# Got to listen critically to a 2004 E60 Logic 7 system... and our plan



## el_duderino (Aug 1, 2005)

Customer brought in a 2004 545 with Logic 7. 

He's a mature guy - a little older than me (later 40's? 50's?) Had the Beatles in the CD player. 

He hates the Logic 7 sound. He is getting a 2007 550, and he decided not to pop the $1200 for Logic 7, but to come to an aftermarket shop and get an upgrade from the base hifi system. 

So he is having us make the fiberglass mold in his 04, so that the sub box is done when his 07 comes in, and he can drop it off and get it back quicker. 

I got to sit in the car last night and listen to it with a nice KINK sampler CD that I use and know pretty well. Acoustic recordings - didn't ask it to play Top 40 bass. Returned the EQ and tone controls to flat. 

There is a Surround setting that you can turn on and off. It only plays CDs, though - no DVD-Audio. 

This Logic 7 system has big tweeters in the F mirror sails, 4" mids in the doors, and 10" woofers under the rear seat in shallow enclosures which are apparently extended with vent tubes. There are 4" R door speakers for surround effects and 4" mid and tweeter comps in the R deck (or vice versa, you know how I hates rear speakers). There is a 4" in the center channel slot.

There is a 9-channel amp - F doors, dash, R doors, R deck, sub, center. 

This system sounded horrid. Heinous. Worse than the DSP system in the 2005 X5 that we removed a while back. Worse than the DSP system in the 2003 E39 that we removed a while back. 

No bass. None. Mids sounded thin and flat. Highs sounded like they were coming out of a Shenzen knockoff of a 10mm Audax hard dome (brochure lists this speaker as being 47mm!). With the surround turned off, some recordings sounded like there was no one in the center of the stage at all. With the fader to the front, the tonality was even worse, midbass seemed to get much quieter, but fading it to the center pulled the stage to just aft of my right elbow. This makes no sense, since the HU is sending this amp digitalized audoio and the preamp functions take place in the amp itself. In an analog system, I would expect the Sub signal to be a sum of F and R, and so there is still bass at either fader extreme - just 3dB less of it. But there's no need for that kind of side effect in this system...

Pulled the driver's rear trunk cover and the amp is about 4 inches wide and maybe 10 inches long. Looks like a decent 2 channel amp. 4 would surprise me. 9? WITH all the MOST hardware in there too?

We did some research and decided to upgrade the front doors with a good 4" and tweeter (either Morel or a hybrid kit we put together). While I've heard the Morel point-source speaker sounds great here, in this car it looks as if the door handle would block the tweeter a lot, so I'm going to use the mirror sail tweeter location

The stock 9" underseat woofers and rear deck speakers (this car will be a non-Logic 7, remember) will stay in place. I'm hoping to get better midbass due to the F seat woofers, but I'm prepared for them to sound like ass. 

The Zapco DC amp will reverse the EQ to the new speakers. Zapco makes a speaker-level-to-balanced adapter that runs into the balanced inputs of the amp. We will retain the OEM crossover freqs and then eq them a bit using the 10-band-per-channel EQ in the amp. 

The amp might even fit under the driver's cover where the OEM amp is (not in the same location - OEM amp has to stay to act as a MOST analog gateway). An audison amp (LRX 4.5?) would fit if we were using a CleanSweep/360 for the conversion, which would probably fit farther forward and to the side, I think. The Zapco can go under the flat R deck if all else fails. 

The trunk upholstery looks easy to match - not like some BMWs - so the sub should look almost invisible. The trunk also is set up for angled golf bags, so it's only the third bag that we eliminate with this design. 

We end up higher than the Logic 7 of course - $2K, I think. 

I'll post more pics and info when we work on the 2007 in December.


----------



## BHR4CE1 (Nov 11, 2006)

*2007 M6 Vert stereo is kinda lame.*

Man, I love my new M6 vert, but the stereo really isn't that great. I sure wish there was something I could do to make it better!

Any suggestions?


----------



## el_duderino (Aug 1, 2005)

I haven't done a vert yet... but there's a post somewhere here on one, I thought. 

I personally would upgrade the door speaks, lose the center channel, and add a sub and amp as a baseline, and my preferred embodiment would be at least a 4-channel amp, front doors and a sub.

My suspicion is that your sound system has poor-sounding highs and no bass. You can improve the sound of the highs, I THINK, by upgrading the speakers, but you can't change the bass without adding a new amp and a sub. Best results would be to have the new speakers on new amp channels as well. 

You need to reverse the processing in some way - we would use a Zapco DC amp, but some would use a RF or JL or Audio Control processor. 

I would go talk to George at Haas in Santa Monica...


----------



## BHR4CE1 (Nov 11, 2006)

el_duderino said:


> I haven't done a vert yet... but there's a post somewhere here on one, I thought.
> 
> I personally would upgrade the door speaks, lose the center channel, and add a sub and amp as a baseline, and my preferred embodiment would be at least a 4-channel amp, front doors and a sub.
> 
> ...


Overall, you are right on the money.

Bass is unquestionably lacking, and what IS there is too "baggy" for my tastes. High end is always a problem when you are in a big room, and a car without a top is a relatively large room!

One other thing&#8230; the sound field seems very constricted. It seems like most of the sound is coming from the center channel that you suggest removing. The stereo image just isn't there. The sound needs to be "widened" if you will.


----------



## el_duderino (Aug 1, 2005)

Try turning the "surround" off and seeing if that widens things...


----------



## chuck92103 (Oct 9, 2005)

.


----------



## BHR4CE1 (Nov 11, 2006)

el_duderino said:


> Try turning the "surround" off and seeing if that widens things...


OK, I will try to figure out where the settings for that are.

Thanks!


----------

