[oreo_carName]

TL;DR: If you hate harsh highs and weak mids in the H/K soundsystem, get the focal isbmw100k pNp speakers and unplug the center channel tweeter.

After purchasing my near-perfect spec F90 in May 2023, I was somewhat annoyed with the Harman/Kardon speakers. While the system was an improvement over my previous car's, providing a solid overall experience, it lacked balance at higher volumes. I always found myself trying to tune the EQ to get the best overall experience but was unable to find anything that worked all the time. I believe the cause of these issues was the stock tweeters, which are ridiculously bright, harsh, and fatiguing, leading me to aftermarket upgrades.

I did a lot of research on potential upgrades for the system, but was hesitant to pull the trigger on a speaker replacement upgrade since I kept thinking to myself "How much could replacing a speaker actually change." Have to extend a huge thank you to FotiosF90M5, since I reached out about his system (found below) and his experience with the speaker upgrade process. We were able to have a solid talk about speakers, but I was still not completely sold on a speaker-only upgrade. Thankfully there is a local shop, Sound in Motion Boston, that has a shop X3M with simple, but powerful, upgrades that completely change the listening experience (front speakers, mosconi amp, and footwell sub).

10 seconds into listening and those speakers immediately blew me away. Extremely tight, clean, and powerful base, ridiculously clear treble, and perfectly crisp mids. Because of this experience, I ended up upgrading the front door speakers to the new Focal ISBMW100K speakers. I honestly did not even know these existed from my research, but I am glad they do! You get the easy plug-and-play install with the outstanding K2 cone (Another thank you to FotiosF90M5 for the Focal/K2 recommendation).

I honestly did not notice much of a difference after picking the car up, probably due to not listening to stock/aftermarket back to back. Took some time to adjust the setting to my taste and they sounded BEAUTIFUL. The music was more immersive and full when compared to before, with added clarity and no harshness. I felt like I could hear more details in the songs I listen to as well. The only issue I still had was that the center channel speaker was still aggressively harsh. There is a simple solution for this though! I ended up disconnecting the tweeter for the center channel, but left the mid plugged in, which perfectly completed the front sound stage! (Found that with no center speaker, the front felt empty with the current DSP tuning)

I attached two before and after videos to elaborate on the differences that I described above. Please note that for all videos, I was listening as loud as I could without the music hurting my ears that much (from the harsh highs), and I used the same phone/recording settings for all videos. I am also listening with Logic7 surround enabled (I know, not great...) so that adds a slight echo. The reason for this is that surround off is not as immersive. (this is where the AMP/DSP upgrade would really help a lot)

(Recommend listening to the videos with headphones)

Before Videos:
Vanic-Staring at the sun: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Jx2...ew?usp=sharing
Vanic-PTLD: (Samsung phone source)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QJY...ew?usp=sharing

After Videos:
Vanic-Staring at the sun: https://drive.google.com/file/d/14hE...usp=drive_link
Vanic-PTLD: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eGN...ew?usp=sharing


FotiosF90M5 setup: https://f90.bimmerpost.com/forums/sh....php?t=1943919

Focal ISBMW100K Speakers: https://www.focal-america.com/product/is-bmw-100k/


Please let me know if there is anything that I missed!