# BMW E46 Touring. Making it sound half acceptable on a budget



## JetBadger (Jan 4, 2021)

First of all, hello everyone! I've been lurking around these forums for a bit now. Found lots of great information here and now I thought I'd share my ideas and progress on the thing that's been bugging me about my car ever since I got it over 3 years ago.

Of the few early-mid 2000s BMWs I've been in they all sounded like absolute crap. I have no golden ears and I've never even been in a car that has more audio-wise than an aftermarket headunit and stock speakers. But even still the OEM system in the BMW has clearly something not right from the start. I've contemplated the idea for a long time, but now I've decided it's time to do something about it. My goal isn't really to break any records here, but if at the end it sounds even slightly better than a decent run off the mill OEM setup, I will consider my goal reached.

Anyway, enough of the intro, here is the plan. Or at least what I've started with, which in a short time I made more complicated.

The original plan was:
-Keep the chinese Android headunit that I had as the source
-Fabricate better midwoofer mounts than the stock
-Deaden the doors
-Run front components passive off a Pioneer GM-D8704
-No rear speakers (they are mounted in the trunk facing the inside of it away from the passengers, so I'm veeery unsure that they could add anything to the table even with trying)
-Run a sealed subwoofer from the same amp.

After learning more and drooling about the possibilities of an active system, DSPs and whatnot, then returning back to earth and finding about the Kenwood units with DTA and 3-way active possibilities I decided to jump on that. Especially since I was not particularly happy with the Android headunit.

So a slight change of plans:

*Kenwood KDC-X5200BT* Running in 3-way mode for front tweeters/front woofers/subwoofer. If there was a version of it with short mechless body, I would've gone for that. But I liked that this one has a much cleaner look to it with the aux and USB being in the rear. Even though the space for wiring behind the dash is at a big premium in this car.
*Alpine SPG-17CS* component set. Very much not anything to write home about, but I got them for cheap and it should already be a huge improvement over what's been in there before.
*Pioneer GM-D8704* 4-channel amp. Powering The subwoofer and the door midwoofers.
*Caliber CA-180* 2-channel A/B amp for the front tweeters. Why? Because I already have it powering a subwoofer. It might not be the best thing for the job and probably a big overkill, but at this point it's free and it works well, so the plan is to use that.
*Rockford-Fosgate Punch-something-something 10"* subwoofer. I've bought that driver new for around 22 euros a number of years ago for my first car, made a box for it for another 10'er or so with a 5'er worth of carpet and it's been doing the job ever since. Ideally I'd love to make a custom-fit enclosure in the side panel of the trunk and maybe use a different driver, but for now I'm more concerned about the front-end ventures, so the sub for the time will do.



The decision to go active and adding a second amplifier really made for some more headache. At first I thought I would mount the single amp where the factory amp/navigation/CD changer would be. But two amps will likely not fit there, so it'll require some more fabrication and creativity. Running separate speaker wires for the tweeters and mids into the doors is also extra work, but I'm sure that definitely won't be the worst.

Anyway, here's what I have now;

The factory speakers are mounted in the door card. they sound terrible in there. When I got the car it already had aftermarket speakers there. Some JBL components screwed in with drywall screws. The drivers had their baskets cut around to fit inbetween the trim mounting spots, the surround was crushed against the trim, crossovers just dangling in the door and weirdly the JBL tweeters were not found - instead OEM tweeters were wired to the crossover. I suppose whoever did it could either not figure out how to mount the tweeters in the factory locations or even didn't know how to remove the trim around the tweeter. Either way I then put in a pair of coaxial speakers I had, since physically they were a much better fit and called it a day. That was a fair few years ago now.




















Even that was a tight fit, but it was better. Unless you count the re-use of the drywall screws.

As for making new, better mounts for the speakers - I wanted to mount them to the metal of the door instead of the flimsy door card. First I thought I could mount them in such way to retain the three door trim pegs that hold it, but later decided that atleast one of them had to go in order to not make then putting the card back on an impossible nightmare.

The metal location in question - not the nicest surface to try to make a flat mounting for a speaker.










First signs of a template










3D printed a spacer ring. I was going to use 4mm thick stiff plastic sheet I had to replace the plywood template, so that measured that a 20mm spacer ring was in need. Also the purple marker is where the speaker would go if it was cocentric with the doorcard mounts - however I had to shuffle it away from the mounts to give it atleast some free room.




























