It took six weeks to figure it out

dombi · 11-11-2023, 01:24 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mscot

Or they should start offering an aftermarket upgrade path through their dealers.

YES!

Spyke1017 · 11-15-2023, 08:22 AM

mscot · 11-18-2023, 12:17 PM

I haven't had the car a full day yet and I really want to replace the subs.

hmbmd116 · 11-18-2023, 02:42 PM

The subs are the thing you can replace

tinfoiltuna · 11-20-2023, 06:13 AM

Watching this thread closely as I really want to move my Morel system into my LCI X7. I wonder if it’s the same story on the X7. Would be a major bummer.

aug0211 · 11-20-2023, 07:44 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by hmbmd116

… I told him that if BMW sells a $90,000 car they should have B&W as an option for those customers who are into upgraded stereos. You can get B&W on a 50e in Canada.

Hey, this comment confused me. Where is B&W not an option? Or is it only an option on certain trim levels? Here’s my build on an M60i, including B&W, in the USA.

Do I have an unpleasant surprise ahead of me?

TurtleBoy · 11-20-2023, 05:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aug0211

Hey, this comment confused me. Where is B&W not an option? Or is it only an option on certain trim levels? Here’s my build on an M60i, including B&W, in the USA.

Do I have an unpleasant surprise ahead of me?

The OP is in the US, it is not offered there.

aug0211 · 11-20-2023, 05:50 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TurtleBoy

The OP is in the US, it is not offered there.

Is that specific by trim (maybe not available on 50e? My post above shows it on my M60i, in the US. Wondering if I’m in for an unpleasant surprise.

TurtleBoy · 11-20-2023, 06:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aug0211

Is that specific by trim (maybe not available on 50e? My post above shows it on my M60i, in the US. Wondering if I’m in for an unpleasant surprise.

It definitely is. I was referring to the 50e that the OP was talking about. B&W is available on the M60i in the US.

aug0211 · 11-20-2023, 07:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TurtleBoy

It definitely is. I was referring to the 50e that the OP was talking about. B&W is available on the M60i in the US.

Thanks for confirming, makes sense.

Well, I mean, not really. That is a huge bummer for 50e and does not make sense.

TurtleBoy · 11-20-2023, 08:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aug0211

Thanks for confirming, makes sense.

Well, I mean, not really. That is a huge bummer for 50e and does not make sense.

It is due to supply, there are not enough B&W units available to be able to satisfy the demand. Rather than constantly issuing production constraints when there is no availability they don't offer it. They use the available units in countries/regions where demand can be met and they generally make more off the options.

aug0211 · 11-20-2023, 08:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TurtleBoy

It is due to supply, there are not enough B&W units available to be able to satisfy the demand. Rather than constantly issuing production constraints when there is no availability they don't offer it. They use the available units in countries/regions where demand can be met and they generally make more off the options.

That part makes sense to me. The part that was odd is that I can get the same upgrade on my M60i but in the same location on a 50e, we cannot.

It’s the same price upgrade on each vehicle so I was thinking it’d make more sense to offer the upgrade to any vehicle on the X5 line.

Then it hit me - the M60i might be in a different assembly line than the 50e - different engines and PHEV vs MHEV?

Either way I don’t know (you are way closer to it than me!) and I am not the expert!

TurtleBoy · 11-20-2023, 08:50 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aug0211

That part makes sense to me. The part that was odd is that I can get the same upgrade on my M60i but in the same location on a 50e, we cannot.

It’s the same price upgrade on each vehicle so I was thinking it’d make more sense to offer the upgrade to any vehicle on the X5 line.

Then it hit me - the M60i might be in a different assembly line than the 50e - different engines and PHEV vs MHEV?

Either way I don’t know (you are way closer to it than me!) and I am not the expert!

