Nice test. Since your goal is to help people decide on how to upgrade the system, thought I'd add a few points in the same spirit.
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Originally Posted by redz06
The install was easy with the only issue being why the harness did not have an additional foot of grounding cable so I could ground to the same point as the battery.
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Because you didn't get our kit. We include equal-length power and ground wires, with the ring terminals already attached and the fuseholder already in line, for that reason.
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Originally Posted by redz06
Results in comparison to stock: Not much difference at all despite the higher quality amplification quality.
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Why I say "incrementalism doesn't work", and that's exactly why we don't try to sell an amp-upgrade kit - people would not like us after giving us their money.
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Originally Posted by redz06
Install was a bit of a PITA finding a suitable location in the door panels for the crossovers. I had to solder a splice in the wiring to the mids and the tweeters, which surprised and disappointed me. Why not just make the lead wires a few inches longer?
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Again, because you didn't get our kit - where we have already extended the wires, put Molexes on them (both driver and crossover sides), and prepped the crossover for mounting in the door - all with appropriate wire lengths. Literally Plug and Play.
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Originally Posted by redz06
One issue was mounting adaptors for the 4 bolt Morel speakers on the factory 3 bolt mounts.
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Our kits come with steel 3-bolt adapters and foam gaskets already mounted, so our customers don't have to worry about that.
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Originally Posted by redz06
A lot of work has been done with Kaigoss and others on the mid-bass support that can be expected from various speakers in the underseat enclosures.
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Yes, it has. Since Kaigoss hasn't ever used the Jehnerts as far as I know, "others' probably played some role...
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Originally Posted by redz06
What can I say, these speakers are pretty pricey for an 8" woofer, especially when you consider that you are not getting a cast frame construction in the deal. Reality is that the Jehnert looks fairly inexpensive to make, and it only has a 1 inch voice coil to boot.
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OK, let's talk about reality. These woofers took tooling - this is not a standard basket or cone out of some Chinese build-house catalog, like a $60 MSRP coaxial. They only fit into BMWs and the newest Minis. They do really well in the car's enclosures. They require neodymium, which has quadrupled in price in the last year (GOogle "neodymium pricing" and select Images, and look at the graphs...)
Most speakers are not vehicle-specific, but these are - so Jehnert has a very small addressable market to sell these speakers to. Do the math on amortizing the tooling costs, and add that to your points about where you think COGS comes from, and I'm sure you'll agree that tooling cost and the low volume of units to cover it affect the cost of the speaker a good bit. I'm sure we would sell more of them at $200 a pair, until Jehnert killed the SKU for unprofitability.
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Originally Posted by redz06
Results of Step 3 were less dramatic than step 2, to be truthful.
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The improvement from a set of HO4 relative to stock would be greater than a set of Jehnert relative to stock. The mids and tweeters in a HiFi system suck more than the woofers do.
That said, how many hours do you have into them? They do loosen up a good bit after they play for a week or two.
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Originally Posted by redz06
So TIC approaches $1500 with lots of my labor. Luckily, I work very cheap.
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Apparently. Fortunately, our customers don't have to spend much time on the issues you solved, since our kits already have addressed most of them.
- Speaker mounting adapters
- Speaker wiring harnesses
- Equal-length power and ground harnesses
- Amplifier mounting panels that bolt into the HiFI bolt-holes
- Amplifier harnesses already attached in many cases
- Tweeters already installed into E92 and E82 trimpieces
- Amp crossovers already preset
- Speaker crossover tweeter attenuation settings already preset
- Woofer rings and wiring adapters attached before shipping
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Originally Posted by redz06
The best bang for the buck was Step 2, but I do not have sufficient data to show how this would work using the stock amplifier in lieu of the JL 600/6.
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No, but you do seem to have provided additional evidence to my longstanding position that incrementalism doesn't work.
The HiFi amp is not thrilled with the insertion losses associated with either parallel or series inductors in higher-quality passive crossovers, I can tell you that
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Originally Posted by redz06
I hope my observations are helpful to others trying to decide what must be done to improve the BMW Hi Fi system for acceptable listening.
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Well, hopefully it will kill that canard that you should just replace the amp.
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Originally Posted by redz06
Ebay, ebay, ebay....
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None of the gear you bought on eBay is warranteed by its manufacturer when purchased through eBay. Whether I think that's good or bad is irrelevant. Manufacturers are trying to curtail the sale of gray-market goods, and one way that they do it is to make warrantees hard to take advantage of, if need be, for product bought through unauthorized channels.
You also seem to be the kind of guy who doesn't want any after-the-sale support. eBay, of course, doesn't offer any.
They don't sponsor Bimmerpost, either
But eBay vendors do sell cheaper than many other channels. Were I to try to be cheaper than eBay, I would soon go out of business. Instead, we feel that we solve most of the issues you list so that our customers don't have to spend any time on them, and we think that's where our value lies.
Enjoy your system, I'm sure it sounds very nice. Maybe in future we can help you with a DSP processor in front of the amp.