So this is pretty much as much progress as I've made over the lockdown rules and dealing with closed stores and such. Tweeters, however, fit in the factory brackets like a glove.





























Hopefully I will update this thread soon.


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## Notloudenuf (Sep 14, 2008)

I'm paying attention because I have a coupe that I am currently working on.
You may want to search e46 on here because there are several installs from years ago that have cut door metal to get more midbass. Good luck and I'm along for the ride.


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## JetBadger (Jan 4, 2021)

Notloudenuf said:


> I'm paying attention because I have a coupe that I am currently working on.
> You may want to search e46 on here because there are several installs from years ago that have cut door metal to get more midbass. Good luck and I'm along for the ride.


Thanks! Luck is one thing I will need, more in the way of finding time to work on this project above all else. I've searched for many e46 builds both here and on the rest of the internet. Helped me a lot to figure out the best way to go about this. Holes in the door is what I'm going for here aswell. The catalyst kinda was the fact that I had the passenger door replaced due to rust, so I have a throwaway door now to work with in the comfort of my parents' basement. 🤪

Also here are some pics of the sub box I built some time ago. It's not special, but I think it turned out alright for a first.























































And another thing I've made inbetween these holidays that should aid with any upcoming building of stuff. Bought that router over a year ago and haven't really used it since.


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## Notloudenuf (Sep 14, 2008)

That box looks great. Can we get a couple of exterior shots of the wagon?


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## JetBadger (Jan 4, 2021)

Notloudenuf said:


> That box looks great. Can we get a couple of exterior shots of the wagon?


Thanks and of course! Realised I didn't have any photos of it in its latest setup, so here are a couple in the current depressing weather. A gray car does not look the best in all gray background. For the record, the car is a 2003 2.0 diesel.




























I'm also quite fond of how the Kenwood looks in the dash. Seems to blend in quite a bit better than most aftermarket headunits. The conservative design and adjustable illumination color helps a lot as well.


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## Notloudenuf (Sep 14, 2008)

Very nice! The Kenwood looks right at home there and blends in well. Love the wagon, thanks for the pics.


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## JetBadger (Jan 4, 2021)

Notloudenuf said:


> Very nice! The Kenwood looks right at home there and blends in well. Love the wagon, thanks for the pics.


Well I can't wait until I can use the features that it has. Not sure when I can get to the wiring side of things with weather like this, but maybe I'll figure something out.

A bit of a loosely unrelated note, while waiting for the weekend when I can work on the car, I decided that it was time to do something about the tinny PC case that was echoing through all the fan noise all the time and driving me crazy. So I used a single sheet of the Silentcoat to help remedy the problem. It did help, but could be improved further I think. Maybe disconnect the fans altogether!


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## JetBadger (Jan 4, 2021)

Made some progress today. Decided to do the speaker mounts out of 12mm plywood this time, because the plastic I had that I wanted to use for the main flange would've been a bit too flimsy and buying a sheet of thick plastic to then throw away most of it is a bit economically unviable. I will at the very least paint the plywood to maybe get some more longetivity out of it.




























The cutouts are for the trim panel mounts to go through. It's a tight fit, but it seems to work.










Next main job is to seal this gap. At first I was breaking my head on how to make a plywood piece the shape to acommodate all the small things it need to go around. In the end I decided that I will just keep it simple and put just straight pieces in the places where they can be used with minimal headache, and the remaining gaps around the angled bits I will seal with foam or something else.










Also received a new tool. 10eur spent well.


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## Notloudenuf (Sep 14, 2008)

Did you cut the metal behind the speaker mount? Do you plan for any deadener or sealing the big holes in the door panels?


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## JetBadger (Jan 4, 2021)

Notloudenuf said:


> Did you cut the metal behind the speaker mount? Do you plan for any deadener or sealing the big holes in the door panels?


Yes and yes.

I have not cut the holes yet, but it's definitely going to happen. Same for sound deadening the doors. I'm not sure yet how I will go about the holes in the door, most likely cover the holes with acoustic foam, have the door card press agains it.