There are many more 40i's and 50e's sold than M60i's so it is a mater of supply and demand. They can see the M60i demand but as I mentioned before, they would not be able to meet total demand and then would have to constantly stop offering it/adjusting orders. A few years ago they would allow 40i's and 45e's to order the B&W when there was extra supply. It was really a hit and miss thing and they abandoned it when HK came more available.

hmbmd116 · 12-09-2023, 12:55 PM

About a month ago Bimmertech offered me a full refund if I returned the amp. They also offered me a 30% rebate if I continued to work with them to try to troubleshoot the problems. I chose the later and promptly received my 30% rebate. Another issue the came up after the idrive 8.5 update was that I could not use the drivers side microphone. I think that microphone was bricked with 8.0 as well but now when I pushed the button on the steering wheel, I could not use voice commands. If I said Hello BMW, the passenger microphone would pick up my voice but I could not turn on steering wheel heat or heated seat for the drive with voice. Basically, assisted driving and the driver's microphone were not working when the amp was connected.

Today, I did a remote session for over an hour with Bimmertech. They ran error reports on my car both with the amp disconnected and then again with it connected after I drove and caused the above errors to occur. After the session, I was told that they see the PNP error with the microphone and that they will construct a new wiring harness which should fix this error and should also fix the assisted driving error as well.

I'll update the group after I receive the harness.

TurtleBoy · 12-09-2023, 01:00 PM

Thanks for keeping us updated.

5wany · 12-09-2023, 08:05 PM

Great thread everyone, keep it coming and lets get a workaround for folks with LCIs.

Just for thought I suppose the elephant in the room is why do BMW just not improve the quality of HK product if they cant make enough B&W to meet demand on certain models.
I get that BMW want to stop after market tinkering with 'their' cars (pre-empt future accident liability claims), but is a stereo upgrade a 'jail breaking' of their system... I would argue not, so let folks have some control over the car they buy IMO. The fact you cant at the moment code your way out of this is also annoying. I recall when I got my E70 in 2011 there was a VIM forum on looking a coding lines to see differences in the lock, turns out a few lines coded with 3mph etc instead of nil. I would suspect this impedance check would also be similar, if you could find it in the code and extend the parameters so that it did not lock out AD - but alas nae coding on 8 & 8.5 at the moment.

mscot · 12-13-2023, 03:31 PM

Does anyone know what the Impedence and Sensitivity of the OEM HK subs are?

The subs aren't getting anywhere near enough power. I played some bass heavy tracks and placed my hand on top of the under seat subs and they are barely moving.

This could be due to a number of things.

The amp just isn't powerful enough.
The amp is powerful enough but its outputs are not properly balanced between all the speakers (the subs needing more power than the tweeters and upper mid speakers)
The sensitivity of the speakers is low (i.e. the speakers are inefficient, which is likely true no matter if the other factors are at play)
The Impedance on the higher end.

I'm trying to determine if merely replacing the subs will help at all. If issue 1 or 2 is the problem there's not much that can be done without replacing the amplifier. Which is still in a holding pattern.
If 3 and/or 4 are an issue, then maybe new subs could help with the caveat that if the problem a high impedance and you go with a lower Ohm then the OEM amp must be able to handle a lower impedance.

Marty in NY · 12-13-2023, 04:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mscot

Does anyone know what the Impedence and Sensitivity of the OEM HK subs are?

The subs aren't getting anywhere near enough power. I played some bass heavy tracks and placed my hand on top of the under seat subs and they are barely moving.

This could be due to a number of things.

The amp just isn't powerful enough.
The amp is powerful enough but its outputs are not properly balanced between all the speakers (the subs needing more power than the tweeters and upper mid speakers)
The sensitivity of the speakers is low (i.e. the speakers are inefficient, which is likely true no matter if the other factors are at play)
The Impedance on the higher end.

