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      11-12-2012, 03:04 PM   #4
elerner61
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Drives: '07 Z4M Roadster
Join Date: May 2011
Location: Mount Kisco, NY

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I took a look at the manual for that HU. It looks like a nice, flexible piece. The Z4 was the first time I've worked on a 3-way (plus sub) system. It was a bit of a challenge dealing with all those channels. You're going to need to do a little homework and some careful planning/thinking with regards to your # of channels and how you are going to drive them.

From my experience with the JBL DSP, to take advantage of Digital Signal Processing capability (like your head unit can provide) you need to run separate channels at least for high & mid (via a crossover), mid-bass, and sub. That's five channels. Optimally for DSP you would run separate channels for each (7 channels). With the JBL DSP I was able to run the tweets off the JBL onboard amp, the mids, mid bass and the subs off an external 5 channel amp.

I did notice that the installation manual for your HU says no speaker loads below 4ohm. The OEM mid-bass are 2ohm so your HU amp is not going to like that (Edited, incorrectly had tweets as 2ohm in this post).

My suggestion is to plan on running external amplification for all your channels. Doing this should let you stay with the OEM drivers (to start) as an external amp should be ok with the 2ohm mid-bass load and you'll get a better sounding system. Talk with the shop who is going to do the install and ask how they see doing it. The 3-way fronts are what is going to challenge the install the most, so focus on this with the shop. Map everything out on a drawing, you don't want the shop to be mid-install and then have them call you and say they made a mistake on the design while your car is torn apart.

One last bit of advice, it's good to have easy access to control the sub level. As you switch between different musical genre's, sub level control is great to have. As you don't listen to much rap/R&B (I do sometimes, to keep in touch with what my son is listening to) you could get away without this.

Last edited by elerner61; 11-13-2012 at 12:14 PM..
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