lupinglade

Hi,

New here, but have been reading a lot. I am doing the CIC retrofit in a 2009 535i, E60 LCI. The car has HiFi option 676 because its a north american car.

My question is how to best wire the audio once the CIC is in so that the woofers and speakers sound normal (ie. pre CIC retrofit).

Is the pin swap trick enough to make the speakers and subs sound correct? Or is this a "hack" and ends up sounding wrong?

Thanks

lupinglade

Well, after more research and help from members here, I have come up with this plan:



This adds an amp between the factory HiFi speakers and the CIC, instead of the wiring hack for the woofers. The stock woofer amp is still used for the woofers.

By using a straight through Quadlock CIC harness you can avoid cutting the stock harness. The straight through must have all the conductors connected straight through, except for the MOST (optical connectors).

The only possible issue is that there is no LOW PASS filter on the factory amp, or is there? Anyone know?

lupinglade

And here are more details on the pinouts and wiring in theory:

bruce_miranda

There is no Low Pass filter on the factory amp. How do I know this, well I using the old Hi-Fi factory amp to drive my front speakers and I can here the Highs too both on music and a test tone CD. Which means that the cross-overs were in the HU of the CCC.

lupinglade

Have you looked at the amp itself too? No switches or anything I guess :-/ Do you think this is a problem?

Also I read that there are crossovers for the twitters within the stock setup. Should the amp be set to high pass or all pass for the front and rear speakers?

TheRacerBoss

So guys should I be using option 10 " E Signal Phone Mute" If I want my radar detector to mute the stereo when the radar detector goes off ?

lupinglade

Did some thinking and HP makes sense for the speakers. Since we just want to filter out the low woofer/bass signals.

Now here's the solution for the woofers - inline LP 70/100Hz crossover: http://www.ebay.ca/itm/FMOD-70-100Hz...item5645954f0c

I'm thinking it should be set to 100Hz (not 70Hz) so that there is no gap between the 80Hz HP on the PBRX300 and the LP filter.

bruce_miranda

Agree.

However at this point I would probably want to also consider an aftermarket amp for the subwoofers. If you don't want to change the sub-woofers themselves that fine, just buying another amp that drives the under seat subs better than the current amp is great too. You wont need that LP filter too because the amp will come with it. Go for something like the Arc Mini and you will be able to put in stock location too.
You will be driving your other speakers harder so your subs may be lost and you will have a hard time tuning the system. Just make sure the gains on all amps are turned down.

lupinglade

Is there a way to swap out the woofer amp w/o cutting wires? I'm trying to keep it all reversible.

TheRacerBoss

Could you experts be kind enough to please answer my question ?
Apologize for the hijack in advance.