What's the deal??? I can NOT beleive a single company has yet to design and offer a custom Sub/Amp box for the mini?

Yes, there are the false floor deals. But I'm talking about a standalone unit with Amp and Woofer all in one.

What in the world is taking JL Audio litterally YEARS at this point, to make a simple Sub box, with a simple 200 Watt single channel amp built in, and a T harness to plug into the hifi amp in the boot to get the speaker level signals to it???????????????????????????????????????????????? ?????????????????????????

I don't get it! They would have sole 100's of thousands of these boxes.

 

I like the boss audio bass600 -- a 10 inch sub with amplifier in a small enclosure. Not perfect, but not expensive, either. Too big to fit under the driver's or passenger's seat. I've got mine sitting (temporarily) in the boot.

One person's "cheezy" is another's "cost effective."

 

Bob,

Could you describe the shortcomings of the bass600? How well does it integrate with classical, jazz, classic rock, etc? I'm not looking for rap thump, I just want more bottom end in the music.

 

More like a few hundred, maybe up to a thousand at best. MINI only sold a total of 222,875 cars worldwide in 2007. Consider the R50/R53 and what drop-in subwoofer kits were ever available for them (basically nothing).

 

+1 if a company doe not see a certain amount of vehicles sold the it is not in their interest to sell a such an item.

I know I Would Not Buy One, it would have to be much more invisible than something they would produce. The one off jobs done by a stereo install place or others here on this thread are much better than anything most of the aftermarket companies would produce.

 

I could imagine a small specialty shop creating a product (build-to-order) but certainly not a manufacturer like JL Audio. Not only is the number of vehicles low, but also (maybe even more important) the boot space is already very small and few people are willing to give up any more space.

 

What it is:

8 inch low-profile powered subwoofer. High and line level inputs, adjustments for input gain, subsonic filter, bass boost, low pass frequency, phase shift, remote gain control with blue LED. Available on-line, $128 on ebay (buy.com) shipping included. 13.7 x 9.8 x 2.8 inches, but figure 14.25 inches long for wire clearance.

Summary - the good news:

Easy to install, not too big. Works, and adjustments are fairly flexible. For the price, well worth trying. More than adequate for what I was looking for. Handles classical, jazz, most music well.

Not so good news:

Won't fit under Mini seats. While it's listed as a 200 watt RMS amplifier (600 watts "maximum power," hence the bass600 name), it has a 15 amp fuse. P=E*I. 12*15 < 200. 14*15 = 210, but that means the amplifier is 95% efficient? I don't think so! It's loud enough. An 8 inch cone can't provide the impulse response of a 10 or 12 inch cone, but it's more than adequate for the Mini.

How's it sound?

Sounds pretty good. Adjusting a subwoofer, setting the crossover frequency and gain levels is tricky. Having the remote gain **** is handy. I like it. The system overall handles complex material, as well as just plain loud stuff.

Discussion (Rambling Opinion)

As a reference, before kids my sound system had a pair of Dahlquist DQ-1W subwoofers, driven by an old reliable Phase Linear 400 power amp, a Symmetry ACS active crossover, and a pair of Acoustat 3 electrostatic panels driven by a hand made 150 watt per channel amp. Placed with a good home as it didn't fit revised decor and kids (at least in my wife's opinion). Sigh. Maybe someday...

If you want the visceral impact of a kick-drum, you need something with a similarly sized diaphragm -- like a kick drum! No sound recording and reproduction system is going to give me the same experience that I had sitting in the flute section with the strings in front of me, French horns behind me (Larry emptying his spit valve down my back), tympani behind the horns, the rest of the strings and brass off to my left. Live music is live music, and recordings ain't it.

It's all a matter of how close you care to get, and how much you're willing to pay to get there. Everything is a tradeoff. The stuff I have in the office at home does okay. I like my earphones (Etymotics ER-4). As I've mentioned in other posts, in the car I want to be able to hear the song of happy, squealing tires and the rev of the engine.

Reference recordings:

"Dies Irae" from Karl Jenkins Requiem
"Alex F" from the soundtrack of Beverly Hills Cop
"Amuseum" from Sheffield Labs Track Record
"Seattle Morning" from David Benoit Urban Daydreams
"Sharp Dressed Man" from Chenier I Ain't no Playboy
"Meltdown" from Atrium Carceri Ptahil

(Not Chicago Manual of Style citations -- bite me.)

Wandering and Listening:

Even with the channel swap in my MCS, and the upgraded speakers, I wanted more low-end. Kick-drum thumps, the thunder of kettle drums, low notes in pipe organ recordings. Oh yeah, and loud low end for sh*t kickin' stuff like "Sharp Dressed Man."

