# DYNAVIN N6 Multimedia GPS System for E46, E39, E53, E9X.... New for mid-2014



## [email protected] (Jun 24, 2014)

*DYNAVIN N6​*
Dynavin has made some BIG changes to their Audio/Video/Navigation System offerings, enough to warrant a new thread, and to hopefully keep all the relevant info and discussions in one place for future users of this forum. Please lets try to keep this thread about Dynavin and try to keep it informative, Q & A stuff....try to leave opinions and speculation out of it, there are already 100 other pages of that. Thank you in advance.








The new N6 unit is 2 years in the making, with a big emphasis on higher quality audio components, features, and improved ease of use. You audiophiles will appreciate features like 24bit burr brown D/A converters, 5 band EQ, time alignment, 4 volt preamp outputs (for those of you with aftermarket amps), basically higher end internals across the board... The result is cleaner sound, much more consistent performance, a much better user interface, and a better appearance.

....and the best part? *The price went DOWN....*:thumbsup:

As always, they are available in a variety of shapes and sizes to fit the B*MW E46, E39, E53, E90,*, and an assortment of Audi, VW, Porsche and Mercedes models.

Details can be found on Dynavin's website, http://www.dynavin.com

Or my website: http://www.jandtdistributing.com/

There has been a pre-release thread over on E46fanatics for a while now, lots of good info: http://forum.e46fanatics.com/showthread.php?t=1040026&highlight=dynavin

Im just going to go over the new and significant stuff here....there are lots of old dynavin threads on the forums but to see the BIG ONE that started it all, and get a look at what the install is like, look here, all really old info now but still lots of good stuff in there:
*Dynavin D90 (V5) thread: (The Big One!)* http://forum.e46fanatics.com/showthread.php?t=793437

Also you can download the install guide from our website's E46 page if you want to get an idea of what its about
http://www.jandtdistributing.com/co...-e46-multimedia-gps-system-99-06-bmw-3-series

I had to bring my old E46 out of retirement to make this thread!  Some of you guys who have been here a long time will recognize this as the car from the original Dynavin threads from 5 years ago....a friend now owns her, looks better than ever, and it was time for an audio upgrade!










*So lets get to it! WHATS NEW?*

The "hard buttons" on each side have the same configuration as dynavin has had from the beginning but I noticed right away that the previously "clicky" buttons are now "soft touch". Subtle but nice upgrade and similar to a lot of dynavins more recent models. The knobs are similar to those on the D99 and newer, and thats a good thing, solid with a muted click as they turn. Other than that the unit has a similar "feel" and is cosmetically similar to earlier units.

*Digital Music: IPOD/SD/USB/Internal HD*

As part of the simplification and refinement of the new N6 user interface the ipod, SD, USB, and the internal 4GB storage functions all share the same basic interface. Simple and intuitive, with selections for artist/album/song/playlist, and in the case of SD and USB, additional selections for folders/video files/picture files. The list can be swiped up and down and there is a scroll bar on the side AND a quick jump alphabetical search allowing you to jump to any letter in the lists so large libraries are no longer a problem to navigate.










Also in the name of simplicity the ipod now just plugs into the USB plug, no more proprietary cables, no more need for lighting adapters for the newer apple devices. Just use the cables you already have. The unit comes with a USB extension to get the rear mounted USB media plug to the glove compartment, console, etc... and we also have on our website flush mount USB plugs and ipod to USB cables if you want to do something a little more custom.

Album art now displays alongside the track info. As you can see, clean and refined is what Dynavin was after here....
Interestingly apps like pandora display similarly (from my iphone at least), displaying track info and album art.



















For those of you interested in higher end audio the unit will play lossless files, In my testing FLAC files played fine from USB and SD and Apple lossless (ALAC) played fine from an ipod.










*Source Selection Screen*

Like previous Dynavin units the MODE button brings up a source selection screen, large easy to press on-screen buttons display your most used sources for easy selection. You actually don't see these screens much....only when switching sources or getting into the settings menus.










Swiping the screen side to side reveals a selection various settings menus and ALL of the potential sources.



















While the Radio, Phone, and Navigation buttons are fixed on the home screen the other two are selectable so you can put your most used functions there for easy access.

*BLUTOOTH PHONE*

Dynavin continues to work with Parrot on the bluetooth system, its now cleaner than ever, will display your phonebook, and has a quick alphabetical search function to jump to any letter in the alphabet. As before it works with the phone buttons on your steering wheel. There is a built in mic AND an external mic, as before I recommend using the external mic as it allows you to experiment with its location for best results.










*BLUETOOTH AUDIO STREAMING (A2DP)*

This is another big step forward, the Bluetooth audio streaming quality is now as good as plugging in, It connects pretty much immediately and works with apps like pandora, stitcher, etc... in addition to your standard media apps. In addition track info is now displayed on the screen:










The steering wheel control buttons work as well, including in apps like pandora. I find that this is now my go-to choice as a music source.

