammer with the chisel.

 

Hi all,

I know this is an old thread and I'm resurrecting, but I just bought a 2011 R60 and I was wondering if there is any wiring harness available for it, or any diagrams on the pinouts of the connectors and where to find them. I have been searching a lot, but I find a lot of mixed information. All I want is to tap into the rear preamps so I can splice into a second amp to add a 10" sub in the trunk.

Please help,
-Fish

 

Would love to see this thread come back from the dead again as well.......

 

What are you looking for from the thread?

https://technicpnp.com has harnesses, also Integral Audio has one.

 

No R60 harnesses that I can see.

On my R55 I made one from scratch but it was a pile of trial and error...... and one big error that I don't want to repeat.

 

Do you have HK? Look on the bimmer.work for the option code and see if it matches up with the BMW harness numbers he sells. My F56 was 674 as I recall and it works fine in BMW or MINI. The Technic guy is more BMW than MINI so often you need to dig deeper.

 

The R60 Countryman shares a lot of components with the E90 BMW — even more than the R56 series does in the audio system. The loudspeaker drivers, mountings, and connectors are basically dropped in from the 3-Series. I am not 100% positive, but these harnesses should match up to the Countryman:

Base radio:
http://technicpnp.com/product-catego...-3-series-e9x/

Harmon-Kardon:
https://technicpnp.com/product-categ...-3-series-e9x/