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## JetBadger (Jan 4, 2021)

One mount basically done. Also had a look at where I could mount the amplifiers. None of the oem locations either on the left side of the trunk or the one in front of the spare wheel are big enough, so I needed to figure something out in the spare wheel location. I cut out a piece in the shape of the location, however ran out of daylight to even test fit it. Plan is to divide the piece into 3 with a hinged part to tilt up the amplifiers so the spare wheel could be accessed.


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## Notloudenuf (Sep 14, 2008)

JetBadger said:


> View attachment 288801


Crazy. I was working on the exact same thing today. The box I built is deeper than the factory spare cover so I removed it and getting ready to cut correct pieces of wood.


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## JetBadger (Jan 4, 2021)

Notloudenuf said:


> Crazy. I was working on the exact same thing today. The box I built is deeper than the factory spare cover so I removed it and getting ready to cut correct pieces of wood.


Heh. That looks like the only possible place for anything more than a single small amp. I'm going to have to ditch the oem spare cover (the one under the main floor) aswell. I would've liked to keep it, but there is just no way to keep it, mount the rack on top of it and then have an accessible spare wheel. Unless maybe cutting it up to have a way for some bracketry to come through it that would have hinges attached to it for the rack. But at that point there is no use for it anyway.


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## Notloudenuf (Sep 14, 2008)

Any updates recently?


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## JetBadger (Jan 4, 2021)

Notloudenuf said:


> Any updates recently?


Nothing worth mentioning sadly other than the alternator crapping out in the few quite cold days that were earlier this week. I could've maybe ordered the wiring and some extra deadening over this week, but the cold makes it hard to put stuff together with no warm place to work in. 

At the moment I only have one speaker working in the car as the passenger door trim is off. And it sounds extra terrible  So I am looking forward with eager to when I can finally make atleast some real progress. The damn cold.


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## JetBadger (Jan 4, 2021)

I was thinking about this one thing for a bit now and can't seem to conclude the best way to do it. I was thinking about adding another 12mm ring to the mounts to space the speaker closer to the grill, as there is more than enough room for that. But that would kind of add up to an even longer "tunnel" behind the speaker, which is already 27mm (or just over 1"). Maybe someone here knows whether one would outweigh the other?


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## LBaudio (Jan 9, 2009)

try to bring speaker as close to doorcard as you can, if possible, since you are running coaxial drivers, make your own speaker grill which is less restrictive than the original grill...it will help a lot to get more mid-high/high tones into the listening area.
I would also suggest that you tape off door metal in area where speaker rings sits, use filler with strands to fill all voids between door metal and speaker rings. Put a neoprene under the driver to seal it off and to decouple it a bit.Close all big and small holes in inner door metal.


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## JetBadger (Jan 4, 2021)

LBaudio said:


> try to bring speaker as close to doorcard as you can, if possible, since you are running coaxial drivers, make your own speaker grill which is less restrictive than the original grill...it will help a lot to get more mid-high/high tones into the listening area.
> I would also suggest that you tape off door metal in area where speaker rings sits, use filler with strands to fill all voids between door metal and speaker rings. Put a neoprene under the driver to seal it off and to decouple it a bit.Close all big and small holes in inner door metal.


Thanks for the reply, it's exactly what I was wondering about. Whether having the speaker closer to the trim will overweigh the fact that it's more suffocated on the rear side by the even longer tunnel the adapter forms. I will glue on another layer of plywood to space it out at this point. The speakers will be components (Alpine spg-17cs), the one in the photos is just an old one as a test fit piece.


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## Notloudenuf (Sep 14, 2008)

JetBadger said:


> Thanks and of course! Realised I didn't have any photos of it in its latest setup, so here are a couple in the current depressing weather. A gray car does not look the best in all gray background. For the record, the car is a 2003 2.0 diesel.
> 
> 
> View attachment 288484
> ...


Where did you find room to stuff all the wires behind your head unit? So far I have it wired but there is no where to shove the harness AND fit the RCA wires back there.


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## Mic10is (Aug 20, 2007)

Notloudenuf said:


> Where did you find room to stuff all the wires behind your head unit? So far I have it wired but there is no where to shove the harness AND fit the RCA wires back there.


Tuck to the left and right. But mostly if you have enough slack u can tuck toward the speedo


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## Notloudenuf (Sep 14, 2008)

Thanks Mic I'll give that a try.


