all the info you could possibly need is in the sticky "r56 speaker replacement" in the audio forum.

 

If you read all of it.

I believe the first post has a few errors in it. I found the speaker sizes to be wrong. What worked for me was:

Front (doors):

6" dia. component speaker. This has a separate tweeter that can go in the A pillar holding the windshield. The 6" is the only speaker in the system that gets bass.

4" dia. This gets mid and high frequencies.

Rear: 6x9" with one input for the woofer and one for the tweeter. There are two pair of wires for this speaker location. You could also use a component system with a separate tweeter. The factory setup consists of a woofer and separate tweeter.

The HIFI amp is set up for 2 ohm speakers. Look for something with a fairly high sensitivity, such as 95 dB.

 

The MINI posseses enough ambient noise that it is a very poor listening "room". Noise is also present from the road and tires.

Personally I think that it is a waste to replace the radio/tuner system and the speakers. I believe that those with complaints are turning up the volume very loud to the point of distortion to overcome the ambient noise that is present.

Give it a listen with the engine off before you decide to spend tons on a replacement.

 

Huh? Who cares if it sounds good with the engine off, if the ambient noise is causing us to turn up the volume, the system is poorly designed if it doesn't account for that. If you replace the speakers with ones that can give louder and clearer performance to compensate for the road/engine noise how would that be a waste?

 

If you are going to drop $1500+ on a stereo system you SHOULD read it all.

and do research at cardomain.com in the audio section there to read up on different speakers/amps/etc..

 

If I only listened to the radio while sitting in my parking lot that would be fine. I like to drive places.

x2!

 

the point is; you may not be able to overcome the high ambient noise to provide "good" sound. You may just get LOUD sound.

 

Well "good" sound is a subjective thing anyhow. Personally, as I said, I don't find the HiFi to be that bad at all, it just does not go very loud, not loud enough to even get distorted. I wonder if replacing the speaker would even help with this, as it may have to do with the output of the amp/HU, or some internal governor to prevent you from damaging the stock speakers. Most of the time you need to either add a different amp and or some kind of HU filter to bypass it.

 

you've never heard my stereo

and yes, I do know the difference between "good", "loud and crappy", and "loud yet crystal clean with great seperation"

 

So, how many people spend a lot of money on the stereo and then play nothing but MP3's through it? Maybe I'm wrong, but doesn't the music quality drop when MP3's are compressed? Or is there another format that doesn't degrade the sound quality?

 

You are correct, but it all depends on how you compress it. Apple Itunes offers many ways to compress music - some of them are very good (Apple LossLess) and some of them are exact copies of the CD files themselves (AIFF) the problem is that these codec take up more space and most people are fine with MP3s and worse quality, as long as they can have more music on their iPods.

There are stereophiles out there that use ipods for their music, but they format with better codecs. Bit rates have a lot to do with it as well.

 

How much did those speakers cost you?

 

This reminds me of when CD's came out. All the audiophiles (like myself) said the same thing about the lousy sound quality. The flat, no depth sound of a CD. A nice clean LP sounds phenomenal compared to a CD. Obviously CDs were way better for mobile use and led us to what we have today, but it's rather funny how we've become accustomed to the sound quality (or lack of) of CDs.

 

Welcome to NAM!


which speakers are you refering to?

 

so after reading this.
who swapped out their hifi speakers and how did it sound at the end of the day?