My first listening impressions with the M80 were surprising to say the least. I was envisioning taking everything apart to find vibrations. to my amazement I noticed immediately the absence of vibrations of the covers of the Z3 rear deck. Everything was quite quiet. The covers that concerned me most were the 2 under the roll hoops which squeak when pressing on them. It would have been a lot of work to remove the roll hoops to be able to remove and insulate these panels.

The speaker appears to sound cleaner as the power is increased. I believe it needs a breaking in period to loosen the inherent stiffness of a new speaker. Even driving it to the point of blurring the cone from about 1/2" of movement sounds very solid. Obviously, it would take a lot of air movement to feel air movement from a speaker in the open convertible. Sitting into the drivers seat allows you to feel the bass through the seat which was not possible with the Model 65 rear firing. The annoying vibrating back panel is finally tamed. With the top up, the bass is much more than any sane listener could tolerate at full volume in such a small space.

In Conclusion: I am very pleased with the adequate sound from this system. The bass from the M80 balances the rest of the system well. It is ideal for listening to Jazz and the newer digital synthesized sounds in today's music. The damping is as good as one can get from this small sealed enclosure. Response time and recovery is instantaneous with little or no boominess. The bass amplifier channel could use a limiter to equalize the variation in recorded music. Reaching for the bass level control is needed when changing music materiel.

You wont find a better system that looks and sounds this elegant for your BMW Z3.