I'm just trying to find out if I am the only one who doesn't think the BSW speaker upgrade for the Hi-Fi (US Standard) set-up is worth the money. Yes its the same shape and its been made plug and play but does it actually sound better or am I partially deaf.

 

US standard sounds like junk... At least need L7

 

everyone that had bought is very happy with their purchase, so im guessing is not bad.

 

Well this is it.

I do hope this thread doesn't become yet another Hi-Fi v/s L7 debate. And nor am I interested in hearing people who upgraded from an L7 system to a BSW system.

If you went from Hi-Fi to BSW speakers are you REALLY happy or do you not want to admit that after spending a good chunk of cash the results are not exactly how you expected.

 

I'm really interested to see where this thread goes. Doesn't BSW have a return policy? If you dislike them so much I would just try to send them back.

 

I'm happy with my BSW's. I took my IPOD and played a couple of songs to hear the range of sound before I installed the new speakers. As soon as the installation was complete, I played the same songs. To me there was a noticeable difference for the better. Let's face it, you could probably put the best speakers in the world in there and they would still never come close to their full potential because the BMW factory system just plain stinks. The factory sound system is one of my greatest disappointments with this car. You could probably buy better sounding systems at Walmart!

 

Yes they do, and in their defence they urged me to send this back as well for a refund because they were aware that I was not happy. Problem is, that it took me about 3 weeks and a lot of money to get those speakers from the US to UK. The reverse trip would take me more money into the negative. Not to mention all the time it would take to get those speakers out and swapped again. I just didn't bother.
Had I known that those speakers need to be pushed as hard as they do to sound decent I would not have bothered doing this upgrade. BSW themselves admitted that I should try driving them with an external amp. If I wanted to do that, you think I would want BSW....

 

I wonder when the amp upgrade will coem out and how powerful it will be.

 

Sound quality of BMW has always been a sore point with me. Buying cars in the price range of BMW's the sound system should be pretty damn good. It doesn't need to be the best factory system but it should at least compete with the better systems offered by other manufactures. Really Logic 7 should be the standard system. My 1997 Lexus LS 400 factory system(by Pioneer)I use to rack miles up with work, sounds better then Logic 7 and that system was design back in about 1993-1994ish. Literally 15+ years ago. That just shouldn't happen in the car audio world. Not too mention it one of the few things most people will notice in a just a quick ride around town.

 

The problem is definitely the lack of power built into the radio on the standard audio cars. To compensate for this, the standard audio speakers were made to be very efficient. It is not very often I see the standard audio system over here in the US but I am working on one right now. I just replaced the woofers under the seat, the midranges in the door, and the tweeters in the oem side mirror location. I am also adding an amplifier to this car, but just for fun I tested it out using the factory head unit and factory under seat amplifier. It actually sounds worse then it did before... Not due to distortion or poor quality speakers, but because I just removed some extremely efficient speakers and replaced them with higher quality ( but much less efficient ) speakers... Once the new more powerful amplifier goes in the whole game changes.