*RADIO, CD, DVD etc...*

The radio is what you would expect, 15 presets, RDS, Pretty standard stuff here. Settings for different regions etc...

The unit plays CDs, DVDs, etc.... same as before.



















*NAVIGATION*

As with previous dynavin units we are able to offer our units with pre-installed, *licensed* iGo Primo on our Dynavin units. This program has long been a favorite of the "hacker community" and I know some of our competitors are pirating it but Im glad to say we can offer it to everybody in a legit legal way. The licenses are not cheap but we include Primo with all of our Dynavin units. This also greatly simplifies things like future map updates etc... as iGo is well established and has an easy upgrade path available via their website www.naviextras.com

Its clean and intuitive, easy to quickly search and enter addresses, all the maps are already on board so no internet connection is needed.



















The new N6 unit has an option to overlay the current media info over the nav screen, displaying track info and album art










A few more iGo Primo Screens...

*Main Menu*










*Main Map screen*



















*REVERSE FUNCTIONS*

As always the new Dynavin N6 will work with a reverse camera, but dynavin continues to refine this function to work with PDC (parking sensors, if your car has them) and is completely configurable within the settings menu. You can have just a backup camera, PDC, backup cam WITH PDC displayed, or nothing at all.

In cars that have canbus connected steering angle sensors the unit can even display parking assist lines that move based on steering angle, this is model dependent and remains to be seen what all cars it will work in....but for those where it does its some cool eye candy:










*AUDIO FUNCTIONS*

Here is where some of the biggest changes are.....Dynavin is going after a higher end market and as such has added a lot of good audio features to the new N6. Time alignment, three band bass/mid/treble AND a 5 band EQ with separate sub control, 4 volt RCAs for clean signal transmission to aftermarket amps, and 24bit burr brown D/A converters....you old school audio guys will know what thats about.










Most of you guys probably dont know what time alignment is or what to do with it but its probably the single biggest factor affecting sound quality in a car stereo environment, this adjustment allows for you to delay the speakers at the 4 corners of the car independently so that the sound from each reaches your ears as the same time....basically putting YOU in the "sweet spot". Ive been running time alignment of one kind or another for a couple decades now, in my opinion its a MUST HAVE for any higher end system. One thing to keep in mind though is setting this wrong can also make your system sound terrible so its important to at least understand the basic fundamentals of time delay before you jump into this setting. Also keep in mind this is optimizing ONE spot in the car at the detriment to the other seating positions. So if you regularly listen to music with passengers you may not want to use these settings.










5 band EQ, self explanatory:










*LIGHTING AND SCREEN ILLUMINATION*

Dynavins have always had matching button lighting, not a big deal, but FYI, the buttons match the other buttons in the car and dim with the dash light dimmer. Nice and OEM.

Now this next thing may not sound like a big deal at first, but for day to day, real world use....its HUGE. The LCD dimmer can be configured in multiple ways and the dimming amount is fully adjustable. There is now an onboard ambient light sensor as well. SO you can set the unit up to dim when your headlights come on OR when the sensor sees its getting dark, or you can dim it manually. There are pros and cons to each approach and the overall ambient lighting where you are at and your headlight use habits will dictate which setup will work best for you. The adjustable LCD dimmer looks great as it does not just darken the screen as most "dimmers" do, it dims the backlight, so there is no "LCD glow" at night. Between the nicely dimmed screen and the clean white/red on black interface this is the best looking aftermarket unit at night ive ever seen

A night pic in my E92,










*ETC...*

You can set the boot screen to whatever you like. Put it on a SD or USB and select it as your boot screen, real simple. A word about start up.... The N6 has about a 20 second boot time BUT dynavin has done something clever, the unit starts booting when you unlock or open a door.... and it does not fully turn off until about 20 minutes after you shut the car off, it goes into a standby mode. So in regular use, running errands, that sort of thing, you rarely see the boot screen, or if you do its only for a few seconds. I like things clean and OEM so I went with this in my personal car....










Dynavin went to an oem style Fakra antenna plug on the unit so that the cars antenna can plug directly into the unit without any adapters. One less thing to install, one less thing to go wrong. For those of you with the old style antenna they provide an adapter.










There is still an OBC display but at least on the E46 it doesnt show much at this time....just a couple temps:










On my E92 there is a lot more, Im assuming this is a canbus/ibus difference thing, I guess it just depends on the particular model:










Finally, a word about updates. Dynavin is really pushing the "DynOS" thing on these units. They have built into the unit (and their new website) an easy update path so that as they develop and activate new features it will be easy to update the units. The current units are running DynOS 1.0.0. so its clear that they intend the current unit to be "generation one" for their software. Its fairly finished as is, but I guess they have things in the pipeline.

