If you have factory subwoofers installed you don't have a basic audio system, you have either HiFi, Top HiFi or Personal M Audio System.

Basic is only front and rear speakers, HiFi is basic on old enough American E series, but it's still considered HiFi and differentiated from basic or Top HiFi.

So when programmed for the codes that indicate basic, the CIC will power the 4 basic speakers directly, but if you have a factory subwoofer and the newer HiFi amp - you don't want it coded for that. In any other coding the CIC outputs 2 line level channels via 8 wires and does not power any speakers directly. The outputs ironically can still power the front speakers and the rear shelves, but if you can't tell, you're not getting very good sound...they are only line level outputs.

In the older E Series CCC HiFi (i.e. American "basic") system the CCC powers the front and rears directly, including the tweeters (the crossover is built into the speakers), but has a tiny little amplifier mounted in the trunk that powers the subwoofers, the outputs for the line level that goes to the amp in one of the smaller connectors coming out of the quad-lock. You can see that in my diagram.

In Top HiFi and in the CIC for any system with factory subwoofers, there's an amp that powers all speakers, so those 8 wires are just the line outputs to the amp, the speakers are then powered from the amp, the subwoofers included; the subwoofers are filtered via crossover in the amp from the rear channel CIC line outputs, the rear shelf speakers are on a higher frequency filtered off of the same rear channel CIC line output, the fronts are unfiltered from the front channel CIC line output.

So no matter how you look at it, there's never wires going from the CIC to the subwoofers, if you are coming from a CCC that was a non-american basic system there were no subwoofers, but because you're using a CIC now you don't need the subwoofer line outs anyways because the subwoofers are powered by the amp as always - and take their input from the rear channel the same as the amp does for the rear shelf speakers. If you had a factory subwoofer with your CCC and upgraded to a CIC, you don't have a use for the subwoofer output from the quad-lock other than to repurpose them as line outputs or as the connecting portions to the front speakers from the amp. You will need to buy the proper newer HiFi amp to power all speakers, subs included.

If you had a basic CIC and added subwoofers and want to power them, you need the amp to do it properly, though there is a way to do it with the old amp by splicing them into the rear channel outputs - you can easily find that guide by searching for "subwoofer fix CCC to CIC retrofit"

I can be more precise with explaining your current situation if you specify what you had before the CIC, and why you're configuring it as basic now. Unfortunately, without the original CCC HIFI amp, you'll hardly get anything out of the subs even crossing the outputs with the rear speakers due to a lack of power to drive them - and they will get distorted and sound almost inaudible due to the inclusion of higher frequencies. You can get some basic functionality out of them if you have the older amp, but it's nothing compared to when you properly retrofit the newer HiFi amp.

 

Ok, so im gonna to describe everything.

I bought the car from 2009. Its e61. Its the European version- i live in Europe. Acording to my knowledge it has the basic audio. Why? It has no tweeters in front and rear of car. My car has cic and its factory - original. I have no amplifer in the left back side of my car. Whats more im sure it has subwoffers under front seat but to be honest i didnt check it because i was sure they are there- now im confused.

I attached the Photo of used complete hifi wires to CCC which i bought and which is modiffed by me. I prepeard it to instal to cic- i bought every necesery pieces and make it ready to fit to new hifi cic AMP which i also bought.

Whats more i bought hifi speakers (blue rear wrap) and i change them in the back (roof) and front doors.

Now i only have to instal wires and amplifer. However i was sure there are subwoffers and i didnt know how are they connected because the are not enough outputs in my cic. If there arent subwoffers everything is fine and correct i Just need to modiffe my wires and add some cables because i dont have cables from cic to subs.

 

I checked it and Yes i have subwoofer under seat, ale acording to VIN code i dont have any additional audio versions so its basic. So there are probably diffrences beacouse of europe/US version

 

The only possibly way that you could have sub-woofers installed from factory, while all the remaining speakers are connected and powered directly to/by the CIC, are if you somehow had the CCC subwoofer amp installed due to the year-model of the car (it was late enough in 2009 to come with CIC, but wasn't LCI and still was candidate for CCC components). In such a case, there must be an amplifier for the subwoofer mounted under the panel covering the left wall adjacent to the tail lights in your trunk space. It would be mounted against the body of the car. It will look like a heat sink the size of a pack of cigarettes (it's really very small). It's possible (I'm not familiar with RHD nor do I know if they reverse some things when they produce LHD variants; but if so, it is possible yours is mounted on the rear right side as on my American LHD model it is mounted on the side of the steering wheel, the driver's side, or the left side). It would receive its low-pass line-level audio signal from quad-lock wires 31 32 37 and 38.

