Speaker Vibration in M40i when playing music

S

Sgreen

Member
Hi

Has anyone had issues with speaker vibration in the m40i with music that has bass even when all audio settings a mid range and volume on 1/3?

I have had my M40i for 6 months and it has been in the dealership at Lincoln 4 times now. At first they replaced the sub and when it came out it was so much worse than when it went in. They then changed the mid range (or at least they said they have) and still no joy. Now they are talking about stripping out the roof to get to the back of the car, which I am very nervous about :cry:

Has anyone else had issues with vibration when playing music?
 
I had it and it was the rear parcel shelf. Ie the one that separates the boot from the cabin.
 
Nothing to expand really. I’ve got mine booked into bmw to resolve. ;) it’s annoying.
I know someone mentioned that the roll hoop covers can also sometimes make a noise, but for me it’s clearly that shelf and I can stop it just by holding it. It’s mostly from road surface, but base can also trigger it.
 
I had that too, it turned out to be the plastic that of the ski hatch. This resonated with heavy bass.
 
I have the car now booked into Scunthorpe who believe that the noise is coming from the bottom inside the boot. They are confident that they can find and fix the issue without removing the roof. I have everything crossed that this is the case.
 
ori said:
Nothing to expand really. I’ve got mine booked into bmw to resolve. ;) it’s annoying.
I know someone mentioned that the roll hoop covers can also sometimes make a noise, but for me it’s clearly that shelf and I can stop it just by holding it. It’s mostly from road surface, but base can also trigger it.
Click to expand...

My car is suffering from both issues. Rattling when listening to music with bass and squeaky noise from roll hop cover. My solution was to remove roll hoop cover and it sorted the issue. Life is too short to go just for this to dealership. I will mention it when doing service. From my experience, technicians can't hear annoying sounds and it's just waste of time or trying to convince someone there's undesired noise. I went through rattling speaker cover in Audi and it costed me 4 visits to the service, because when they tried to fix it, they broke the cover and had to order new one.

If you get a solution from dealer, let me know, I will mention it to them together with roll hop cover.
 
Sgreen said:
I have the car now booked into Scunthorpe who believe that the noise is coming from the bottom inside the boot. They are confident that they can find and fix the issue without removing the roof. I have everything crossed that this is the case.
Click to expand...

Has it been in yet?
 
ori said:
Sgreen said:
I have the car now booked into Scunthorpe who believe that the noise is coming from the bottom inside the boot. They are confident that they can find and fix the issue without removing the roof. I have everything crossed that this is the case.
Click to expand...

Has it been in yet?
Click to expand...
No car is booked in at end of January, unfortunately there is a shortage of courtesy cars due to the recent recall
 
I’d be interested in hearing (pardon the pun) the outcome of your inspection with your local dealership. I’ve noticed a vibration when listening to certain music, at a modest volume, in my recently purchased M30i. I’ve played about with the equaliser and it’s still happening.
 
Hi all problem solved appears it was a problem with a seal behind the bulk head. Now I can listern to quality tunes again 😀
 
My 2020 G29 is having this exact issue. There is bass vibration from the bulkhead regardless of volume with some songs. I'm pretty sure it's the ski hatch since I can feel the plastic vibrating.

I'm out of warranty so curious if there are DIY solutions or how expensive this might be to fix. Any new experiences? Is it a dealer recognized problem by now?
 
Hi!
If it’s the ski hatch, you could try adding some sound-dampening material behind it. If it’s a bulkhead seal, that might be a bit trickier without dealer assistance.

Given how many owners are dealing with this, BMW should probably start handing out noise-canceling headphones with every M40i purchase :D
 
I emailed my bmw dealer who said they have never heard of this issue..yeah right. And they want to charge a fee to "diagnose” the issue first.

I'm going to try and stuff that stupid hatch with some kind of material and see if it helps first.
 
I had this vibration as well, in my case clearly woofer and sound-volume related. Pretty annoying.
With a decent bass loaded song I could feel the bulkhead cover in the trunk vibrating significantly passing the vibrations on to the ski hatch and other parts of the plastic covers.

When removing the bulkhead cover on trunk side I noticed a couple of things;
  1. electronic boxes mounted on woofer housing with very narrow distance in between the plastic,
  2. woofer housing in fact is an open/vented box with openings downwards into the metal beam below it,
  3. the metal beam connects the 2 woofer openings together and also has 2x3 cylindrical openings towards the trunkside of the car.

With these observations I also realised the woofers basically vents towards the plastic, carpet covered bulkhead cover in the trunk and I’m pretty sure this is bad engineering and most probably the root cause of the vibrations.

When testing the sound without the bulkhead cover the rattle was still there but almost reduced to zero. I also had the feeling there was more bass respons, probably due to the opened up woofer vents (you can feel the pressure waves coming from the two sets of beam openings by holding your hand in front of it when playing music with proper bass).

In an attempt to improve the situation I did the following;
  1. added anti-drumming plate (4 mm) to the side of the metal beam facing backwards (the top part is not reachable without removing the woofers), made sure the openings remain,
  2. added anti-drumming sheet (4 mm) at the back side of the woofer housing,
  3. added anti-drumming sheet (1.5 mm) at the back side of the electronic boxes mounted on the woofer housings,
  4. added sound insulation material between the woofers and around the ski-hatch (white stuff on the pictures) and
  5. added anti-drumming sheets on the backside of the bulkhead cover (re-installed the existing sound insulation material with double sided tape).
I also considered creating two circular holes in the bulkhead cover at same location of the beam-openings but since that would be quiet destructive I gave it a trial without first.

Result is impressive, no more noticeable rattles and way better bass response. Could be my mind wanting me to believe the situation is improved after all the hard work but i’ll try to prove my observations later on with response curve data.

Pictures of the modifications below…
 

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@Wolter was it easy to remove the carpet covered bulkhead cover from the trunk side? I’ve had a look there, removed the trunk carpet floor and tried to prize off the bulkhead cover but seems like is has pretty big clips securing it underneath. Any help would be appreciated as this issue drives me crazy…. I already added small foam strips inbetween the ski hatch plastic as it doesn’t clip together tightly and that causes some of the rattle.
 
SfrZ4w said:
@Wolter was it easy to remove the carpet covered bulkhead cover from the trunk side? I’ve had a look there, removed the trunk carpet floor and tried to prize off the bulkhead cover but seems like is has pretty big clips securing it underneath. Any help would be appreciated as this issue drives me crazy…. I already added small foam strips inbetween the ski hatch plastic as it doesn’t clip together tightly and that causes some of the rattle.
Click to expand...
Trunk carpet needs to be removed indeed, but also the 2 side panels (3 plastic clips and 2 bolts with big rings each panel). To be able to remove the side panels also the plastic cover (that keeps the trunk light) needs to be removed (4 plastic clips) because there’s 2 of the plastic side panel clips underneath it.
Once the side panels are removed the bulkhead panel can be removed easily (pull on the lower side first to unclip it)
Maybe this all sounds like a lot of work but its actually done pretty quickly once you know where to find and remove all the clips.
Its not possible to remove the bulkhead cover without removing both side panels.
 
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