Should I save my money and get the JL 500/5 or should I go big baller style and get two JL amps, the 300/4 and 500/1... and no, I don't know what speakers they will be powering yet, but I figure... it's always good to have more power than you need rather that buying the 500/5 and shooting myself in the foot for not having enough power later...

option 2..more power...
Kevin

I would go with the 500/5....your front stage being the most important and with the 500/5 getting 100X2 to the fronts is muy importante.....

Actually.....you REALLY should go with a 450/4 and a 500/1....then you would never have to kick yourself....

-Nathaniel

Nate:
i was figuring bridging the 300/4 to the front and using the 500/1 to subs....but i guess for the possibility of going 4 channel u made a better suggestion...i dont use rear fill 99% of the time :)...
Kevin

I need some rear fill or else my rear seat passengers will start to whine again.

I tried in my E36 M3 to put all the majority of the power to the front speakers and subs and throwing some spare change wattage to the rear speakers. One... it sounded wierd to me, Two... rear seat passenger were always saying... "All I hear is thump thump thump" ... mind you, most of the people in the back seat are girls... so they (most of them) don't know anything about audio but still...

So it'd be nice to have some rear fill as well...

then definitely Nate has a better option than mine....
Kevin

Kevin:

I had the advantage there...since Kevlar has told me before that he needed decent rear fill ;-]

-Nathaniel

Guess I'll go with the 500/5 and hope that'll make me happy... else I'll have to sell the 500/5 and buy the 300/4 and a 500/1.

That's the only thing I hate about 5channel amps.

Moving a 5 channel amp is hard, more difficult to sell than 6 channel amps...

Just found a flaw with the 300/4 and 500/1 plan...

The factory radio has four outputs... FL, FR, RL and RR.

The 300/4 takes four inputs (required to maintain F/R fader support) ... that leaves no inputs for the 500/1. ARGH!

So it looks like I am stuck with the 500/5 then...

Ahh because you are sitcking with the stock headunit and want to run RCAs from the first amp's output into the second?

Can't you run an line level converter (like David Navone's) to give you two pairs of RCA outputs (from hi-level inputs) so you can run two amps? The Navone unit is IMO the best quality line level converter
http://www.davidnavone.com/detail.asp?PRODUCT_ID=N-774V

Two of my friends did this with a Mini Cooper S and a 330ci, both ran two amps with the factory headunit.

Originally posted by ultim8DTM5
Ahh because you are sitcking with the stock headunit and want to run RCAs from the first amp's output into the second?

Can't you run an line level converter (like David Navone's) to give you two pairs of RCA outputs (from hi-level inputs) so you can run two amps? The Navone unit is IMO the best quality line level converter
http://www.davidnavone.com/detail.asp?PRODUCT_ID=N-774V

Two of my friends did this with a Mini Cooper S and a 330ci, both ran two amps with the factory headunit.

Yeah... maybe I'm reading it wrong, but that converts my 4 factory outputs... FL, FR, RL and RR into four RCA outputs for the equivalent channels.... FL, FR, RL and RR. I'm still missing the necessary output for the subwoofer amp. Should I just a set of RCA splitters and split the FL and FR signals then run that to the sub amp?

I'm foncused also, don't you run the RCA output into the amp's RCA input, then from the amp the signal to the speakers?

In that case, both amps are connected to the converter, and the speakers/sub are connected to the amp...

Basically the converter lets you run RCAs from your factory HU to your amplifiers, it acts as a go-between.

RCA splitters convert one RCA output into two, AFAIK the BMW factory HU does not have RCA outputs to begin with, hence the use of a converter.

Yeah, I would need the converter anyway to convert the factory outputs to RCA (why don't radios just come with RCAs?).

Yeah... but here is the problem...

The JL 300/4 has inputs for FL, FR, RL and RR. By plugging all four channels into the 300/4, it maintains the ability to fade from front/rear and left/right. The only problem is, all four outputs from the radio are getting put into the JL 300/4 and the JL 300/4 does not have a pre-amp pass through for the JL 500/1.

Now here is an alternative, but I have no idea if this will work

I could take the FL and FR (converted to RCAs -- from factory headunit) and run that into the 500/1... then use the pre-amp pass thru and connect that to the JL 300/4 front channel. Then use the RL and RR (converted to RCAs -- from factory headunit) to the rear channel. It may make for a wiring nightmare... but in theory, I think it just might work. The fader would remain intact, but, the subwoofer output would might be affected by the fading of the front two channels left/right.

just use a Y adapter(this allow u to have 4 RCA's from two) at the FRONT inputs of the 4 channel amp....the navone units are very good as was mentioned above..
Kevin