[pbanders]

Most likely, there's nothing wrong with your clutch or tranny. My guess as to the noise you're hearing on engagement is that you're still in the throttle a bit when you're depressing the clutch.

As the other guy said, BMW's and Porsches have much more abrupt clutch engagement than the general crop of "luxury sport" cars. The abrupt transition makes for faster shifting with less slipping, but it also makes smooth driving in traffic difficult. It took me quite a while to learn how to drive my M3 smoothly, and I remember driving an A4 at that time and thinking, "wow, this is a lot easier to drive!".