[Aussie7]

I have a question for those that have installed a Musicarnw Level 1 upgrade in a e90 with hifi. I purchased this system and did the install myself in my 08 e90 M3. I purchased a la carte upgrades of morel dotech speakers and jenhert under seat woofers.
I have a question as far the front left speakers. The signal to this speakers is half the volume of the right speaker. If I fade fully to front and then to the left you can hardly hear. Then if I fade to the right it is fine. When I have everthing balanced out the sound seems do be coming from the right and the left is very weak including the subs.
I have the JL XD600/6 with ch1 and ch2 are the fronts, 3 +4 the rears, 5+6 the subs. The amp was preset by musicarnw and I set the gains.
I am wondering if it's an amp problem or if that's just the way it is. I really doubt that the front left speakers should be half the volume of the right front speakers. Maybe the settings aren't correct on the amp. I have had this installed for a few months and this has been something that has bugged me but I didn't have time to try and work out what was wrong or if anything was wrong at all.
Any help will be much appreciated. I have called Ken at Musicarnw and am waiting for him to get back to me. In the meantime any input will be appreciated

[ctuna]

I would take a volt/ohm meter and measure the speaker resistance
right at the tightening nuts on the amp and compare your left and right channels. Mine were about 3.1 each.
I would expect them to be within .1 ohm of each other a 2 or 3 ohm difference
would indicate a problem. If you see a difference connectors could be the culprit.
If you have a high resistance connection sometimes a simple reseat of the connectors
will make it go away.

If they don't show any difference you could swap the channels left to right,
or the backs to the fronts to further isolate things.
You might want to get Kens OK before you change things around.
Did you change out the rear speakers or are they stock?

[Aussie7]

Rear speakers are stock. I will play around tomorrow and try and isolate the problem by changing left to right or front to back to see if I can find a problem. Where is the best place to find a volt/ohm meter? Radioshack? To check the resistance do I just remove the wires and test the channel at the tightening nuts?

My settings are as follows;

remote level mode- set at ALL

Input mode - set to 4ch

Channel 1 +2 filter mode- HP
filter frequency 200hz
gains set at about 1/8inch

Channel 3 +4 filter mode - HP
filter frequency 400hz
gain at minimum

Channel 5 +6 filter mode- LP
filter frequency 180hz
gain at 50%

[ctuna]

Or any decent electronics store like maybe Frys.
Since the gains are paired in channels the settings are nor likely to have
anything to do with a difference between output from the same
channel pair. I would get a 3 or 4 digit volt/ohm meter should be between 10 and 20 bucks.
There are lots of them on the net but you should find them at Electronics stores to.

When you check the resistance you want the amp power off so pull the fuse.

Are you familiar enough with the connections to know what your doing with
them? As in can you set up a home stereo and know how to hook up the speaker wires
and Inputs ?

If you want to get real scientific about it you could download the RTA app and it will
allow you to burn a disk with tones ,white noise or pink noise which would allow you to compare channels with the same source tones. If will also allow you to analyse the frequency response of your system on your cell phone or PC. I was wondering if both my tweeters were
working equally well but it turned out to be just he mix of the music I was listening to .
Both your ears are still working good I hope.

[Aussie7]

I am familiar with the wires. I set up my home stereo and know what I'm doing

[dgafxxx]

you can pick up a cheap chinese made multimeter at harbor freight for like 5 bucks. But I recommend spending a few extra dollars and getting the next level up cheap multimeter as Ctuna described.

But it does sound like something is out of whack as Ctuna described the gains are in pairs, so the front doors should be fairly equal. It could be a bad connection on a speaker wire somewhere, or possibly a bad amp. But its hard to say until you start digging into it and taking some measurements with your meter.

[Aussie7]

Thanks guys for your help. Just took all the wires out and checked all the connections. I put it all back together and it is working perfectly. Looks like it was a bad connection. Now I can really hear how good this sounds. Gives you an idea of how bad the factory sound is when I was basically running on only one front speaker and it still was better then factory.

[ctuna]

I was just wondering if you were able to isolate it a little.
You don't have to pull the wires out of the amp to take a speaker measurement
just pull the fuse and measure right at the tightening screws.
I know the values on mine are 3.1 on the Morels about the same on the stock doors
and around 6.2 on the underseats if anything ever burns I have those as reference values
so I don't have to take off door panels to check the speakers .

The output channels on the amp was 400 + ohms so its not a factor in getting
the speaker measurement.

[Aussie7]

Okay. So now I am annoyed. Got in the car this morning and the left speaker has once again lost volume. So I guess I need to investigate further and get a multimeter and check what is going on. I will remove the door panel again and see if something is wrong with the wiring in the door. This sucks!!!

[ctuna]

Chances are its still there.
Did you try reseating at the Technic Harness Connecter . That connector has to
be all the way down in the receptacle side to make good contact before you throw the lever. If you take it off be sure to do a visual inspection to see
that there are no pins that are pressed in further than the rest or otherwise damaged.

I would go get that meter its a good tool to have for lots of things.

If you can get somebody to take the ohms measurement on the channel thats effected while
moving the wires around at the connection points on the amp, amp out, main amp connector and in the doors at all the connectors and crossover to see of the ohms measurement goes in an out .

[VP Electricity]

We just spoke on the phone OP is going to swap RCA L/R inputs and see if the issue moves. If it does, it's a bad harness.

If it doesn't, he's going to swap L and R speaker outputs. If it moves, bad amp. If it doesn't, issue downstream (bad passive crossover?).

But based on his testing as described over the phone, my first suspicion is a bad RCA in the harness. We will see - regardless, he will get a replacement part right away.

[dgafxxx]

Originally Posted by VP Electricity

We just spoke on the phone OP is going to swap RCA L/R inputs and see if the issue moves. If it does, it's a bad harness.

If it doesn't, he's going to swap L and R speaker outputs. If it moves, bad amp. If it doesn't, issue downstream (bad passive crossover?).

But based on his testing as described over the phone, my first suspicion is a bad RCA in the harness. We will see - regardless, he will get a replacement part right away.

This is why it is good to buy from a trusted vendor. People that try to source their own parts on ebay to save a buck or two will never get this kind of support when something doesn't work as it should.

[VP Electricity]

Thanks for the kind words

Looks to be a bad RCA or a bad harness - swapping the L and R RCAs moves the problem to the other side. So Monday we ship him replacements, all sorted.

[Aussie7]

Ken was able to help me out over the phone today and it looks like the problem is due to the wiring harness. As dgafxxx stated this is why you buy products from trusted vendors and is exactly why I did so. Saving a few bucks at the front end usually costs you a few more bucks at the back end. Ken is a true professional and knows his stuff