[cschmelz]

I purchased a 2011 BMW 335D a few months ago. It was a good deal on a car on the dealer's lot.

It is a nice car with some nice features and is a blast to drive, but it came with base stereo.

MSRP $50k on this vehicle and I have to say, even the Toyota Corrola rental cars I was getting from Hertz sounded better. My BMW, for all it's style, all its grace, sounded awful. No imaging, no soundstage, no bass, no clarity.

I am fortunate to live in eastern Washington state just a few hours from Portland and MusicarNW. After a few very detailed emails from VP Tuning (Ken) I elected to go all out and get the Level Two upgrade from them with a small addition of a Helix P-DSP instead of a CleanSweep.

Parts were ordered, and a few weeks later I was in the shop in Portland for an install.

First, even if Tom or Ken say Level Two is a half day affair it isn't, plan on a full day. This isn't due to laziness, it is due to their level of detail in the install.

New tweeter sails, huge tweeters, amazing looking midranges, flat but heavy woofers all went in. The wiring harnesses were all indistinguishable from stock BMW (actually they looked better than some stock).

The Helix DSP goes into what looks like a factory location as does the ARC amplifier.

Once it was all installed Ken got to work with a frequency graphing device of some sort, first balancing the output of the DSP to counteract the ugly output from the base head unit, then balancing the AUDIBLE output from the entire system with a calibrated microphone. He then wanted to know if I wanted it to sound good everywhere or to have priority to my driver's seat (Driver's seat of course). Ken then balanced/delayed the system such that the soundstage was perfectly balanced across the front windshield from my seat.

It was night and day. Clean bass, detailed treble notes, most detailed soundstage I've ever heard. Really amazing!

The Bad:
After a few hours I started to notice a whine during quiet passages. I spoke with Ken and was offered a time during an upcoming visit to Portland. It was amazing to watch Ken and Tom work to try to troubleshoot the issue. They really are brilliant guys and do amazing work.

As we did all this the Friday of Memorial Day weekend it wasn't easy to get manufacturer help. Ultimately they felt we most likely had a bad Helix DSP with a bad input section (they use speaker level signals to drive the DSP). They ultimately utilized an old tech passive device to convert the speaker level signals to RCAs and input that into the DSP.

Not the most elegant solution longterm but a brilliant solution while we try to decide if the Helix P-DSP is bad. Now the system is completely silent and still sounds amazing.

It wasn't cheap, but the retrofit is elegant, amazing to listen to and makes the car a real joy to drive. I couldn't be happier now.

Tom and Ken are a real class act and I could not be more impressed with their skill, dedication and customer service.

[Route 16]

sound clip/video clip? Regardless of camera, I listen with Bose audio so I do hear things.

[cschmelz]

Sound clips make no sense without a calibrated microphone, etc. Trust me it sounds great.