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## JetBadger (Jan 4, 2021)

Notloudenuf said:


> Where did you find room to stuff all the wires behind your head unit? So far I have it wired but there is no where to shove the harness AND fit the RCA wires back there.


Oh it is very tight in there. I removed the whole plastic cradle that holds the headunit and the climate controls, then tucked the majority of the wiring under it and have the main connector and the RCAs come from the right side I think. Even then it needs some persuasion to fit there. The main thing causing the hassle is the rear center bit of the cradle. Since I will have to remove the headunit once more when I run the rest of RCAs and other stuff, I think I will cut that bit out.


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## JetBadger (Jan 4, 2021)

Picked up the last bits today, cut the holes in the doors for the speakers. I tried several methods to do that on the scrap door - angle grinder with thick grinding wheel, regular zipcut wheel, dremel with a cutoff wheel and a hacksaw. The hacksaw yielded the best results, even though it was not very comfortable.

Also started making driver's side speaker mount. Not sure if I will be able to space the speaker closer to the grill. I cut spacer rings and was about to glue them on, but decided to check what's under the door trim. There is a chance that by spacing it out more it will hit the edge of the door pocket. But further investigation is required.


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## JetBadger (Jan 4, 2021)

Small update as always due to lack of time, but it's something.

Soldered pigtails with bullet connectors to the speakers.










Got a 5 core cable and a ISO speaker plug to run from the amp in the back to the connector behind the HU and into the OEM wiring for the tweeters. Mids will need separate wires. Also having 5 cores it's enough for two speakers and a remote, so that's nice.



















The run with the tweeter cable and the mismatched RCAs.










Finding space for even more connections and stiff cables behind the dash was not easy, oh boy.










So many pieces need to come out for seemingly such a simple task, but what can ye do... While I have the rear trim off I will replace shock mounts aswell.










Played around with possible amp layout, turns out there will be much less room to spare than I anticipated. Really should've ponied up for a 5ch amp. Well, maybe down the line...










More caveman modifications to the door trims. Broke. so. many. clips.



















Also painted and temporarily mounted the baffles, wired up the speakers with the passive crossovers to an amp, since I've disconnected the speakers from the HU and I have no intentions to take the dash apart several more times to plug it in and out while I work on it. For now the amp just sits in the trunk strapped down with a single strap. I was really curious of how much of a difference there would be. And the difference is already huge! Even though there's so much left to do. I've put some deadening in the passenger side door, but the cold weather is not very nice for that, so I need to finish that part off. And I want to epoxy the baffles to reduce moisture damage. And make the amp rack board atleast somewhat usable. And run wires for the mids into the doors. And probably something more...


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## JetBadger (Jan 4, 2021)

Another small update. Wow this is taking me a long time. Eitherway I wanted to get done with the passenger side today. That includes running the extra cable into the door and treating the door. I kind of done that, but not really, since the replacement trim clips I got are very weak and pop out. I suppose I will order some OEM ones.

Drilled out the connector in an unused spot by the factory speaker contacts.











Found these CCF "fast" rings I bought several years ago. They will come in handy, even though not for their intended purpose.










Applied some seals to the baffle. The lighter gray tape is a 2mm thick one, it will compress. Bits of the fastring foam for the bigger gaps did the job nicely.










Applied deadener to most of the outer skin and the flimsier bits on the inner one. I was thinking for a while how I would seal the big hole in the door. Couldn't use a flat piece as the edges are all over the place height-wise. Decided to just keep the OEM vapor barrier. It also goes under the airbag and over the window motor. Sealing those would be a headache, so I just left the factory piece. Also put a piece of eggcrate shape CCF behind the speaker and glued a strip of it around the inside of the hole I cut in the door, so that any water that runs down the inside of the skin would be directed around it, rather than drip on the speaker.




















Same "2mm" gasket foam. What a versatile product. Oh and I didn't mention, but I glued another 12mm spacer to the baffles. Now it's real close to the trim, maybe even a bit too close. But it will do. 
Didn't put the gasketing tape between the speaker and the baffle however, as even though it's the thinnest stuff I could find, it's still too thick for this and causes the basket to bend out between the screws.










Silentcoat on the flimsier plastic bits of the trim and covered the whole panel with the same eggcrate CCF.



