Went around to car audio places. Lots of them will demo subwoofers that will make car windows rattle and small dogs pee.

But when I played my own material, particularly the "Dies Irae", most of them sounded like sh*t. Jenkins' "Dies Irae" (Days of Wrath) has thundering kettle drums and orchestral string bass, but also has very complex vocals from a full choir. Everything should be clear! Yes, you can adjust most of these demo systems so that the vocals are clear and crisp, and the low end is tight as well, not booming. Your windows will still rattle, but small dogs will merely whimper and hide.

My initial conclusion: most car subwoofer systems are overpowered and are not set up for playing music.

I tried rolling my own with a 10 inch dual coil subwoofer and a class-D 15 watt per channel stereo amp (30 watts total to the sub), and while it helped, it didn't have the oomph (technical term).

The bass600 seemed to be a reasonably inexpensive experiment. If it works, hey, great! If it doesn't, then I give it to my kid and he puts it in the Jeep.

Installed, located in the boot, tested. As mentioned, adjustments are tricky, but "Dies Irae," "Amuseum," and "Seattle Morning" provide good material for setting the turnover point and level so you get thump without a lot of booming in the crossover region.

"Axel F" has a surprising amount of low end -- Wilson Audio used this track to demo their subwoofers at CES. It also has some high end stuff dancing between the channels, and once again, everything should be crisp and clear.

"Meltdown" scares some people -- crank it up!

The remote bass level control is handy. I can leave the level set at "reasonable" for complex stuff, or I can crank it to 11 as I blow by the lobotomized soul piloting the Prius down the road at a safe and sane speed.

Conclusion:

For me, the alternative is an Alpine PDX.5 amplifier, 10 or 12 inch sub, JL Clean Sweep, and a lot of labor. Many hours of installation, and many more hours trying to justify the expense.

While that system would give me flexibility and power I can't match currently, the bass600 does a good enough job that I'm not going to upgrade in the reasonably forseeable future.

 

Excellent post k6rtm.

I agree with 99.9 percent of what you said. i would just add some other tracks such as (but you do have a good selection there)

Do The Shrimp by Luis Conte - Great dynamic and frequency range throughout a large selection of percussion insturments.

Never Give Up by Tim Weisberg with Amy Holland - Fantastic vocals for checking the sound stage, Background vocals can be located on the stage very easily.

Fanfare by Bill Meyers - Excellent adaptation of instruments to show the frequency response.

Up by Nelson Kole, Dynamic range and punch factor of a sub along with great high end to test the tweeter response.

 

Thanks very much for the info. I've sent you a PM.

 

Your dead wrong. JL audio already has a custom, built in/snap in place sub for the MINI. They just haven't adjusted it (needs slight change in formfactor) to fit the R56.

And, I have about 45 to 50 emails from different owners from NAM alone in my personal inbox from people looking to purchase one of these for the R56. Those were simply a response to a post I made regarding JL saying they were going to make the changes. But they never did, to lazy if you ask me. They (JL) sent me and a few others emails setting up getting a car to work the fitting on, and then never followed through with it.

They would easily sell 1000's of them.

 

it is nice that JL did make one at least once but for that cash you can build one that suits your needs. I have started planning my sub enclosure even though my delivery is still a few weeks away. I like the idea of the flush box in the back because of the cargo space not being drained but the airspace has a direct impact on the sound aswell as the placement of the sub (some enclosures sound better facing the rear of the car) so I will need to build a few test enclosures for the car before I decide on the final product.
I was thinking about something like the JL box but I just don't like the shape it has (looks like a cancer growing in the corner of the boot to me) so I am thinking how I can combine some of the airspace of the sunken enclosure and the space on the side to maybe get a smaller profiled side enclosure as well as a place to mount my amp under the cover without removing the tool kit.

Anyon else thought of this?
David

 

k6rtm - great review - thanks!

Question for you. I'm not 100% familiar w/the R56 and how the boot space works but in the Clubman there is a decent amount of hidden space. Do you think the sound quality would suffer significantly if it were hidden beneath one floor cover? This looks as if it would easily fit below the first hidden level in the clubman and if it didn't the tool compartment could be opened up to give it some room to breathe...

 

Yea, sure, for "cash" I could drop my mini off and have the local pimp shop turn it into a 1965 Chevy!!

But that is not what I'm trying to do. I simply want to buy a prefab sub, plug it in, screw 2 screws in and BAM, I have 100% better sounding system in 15 minutes and a few hundred bucks tops!!!

The Hifi system has an amp in the boot with the harness plug with all the speaker inputs on one little jack that can easily be unplugged without dis-assembling anything, just simply reaching in and unplugging it. So, you could EASILY make a T type harness, unplug the amp, plug the cars harness into the T, the other side of T into the Amp, and the 3rd side of the T into the Subwoofer. Screw 2 screws down to hold the sub in place, BAM, done in less than 15 minutes.