I was skeptical of this approach as marketing this as a feature obligates you to use it but Dynavin assures me they have plans in this regard and they have given me a few details about things they are working on. Dont expect huge, earth shattering, changes. But just know that there are further refinements and a few interesting features in the works and as time goes on these will be easy to apply to existing units.

Finished look:










Ill keep adding to this post as we go, ill try to make it a inclusive resource for all the new, relevant, N6 info.


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## Mc Lynn (Jul 8, 2014)

Do you have any photos of the E53 Avant-2 model? When will you have those in stock?


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## [email protected] (Jun 24, 2014)

wrong thread my friend.....but the answer is....tuesday....


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## [email protected] (Jun 24, 2014)

*HINTS, TIPS, AND HIDDEN FEATURES*​
Ill be adding little hints and tricks here as I run across them and people ask about them.

*REBOOT*
Since the N6 does not actually turn off with the key but instead goes into standby mode for a period of time, getting it to reboot could be a tedious wait....but you dont have to, just hold down the source button for 6 seconds and the unit will reboot.

*TIME ALIGNMENT*
What is time alignment? In a car you sit on the left side, placing you closer to the left side speaker, so the sound from the left side gets to your ears before the the right side and greatly reduces your sound sound quality. The goal in high end audio is to create a solid aural image of each musician at a certain point in space on a a perceived soundstage. By delaying the near side channel we can bring the sound back into "alignment" and put you in the "sweet spot."

Sitting in the drivers seat measure the distance to each speaker (the front and rear mids in the case of the E9X). In my personal car it looks something like this:

FL: 28in (71cm)
FR: 48in (124cm)
RL: 24in (61cm)
RR: 42in (107cm)

Take the longest distance and subtract the other distance from that number...

So we end up with:

FL: 53cm
FR: 0cm
RL: 63cm
RR: 17cm

In a recording there are sounds and musicians to the left, the right, and the center, it's the center that we are concerned with here. Most of the time the drums and primarily the vocalist are in the center. We want to select a music track that has some space in it so we don't want a heavily overdubbed recording with lots of backing vocals....too much noise.

Set the fader to the front so we are only hearing the front pair of speakers. Enter the delay numbers above and put on some music. It should sound pretty good. Then raise one side of the delay settings, say the front left. As you do this you will hear the sound change, it will become hollow, out of focus, kind of a "in a tin can" kind of sound, your front speakers are now out of phase. Then lower the setting, as you pass the correct setting you will hear the sound come back into "focus", the vocals will move to the center of the car and become more solid. Keep going and you will hear it go out of phase again. Now go back towards you original setting again and listen as the music becomes focused again. Somewhere near the number we calculated above you will find the "sweet spot" where the vocals and bass are centered in the car and solid.

Then fade the rear speakers back in a little bit at a time until the sound is full and pleasing but not at the expense of the solid centered imaging. And that's it. Now you can play around with the EQ and other audio adjustments.

Try the above and if you have never hear a time aligned system you might be surprised by what you hear....it's a different experience than you are used to....

Let me know if you have questions....I've been running time alignment in all of my personal cars for....a long time now...

NOTE: the L7 system with the MOST adapter can only accept 2 channels of input from the head unit so you will not use any delay settings on the rear speakers, just measure the front settings and use those to set the time alignment, its not perfect but is still much better than non time alignment at all!

*BOOT LOGO*
Due to popular demand....here are some boot logo screens you guys can use....

To put a custom boot screen on your dynavin just copy and paste any 800X480 to a SD card or USB, jpg, png, bmp, all seem to work. Put the SD or USB in the Dynavin, select the appropriate source on the dynavin and find the pic you want to use, when you are viewing it simply press the icon in the lower left and and a check mark will appear. DONE!

I made this one, use it as you like....









I dont know where this one came from....but credit to whoever made it....









Credit to Transport3r for this one...nice!









Credit to 1QuikWS6 for submitting these:


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## [email protected] (Jun 24, 2014)

In stock and shipping


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## [email protected] (Jun 24, 2014)

NOW COMPATIBLE WITH THE OEM DSP SYSTEM in the E39 and E53 X5.....those of you with DSP systems who have looked into upgrades know how big of a deal this is and how much time, labor, frustration, $$$ this will save you!


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## impac4000 (Mar 12, 2006)

I am very interested in this for my 2008 BMW E60 535i right now i dont have Navigation. Is this a Plug & Play for my car ?


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## [email protected] (Jun 24, 2014)

The unit in these threads is not for an E60 but dynavin does make one that is http://www.dynavin.com/products/dvn_e60.php .....but its very different, its an "add on" type unit that adds functionality to the stock system but otherwise leaves the stock idrive in place.


