I know this has been discussed on LOADS of other forums, and I really want to do it
BUT, i really don't want to be taking the car apart myself as I will almost certianly break something!
I'm going to go to the dealers at some point this week to see if they will do it, somehow i don't think they will.
Has anyone on here done it / had it done?

I want this done too, after reading about it on tM. Let me know if you manage to get it done somewhere

What is it?

No idea if I want one as well or not, because I have no idea what the swap does!

Can anyone explain please?

Okies i should have explained that OOPS lol
Here goes...
The r56 doesn't get much bass out its speakers as im sure we all know
Thats because for some reason MINI have sent all the bass to the front speakers, and sent NO bass to the bigger rears.
This means that the speakers that can handle the bass dont have any, and the ones that cant, are dealing with all of it.
SO...
You can swap the channels around to send the bass to the rear and the rest to the front, the way it should be.
This way you get more bass, and the front ones don't struggle if you turn the volume up.

You can hear that all the bass is at the front by turning up the volume and moving the fader backwards and forwards to compare

(the only bad effect of the channel swap is that the fader works back to front)

Hmmm why would BMW do that? Very odd. But since I am happy with my sound I will not bother re-wiring my car lol

Ok having read up it seems:

1) MINI Boost units have a hi-pass filter at 50hz to the rear speaker - which in laymens terms means it does not allow bass sounds to travel to the rear speakers
2) Possible reasons for this are
i) The plastic trim over the rear speakers is too given to vibration and rattling to handle bass
ii) MINI may have been planning a separate rear subwoofer that just never happened
3) By swapping channels you allow the full bass range to get to the rear big speakers, while also preventing them getting to the front smaller speakers, which are ironically less able to deal with them anyway
4) When you do it you will get bassier sound from rear speakers
5) It does not work on HiFi Boost units as these units have no hi-pass filter and already let the full sound range through to rear speakers
6) If you do it, your bluetooth phone calls will come through rear speakers not front as a side-effect

I have Hi-Fi so it doesn't apply to me anyway!

Not sure this effects my Clubbie, I have the HiFi upgrade. It has a 240 watt amp & 10 speakers

Sounds are pretty good in my opinion

Aah, thanks for explaining

Yeah sounds like you guys don't need it!
I havent got Hi-fi or bluetooth so im gonna go for it
If the trim is rattling it can always be changed back, apparently a 15min job if you know what you are doing!

wicz wrote:

Yeah sounds like you guys don't need it!
I havent got Hi-fi or bluetooth so im gonna go for it
If the trim is rattling it can always be changed back, apparently a 15min job if you know what you are doing!

Yeah go for it Max

And get your picture sorted, still showing the L plate

haha
yeah forgot to take some pics the other day last night!
Il try this week!

wicz wrote:

haha
yeah forgot to take some pics the other day last night!
Il try this week!

about time

Its still on there, just hidden lol!
(don't tell anyone!)

wicz wrote:

Its still on there, just hidden lol!
(don't tell anyone!)

OK, I'll keep it hushed


Max's photo still has the L plate but he's hidding it

hehe, good good they will never know.....




HEY!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm off to find that noisey red Micra for an update of your L plate

lol
he was at that party last night should have taken a picture!
Hmmmmmm...
Need to find a good photo location

Fitted the plug and play loom from new mini stuff this morning and really happy with the result. Can turn the bass right up to +6 without worrying abouy blowing the speakers, which is brilliant for the kind of music Im listening to atm.

For Rob and anyone else who is wondering what the channel swap is for:

The R56 (without hi-fi upgrade) has a weird setup from the factory which has most of the bass filtered out from the big rear 6x9s, so the majority of the bass is sent to the front speakers whch are smaller and cant handle it.

What the channel swap basically does is swap the front and rear utputs around, therefore the bass is sent to the big rear speakers which are more suited to dealing with it.
The benifit of this is x2. 1. you get more bass output and overall better sound quality. 2. you dont have to worry about the front speakers failing because they are being worked too hard.

Ahhh! Got it! Very well put Max! Cheers mate!
I have the HiFi speaker upgrade, will this channel swap become uneeded then?

Yeah the sound is better with the hi fi upgrade so no point in swapping

Cheerrs Max!

I ordered my channel swap wire last week so hopefully arrive tomorrow, will keep people updated on how much better it should sound hopefully my stubby Alta 4" should arrive too to change the look from Radio Control / Dodgem to angry Mini

Is one of the favourite mods I did. It's by no means Harmon Kardon quality but is still a HUGE improvement.