Both doors are now treated, even though they will still need more attention, despite my best wishes to be done with them already. Need new clips for the passenger door and run the speaker wire to the driver's.

I couldn't resist connecting up the speakers to the amp, through the passive crossovers for now and it sounds better than I even hoped. Never thought I could hear that much low end from these doors. It's an amazing difference. Can't wait to finish wiring the thing so I can make use of the active setup. With a proper image and sub it should be great.


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## Mic10is (Aug 20, 2007)

Likely would have been easier with better results to do mids in kick panels.
But it's nice to see your progress and see what others do to bmws


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## JetBadger (Jan 4, 2021)

Mic10is said:


> Likely would have been easier with better results to do mids in kick panels.
> But it's nice to see your progress and see what others do to bmws


You're probably right and I have toyed with that idea for a bit. Maybe if it was an auto it would've been viable, but as it is now I think that would impair the drivability too much. Also I wanted to retain the oem appearance as much as possible. Venting the woofers in the kicks would be a bit of an issue I think with the way those spots are and not really sure I would've liked the process of cutting up those spots of the car. Eitherway the improvement is massive already. I've never been in an sq car of any kind. The way just the cheap components sound in deadened doors already blows my mind. If I had an actual reference it might not be so, hehe. 

As I was reading about tuning and downfalls of such 2-way setups, it did irk me a bit that maybe I should think about a more substantial upgrade, but in reality the current plan will likely give me everything I look for. Especially since going forward from there would mean exponentially bigger expenses. Maybe if I feel like it's not enough down the line.


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## Mic10is (Aug 20, 2007)

JetBadger said:


> You're probably right and I have toyed with that idea for a bit. Maybe if it was an auto it would've been viable, but as it is now I think that would impair the drivability too much. Also I wanted to retain the oem appearance as much as possible. Venting the woofers in the kicks would be a bit of an issue I think with the way those spots are and not really sure I would've liked the process of cutting up those spots of the car. Eitherway the improvement is massive already. I've never been in an sq car of any kind. The way just the cheap components sound in deadened doors already blows my mind. If I had an actual reference it might not be so, hehe.
> 
> As I was reading about tuning and downfalls of such 2-way setups, it did irk me a bit that maybe I should think about a more substantial upgrade, but in reality the current plan will likely give me everything I look for. Especially since going forward from there would mean exponentially bigger expenses. Maybe if I feel like it's not enough down the line.


Do a search for Benny Z's build log. You'll see what's possible in an E46.

My wife has a 330i. So I'm quite familiar with the car. There is a bit of metal to cut for kick panels to work well but also it's nothing structural.
Also 2 big wire harnesses to contend with which are a pain. But can be moved out of the way when u remove enough metal.


Here is an older pic when there was just a 6.5 in kicks
And one w the 6.5 and 3


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## JetBadger (Jan 4, 2021)

Those do look pretty and I bet sound great aswell! However I still could not live without the dead pedal. Right now I have the foot rest removed, because I couldn't be bothered to put it back in just to have to take it out again for the wiring and it's absence is driving me crazy. Of course there's a always a price to pay for sound quality. I still think what I did is a bit less involved, maybe it's just my oem-look fetish there.

I have ordered an UMIK-1 (also a pair of capacitors for the tweeters) earlier this week, since I'm a sucker for measurements and data. Then remembered that the Kenwood does not have EQ for separate channels, only one main one. I will see what's going on and what I can do and maybe it will piss me off enough to go further down the rabbit hole. If anything, the Dayton 408 is not that expensive and I could make do with solving it's noise issues. Then again, the speakers are a 60eur set, so not sure if much can be expected from them...


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## JetBadger (Jan 4, 2021)

Started building the sub box today. It's gonna go in the spare tire well. Should turn out to 25l or so.



















I've been trying to find which driver to use for this for a while now. Got a few options, but now that the box is coming together I see that I may have more depth than I thought I would, so that might open up some more possibilities.

This the idea of the configuration I am thinking of. The sub box with 12mm top board will bolt to rivnuts on the flat sheetmetal to the sides of the well and the amp rack will bolt up to the sub box through rubber mounts to reduce the vibration. I may, however, have to ditch the separate amp rack and mount the amps directly to the box because of height. 

