Trunk subwoofer decision - Visual Ice vs. Integral Audio vs. Musicar

[noone]

I'm ready to pull the trigger for a pre-fabricated aftermarket subwoofer for my 2018 M3.

Looks like the options are:

Visual Ice out of the UK left side that appears to do quite a lot of volume based off his Facebook page
$200 - https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/BMW-3-SER...-/152919939296

Or

Integral Audio Phantom which sits on the left side of the trunk, includes house label 10" driver $680-$800 (is on sale right now for $680) - https://integralaudio.com/phantomtm-...eries-f30.html

Or

the Musicar sub enclosure which sits on the right hand side $500- https://musicarcertified.com/product...fer-enclosure/

I'm leaning towards the Visual Ice option for obvious reasons.

Please discuss your experiences with these units.

[G35POPPEDMYCHERRY]

quick layman question here.

so you have the hk system and will spend somewhere near under 1k to have a rear sub installed plug and play?

asking because I need this and the price sounds right

[noone]

Originally Posted by G35POPPEDMYCHERRY

quick layman question here.

so you have the hk system and will spend somewhere near under 1k to have a rear sub installed plug and play?

asking because I need this and the price sounds right

I have the 688 option audio which I assume is the HK.

I have my own amps from a previous car and will be using one of them to drive the underseat 'woofers' and the other, an old school JL Audio Slash 500/1 to drive this new sub.

I'm also looking at this which I just saw on the F30 forums which is what I'm now leaning towards. Seems like a great value.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/BMW-3-SER...8AAOSwafZakGCF

[Kevin @ Integral Audio]

Originally Posted by noone

...The Integral Audio includes a driver while the Musicar does not but adding a JL 10w3v3 brings it to $800 which makes the cost of both of these options essentially the same, assuming the driver in the Integral Audio unit is on par with the JL. It looks like it at any rate.

The Integral Audio unit enclosure displacement looks less than the Musicar and that concerns me but I like it's location better than the Musicar.

Our enclosure volume is size to meet a measured/calculated target response based on our specific subwoofer and the vehicle's transfer function. This is a very old and sorely-in-need-of-update write up that covers this a bit: https://integralaudio.com/blog/wp-co...fer-Design.pdf

In terms of the subwoofer itself, it is made for us by ScanSpeak. When I've got some time I'll be doing some more detailed write-ups on measurement, design, and quality of our tranducers, but for now I'll just point this out - take a close look at this picture of the subwoofer driver in the $80,000 B&O Beolab 90:



and compare it to ours:



It's same driver from ScanSpeak, they make it for both of us. Parameters are going to be different based on needs, but the driver/quality is the same.

Originally Posted by noone

I'm also looking at this which I just saw on the F30 forums which is what I'm now leaning towards. Seems like a great value.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/BMW-3-SER...8AAOSwafZakGCF

I think if you look closely at the pics and consider the price you'll have your answer. Our raw materials cost more than that...but if you want to order both ours and that and do a direct comparison for the forum PM I will offer you free shipping (both ways if you decide to return ours, but that isn't likely ).

[noone]

Originally Posted by Kevin @ Integral Audio

Our enclosure volume is size to meet a measured/calculated target response based on our specific subwoofer and the vehicle's transfer function. This is a very old and sorely-in-need-of-update write up that covers this a bit: https://integralaudio.com/blog/wp-co...fer-Design.pdf

In terms of the subwoofer itself, it is made for us by ScanSpeak. When I've got some time I'll be doing some more detailed write-ups on measurement, design, and quality of our tranducers, but for now I'll just point this out - take a close look at this picture of the subwoofer driver in the $80,000 B&O Beolab 90:



and compare it to ours:



It's same driver from ScanSpeak, they make it for both of us. Parameters are going to be different based on needs, but the driver/quality is the same.




I think if you look closely at the pics and consider the price you'll have your answer. Our raw materials cost more than that...but if you want to order both ours and that and do a direct comparison for the forum PM I will offer you free shipping (both ways if you decide to return ours, but that isn't likely ).

I don't mind paying a few hundred extra for quality if it makes sense and provides value.

With that said, you mentioned that with my 688 HK system, it will not sound very good if I tap into the high level underseat sub signals?

"No, recommend using Technic's harness if you are going to go that route. Just note that you are NOT getting a flat signal if you do it this way - the underseat woofer signal has significant EQ. See my other posts on this for more detail. This is why we don't offer an amplified subwoofer package - by the time you add what's required to get a flat input signal you're most of the way to a full SoundstageDSP Ultra."

I'm very tempted to pull the trigger with your Black Friday pricing but am concerned by this comment.

I will be using an old school JL Audio Slash 500/1 for this sub, if that matters. Is your 10 2ohm capable?

[ellipsis212]

I have the musicar option with the exact JL sub and amp you mention. It's great though the other option looks nice as well.

I will add that the main challenge in this car is dealing with trunk and panel rattle from the sub.

[noone]

Originally Posted by ellipsis212

I have the musicar option with the exact JL sub and amp you mention. It's great though the other option looks nice as well.

I will add that the main challenge in this car is dealing with trunk and panel rattle from the sub.

Thanks for the feedback. I'm leaning towards a left side option as I think there will be less rattle on the gas lid if it's on the left. Also regarding trunk rattle, I think it fine as long as you don't hear it in the cabin. On my old E60, you could hear the trunk rattle from the outside of the car but you couldn't hear it in the cabin, it just sounded nice and tight inside which was fine by me.

Can you hear the rattle inside the cabin?