I'm trying to determine if merely replacing the subs will help at all. If issue 1 or 2 is the problem there's not much that can be done without replacing the amplifier. Which is still in a holding pattern.
If 3 and/or 4 are an issue, then maybe new subs could help with the caveat that if the problem a high impedance and you go with a lower Ohm then the OEM amp must be able to handle a lower impedance.

I don't know the answer to your question but have questions of my own

- Not quite sure I know what you mean by bass heavy.
- Does this mean the tracks have a lot of bass frequencies or
- Does it mean those tracks have the bass frequency range cranked up above 0db or way above the non bass frequencies?

I know my tracks that I play off a USB drive are of varying loudness levels as I've not taken the time to fix that yet so when I play the tracks, some have pounding bass, some faint bass but I know why and that tells me my HK system is very capable of producing pounding bass from the subs. Bela Fleck and the Flectones come to mind, when one of their tracks come up it about vibrates me out of the seat

Rob_G77 · 12-14-2023, 08:53 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Marty in NY

I know my tracks that I play off a USB drive are of varying loudness levels as I've not taken the time to fix that yet so when I play the tracks, some have pounding bass, some faint bass but I know why and that tells me my HK system is very capable of producing pounding bass from the subs. Bela Fleck and the Flectones come to mind, when one of their tracks come up it about vibrates me out of the seat

Play Billy Idol's 'White Wedding' (remastered version) from spotify and it sounds excellent. I think the HK system just lacks advanced DSP processing so it basically sounds as good or bad as the source is.

Rob

Marty in NY · 12-14-2023, 09:16 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rob_G77

Play Billy Idol's 'White Wedding' (remastered version) from spotify and it sounds excellent. I think the HK system just lacks advanced DSP processing so it basically sounds as good or bad as the source is.

Rob

Right you are, well that could be said about any audio recording. I like a bit of bass in my music and I like to feel it as well so I increased the bass frequencies in the equalizer and have no issue with the amount of bass and bass drum I get from the HK. Certainly you can go too far in that regard but playing around with it using multiple songs and finding your personal likes worked for me. Simply increasing the bass (not with the equalizer) was less than acceptable to me, I don't know what frequencies that incorporates so I left it flat) I don't hear high frequencies well so I cranked them up too :-0 I also get somewhat tinny (lack of bass) sounds on certain songs like old Beatle tunes from the early 60's but I know it's the source. In the case of the old Beatle music, I recorded those from my albums and meant to run the recordings through an audio editor but just haven't done so yet - ugh.

Here are the settings I'm happy with. Hearing sounds is a very individual thing but to the point of mscot's post, I believe the HK system is capable of producing the bass he/she is looking for given the right source and audio settings. Unless the subs or amplifier sub out are defective.

.

hmbmd116 · 12-14-2023, 10:12 AM

FROM BIMMERTECH

New reply for the ticket #BA00230424

Hi Howard,

Thank you for your time on Saturday. The diagnostic log our tech was able to take was more readable and detailed this time over, however we can't say any breakthrough information was gathered. The errors we see when the amp is plugged in still have no causation descriptions in most cases. The microphone error has some description at least but it doesn't make full sense to us. I do see the microphone cables in your harness. In the wiring diagrams however - the drivers microphone is shown to be connected to a different module and not the RAM. Clearly there is an error somewhere, likely in the diagram. The wires can't go to two places at once.

We gathered additional bits of information from another customer too where our speakers were installed (no amp) and this time with the speakers in an error for acoustic pedestrian warning came up immediately (in that car the acoustic pedestrian warning is a speaker on the outside of the car and makes noises when in reverse and is connected to the RAM). However we weren't even connecting anything at all to that output so it makes no sense for such an error to come up. Again, a sorts of mystery when it comes to causation and correlation.