Also probably will use more than one spacer for the sub to gain more depth for the driver if needed. The amp layout will need attention as well. Really should've gone with a single 5ch from the get go.


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## Mic10is (Aug 20, 2007)

I dunno where youre located, but we are selling our E46 330i. gutting audio to put most in new vehicle.
Interested in a dash, with Arc Audio RS3s custom mounted with custom grill? If the apillars from a sedan fit a wagon, id throw those in too, theyre custom built for Arc Audio RS1.
speakers would be included.
Just dont want to waste nice pieces and the labor to do the install.


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## JetBadger (Jan 4, 2021)

Mic10is said:


> I dunno where youre located, but we are selling our E46 330i. gutting audio to put most in new vehicle.
> Interested in a dash, with Arc Audio RS3s custom mounted with custom grill? If the apillars from a sedan fit a wagon, id throw those in too, theyre custom built for Arc Audio RS1.
> speakers would be included.
> Just dont want to waste nice pieces and the labor to do the install.


I am in the middle of Europe, not sure if that would be possible


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## Mic10is (Aug 20, 2007)

JetBadger said:


> I am in the middle of Europe, not sure if that would be possible


Well if u wanna pay shipping...I'll ship it


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## JetBadger (Jan 4, 2021)

Mic10is said:


> Well if u wanna pay shipping...I'll ship it


I must pass. It would be not economically viable and on top of that I should really dial down on the scope of this build in my head or I'll never finish it at this rate. As much as I drool over the possible improvement with a 3-way front, first need to finish the current setup to see what it's even like


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## JetBadger (Jan 4, 2021)

Taking a look at the woofer location. Needs a little bit more clearance...










Gluing up some double pieces.




























The amp layout will be like below, only minus the rat's nest  The passive crossovers will go away and distribution will be in the top right corner. With the way the wiring comes out of the amps, it's the only way it makes sense. Of course the whole placement of everything is quite aesthetically random, but function over form here.

I've also had to ditch the rubber mounted floating amp rack due to the height it would add.










And another refreshment for the car - new headlight covers.


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## l33th3tr33 (May 12, 2021)

Been looking at what to do for my current (4th) 46 coupe, specifically the front doors and I'll be doing what you've done for sure. My previous 46's were very mediocre sound wise although I never went past just mounting new speakers so I'm looking forward to doing it properly this time. Thanks for putting up such in depth info and pics, much appreciated and I'll be following this for sure! Good luck with the build.


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## JetBadger (Jan 4, 2021)

l33th3tr33 said:


> Been looking at what to do for my current (4th) 46 coupe, specifically the front doors and I'll be doing what you've done for sure. My previous 46's were very mediocre sound wise although I never went past just mounting new speakers so I'm looking forward to doing it properly this time. Thanks for putting up such in depth info and pics, much appreciated and I'll be following this for sure! Good luck with the build.


Thanks! Just don't take my process as a how-to, this is my first time doing something more involved than a speaker replacement or a headunit and sub install. I'm sure there are better or 'more-correct' ways of doing most of what I've done here so far, so more research is always good.


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## l33th3tr33 (May 12, 2021)

JetBadger said:


> Thanks! Just don't take my process as a how-to, this is my first time doing something more involved than a speaker replacement or a headunit and sub install. I'm sure there are better or 'more-correct' ways of doing most of what I've done here so far, so more research is always good.


Oh, I'm in the same position. I've not used sound deadening before but really need to in the coupe as the rear shelf rattles like mad, so I'll be happy just to sort that alone. I've looked at guides for the 46 a few times over the years and all seem to be the same old, but your pics and explanation of what you're doing is very helpful.


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## JetBadger (Jan 4, 2021)

Well after a long while of physical and mental issues, the saga continues.

Had to trim off 3mm off this tube thing to make it fit as a brace in the sub box. Man, doing this was scary.










Found out that by removing the follower bearing off a chamfer bit I can do several passes of different depths to achieve a much larger chamfer. Really wanted to do it in this spot, because the Alpine woofer has fairly small openings and they are close to the baffle, so with a baffle this thick (51mm in total I think?) it was a must.










Threaded inserts for sub mounting.










