[rice_rocket88]

I would have gotten it if I could, but the deal I got on the dealer stocked car was better. I have a bunch of other cars at home and after a few weeks of owning the X2 I just had to give in and admit... the regular Hifi system is just lacking in compared to even the family minivan! What I feel is that the treble/high notes are really drowned out. I'm not keen anymore on the super bass, so that's actually enough for my liking. I read on the X1 forums some people got lucky and ordered the trim piece with the HK speakers and got the speakers included! The last few threads, however, it seems that nobody is getting speakers with them. I did a little digging around to see about bavsound and audisson upgrades, and although I am still thinking about it, did not want to make the jump/investment in changing out everything. Looking online it seems that tweeters are actually very affordable in price and range from a few dollars to $200 a pop. I tried to do a little research and reading to find something relatively budget to try out first before wanting to go to the expensive stuff.
Also to note that in the US we have either the Hifi system or the Harmon Kardon system. Apparently the Amp and headunit are sufficient enough in the Hifi system unless you are aiming for even better sound, so first of all adding tweeter is step one, and then upgrading the door speakers step two, and at last if you want more bass, the subs in the floor.


So I ended up trying the Pioneer TS-T15 tweeters. 120w per tweeter 4 ohm resistance and 90db sensitivity. All of this I don't quite understand, but apparently that's pretty good and slightly better than a few of the choices I was going to pick. It was $33 for a pair on amazon. This morning I wired up one tweeter and mounted it, and so far I can say it might bridge the gap, especially once I put in the passenger side. Another thing to note, which I have yet to check.. is that I believe the in dash center speaker is also lacking the tweeter which I may have to source something for that eventually, but don't want to go overkill... slow and steady wins the race.

So.. door removal: Once things got going I think I can do the other side in about 30 minutes, but obviously first time around I had to take my time. Door removal seemed similar to the X1, yet more screws. If you only plan on adding the tweeters, you can short cut it for sure and not have to take the whole door off, I'll break it down though.

First thing's first.. roll the window down.

Okay so the biggest challenge is to get the door handle off. This is at least common on a lot of BMW's. But boy getting this off took me like 10-15 minutes alone! It's wedged and clipped on really tight. There is a small groove on the bottom of the handle, but that only helped get the pry tool in there. After looking at the handle design, it's best to pull it out starting from the TOP nearest to the glass, and the bottom is actually hooked in, so that has to come out last.

There are 2 torx bit screws in the door. You need a long extension to get to one of them. At this point you could pop the top of the door jamb as well as the side and reach into the door speaker connector. *If you want to continue on.. there are 2 more torx screws at the very bottom of the door, those are easy enough to see if you're on the ground looking at it. And there is one more screw on the door striker/lock side. There is a plastic cover that is best pried from the top out (the bottom has a hook).

Now going back up to the tweeters.. once the top of the door card is opened up enough, there is a glass guard on the top of the sill. That simply pulls out. Once this is out, you'll get some room to get the "tweeter" cover out. It's popped into the door, but the rest is just fit into the door frame. I didn't take the whole thing out, but from the diagrams it just pulls completely out. Behind the "triangle" is just a piece of soft foam. Now I didn't quite decide how to mount my tweeters, so I went with the second easiest solution to surface mount. (easiest would just be to use the double sided tape they provided). I marked out the spot to mount it, and drilled a pilot hole and screwed the "base" onto the tweeter triangle. I then put another larger hole in the wire feed slot, and pulled the tweeter wires through. With the surface mount and wires I just pushed all the foam back together and pushed the trim back in reverse. The tweeters came with a separate resistor to put inline the POSITIVE speaker wire. I soldered that in, and then wrapped it all up. You want to put this resistor in to filter out the low db sound that would basically pop the tweeter. The door speaker had a tiny little plug in it for the speaker wire with only a black brown and a black red wire. Off the top of my head I thought that on my older BMW's anything with brown was a negative/ground so I put my positive wire to the red one, and the negative to the black brown. If I can find a diagram at any point I'd love to make sure that this is right.

Patched it all up together and fired up the speaker. I figured at worst if I got the wires reversed it would blow the tweeter and I could use the remaining one for the dash speaker Anyways that didn't happen, and I got some pretty crisp treble out of them.

I may take some nice pictures for a write up when I do the next side, or if I decide to flush mount the tweeter instead. Difficulty was pretty low in comparison to other things I've done.. but for first timers getting that door handle could be defeating. Popping off the doors next is nerve racking, but a little bit of tugging pops things off, you certainly can't be gentle. Next of course is the electrical wiring, which again is relatively easy. I can't think of any shortcuts, other than ordering tweeters with resistors already built in.

