Ok, I know this is a dumb question or at least not a serious driving issue, but on my new 7 I cant adjust the bass so that sound is not very boomy. Think hard core rock not jazz or symphony.. It is NOT the equilizer nor is it the bass volume. Rather I have been in the car with an audio engineer and the problem, i believe, is that on the Alpina B7 is that there are two subwoofers under the front seats. These kick in well below 100 Hz and BMW tells me there is no way to reduce the gain on them. The result is the car eiher sounds like I am trying to shake the neighbors awake, or the bass from 100 to 500 Hz is damped. Does anyone know how to reduce the gain on these speakers? I am ready to cut cables. thanks
The equilizer's lowest setting is 100 Hz. The subwoofer seems centered much closer to 50 Hz. If you reduce the 100 Hz slider substantially, you can eliminate the issue of the car sounding like a boom box BUT at the cost of losing all frequency below a few hundred Hz. Not appealing. That is why I am trying to reduce the gain on the subwoofer. All the other speakers can be well tuned.
Is the B7's system different than the 7er's? The first thing I would do is try to compare the sound in a similarly equipped car to see if it's a problem unique to yours.
A little labor-intensive perhaps, but wouldn't it be possible to yank the seats for access and splice in some sort of adjustable attenuator? (or whatever would be appropriate). Ya, I know, of course you shouldn't have to go to that extreme but you know how it is, if your preferences don't align with BMW's engineering choices, sometimes you're forced to engineer your own solution. Try to check out any potential negative effects; obviously you wouldn't want to put a bunch of effort into something that then causes error codes/messages or whatever just because the 'system' monitors some resistance value that ends up changing or being out of spec, or something like that. I wouldn't suspect that particularly for a couple of subwoofers, but these days with newer cars and their integrated systems, who knows.. (Jonathan here might )
I must admit that your suggestion was my first instinct. I asked BMW who said ask Harmon Kardon, we just replace the whole unit if it breaks. We know of no adjustments or way of putting in resistance.. etc. So I will wait and see if someone knows where the blue screw is that adjusts gain, and if i dont hear anything, I will try what you suggest. thanks