From these things our suspicion/working theory is the RAM is not only capable of detecting an open circuit/short circuit on the speaker outputs but perhaps also it is capable of measuring the resistance at the output and we also suspect there is a normal and non normal range for the resistance. When non normal is hit - errors come up and their trigger mechanism is not disclosed in any specific manner via diagnostics. Kind of like in that joke when Soviet scientists discovered a direct link between the human butt (or gluteus maximus as surgeons call them) and the eye. When you kick someone in the butt hard enough tears will come out of there eyes so clearly there is a direct link between the two.

For that reason we came up with a harness which should allow us to closely match the resistance which the RAM sees at its speaker output from the factory while having our amp installed. It's the only thing that is making any sense to us.

When it comes to the microphone and what the reason for that error is with your current harness - we'll check it out when we pick it up from you. It could be crossed wires. The harness we'll be shipping I tested myself - the two sets of microphone wires in it are not crossed for sure so if the error remains with the replacement - it will be another mystery to me hence why I'm hoping it is a case of crossed wires. Crossed wires on a mic can definitely make it in-operational as microphone capsules are usually polarized and when it's polarized wrong - it doesn't work at all. Unlike a speaker - it will play out of phase anyway.

We're going to be running one final test on the harness made today and it will be dispatched to you tomorrow.

It might look the same but my colleague added 6 resistors under the tape in it here:

So try not to bend that part too much

Other than that we also made the center channel resistor swappable using a BMW 2-pin plug and included a 3ohm resistor by default (already plugged in) and a 5.1ohm unit as an alternative.

I sure have high hopes for this harness as it's the only thing that makes any theoretical sense to us. I'm sure the day will come when BMW will put some microchips in their speakers to make it yet again more difficult to upgrade but we really can't think of anything else than ohms being diagnosed here as that is cheap and easy to implement and has been in BMW's amps for a while to do binary checks for short circuits and open circuits but we never had any signals that would lead us to believe the exact range was being checked and it sure wouldn't be expensive for them to check the range so they just might have done it without having it described anywhere.

I hope the test goes good today - we'll be checking if these resistors won't cook under heavy load. They shouldn't but better safe than sorry.

Kind regards,
Maciej Stalmach
Technical Support

mscot · 12-14-2023, 11:30 AM

Rob_G77 and Marty in NY
I'm referring to recently produced drum & bass and breakbeat. Music specifically made to push club subwoofers. Far more bass than Bela Fleck would have (not a criticism of Bela Fleck) and there's barely anything there.

We have different vehicles so I'm wondering if the amplifier has less power or they've changed the sub set up or both.

I'm playing lossless via CarPlay/Apple Music.
I haven't tried with a usb drive but I can check that tonight.

I remain horribly disappointed in this HK system.

11-15-2023, 08:22 AM	#90
Spyke1017 New Member 2 Rep 15 Posts Drives: BMW X5 50e Join Date: Oct 2023 Location: 49009 iTrader: (0)
	Appreciate 0 Quote

11-18-2023, 12:17 PM	#91
mscot First Lieutenant 189 Rep 303 Posts Drives: 2024 X5 50e Join Date: Jul 2023 Location: Colorado iTrader: (0)	I haven't had the car a full day yet and I really want to replace the subs.
	Appreciate 0 Quote

11-18-2023, 02:42 PM	#92
hmbmd116 Private 91 Rep 78 Posts Drives: G05 X5 Join Date: Sep 2021 Location: Pennsylvania iTrader: (0)	The subs are the thing you can replace
	Appreciate 0 Quote

11-20-2023, 06:13 AM	#93
tinfoiltuna Private First Class 60 Rep 139 Posts Drives: 2023 X7 M60i Join Date: Oct 2023 Location: South iTrader: (0)	Watching this thread closely as I really want to move my Morel system into my LCI X7. I wonder if it’s the same story on the X7. Would be a major bummer.
	Appreciate 0 Quote