[strripedz]

Nice write up and thanks for sharing!
I have the same (stereo) setup as yours, and it is either hard or expensive to get the X1 HK door trim, therefore I went with the same route as yours.
The difference is i'm using focal ifbmw-s kit for my tweeter and front door speaker.
Does TS-T15 have the correct connector, or do you have to splice the cable connector for the door speaker?
And do you angle your tweeter if you surface mount it to the door trim?

[rice_rocket88]

Hey strripedz,

No, unfortunately there was no bmw specific connector and I just spliced the wires in. I'm actually surprised it's such a teeny plug and pretty specific sizing (haven't really seen that type of connector anywhere in any cars I've worked on. I saw the focal ifbmw-s kit along the way as well and noticed that the pioneer tweeters seem to have the same spec but maybe more wattage than the one in that kit. I am happy to be able to pay only $33 USD for the two tweeters!

I kept it surface mounted exactly for the reason you ask. The curve in the trim actually does angle it a little more towards me. I saw a few different tweeters that seemed to have even more angle on their mounts, and was considering those. The flush mount on the pioneer to me looks a little big ugly, and then the angle may also be a little less towards me. Still i may think about modifying it a little more to get a couple more degrees towards me, but those two little tweeters has made the sound improve significantly!

[rice_rocket88]

Looks like I can insert pictures only a few at a time.. here we go. Bottom of the door sill two torx bolts on there. *If you're just doing the speaker connector you can just leave these two on. Second picture, the door striker side screw. You can see on the last picture how it pops on.. so pry from the top and it'll pop out. You might as well take this screw out as it lets you pull the door card a little more.

[rice_rocket88]

Here are pictures of the door handle. This is a total pain to get off since it's super tight. Here are pictures of the clips holding it on, both the top and bottom of the handle have hooks, but the top handle has to come off first, as the bottom of the handle has two big hooks that would probably be impossible to pry off. You can see the groove in the bottom of the handle that you can at least start working the pry tool up here.

[rice_rocket88]

These last two screws on the door handle are a little harder to get out since they are deeper. The bottom one is really deep in there so you'll need an extension for sure.

Next is the top of the door frame. You just need to get your finger behind the rubber and pull/pop the door card out. Then you can pull up/out the window guard as shown.

[rice_rocket88]

Next is the corner speaker cover. I circled where it's just popped into the door frame. This is easy to pop out, and just pull it out along the window seam. There's a soft foam piece behind the "triangle". If you're going to do more complicated flush mounting you'd have to take it all off and do the rest on a bench. I did the easy surface mount first and just draped a towel over everything so no plastic shavings dropped anywhere.

[rice_rocket88]

Voila, here is the speaker and connector. Pull out the entire blue clip. The brown wire seems to be the ground (negative) and the red is the positive. I wrote "seems" because I didn't know how to test it for sure, but it is behaving correctly. If you do not have an inline resistor for your tweeters already built into the tweeter, you will have to solder/insert the resistor inline with the positive wire. This is how I marked/mocked up my surface mount tweeter, and here's a picture of the finished product.

[spdandpwr]

hmmm, I'm wondering if I get the focal speakers with the integrated tweeter. Does anyone have experience with those? Ugh, I ordered the perfect X2 M35 but they didn't have HK available. SO disappointed!

[rice_rocket88]

Even if you did get the speakers with an integrated tweeter it would be facing towards your legs and you wouldn't get as much high freq sound. Honestly adding those two tweeters has given it a big enough improvement so far that I haven't even bothered to look into the center tweeter. Also there have been some debates of whether changing the amp might give it a big boost. The amp, however, is going to be $700 ish which to me is a larger commitment.

[spdandpwr]

Originally Posted by rice_rocket88

Even if you did get the speakers with an integrated tweeter it would be facing towards your legs and you wouldn't get as much high freq sound. Honestly adding those two tweeters has given it a big enough improvement so far that I haven't even bothered to look into the center tweeter. Also there have been some debates of whether changing the amp might give it a big boost. The amp, however, is going to be $700 ish which to me is a larger commitment.

Very good point -- and thank you for your hard work! Question for you, what the drivers in the HiFi system? I know about the drivers in the door being 4" but not sure about the others. The info on this forum is hard to search since it's all hodge-podged in one section as opposed to multiple section.

[//TMT]

Originally Posted by spdandpwr

Very good point -- and thank you for your hard work! Question for you, what the drivers in the HiFi system? I know about the drivers in the door being 4" but not sure about the others. The info on this forum is hard to search since it's all hodge-podged in one section as opposed to multiple section.