Then followed drilling the car. It was a bit unnerving task, but I managed to not drill into anything I did not intend. Used closed end stainless steel M6 rivnuts. At one point I thought I will not be able to fit the rivnut tool in the spots I chose, but it ended up working out just fine.

The box is now trimmed, wired and other than finding more suitable bolts, mounted. Next up follows the amp layout and wiring


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## JetBadger (Jan 4, 2021)

Wired it up for the most part today. At the end it was running but of daylight fast, but I wanted to atleast test it today, so will need to return to sort out the speaker wires a bit better and place caps on the tweeter lines.

After a quick conservative gain eyeball and T/A setting it sounds better than it was and the addition of a sub is nice. However still need to see how I can set it up better.


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## ReCat (Oct 12, 2021)

After adding the sound deadening have you noticed a decrease in road noise, if so by how much?


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## JetBadger (Jan 4, 2021)

ReCat said:


> After adding the sound deadening have you noticed a decrease in road noise, if so by how much?


I've only put deadening in the front doors, so can't say it was a very extensive treatment. However it did reduce the noise a little bit that comes from the door area. The holes I cut for the speakers sort of negated that, but after everything is assembled back I can say it is definitely not worse, probably slightly better than stock. 

The biggest difference was the quality improvement from the midbass after the deadening and venting the speaker into the door. One thing I did not do that I want to rectify is the fact that I did not seal up the large opening in the metal. At the time I figured it's a bit too complex of a shape to do easily and that the foam on the back of the doorcard will press against the vapour barrier enough to effectively seal it. However I feel like covering it up with some aluminium sheet or such would be a definite improvement both in the sound and the door vibration.


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## JetBadger (Jan 4, 2021)

Spent all day tidying up the wires. I was very close to leaving it as is, because "you can't see it anyway", but decided to do a proper job for once in my life. Labeled all the speaker cables, because I feel like I will not keep the system without some changes and upgrades for very long.

Also those are 3D printed button caps for the bolts that hold the box/rack to the car.


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## Notloudenuf (Sep 14, 2008)

JetBadger said:


> Also those are 3D printed button caps for the bolts that hold the box/rack to the car.


How about a close up of the button caps. Looking good. How do you like the sound?


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## JetBadger (Jan 4, 2021)

Notloudenuf said:


> How about a close up of the button caps. Looking good. How do you like the sound?


Thanks! I will snap a photo tomorrow, but they're just bits of a sphere with a slot on the underside to snap onto the round DIN912 bolt heads.

It sounds not too bad, but then again my level of reference are my bookshelf speakers. I like how much actual difference T/A does compared to passive crossovers before, a huge improvement really. But again, I'm yet to "tune" the system. Tune as in set the gains properly and check polarity, especially since these are 12dB slopes. Just didn't have the time for now to pull out all the toys for that, so for now it's all guesstimated. Other than that the processing in the head unit is pretty limited, that's why I said it may not stay long in the previous post. Really want to try to see what I could do with a DSP and 2" midranges. The possibilities are endless!


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## JetBadger (Jan 4, 2021)

Wanted to wrap up the doors once and for all (hopefully) as the thought kept bugging me ever since. Cut out blanking plates from 0.7mm zinc steel, made a sandwitch with CCF on one side and CLD on the other. M5 rivnuts for mounting. Covered up every hole and opening, other than ones needed for mounting stuff. Also took out the tweeters and sanded off the chrome plating on them as it kept annoying me seeing them shine through the oem grilles. Now I can finally put the doors together completely and forget about them.





































Oh, and these are the printed covers for the bolts in the trunk. Nothing special, but still they look a bit better than plain bolt heads.


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## JetBadger (Jan 4, 2021)

I got another piece to go in. Bought a Helix M4 DSP! I was going back and forth between "it's improvement enough, why spend any more money on this?" and "but it could be so much better..." for a while and finally decided to pull the trigger on a DSP. The M4 being only few tens more than the DSP.3 and having more DSP channels and 4 amplified ones seemed like a pretty good deal.

The other part of the plan is to put small midrange drivers in the a-pillars for a 3-way front. I have a pair of 2" Vifa NE65W's and think that's what I'm going to use. Another contender is the Dayton RS75 that many people seem to use with good results. I will need to decide before starting the fabrication, would be hard to change my mind mid-process.