12-09-2023, 12:55 PM	#102
hmbmd116 Private 91 Rep 78 Posts Drives: G05 X5 Join Date: Sep 2021 Location: Pennsylvania iTrader: (0)	Latest Update About a month ago Bimmertech offered me a full refund if I returned the amp. They also offered me a 30% rebate if I continued to work with them to try to troubleshoot the problems. I chose the later and promptly received my 30% rebate. Another issue the came up after the idrive 8.5 update was that I could not use the drivers side microphone. I think that microphone was bricked with 8.0 as well but now when I pushed the button on the steering wheel, I could not use voice commands. If I said Hello BMW, the passenger microphone would pick up my voice but I could not turn on steering wheel heat or heated seat for the drive with voice. Basically, assisted driving and the driver's microphone were not working when the amp was connected. Today, I did a remote session for over an hour with Bimmertech. They ran error reports on my car both with the amp disconnected and then again with it connected after I drove and caused the above errors to occur. After the session, I was told that they see the PNP error with the microphone and that they will construct a new wiring harness which should fix this error and should also fix the assisted driving error as well. I'll update the group after I receive the harness.
	Appreciate 3 cellarrat517.00 matowi260.00 BSfmAZ94.50 Quote

12-09-2023, 01:00 PM	#103
TurtleBoy General 13266 Rep 19,785 Posts Drives: 2019 X5 40i,2021 M340i Join Date: Jan 2019 Location: Colorado iTrader: (0)	Thanks for keeping us updated. __________________ 2021 BMW G20 M340i xDrive - Verde Ermes/Black - 03/2024.40 2019 BMW G05 X5 xDrive40i - Phytonic Blue/Cognac - 11/2023.50
	Appreciate 0 Quote

12-09-2023, 08:05 PM	#104
5wany New Member 5 Rep 27 Posts Drives: BMW X5 45e Join Date: Nov 2023 Location: Edinburgh iTrader: (0)	Great thread everyone, keep it coming and lets get a workaround for folks with LCIs. Just for thought I suppose the elephant in the room is why do BMW just not improve the quality of HK product if they cant make enough B&W to meet demand on certain models. I get that BMW want to stop after market tinkering with 'their' cars (pre-empt future accident liability claims), but is a stereo upgrade a 'jail breaking' of their system... I would argue not, so let folks have some control over the car they buy IMO. The fact you cant at the moment code your way out of this is also annoying. I recall when I got my E70 in 2011 there was a VIM forum on looking a coding lines to see differences in the lock, turns out a few lines coded with 3mph etc instead of nil. I would suspect this impedance check would also be similar, if you could find it in the code and extend the parameters so that it did not lock out AD - but alas nae coding on 8 & 8.5 at the moment.
	Appreciate 0 Quote

12-13-2023, 03:31 PM	#105
mscot First Lieutenant 189 Rep 303 Posts Drives: 2024 X5 50e Join Date: Jul 2023 Location: Colorado iTrader: (0)	Does anyone know what the Impedence and Sensitivity of the OEM HK subs are? The subs aren't getting anywhere near enough power. I played some bass heavy tracks and placed my hand on top of the under seat subs and they are barely moving. This could be due to a number of things. The amp just isn't powerful enough. The amp is powerful enough but its outputs are not properly balanced between all the speakers (the subs needing more power than the tweeters and upper mid speakers) The sensitivity of the speakers is low (i.e. the speakers are inefficient, which is likely true no matter if the other factors are at play) The Impedance on the higher end. I'm trying to determine if merely replacing the subs will help at all. If issue 1 or 2 is the problem there's not much that can be done without replacing the amplifier. Which is still in a holding pattern. If 3 and/or 4 are an issue, then maybe new subs could help with the caveat that if the problem a high impedance and you go with a lower Ohm then the OEM amp must be able to handle a lower impedance.
	Appreciate 0 Quote