The 15% off from Integral is for sure tempting.

[ellipsis212]

Originally Posted by noone

Thanks for the feedback. I'm leaning towards a left side option as I think there will be less rattle on the gas lid if it's on the left. Also regarding trunk rattle, I think it fine as long as you don't hear it in the cabin. On my old E60, you could hear the trunk rattle from the outside of the car but you couldn't hear it in the cabin, it just sounded nice and right inside which was fine by me.

The 15% off from Integral is for sure tempting.

My e90 was much more vibration proof than my f80. You're right about gas lid tho. It's a thing

[noone]

Well now I need Kevin at Integral Audio to set things straight for me because something smells fishy.

Kevin - The subwoofer pic you have posted above is a different subwoofer than the one on your website on the Phantom page.

Which one should I expect if I buy the Phantom?

Also what is the power rating on this driver at what ohms?

[Kevin @ Integral Audio]

Originally Posted by noone

With that said, you mentioned that with my 688 HK system, it will not sound very good if I tap into the high level underseat sub signals?

I just said you aren't getting a flat input signal. Whether it sounds good or not is in the ear of the listener. I believe you said you had done the same thing in an E90? If you've done it before and you liked it, you'll be thrilled with this.

I will be using an old school JL Audio Slash 500/1 for this sub, if that matters. Is your 10 2ohm capable?

The sub is 4 ohms, the capability to handle lower impedances lies with the amp. That amp will be just fine.

[Kevin @ Integral Audio]

Originally Posted by ellipsis212

I will add that the main challenge in this car is dealing with trunk and panel rattle from the sub.

Originally Posted by noone

Thanks for the feedback. I'm leaning towards a left side option as I think there will be less rattle on the gas lid if it's on the left. Also regarding trunk rattle, I think it fine as long as you don't hear it in the cabin. On my old E60, you could hear the trunk rattle from the outside of the car but you couldn't hear it in the cabin, it just sounded nice and tight inside which was fine by me.

Can you hear the rattle inside the cabin?

You'll find you get no or virtually no rattle with ours. I'll expound on this a little more when I've got some time, hopefully soon, but the biggest driver behind most rattling with subs is wildly uneven freq response, with large 10-20+dB peaks putting WAY too much energy into the wrong places. Decibels are a logarithmic scale, 10dB is 10 times the energy and 20dB is 100 times the energy. When that energy excites natural resonance frequencies in a given panel/part/etc, you get a rattle. If you are putting 10 or 100 times the energy in the wrong place, you are 10 to 100 times more likely to get rattles.

This isn't just theorizing on my part - we know this because we've measured and tested it.

[Kevin @ Integral Audio]

Originally Posted by noone

Well now I need Kevin at Integral Audio to set things straight for me because something smells fishy.

Kevin - The subwoofer pic you have posted above is a different subwoofer than the one on your website on the Phantom page.

Which one should I expect if I buy the Phantom?

Also what is the power rating on this driver at what ohms?

Yes, my apologies on that. I was writing all that from the perspective of the SoundstageDSP™ Ultra, which is where those images came from. The current standalone F30/F80 Phantom™ subwoofer comes with our previous driver, which you see in the pics. I assure you, it is every bit as good of a driver. Same performance but gets there slightly differently. It is honestly better suited to most sub-only installs - a little less efficient but higher power handling at a conservative 500W limit. We sourced the new subwoofer only because the supplier of the old one closed up shop. The F30/F80 SoundstageDSP™ Ultra uses the new driver because we knew that we'd be using the new driver long-term, all of the measurement and settings/etc were done using the new one.

[ellipsis212]

Ok, but literally everything in the F80 platform vibrates or rattles. 😂

The exact same sub and amp produced almost no rattle in the E90.

[noone]

Kevin - So in summary, the woofer in the Phantom box is a 10" woofer that handles 500w at 4ohms?

[Kevin @ Integral Audio]

Originally Posted by ellipsis212

Ok, but literally everything in the F80 platform vibrates or rattles. 😂

The exact same sub and amp produced almost no rattle in the E90.

Maybe so , but everything above still holds true. The bar for what causes rattling in the F80 may be lower than the E90, but that means it's just that much more important to get it right.

[Kevin @ Integral Audio]

Originally Posted by noone

Kevin - So in summary, the woofer in the Phantom box is a 10" woofer that handles 500w at 4ohms?

For the current generation subwoofer-only Phantom™ for the F30/F80, yes.

This is that subwoofer:

[Kevin @ Integral Audio]

Might also be worth mentioning here a difference between the Integral Audio Phantom™ and the others mentioned - the mounting hardware shown here:



The Phantom™ mounts with just two machine screws through the front baffle of the enclosure, and ties to a blind mount into that angled bracket shown. Every other enclosure on the market that I'm aware of (and anything you'd get fabricated locally) mounts through the inside back of the enclosure, so you have to remove the woofer to remove the enclosure. Both of the other enclosures listed above use wood screws into an MDF baffle, so every time you remove the woofer you deform the MDF and lose a little clamping power, after a few removals you need to sand/redrill/remount the woofer. Even though you don't need to remove our woofer, we use threaded inserts and machine screws to mount the woofer.

That bracket mounts securely to factory mount points on the vehicle. We can design that because we are using 3D scan data to design the entire thing:



You can also see that support bracket in the back - something that is definitely needed if you mount on the left side trunk cubby. Without it the weight of the sub will eventually distort and displace the trunk liner on that side.

To us, these details matter. It's why we take the time to get them right.