1Animal1

Doesn't look amazing does it? i suppose it meets a need.... but in a very basic sense currently

Keithy D

I know this is an old thread, but I thought I'd give my tuppence worth.

I had an Autodab fitted to my 11 plate F10 last week.
The aerial is glued to the side of the front windscreen, as previously discussed & is pretty discrete to the driver.
Sound quality is good, at least as good as FM but with the added bonus of all the extra channels.

Where the unit lets itself down is the lack of control from the iDrive.
The only way to change station or use any of the functions is via the small supplied remote controller.

Using it during the day is awkward, but at night where you can't see the buttons on the controller, it's impossible.

I'd avoid it unless the company can connect it properly to the idrive.

drsaleem

Just retrofitted a dab to 57 reg 520d saloon. Firstly, I would like to thank Simon for sorting me out.Cant thank him enough for doing the dab retrofit.

This is how we went about doing it

This is not the conventional way,but it works brilliantly

Firstly, started off by coding the car to play the DAB via the iDrive £50

Bought a bmw dab tuner unit from ebay for £100 ( bargain !)

DAB unit holder -£10 from BMW dealer. ( cheaper than ebay)

Bought cables to tap into the fibreoptics .approx £70( had to pay over the odds as wasnt getting the cables from any BMW breakers or anywhere else. had to request the guy to specially make one for me)

Antenna- crucial bit, which I dont think anyone has done before. Because I didnt want anything visible anywhere in the car, I didnt go for the internal glass mount or external antenna. What Simon did was , just use a piece of wire ( similar to a wire thats used in a Sony DAB Hi fi unit). We just hid the wire behind the rear plastic bumper . To be honest, we thought ..... a piece of wire? Naaah? But when we tested it , it worked better than the external antenna that Simon had fitted in his 320d! Sounds strange but its true

The other options for antenna were
-to change the rear windscreen as done by a few people before as the FM & DAB antenna is built into the rear windscreen( costs £900+ vat & therefore too expensive)
-external antenna ( visible ,spoils the look of the car)
-internal glass mount aerial ( visible to passengers and anyone looking around.)
-digital video antenna hidden behind the rear plastic bumper ( costs £173 + vat, similar to whats used in a factory built DAB in a Z3 and Z4.expensive + cost of labour removing the bumper and re attaching it )

Feedback
So far its been great. I get very good reception to all stations in the Birmingham area and good very reception to the BBC stations all over the country. Tested it on the M6, M74, M42, M40 and M1 !!
Occasionally it will crack up and go off , but only for a couple of seconds. This happens with all the dab players, as its a problem of the dab signal and not of the unit itself

best part is everythings hidden and can be operated via the idrive.

Overall conclusion
I am please its been done. I am really enjoying driving the car and thats because of the DAB,not because of the car !
To all those considering /contemplating dab, I would say ....go for it. You dont know what you are missing unless you listen to dab !

bruce_miranda

The wire above the rear screen is basically how the retrofitter do it, the idea is copied from the X5 where the aerial is in the rear spoiler.

drsaleem

I spoke to a couple of professional retrofitters
option 1 http://www.cartronics.co.uk/BMW-retr...n-3-series-E93 . As you can see there is an actual antenna hidden behind the bumper
option 2 change the whole rear windscreen
option 3 internal glass mount / external antenna

I wasnt aware of the x5 solution
In my case , all I have is just an actual open copper wire hidden behind the bumper . I have to say we didnt consider trying to it hide it underneath the windscreen