However, from what I understand about the E-Series and the CCC/CIC configurations - the CIC did not ship with the CCC sub-woofer amp. Furthermore, if it's not American, there're no tweeters, and the speakers are driven by the unit directly - it is definitely the basic audio system and is definitely the system that does not come with sub-woofers. This does not mean that someone did not install them before you bought the car; and you would have to trace from the speakers to see how they are hooked up, if they are at all hooked up. If hooked up by OEM means then somebody installed the amp somewhere, and wired it from the appropriate wires in the quad-lock (31 32 37 and 38), ideally.

It is very easy to believe that a BMW audio system has sub-woofers installed; even from the Basic system - which does not have sub-woofers. You would have unmistakable certainty from feeling your butt thumping in your driver's seat; same for the passenger. Furthermore, if you put your hand on the passenger's seat while playing something that thumps, you'd have unmistakable proof from feeling the hit on your palm. You can try to go full rear in audio settings, crank bass, and turn it up; if you feel direct hitting from the seat tops in the front; there are likely subs and you might need to trace from them if you do not see lines in quad-lock 31 32 37 and 38. It's possible someone spliced into the rears by the rear seat or somewhere along the line, pulled line signals from them using a converter, and installed their own amp (sorry if so, that's very tacky...). It's possible someone line converted at the back and installed an amp properly... etc, etc.

The most surefire way to know is to check under one of the front seats. With no amp in the back, and no wires coming from 31 32 37 and 38, you certainly do not have sub-woofers from factory; not with a basic audio system.

Here's how they were configured:

Basic
Front Door and Rear Shelf speakers, no tweeters, powered by CCC/CIC; No sub-woofers.

HiFi (American Basic)
Front window tweeters, Front door speakers, Rear Shelf Speakers with tweeters included. Sub-woofers under front seats.Top HiFi
CCC/CIC This is the Logic7 sound system. All audio signals are digital and are provided to the rear amplifier, which powers all 10 speakers, via the MOST bus.

M-Personal Audio
The hail mary of factory sound systems. It's DSP (same as Top HiFi) but has a much better amp, much better speakers, much better sound.

 

I did all manner of research on this historically and I don't recall there being sub-woofers on the basic version. Someone must have installed them after production - or I'm mistaken, but I'd bet on the former. Are you the original owner?

If the subs were not retrofit via CCC subwoofer amp, you'll just have to trace from the woofers unfortunately and see how they're installed.

There are other audio applications in these vehicles - TV systems, etc. There might have been other options that got you the sub-woofers than just the CCC/CIC systems; but I did not research very thoroughly there (only a little bit in troubleshooting my reverse camera on my 09 E70 post CIC install). I did my research, and the documents, for my 2006 E60.

 

I checked it, when i turn off the rear speakers subs play however when i turn of front speakers they dont play. So its Little more job than i thought because i have to check end eventualy eliminate mistakes made by someone

 

@Tomurka did you solve the issue with the subs? I didn't had a look yet at my car, but I'm pretty confident that I read everywhere that the basic audio system has installed 6 speakers: two in the doors, two in the rear and two sub below the seats. Nonetheless I couldn't find any wiring diagram for that particular configuration.

Any additional tips?

I'm looking forward to also install hifi completely from scratch, but I'm still collecting information where to put all the cables etc.

 

Hi! Yes i finished it a few months ago. Now everything is fine. Every diagram and necessery things are here so Just read and you will know everything.

What can i say more? Acording to my car, there are diffrences usa/Europe. I dont know were are you from but most People here are from USA, hovewer im from Poland (Europe) . I checked my cars VIN and i have basic audio. Hovewer in my car i had 6 stock speakers as a basic audio. I have stock CIC (my car is 2009 e61). Whats interesting cic have of course 4 pairs of outputs to speakers (+ and - which gives 8 single wires). 2 of them are for back speakers, and 2 of them (stock, much bigger wire) were in my car to front speakers and subs. As you can see there are some diffrences. I solved everything- from basic audio with cic and 6 speakers (2 front, 2 back, 2 subs, no amplifer) to full hifi after lifting (big HK amplifer, 4 speakers at front, 4 speakers at back, and 2 subs- all speakers from hifi version, with blue sticker.

​​​​​ I also made all what i can to make it as close to stock as its posibble. Its a lot of job however now it Look like made by bmw

I attached some photos which i made while working with my bmw. Maybe some of them will be helpful to you.









​​​​​​

 

Thanks for the quick response! My car is also a european version. According to VIN check mine matches your (audio) configuration.

