I know I know,I’ve been a bit on a car stereo kick. which so far btw is overrated. I mean. Putting in a new amp and speakers makes a huge diff. But the , setting it up and ‘ tuning it’ a a bit overrated. Being 54 I am the generation that gets annoyed from what you buy is what you get My 2011 328i is even better built than my wife’s 2020 4 series. but marvel on the speakers used on my 2011. 3 series Yeah. It pisses me off Getting them all changed one by one
...Well, at least from what can be seen in the pic, it looks like they have butyl surrounds and the frame looks like it's thicker than plain stamped steel? Also, could there be tweeters hiding behind those dustcaps?
Don't be. Years ago a girl wanted to take me out on a date. She picked me up in her parents Merc 560SL. A really nice car, but the stereo sounded like a 1960's Japanese transistor radio. jeff
It’s just my generation. we still get annoyed as all hell when we feel or ‘ know ‘ we have been ‘ ripped off’ my wife’s 2020 series 4 start button has already worn off. Mine doesn’t have a single scratch on it. I could mention so so many other qualms, but I’ll leave it to stereo since that’s what this forum is about so, yeah, I’m abhorred by the complete quality from such an expensive and ‘ prestigious’ vehicle. Rant
@Tone? and @vinylkid58, your posts remind me of an effort in the 1980s to get better car sound through EQ - Blaupunkt (sic?) came out with modules that were tailored specifically to the acoustics a car - just plug the module for your vehicle into their aftermarket amp. I didn't have the wheels or the currency to try out the concept back then, but it was intriguing thought. Now these days with DSP and noise cancellation technology...can one make a silk purse out of a sow's ear?
Ah yeah, BMW has cut corners like crazy on the latest generation. I have a 2022 M3 and 2017 X5. The button quality in the x5 (and my older 2017 M2) is so much more substantial and well built. then there’s the stereos… The m3 has the Harmon Kardon which is quite decent. The x5 has the base stereo and wow it’s boomy and cheap. Really ruins the driving experience. Never considered upgrading components as I assume the amps and speakers are all bespoke crap.
Eh, you should see what can be found in some higher-end (expensive) home speakers. Most don't realize that the single most expensive part of their pricey loudspeakers, is the cabinet. Those BMW speakers actually look decent, they may measure quite good. I wouldn't be quite so quick to dismiss them.
The 328i is an entry level BMW, there is nothing high end about that car so with respect the system is vehicle appropriate when you consider most vehicles come with **** stereos.
And the mid bass drivers are under the seat. Total garbage. I bought a M2 without doing my research on the stereo.
My Hyundai Accent has the normal bad to worse factory installed system. But since I don't drive for long periods of time as I did prior to retirement, I make do. I can't see me putting money into that car stereo for a series of five minute drives. However, I recently changed my streaming account to Deezer. The change has nothing to do with the sound of my car stereo, but it has proven to be a good improvement. Deezer has various settings including a high fidelity range. It really sounds nice, and makes the car stereo acceptable. It also sounds great wirh my home system.
Ah so that's what that weird vent was under the seat! Always wondered. I even had the upgraded version on that car, and it was still kind of meh. I remember when I was so let down when I traded in my Fiat 500 for a 228i with base stereo. Couldn't believe the step back it was in sound quality. I'll never buy another base stereo BMW. Awful!
Entry level. Ok Mr moneybags. Lol nah I know what you mean that it is entry level. Mine is, but the sport model with all the accoutrements. Blah blah but old school thought is that, you pay well for something and you get something half decent.
This^ Just the buttons, the stitching , even the BMW logo on the wheel is compete garbage compared to my older one. seats, etc. only the electronics are more up to date. ( better) and if you go further back to the early 2000’s the button quality, knobs etc are even better.
haha, after a long time you remember about the car and the (mediocre) audio, but about the girl you don't say anything.. OK, got it. She didn't give it to you ...
'they' allready went downhill from the mid 90's. That's when I stopped buying 'them', having driven nothing else until then. German engineering my @ss.
I owned a 2001 3 Series when in college. Unfortunately, it was one of the most unreliable cars I ever lived with. I bought it based on the experience with my ex girlfriend’s 318 that, aside from some minor electrical gremlins, seemed near bullet proof with 250K odo. Big mistake. Since I was living on a fixed income at that time, I nearly had to become a Bimmer mechanic to keep the 325 on the road. And if you think yours is bad well, whatever trim level I had (sport or entry whatever) didn't even come from the factory with rear deck speakers installed. Regarding the switch gear, it was nice when newer but shortly after I purchased the car (with approximately 80k mi), the rubber-like coating applied to all the plastic touch surfaces and switches began to wear off quickly. I noticed the same issues in my mom’s 2011 Z4 when it had only 34K on the odometer. That car had more rattles than something like a 95 Pontiac Sunfire. My folks took it to the dealer multiple times to address an obnoxious knocking from the retractable hard top. I managed to fix it on the first attempt by simply adjusting the latch stops. I’ve owned a number of European vehicles over the years and have worked on many more. My conclusion is that they’re mostly designed to hold up for the original owner. These brands know the original owners are likely to trade them in before 90K is reached, after which the problems increase almost exponentially. This is a major reason why their five-year value retention is much lower than a Lexus or Acura. As much as I love how some of them handle and drive when new (especially those from the E46 era), I don’t foresee myself ever owning another unless maybe I hit the lottery.