Plan is to take out the crusty Caliber amp, place the Helix and the Pioneer side-by-side on the front side of the rack on standoffs and route the wires under them. Leaved the midbass and the sub to the Pioneer amp and Helix for mids and tweeters. 

And I still need to make the grill piece for the sub as now it's still covered by the floor board.


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## JetBadger (Jan 4, 2021)

So I've spent the last two days redoing the amp layout and wiring. Wanted to put the amps on standoffs, so I could route wires under them and reduce the clutter. 

M4 threaded inserts and 20mm standoffs:


















Test fitting. The wiring mess behind was quite a tedious challenge afterwards...


















Cut out a bit of plastic sheet to mount the distribution blocks for relocation under the factory compartment thing.


















All in all it turned out OK. Wish I had made things in the hidden compartment a bit more compact, which would have allowed for tidier execution, but it's fine really. Late evening now so I'm leaving the <attempted> tuning for another day. The only things I did today in that regard were doing a basic setup for the Helix and some attempts at RTA measurements with the UMIK-1 to see what it looks like. Lots of things to learn there.


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## JetBadger (Jan 4, 2021)

Thought I'd share my findings and and attempts to adjust the DSP. I did try to do some kind of tune last week, however not with satisfying results.

Today's result was this. It does look pretty bad, doesn't it. Ended up knocking down the level of the tweeters by a couple dB afterwards. However I got a bit lazy and just left the tweeter settings from previous time. Should have started over and put some effort into them, as now after coming home it looks worse than in the cold garage lol.










There are so many issues with the door mounted mids that I was not even sure where to place a target line and even then, the tweeters don't play low enough and the door mids don't play high enough for the two to even crossover properly.

This is the un-eq'd response from the left and right door mids:









Here are the mids after EQ and their pair. Not exactly sure why they sum by so much between 90 and 130Hz. I knocked down any EQ bands that were on both mids in that range, however it didn't help much. Further research is needed.


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## JetBadger (Jan 4, 2021)

Started on the A-pillars for the Vifa NE-65's. Got the second hand pillar trims for 5€ a piece a while ago. The pillars are not very friendly at all in these cars sadly, a 2" midrange is probably the most you can put on there without it looking horrible. No depth to sink anything into the pillar either. Not sure I'll be happy with the aesthetics, but eitherway it'll be an experience.


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## JetBadger (Jan 4, 2021)

Really wanted to test out the midranges, so after a few passes with filler and sandpaper put them in place, ran wires just through the interior for now and tried to tune them in. Gotta say having midrange is definitely nice. Not sure what I can expect from a 100eur front stage and the whole install being winged as it went. So far I'm quite happy with the results, however I suppose I should spend more time with the DSP side of things. I'm sure it could be even better than it is now.


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## JetBadger (Jan 4, 2021)

Got done with the pillars more or less. Want to make some kind of grilles for the speakers though. I was thinking about pressing grills, but I think I'll try 3D printing something first to hold on the screws with magnets.

Trimming them was a mental and physical workout, ended up having to leave a single seam where I had to bunch up the material. It's in a barely visible spot though, so I'm quite happy with how it turned out given that it's my first time doing it and all in all these pillars were never going to be perfect.


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## mfenske (Feb 7, 2006)

Great work on the pods!


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## JetBadger (Jan 4, 2021)

mfenske said:


> Great work on the pods!


Thanks!

At this point not sure what the next big step should be


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## JetBadger (Jan 4, 2021)

Small additional thing, finally ran the aux and USB to the glove box. There would be an oem torch socket there normally, but this car did not come with one. It is handy, because I used the torch connector to wire the dashcam to and it powers up with unlocking the car and powers down with locking or with a timer if the car is off. As if it was made for it.


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## TJ Mobile Audio (May 6, 2009)

Any updates recently? Can't believe I just barely found this one. Lots of good ideas for my e46 build. I, too, didn't do quite enough with the midrange install the first time around, will need to modify again. Good call on the rivnuts, you'll need to access that area regularly for window regulator replacements 

Interesting thought on the USB and Aux placement - I do have a USB fished up into the glovebox to run my 4G modem, but it's just lying there coiled up. Would be more than willing to sacrifice the stupid OEM flashlight to make a spot for it. I'll just have to see if the 4G modem fits there properly without getting slammed in glovebox door every time I close it.


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