E60 Stereo upgrade

[ralph s3]

Hi All,

I normally lurk in the TVR S series forum but have just swapped my old 528se for a newish E60 525d. I love all aspects of the car except the stereo sound (standard one) which to be honest is woeful. I have done a search and have seen that I am not alone in my views but I haven't seen a post describing a successful improvement.

Has anyone made any changes (perhaps added a sub) and successfully linked it into the E60 wiring without having to rip the interior apart. I know that BMW sometimes build all the cars with the wiring for optional components in place and was wondering if the E60 had any wiring that could be used for driving additional speakers/amps. I am pretty handy with spanner etc (i run a TVR S after all) but I have not had much experience in car audio
beyond installing four speakers and a head unit.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

Ralph

[Fixedwheelnut]

To be honest unless you can upgrade/retro fit a better BMW stereo you are stuck with what you've got.

The stereo system on the E60 is part of the 'Most Bus system on a fibre optic network linked to many other circuits.

Also any speaker changes in the rear shelf area to non BMW can affect the magnetic field and accuracy of Sat Nav if it's fitted.

Best bet is to phone your dealer and see if a Harmmon Kardon retro fit is available.

[DanH]

ralph s3 said:

Hi All,

I normally lurk in the TVR S series forum but have just swapped my old 528se for a newish E60 525d. I love all aspects of the car except the stereo sound (standard one) which to be honest is woeful. I have done a search and have seen that I am not alone in my views but I haven't seen a post describing a successful improvement.

Has anyone made any changes (perhaps added a sub) and successfully linked it into the E60 wiring without having to rip the interior apart. I know that BMW sometimes build all the cars with the wiring for optional components in place and was wondering if the E60 had any wiring that could be used for driving additional speakers/amps. I am pretty handy with spanner etc (i run a TVR S after all) but I have not had much experience in car audio
beyond installing four speakers and a head unit.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

Ralph

I read about this a bit last night when investigating doing similar for my e90. If you dig around on the e60 forum (forgotten it's name but google will find it for you (it isn't on PH obviously!)) there is a bit of info about what you can do.

[blackspider]

The upgrade would be logic 7-no officail retrofit but it is do able-its a 13 speaker system

[hughjayteens]

We offer a few E60 upgrade packages depending on budget - I would forget trying to retrofit Logic 7 as while it is possible, it would cost £££££ and still not sound all that!!

Feel free to email me.

Cheers

Chris

www.prestigeaudio.co.uk

[blackspider]

hughjayteens said:

We offer a few E60 upgrade packages depending on budget - I would forget trying to retrofit Logic 7 as while it is possible, it would cost £££££ and still not sound all that!!

Feel free to email me.

Cheers

Chris

www.prestigeaudio.co.uk

This is the way I would go if it were mine.There is so much more on offer throu these guys and for half the price.
I worked with Jamie Shaw at Carisma on the gold Cerbera and the sound systems that he fitted to that and the R5 Turbo were absolutely amazing.Perfectly crystal clear sound at deafening levels,if you stood there long enough would make your ears bleed.

I said Logic 7 because thats what I know and work with and like Chris said it would cost ££££'s where as a better system would be £££'s

[ralph s3]

Thanks Guys,

I'll send Chris an email.

R

[bmw525DJ]

Now heres what im in the porccess of trying!

Putting the old cd player behind dash????? (why)
So i can keep the radio and cd on the Idrive and keep idrive working fully.

then putting my touch screen tv into that hole in the dash!

Ok now running the audio though the audio in slot thous keeping the full idrive really.

Then changing the tweeters which lets be honest are poo*
and door speakers i have to find out wat size and replace them

back speaker on shelf are easy! bought some pioneer (not sure wat size and dropping them in) now the fun part!

putting a small amp and box in boot! run of high level inputs and direct to battery! and then using the remote wire off head unit to turn it on and off!

thats my plan! will let you know!

Good luck!

ohh and 2 more tvs in head rest then xbox 360 fitted! mmmmm nice! lol

[DanH]

The normal approach is to use an amp or convertor with speaker level inputs that hooks into the standard BMW amp. Apparently the BMW head unit + amp are decent enough quality to do this. Hacking it all up with aftermarket DIN stuff seems crazy.

Edited by DanH on Tuesday 16th January 13:16

[bmw525DJ]

but the standard head unit is only 40 watt per channel and i want a tv????

i get your point about the unit being good but lets be honest it looks poo! lol

Also does anyone know wat connection the idrive tv has on it can it be changed to something more mmmmmmmmm

colourful???

[DanH]

bmw525DJ said:

but the standard head unit is only 40 watt per channel and i want a tv????

i get your point about the unit being good but lets be honest it looks poo! lol

Also does anyone know wat connection the idrive tv has on it can it be changed to something more mmmmmmmmm

colourful???

I dunno what you've got in your car at the moment in terms of idrive/pronav etc. If it is any use, you can get a unit that lets you splice in an aux in for the OEM screen.

As to the 40w per channel, you just need an amp that takes speaker level inputs or one of the converters that will take speaker level inputs and output at line level. Of course if you are completely binning the head unit that is fine, but there are no line level outputs from the OEM head unit that you can splice. It communicates to the BMW amp over a fibre optic bus.

Personally I think the OEM stuff looks pretty good if you have pro nav! I'm going to have to do something to my 3s stereo as it has the lowest spec and the speakers are crap. Prefer to make it look OEM though as I hate garish retrofit japanese head units made out of plastic painted to look like metal (but never does).

Anyway be careful in there! If you start hacking around without proper investigation you could end up with a real mess on your hands.

[bmw525DJ]

cheers for advise my friend.

i have the standard e60 head unit so not even mulitchanger

not satnav either or pronav

so not so great

The info on the optical fibre is wrong ive had the head unit out on mine and no sign of it there! maybe different for the pronav version but i heard about this before so took a look while fitting car phone kit.

im not sure if i can add tv to my screen as its not a pronav version so just the small tv.

Will have a dig about.

my plan is not to cut any wires just put the facia unit in the dash so its not showing

add tv to where it was

and new speakers

and fit the amp and sub in boot from new wiring

turns out everyone thinks im mad :O)

do you know if i can run tv though my idrive tv??? even the standard one???

and where i can get that

cheers for your advise.......

my last project car was easier (st220 mondeo)

4 tv's
xbox
freeview (satalite tv)
3500 watt ice in boot
and blue interior light bulb lol

[DanH]

Fair enough - I thought you had a nav unit. You may want to investigate how your car generates the indicator click + other squarks. Normally this goes through the hifi, but some cars have a supplementary speaker for this instead - I think perhaps yours may. Anyway worth checking before doing anything drastic.

All the info I have is from the following forums. You will be able to find out about the units to splice in if you want an aux in for the tv screen here too :

http://forums.e60.net/
www.e90post.com/forums/index.php?