Upgrading E46 HK Speakers - BSW and your experience?

[bclarkeva]

I plan to upgrade the HK speakers on my 2002 330i and want to know:

- have either of you done the Bavarian Soundworks speaker upgrade and what improvement did it make?

- what other types of speakers have others used to upgrade the system?

I'm planning on keeping the factory head unit and amp, so focusing on speakers. Goal is crisper, tighter sound from highs to lows. Not aiming at higher SPL.

Thanks,

Bob C

[Nick325xiT 5spd]

If you insist on keeping the stock amplifier, the BSW system is decent. The stock speakers in an E46 are pretty junky, but they are also held back hugely by the amplifier, which produces next to no power at rather impressive levels of distortion.

I've found that the BSW stuff is a little bit more shrill than I'd like, but that is a common problem with any aftermarket setup that doesn't have meaningful EQ.

The stock head units are pretty good (and replacement is too hideous to contemplate), but I strongly encourage you to look at swapping out the amplifier.

[prentissra]

Would you have any advice if you didn't go the BSW route? Anything that is easy or a DIY?

[Nick325xiT 5spd]

I will say flat out that nothing is easy, and that the BSW system in an E46 is not as unreasonably priced as people think it is.

If I had an E9x with HK, the absolute ticket is a JBL MS-8 processor. You'll need a small two channel amp to power the underseat subs, but you can run everything else off of the MS-8's internal amps. The stock HK speakers in the E9x are genuinely decent with a powerful EQ/DSP processor. You'd end up spending slightly more than the cost of the BSW speakers to do this, but it's worth it. The MS-8 is just awesome.

In the E46, you struggle with crap speaker locations and fairly ghastly installation constraints. The real problem is that making an E46 sound genuinely good requires, well, a lot of work. BSW is honestly a pretty good and simple solution.

I'd like to experiment with a set of Hybrid Imagine coaxials (~$200) installed in the stock woofer location. I think that that would provide decent sound rather than the ear shattering treble you get when you install powerful tweeters in the stock location. (Putting them up high If it works as I (hope) that it would, you could get away with a small amp, no EQ, and you could use the back channels of a small amp either to run rear fill (Hi-Vi coaxials in the deck, ~$70), or a sub. This is largely speculation, but it's how I would start my build over in the M3 if I went back to the beginning.

All that said, I would strongly advise you to leave everything alone if you think the sound is adequate, just not perfect. Getting somewhere near perfect is both a pain in the ass, expensive, and starts requiring other compromises.