Finally someone with an E61 - I have one question that no one could ever answer me. Maybe you can help out. Where do the wires run for the rear speakers (in the roof)? I'm asking myself if the wire runs at the roof to the front, down at the A-pillar - or e.g. down at C-Pillar and then at the bottom/side of the car to the front.
Resp. what's the best place to pick them up so that I can connect the speakers to the amp without splicing the rear's speaker cables very close to the CIC.

So on this one:

So how does the wire run? First from CIC to front speaker, connecting to the door's connector (I think it's X257 on the driver's site) and from there moving on the subs? Or is that a y-cable anyways (one moving from CIC to front and the other to the sub)?

--- Thank you!

 

Resurrecting this thread, TONS of good info here that wasn't readily available elsewhere. I'm having some similar issues after a CIC retrofit and wanted to run some options before spending some more $$ and doing some more work:

The car is an 2009 E60 535i (American) originally equipped with CCC S609A, OEM navigation, CD changer prep but no CD changer (so there is a spare MOST line in the trunk). It has front tweeters, front door mids, underseat woofers, rear deck speakers. No center channel (AFAIK, I haven't actually checked) or rear door speakers.

I did a CIC upgrade with a screen and headunit (6512 9214927 01) from eBay, and a Mr12Volt for Apple CarPlay, and a soon-to-be-installed backup camera from GreenYi. I love the updated screen and CarPlay interface, so going back to CCC or a different Android-based screen and headunit is not an option for me.

As described well in this thread, the sound quality sucks now. Underseat woofers no longer work (which this thread has explained well), and the tweeters and mids don't sound great either (which makes sense now that I understand that the CIC outputs are line-level rather than speaker-level).

I have a fair understanding and experience with basic car audio installations, and the ability to code with BimmerGeeks ProTool if needed. The way I see it, my options are:

1. Add on an aftermarket amp for the underseat woofers. Tap the signal from the rear deck speakers, it's line-level anyway so no LOC needed, use the amp's LPF to filter the signal, run new wires to the underseat woofers. This is probably the path of least resistance. Amps are affordable these days, there's minimal alteration to the stock wiring (other than tapping the rear deck signal to send it to the new amp). And I guess I could remove the factory amp since it's not doing anything in my factory setup anyway. Downside is that all the other speakers will remain powered by a line-level output from the CIC and are never gonna sound their best.

2. Get an updated CIC-compatible amp (65129198762) as-described here. They're as low as $45 shipped on eBay, plus probably some cost for wires and fittings, and I'd have sound quality similar to what I had with CCC before the retrofit, maybe marginally better with all channels amplified by the amp in the trunk. Side-note, are we CERTAIN that CIC headunits don't have any speaker-level outputs (perhaps in different pins/locations from CCC)? Wishful thinking, probably.

3. If I'm doing all the wiring anyway, I could do a Logic 7 upgrade. The amps are about $180 on eBay, plus another $300 or so for a set of used speakers (which I think would be necessary due to differences in impedance, and crossover/EQ applied by the Logic 7 amp). The wiring would be a bit more intense since I don't think I have wires for a center-channel, but I could simplify the project by not using any rear door speakers (I'm not gonna get new rear door cards or cut holes in my existing door cards), and recoup a little cost by reselling those drivers. I have zero experience with MOST but my understanding is that as long as the MOST chain is uninterrupted (and I know mine is working fine from the Mr12Volt install), I could add the Logic 7 amp as a MOST device using the MOST connector in the trunk that was for the prep for the CD changer. In this case, I don't think I would need to repin the QuadLock behind the CIC headunit (since MOST would be sending the signal to the amp), but I would need to run new speaker wires from the Logic 7 amp for the front tweeters, front door mids, rear deck, and center channel (but not the subs, if I understand correctly). I'm leaning towards this option, anybody see any reason why it wouldn't work?

4. I could install an aftermarket amp+DSP. The classic one is the JBL MS-8, which is still available for $350-$500 on eBay, or the MATCH UP series which are around $800-$1000, or the BimmerTech or BAVsound amps (which I think are rebadged MATCH UP amps and cost a bit more). In this case, I think I WOULD still have to repin the QuadLock to get a clean signal to the amp+DSP, or maybe I could feed it off the rear deck signal (assuming that's a full-range signal). This would give me ultimate tuning capability via the DSP, but I don't think it's worth the cost considering that I've already got a decent EQ in the Mr12Volt.

Anyway open to input, especially if any of the above options clearly WOULD NOT work. I'd hate to find that out after I'd already spent the money and done the work. Thanks!