They're 4", with three screws holding them to the door. The connector is a funny semi-propietary one, and generic speakers need some work to connect, especially if you are adding external tweeters. So the extra cost of an F48/F39 BMW kit can be worth it to avoid that.

I'm not certain if Mini kits have similar connectors and shapes, but I believe there is quite a bit of difference in older doors, so tread carefully if you take that route.

[spdandpwr]

Originally Posted by //TMT

They're 4", with three screws holding them to the door. The connector is a funny semi-propietary one, and generic speakers need some work to connect, especially if you are adding external tweeters. So the extra cost of an F48/F39 BMW kit can be worth it to avoid that.

I'm not certain if Mini kits have similar connectors and shapes, but I believe there is quite a bit of difference in older doors, so tread carefully if you take that route.

Its just 4 drivers? I thought there were more

[//TMT]

Oh, there are lots more, in the dash, under both seats, and depending on system there can be 4 in the rear doors. The aftermarket kits are mostly just the front door ones, plus optional front door tweeters. You can go for more, but you'll be looking at serious $$$ that might be overkill for your needs. Depends on your goal if you want to go that way.

[spdandpwr]

Originally Posted by //TMT

Oh, there are lots more, in the dash, under both seats, and depending on system there can be 4 in the rear doors. The aftermarket kits are mostly just the front door ones, plus optional front door tweeters. You can go for more, but you'll be looking at serious $$$ that might be overkill for your needs. Depends on your goal if you want to go that way.

Got it, would you happen to know the count on the base (non HK system) that comes standard in the US? Just trying to figure out the locations and woofer sizes. Thanks so much -- I really appreciate it. Also, do you have a link to the kit you bought?

[rice_rocket88]

I'm pretty sure on the x1 and x2 HiFi it is going to be 7.. one in each door, one in the dash, two woofers under the front seat. The hk adds one tweeter per door and center tweeter as well as. A bigger amp and... Well better speakers.

[//TMT]

Originally Posted by spdandpwr

Got it, would you happen to know the count on the base (non HK system) that comes standard in the US? Just trying to figure out the locations and woofer sizes. Thanks so much -- I really appreciate it. Also, do you have a link to the kit you bought?

As rr88 mentions it's called the HiFi system, you can find the specs at bmwusa.com. I actually haven't upgraded yet, but I'm considering the separate-tweeter Focals. Honestly I don't really use my car for serious listening, but I do appreciate a good system and it can improve the clarity for day to day stuff.

[spdandpwr]

Originally Posted by //TMT

As rr88 mentions it's called the HiFi system, you can find the specs at bmwusa.com. I actually haven't upgraded yet, but I'm considering the separate-tweeter Focals. Honestly I don't really use my car for serious listening, but I do appreciate a good system and it can improve the clarity for day to day stuff.

Yeah, I had initially referred to it as the HiFi system but wanted to further clarify as we went back and forth to ensure we were discussing the same thing.

Unfortunately, the website is dumbed down, this is all I could find:

HiFi Sound System with 7-speakers and 205-watt digital amplifier

[//TMT]

I wonder where#7 is. One in each front door, one subwoof under each front seat, one speaker and one tweeter in the center dash, I thought...

[spdandpwr]

Originally Posted by //TMT

I wonder where#7 is. One in each front door, one subwoof under each front seat, one speaker and one tweeter in the center dash, I thought...

That's the thing, I don't think they're actually subwoofers under the seats. They may be standard woofers. I guess I'll find out on Monday when the car comes in.

[//TMT]

Originally Posted by spdandpwr

That's the thing, I don't think they're actually subwoofers under the seats. They may be standard woofers. I guess I'll find out on Monday when the car comes in.

Looked it up on Realoem, they're called "Central Bass" speakers. Image visible at the following link:

https://www.realoem.com/bmw/enUS/sho...diagId=65_2805

I still don't count 7 speakers. In fact, tweeters seem to be unique to HK configurations, even in front. Hard to tell without practically dismantling the dash!

[rice_rocket88]

Again as I said before..
Center console #1
Drivers door #2
Passenger door #3
Drivers rear #4
Passenger rear #5
Driver seat #6
Passenger seat #7

Voila.. 7 speakers.

NO tweeters in the A pillars.. and I haven't confirmed, but 99% sure there's that extra tweeter missing in the center. So if you had the HK system it would add 3 more tweeters, a more powerful amp, and better speakers all around.

To me you guys are splitting hairs.. the speakers under the seats are the subwoofers.. or "lowest frequency" if you want to call it. If you go and look at all the upgrade paths, they first add in tweeters, then they change out the door speakers, and then you can get better "subwoofers". .. and you can get a better amp.