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FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!!!!!!
My particular 540 has what they call a DSP system. It's the top end premium system that cost like $2K more on delivery. Technically it's a very awesome design. The M3 is setup pretty much like this:
Radio antenna in back travels through car to head unit in front. Radio is tuned in front, preamped and then sent to amp in rear. Signal is fully amped and then sent all the way back up to speakers in front. 3 trips for that signal through the car, all kinds of potential loss/interference/alternator whine (though in practice it's perfect).
In the 540 the antenna is in the rear pillar. It goes to the dsp amp in the trunk. The DSP amp in the trunk has almost all of the logic. The tuning, etc. From there the amped signal goes to the rest of the car. The head unit in the front sends a coaxial digital signal from front to rear so there is no losses for cd. Everything else, fader, balance, eq is digitally controlled in the front and the actual stuff happens in the DSP amp.
It's IMPOSSIBLE to upgrade any one component without replacing ALL OF IT. Making my life MISERABLE. There's no actual speaker wires from the front to rear to run a signal from an aftermarket head unit through. Worse the system is 14 speakers so I dont even know how I'd wire it anyway. In the m3 12 speaker I just use the factory amp which takes balanced +5v inputs (aka speaker level). Easy peasy. Not the case in this setup. I just wish the damn setup had an aux port. Maybe I should just spend the $170 on an ipod setup for it.
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