12-14-2023, 10:12 AM	#109
hmbmd116 Private 91 Rep 78 Posts Drives: G05 X5 Join Date: Sep 2021 Location: Pennsylvania iTrader: (0)	FROM BIMMERTECH New reply for the ticket #BA00230424 Hi Howard, Thank you for your time on Saturday. The diagnostic log our tech was able to take was more readable and detailed this time over, however we can't say any breakthrough information was gathered. The errors we see when the amp is plugged in still have no causation descriptions in most cases. The microphone error has some description at least but it doesn't make full sense to us. I do see the microphone cables in your harness. In the wiring diagrams however - the drivers microphone is shown to be connected to a different module and not the RAM. Clearly there is an error somewhere, likely in the diagram. The wires can't go to two places at once. We gathered additional bits of information from another customer too where our speakers were installed (no amp) and this time with the speakers in an error for acoustic pedestrian warning came up immediately (in that car the acoustic pedestrian warning is a speaker on the outside of the car and makes noises when in reverse and is connected to the RAM). However we weren't even connecting anything at all to that output so it makes no sense for such an error to come up. Again, a sorts of mystery when it comes to causation and correlation. From these things our suspicion/working theory is the RAM is not only capable of detecting an open circuit/short circuit on the speaker outputs but perhaps also it is capable of measuring the resistance at the output and we also suspect there is a normal and non normal range for the resistance. When non normal is hit - errors come up and their trigger mechanism is not disclosed in any specific manner via diagnostics. Kind of like in that joke when Soviet scientists discovered a direct link between the human butt (or gluteus maximus as surgeons call them) and the eye. When you kick someone in the butt hard enough tears will come out of there eyes so clearly there is a direct link between the two. For that reason we came up with a harness which should allow us to closely match the resistance which the RAM sees at its speaker output from the factory while having our amp installed. It's the only thing that is making any sense to us. When it comes to the microphone and what the reason for that error is with your current harness - we'll check it out when we pick it up from you. It could be crossed wires. The harness we'll be shipping I tested myself - the two sets of microphone wires in it are not crossed for sure so if the error remains with the replacement - it will be another mystery to me hence why I'm hoping it is a case of crossed wires. Crossed wires on a mic can definitely make it in-operational as microphone capsules are usually polarized and when it's polarized wrong - it doesn't work at all. Unlike a speaker - it will play out of phase anyway. We're going to be running one final test on the harness made today and it will be dispatched to you tomorrow. It might look the same but my colleague added 6 resistors under the tape in it here: So try not to bend that part too much Other than that we also made the center channel resistor swappable using a BMW 2-pin plug and included a 3ohm resistor by default (already plugged in) and a 5.1ohm unit as an alternative. I sure have high hopes for this harness as it's the only thing that makes any theoretical sense to us. I'm sure the day will come when BMW will put some microchips in their speakers to make it yet again more difficult to upgrade but we really can't think of anything else than ohms being diagnosed here as that is cheap and easy to implement and has been in BMW's amps for a while to do binary checks for short circuits and open circuits but we never had any signals that would lead us to believe the exact range was being checked and it sure wouldn't be expensive for them to check the range so they just might have done it without having it described anywhere. I hope the test goes good today - we'll be checking if these resistors won't cook under heavy load. They shouldn't but better safe than sorry. Kind regards, Maciej Stalmach Technical Support Attached Images
	Appreciate 0 Quote

12-14-2023, 11:30 AM	#110
mscot First Lieutenant 189 Rep 303 Posts Drives: 2024 X5 50e Join Date: Jul 2023 Location: Colorado iTrader: (0)	Rob_G77 and Marty in NY I'm referring to recently produced drum & bass and breakbeat. Music specifically made to push club subwoofers. Far more bass than Bela Fleck would have (not a criticism of Bela Fleck) and there's barely anything there. We have different vehicles so I'm wondering if the amplifier has less power or they've changed the sub set up or both. I'm playing lossless via CarPlay/Apple Music. I haven't tried with a usb drive but I can check that tonight. I remain horribly disappointed in this HK system.
	Appreciate 0 Quote