Just picked up my new 2011 Mini and compared to the 2009 car I had had the stereo sounds a lot better.

I know that there is a lot of information on the incorrectly allocated bass roll-off (for the rears, not the fronts) in the pre-FL car. has this fault been eradicated in the new FL variants?

I had to check that the dealer hadn't simply applied bass boost, but the 'tone' control was in the flat position.

I'm not sure what they've changed and I've not had an R55/R56 before ordering my 2011 MY R55 (so can't compare) but all the talk on the forums of th radio being rubbish seemed odd to me.

Having only heard the facelift/LCI versions of the standard setup and the H/K I really couldn't fault them - the standard system being certainly as good as my E46 330d standard system.

They readjusted the bass crossover circuits for the front and rear. in the 2007-2010 models the front got all the bass making the crossover cut them. A fix for that in the older models was to change the pinout on the audio plug to switch the front to the rear.

The bass crossover certainly seems to have been (correctly) re-adjusted. If I can just get hold of some tweeters the sound may be perfectly adequate.