Car's Great-Audio Sucks

[DrJake]

I have a leased 04 M3 Cab with stock audio. I've heard the HK isn't much better. Anyway, I have to say the system sounds like the old delco in my box nova.

What's the simplest way to boost the audio a bit without doing a something irreversible on this leased baby?

If I upgraded the speakers, is the head/amp good enough to handle better, or will the head drag them down and still sound lousy? If I throw an Inifinity Basslink in the trunk, I imagine it would add a bit on the low end but worry the high/mid so easily distorts, that it wouldn't be worth it.

The car ripples with muscle but there's not much junk in the speedo's if you catch me.

Anybody been down this road?

Jake

 

[wizard]

The stock radio does suck...My suggestion to you is to replace the speakers and the preamp but leave the head unit..that way you don't screw with the electronics. Tweeter center actually makes a custom system just for the e46 M3. I bought it myself when I owned this car and it just sounded awesome. The name of the manufacturer is J&L audio...trust me ...you HAVE to do his...They will install it for you..The total cost is about $1,200..but trust me it's worth it.

 

[andreyiv]

Hmmm, just going to tell you this, if you replace the amp, you need to rewire the car, if you replace the head unit, you need an adaptor, if you replace the speakers you don't need to do anything more if everything fits right. I don't know about e46s but in e36 and e30 (so I imagine its the same thing here), the speakers are actually not that bad, but the amp sucks and because of that the head unit sucks. What you can do is get a new HU (but a good HU, look into Alpine 9813 (CD/MP3/WMA/CD-R/CD-R) head unit, its last years model so you can get it for cheap but it was one of the better Alpines), then rewire the car, meaning run speakers directly from the headunit, bypassing everything and you will have pretty good sound. It will be loud, even without an amp and if they kept doing what they were doing before, you'll get much better quality sound. When your ready to give the car back, you can just put in the old HU and re do the speakers. This way will probably be one of the cheaper ways to get better sound all around, but you will have to rewire the speakers. Personally that is what I am going to do except I will probably replace the speakers. Don't know if its right for you since you will need about a day of work to do it all and then a day of work getting back to stock if you know how to solder wires and don't mind taking a lot of the interior apart, hehe. Of course before you do that, you can get the head unit witht he adaptor and just see how it sounds with the old amp. All you'll have to do is take out the old HU, plug in the adaptor and put in the new HU, shouldn't take you more than half an hour if that much and thats probably the easiest thing to do that will give you better sound, just the amp will be limiting your potential.