I don't know squat about car audio!

[Gaffes]

Can anyone help me out?

I have a '98 M3/4 with the HK stereo system, and I want to upgrade it. I am thinking of doing the work myself. I am a certified electrician, but don't know squat about car audio.

I also heard somewhere that the BMW HK system is very proprietary and hard to upgrade. Ten channel amp, etc... Is this true?

Are there any newbie car audio sites out there?

What I would like to do, I think, is keep the factory head unit and
changer in the trunk and upgrade everything else. Is this reasonable?

I want to keep he factory head unit for looks and for the weather band, which I actually use alot.

cheers, and thanks for any advice,
Gaffes

[Avery]

I use to hang out at http://www.pacific-audio.com it helped me with out of questions and recomendations. You can also try http://www.crutchfield.com it tells you about the basics and stuff. As far as the amp on the bmw I wouldn't know if you wanted a good system you would start from scratch.

[LUNI2NZ]

You're right about the 10 channel factory amp. The most difficult part of upgrading the E36 audio system is doing the amp and speakers. They must be done together. The factory amp has built-in crossovers that are designed to work with the 10 factory drivers. If you want to change speakers, you must also replace the amp and visa-versa.

Although it is possible to add an aftermarket amp and speakers to the factory deck, I don't recommend it. The factory deck doesn't have preouts to feed a line level signal to the new amp(s). And, more importantly, the signal coming from the factory deck isn't very good. Garbage in....garbage out.

There are a few decks out there that look good in the dash. Nakamichi and the Kenwood variable color decks from 2001 (KDC-Vxxxx). These decks will match your dash lights pretty well. The Nak looks like it was designed for our cars and has awesome sound.

Jay

[Tnucu]

I prefer Alpine decks, and they make ones that can change colors to out red/orange. But you do what a new deck, the factory decks, no matter how "premium" or whatever tend to be crap...

[LUNI2NZ]

WTF!!!! We've got the Oregon connection goin' here.

Jay