Tuning it yourself can be overrated, if you don't have the right tools. I worked with a bunch of professional car audio guys from Delphi and Harman. 90% of the difference between a JBL car audio system and a Mark Levinson car audio system is how much tuning they do. The speakers and electronics are usually very similar, as they don't want to go through the arduous type acceptance procedure that can take years. The OEM stuff is not primarily designed with performance in mind, it's designed to not break and need to be replaced under warranty or, worse, trigger a recall. Whatever money is left over in the audio budget is used to make it sound good. Aftermarket stuff is designed to mainly sound good, with durability a secondary consideration. Which might be fine for your cost/benefit analysis, but it's also why most car speakers only come with a one year warranty, unless you splurge and pick up a $2500 set of Morel speakers, in which case you get a whopping two years. They'll probably last longer than a year or two, but the manufacturer isn't willing to bet *their* money that they will.
the pitfalls of high volume price points. every dollar they save is multiplied by X100, 000 vehicle sales volume and results in additional annual profit.
You guys are not thinking big enough. Back in the early ‘70s I had a ‘65 Datsun 1600 2-seat roadster. Of course its radio was junk but that changed when I put an AR 2ax immediately behind the drivers seat. Sure, it didn’t play very loud but there was no need with the speaker just a foot from my ears, and to my 19-year old ears it sounded mighty good indeed!
My next car will be an EV. My Volkswagen TDI is the last internal combustion engine vehicle I’ll ever own. 200,000 km on the odo. What I’ll look for - probably most obviously - is how much better even a base factory sound system will sound when absent the background engine noise. The last Tesla I was in (Toronto is lousy with them) - a Model S - had an audio system that sounded about as good as I expect a car system can sound. No engine noise intruding in the passenger cabin - not at any speed. BTW, 0-100 kilometers per hour (60 mph) in 3.1 seconds which we clocked from a standing start from a ramp onto Hwy 401 eastbound (a little detail for the Torontonians on SHF!). Whatever. The questionable effort of ‘investing’ in car audio has always been, IMO, largely a waste of otherwise perfectly good money. Engine noise, road noise, and extremely offset listening positions, not to mention the impossibility of any DSP ever invented of creating a decent balance for more than one seating position, leaves nothing but loudness. That’s great for the rap and hip-hop and beats fans, but none of them can hear the horn from the guy in the adjacent lane whom they’re about to cut off. None of them can hear the ambulance siren screaming for them to move over. And none of them gets within a country mile of high-fidelity. Car audio efforts, I think, should be concentrated on systems that offer the best connectivity so that TIDAL/Qobuz/whatever can be streamed, and/or so that sat radio reception is robust, and/or so that vocal clarity and midrange clarity is accurate and well-distributed inside the cabin. If all that basic stuff isn’t designed into the factory cabin and audio system, it’s a expensive process to attempt to third-party it into existence and the effort is rarely fully successful. IMO, save your money. In Canada, the stats seem to indicate that 328i vehicles in all trim levels have generated above average numbers of owner headaches and aggravations for many, many years. 3-series vehicles in all trim levels have had some good years without a doubt, but they’ve always been just entry levels into the BMW fold. Have I seen a 2-series on the road recently? Have to look that up. In most markets - particularly in North America - 3-series repair rates have been high, turnover has been high, and the used car lots have driven used prices down because those lots always have too many to choose from. Owner retention has been well below every other owned (i.e., non-leased) BMW series. Unless a passenger cabin is so heavily insulated from both road and engine noise that the driver loses a significant (and important!) amount of feel for the road and presence, there is no way for a car audio system to be worth upgrading.
The quiter the car, the more you will sense annoying squeks and rattles.....did you hear any squeaks and rattles inside the Tesla? I recently watched this video. One main complaint is the rattles noise inside Tesla Y. You can jump to 31:40 of the video for his verdict about how he felt about it. If you plan to get the model Y next, do tell us all about it. Also, curious, when was the last time you heard the top trim audio (Mark Levinson) in a nice Lexus sedan?
My 2022 Volvo x60 "standard" audio system sounds better then all cars I had before, incl Infiniti and BMW. I suspect new car has better DSP and tailored for that specific car. I declined $3K (!) Option for B&W branded upgraded stereo.