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## [email protected] (Jun 24, 2014)

In stock and shipping...


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## timgray (Dec 17, 2014)

They really need to add support for the Generic Sirius/XM tuner that is out there and trivial to program for. I would be all over their product if they supported Sirius/XM


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## [email protected] (Jun 24, 2014)

just my opinion but with everything moving toward internet streaming I think support for sat radio is unlikely. Now the SiriusXM streaming app on your phone, you CAN do that now and hear the audio on the dynavin via bluetooth.


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## timgray (Dec 17, 2014)

that's too bad because internet streaming is 80X more expensive than Sat radio here in the USA.

Looks like I need to investigate Pioneer's offering, they support Sirius/XM


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## [email protected] (Jun 24, 2014)

Yep, if Sat radio is your priority, and you dont want to use the SiriusXM app, you will need to look at the more traditional universal options.


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## [email protected] (Jun 24, 2014)

Dynavin has the 1.1.1 firmware update up on their website.....for us BMW guys this will offer a lot of nice little improvements over the current 1.0.1. Follow the instructions on their site to update (the link is on the bottom of each product page). 

Nothing huge but some of the obvious changes:

-Changes to tuner software to better work with certain diversity antennas (like on BMWs), the "hi cut" option in the radio menu should be unchecked for us BMW guys.
-Changes to the way the volume works in nav.....when the nav voice is talking you can turn the volume knob to adjust the nav sound volume independent of the media volume.
-Microphone Gain in the bluetooth menu to allow for adjustment to each individual installation plus options to better handle multiple phones.
-Lots of small stability and performance improvements, as well as a number of vehicle specific changes for wider compatibility.


Keep in mind, this is not your PC, this update is not mandatory.....your various settings will be reset (on the radio, not nav) so make note of them before updating.

For you guys who got the firmware from me in the last couple weeks, no need to update, the "beta" I sent you was the same as this final firmware.

If you happen to be one of the E39/E53 guys following this thread.....AND you have the DSP audio system, make sure you read the info on dynavins site (or my stuff on bimmerfourms) about setting up the volume levels.


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## Imdi (Apr 28, 2015)

Hi jeff,
Did you know , why my unit can't up grade os,
Sdcard can read but can't auto run ..
I need change languages hk tO english
NAV not working ,

Please help us
Thanks'


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## [email protected] (Jun 24, 2014)

format the card FAT32

Make sure you extract the download so you should have 3 files.

Put those 3 files on the SD card, NOT in a folder, just 3 files on an SD card.


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## [email protected] (Jun 24, 2014)

1.1.1 firmware has been released, lots of small but nice upgrades!


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## junkycosmos (Oct 1, 2015)

Any ideas for XM / Sirus without having to have a dedicated XM head unit visible? Would really be nice to control the XM feed via the N6 screen. Still nothing on the road map for the N6 to support the generic XM controller units like newer SXV300 ? http://www.amazon.com/SiriusXM-SXV300v1-Connect-Vehicle-Satellite/dp/B00NJTO4CY/

I was again eyeing he XM head units and trying to see which one would match the best, but still seems it will be a little silly to do so much on N6 and then just use its AUX in for XM.

http://shop.siriusxm.com/ctlimg/siriusXM/productcompare.html?SkuId=XEZ1V1

anyone else done Sirus / XM into their N6?

thx
J


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## [email protected] (Jun 24, 2014)

junkycosmos said:


> Any ideas for XM / Sirus without having to have a dedicated XM head unit visible? Would really be nice to control the XM feed via the N6 screen. Still nothing on the road map for the N6 to support the generic XM controller units like newer SXV300 ? http://www.amazon.com/SiriusXM-SXV300v1-Connect-Vehicle-Satellite/dp/B00NJTO4CY/
> 
> I was again eyeing he XM head units and trying to see which one would match the best, but still seems it will be a little silly to do so much on N6 and then just use its AUX in for XM.
> 
> ...


No I dont expect integration with an XM tuner....frankly the industry is not headed that way, streaming audio is where things are headed so I dont imagine that Dynavin will be investing in satellite at this point. What I personally do is run the SiriusXM app on my phone and stream the audio to my dynavin via bluetooth.


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## [email protected] (Jun 24, 2014)

Hey guys, I know we are late to the party but we are trying to get our facebook page going....

So if you are a previous/future customer, someone I helped out here over the years, or you just like the way I do things, please visit our facebook page<-click here, "like" us, or even better write a review of your interaction with me and my company!

Also please post pics of your own installs, install hints, boot screen logos, whatever else you might be into that is BMW or Dynavin related.

These forums are getting a bit....dense...its sometimes difficult to find the most current and relevant info....so Id like to get something going over on facebook that keeps things a bit more current....


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