You could take it a step further, and design one that utilizes the passenger side of the boot which is an empty fake compartment/bulk head with lots of space in it. this would take a little more customer work to install (cutting hte bulkhead a bit), but would still be pretty easy.

BOTH of these, would take a manufacturer (aka 1 guy!) all of 1/2 day to make a mock prototype, and send off to china to get 1000's made. The cost would be less than $100 (for box, 8" woofer and 150 watt amp), they can sell them for a few hundred bucks.

Why somebody hasn't done it already, is beyond me. I'm thinking of doing it myself.

 

Getting to the amp is an incredible PITA -- been there! Getting to the X9331 connector ahead of the driver's door is easy.

The part numbers for the connector bodies and pins are in the channel swap thread. Want to check on prices?

I agree, a "T" harness would be a good thing, two twelve-pin connectors for the existing stuff, and a 4-pin for the sub. At BMW prices, it ain't going to be cheap!

Since I had the pins out of the connector already, I made my connections to the tail ends of the pins, then pushed them back into the connector body. Nice and clean, no cut-up wires, and no need to take the front or the back of the car apart.

 

Because it is not just that easy. There is a lot of testing to be done on the box design, which actually takes months. Also specking those connectors is not all that easy either. So for a company to go from start to finish and have something that sounds good would be a minimum of 6 months.

Then there is the part about installing it. To get to the amplifier is not that easy. you must remove the rear door/opening sill and then a few other pieces just to get the side cover off. That there is about a 15 minute job for someone who has done it before.

If you do not have the HiFi system Then what are you supposed to do. You do not mention these people.

They have an even harder time getting the wiring run to the rear for the car as the connector they need to get to is in the drivers foot well. They will have to run the sires from there to the rear of the car that means taking out the rear seat and door sill on the drivers side as well and from experience that is not an easy job.

This is all a lot harder than you expect.

 

You are joking right?? 6 months to test a sub box? What are you testing it for, military specs for a Sattelite probe? I cna design and build the entire mini, in 6 months. We are talking about a subwoofer, not a rocket. They make the box, measure it's internal size, and install a sub speaker that meets it's specs. That should take a professional in the bidness, less than 1 hour at most.

why would you need to remove the side cover to get to the amp? You can reach the plug, just reach in, unplug it , plug the new T harness into it, and plug it back in. Or am I mistaken and you can't reach it? I thought I tried that last year and had no problem, but could be wrong on that.

What about the folks with no hifi? I don't know, what about them? They can start there own thread and make there own box. Besides, the only difference would be where they make there speaker line connections. So make separate instrcution sheet for non Hifi users, whats the problem.

 

I was thinking along the lines of that exact setup... Anyone try it? Perfect for glassing a box.....

 

So bust that design out and start selling them, at discounted prices to NAMers, of course.

 

I am going to make one for my car, I used to make F/glass custom stealth boxes in the UK,
I think I can use some of the "dead" space inside the rear back 1/4, the box would be a crazy shape but boy will it be rigid, If there is any interest in this let me know and I will make it for production instead of a one off,what is the ball park figure of the volume you guys would require.

 

No clue about volume--no MINI yet! But I'm certainly interested to see what you come up with.

 

Sorry I should have said optimal internal volume.

 

I *was* speaking of volume in the cubic sense...

 

Birdman,

If you think you can do it in 1 hour go right ahead and see how bad it sounds.

I am currently working with a company that is working on one for the clubman and it has already been 30 days and we are just finishing up a box design that will work and be easily removable and function properly.

There are also many other factors besides the "Box" design to consider.

1. What is going to rattle when the box is in place
2. What panels int he car are above the box if it is in a place like the boot floor.
3. What options does it need to have, Built in amp shelf, connector locations, false floor or openings, sealed box or vented box.
4. How is it going to mount in the car.
5. Does it impead the use of any other part of the car. I.E. spare tire area if used. ( know i use the spare tire space for other things as it is a great storage space but how do you make it so that space is still usable)

These are only a few of the considerations that must be made if you are making somthing for production and genreal market purchase.

 

The new SB for our Minis should be out in about 4 weeks. Call JL and they should confirm.

 

Marksman,
you make the box, take a pic and post it here, I can garrantee you, you will sell a BUNCH of them. I will buy one. Internal space? As big as you can make it, in that space. THEN, we will find a suitable speaker to fit it's size. I simply want to utilize that empty hidden space on the passenger side of the boot, and it can come out a bit further. As long as you can still open the tools compartment, it's all good. Get glassin!!