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Finally...

Did you do something cool over the break period, or snap a pic of anything wicked over the year? Share 'em here for us to oogle while we're back at work or winding down. I took the hard top off and went camping. Convertibles are pretty much just fancy utes anyway right?

One of the other things I did recently was to take advantage of the EQ built in to the headunit. I'm not an audiophile by any means, but figured I might as well make it as decent as possible. To do this on a budget I took advantage of a very nifty iOS app called HouseCurve, which comes with a profile that flattens out the microphone response and makes it suitable to measure a response curve. I used HouseCurve to take several measurements and average them out: Which gave me the default response of the system. HouseCurve has a built in mechanism to EQ the system and generate PEQ values, however the EQ on the Xtrons is a 16 band fixed frequencies EQ, rather than full parametric, so I wasn't able to take advantage of that directly. I could have adjusted each of the EQ bands manually to try and optimise, but I'd rather get the calculated optimum. So what I did was to export the measurements from HouseCurve and import them into REW which has a generic EQ which allows for specifying the fixed frequencies for each band. You can then optimise on just the Gain and Q values to the target curve you're seeking (I chose to use the AudioFrog curve). This gave the following (blue = target curve, dark green = original curve, light green = optimised curve): The graph of the filters looks like this: I was then able to take the calculated Gain and Q values for each filter and set them in the EQ in the Xtrons: And the difference is night and day. Sounds so, so much better, and such an easy thing to do to improve the end result!

to be fair, labour had already passed that before they left, it had been extended multiple times from its original date, great news though

Is this any use?

So yesterday I dropped round to @Cement's house to pick up the CD stacker he kindly offered me. @Michael. was there as well, so was great to meet them both and talk BMWs and see their amazing cars 😍 And today is the final day of my summer holiday before I head back to work. This morning before it got too hot I finally got around to doing the work on the rear seat. First up I removed the black leather seats and bolsters, and then I was able to install the rear seat sound mat that arrived a couple of months ago. It fits really well and was no problem to install, at less than half the weight of the rubber/butyl one and not likely to disintegrate like the original I'm very happy with this: You can see there are a couple of cut outs that aren't needed on the M3, presumably they are for the E46 compact or similar, but aside from that it all fits in very nicely. I was then able to install the G7AT interior (which I've been cleaning and drying over the last week) from @M3_Power and now finally have an (almost) matching interior. I took the covers off the headrests and put them through the washing machine (gentle cycle, no spin) and wet vac'd the bolsters, seat bench and backs. The bolsters needed new clips at the tops, as they seem to ALL break. I ordered new ones in one of my orders last year, so had these on the shelf ready to go. Originals were black, these new ones are white, maybe they're also stronger 🤣 Then it was just a case of putting everything in, and soon it was all done! (apologies for the terrible photos and dusty car, am rebuilding a retaining wall at the moment and the clay dust gets into everything). I also got to take the car for a drive today. With the work I've done on the drivers door, and the cloth rear upholstery, a good 90% of the rattles and such that were present in the car seem to be gone! I thought there were going to be a bunch still to hunt down, but appears I have one in the dash by the drivers door, and aside from that any other noises were pretty infrequent! Now I just need to give the car a good wash!

😆