[Dr.Apex]

Hi there,

First post here.

So, I recently bought a G21 330E as pre-owned car. Being kind of a car person I had a list of minimum specifications for the vehicle.

I found one which actually exceed that list, but it, unfortunately lacked a very important option. Any sort of Audio upgrade was not checked when ordering, so it only had Base audio (4 speakers, 2 15W "subs", no amplifier, DSP from headunit).

As the rest of the optionslist exeeded what I wnated I thought I might get used to that audio, but I did not. Therefor it required an upgrade.

I have looked into possibilities, but for what I wanted (adding tweeters, new door mid ranges, adding center speaker and tweeter, new woofers and an amplifier) it became so damn expensive I refused to go for an A brand like BAVsound.

So I thought, "hey, what is there to loose", and "I am not in a hurry", I ordered a single Bowers and Wilkins mid range speaker and tweeter from Aliexpres.

Seriously, I was very pleasantly surprised by what I got, (I mean, it came in original BMW box, BW and BMW logo's on it, very well packed, and BMW Serial numer on it). I did some extensive testing on it and it actually performed really well... It might be a replica afterall, but I do not think it can become any closer to the real deal, aand let's be real, the original BW speakers are produced in China as well, just like the HK ones.

Therefor I decided to buy the whole set from Ali (Sorry, some might have an opinion on it, I do not care, we use this as a family car so the majority of time I cannot even turn up the volume to anything close to what I would like).

So what I bought:
- Bowers and wilkins lookalike Luminous audio set for G20, which comes with door profiles with build in tweeter facilities. This one also came with a set of speakers and tweeters but were obviously of less quality compared to the ones bought seperately.
- 1* BW 4" center speaker, and tweeter.
- 4 * BW 4,5" mid range speaker and tweeter (to replace the ones in the set).
- 2 * BW subwoofer, which looks alike but this one does not come in original packing, logo's and serialnumbers etc.
- 7.1 channel 1050W DSP amplifier from Aliexpress as well.
It took some time, had to pay some customs duties but it all arrived well.

As I am quite short in time I mounted the luminous tweeterset at first and I was seriously negatively surprised with how it sounded. I think the original DSP profile was not set for tweeters, so the sound was very shallow. Even dialing back the Treble did not do anything good to it.

I had no issues mounting everyting and the fit was just perfect.

So I planned some time yesterday and started at 4 in the afternoon. In the end it took me until like 1 at night in order to get it in.

There were a couple of challanges getting this set in being:
- In a 330E, there is about zero room for the amp, which in this case adds up to some unit in the back and is quite large. in the end I had to trim a bit from some interior plastic and got it to fit right under that unit in at the left side of the boot.
- The "plug and play" subwoofers did not fit in the houding of the 15W ones which werer replaced. I had to do some extensive cutting in the original housing in order to get them in.
- As I had no center speaker I had to wire it from the boot, which meant getting quite a bit of interior parts removed.

In the end, the upgraded sound is a very, very big improvement to what it was. As I had(have) quite a few BMW's with HK I can tell you it sounds comparable.

However, I have coded the Bowers and wilkins profiles into the Idrive system. I did the same on my G16 8 gran coupe (huge improvement even with the HK system) and in the G16, changing the sound profiles actually make a world of difference, as well as adjusting the surround sound. On the G21 on the other hand, adjusting those make zero difference to the sound.

The seller of the amp, who actually communicates very well, tells me it should work as the DSP amp is like a "dumb device" which enhances the sound being input in it.

It is set to a 6 channel in (4 speakers, center and subs), and 6.1 out setting.

I have read of multiple people who have ran across this, but have not yet found a solution for it. Anyone an idea.

Using Bimmercode I coded:
Multi channels "Active"
BW high quality "all settings"

Thanks in advance.