Hi,

As next step of my car re-haul now comes the audio. I looked over wiring diagram and workshop manual so I know now all the connectors but did not find exact specs for speakers and amp - what is wattage of stock amplifier, exact dimensions of all speakers, max allowed mounting depth, etc, technical data. I hate to take all speakers off just to investigate what they are.

I haven't decided yet what to put into car. Having $10K audio system at home (rotel + b&w nautilus) my standards are quite high, so I`ll have to think about it. Dynaudio sets are nice but they are 3-way I think, not a 4-way as we have in 997. Plus that center speaker puzzles me.

It would help at least to find all required technical specs first. Does anybody here know/saw those details?

 

Found this post that actually confused me:

http://www.renntech.org/forums/index...81&mode=linear

I planned to go with simplistic sort of design to replace drivers and add-up power amp and feed to it all high level outputs from stock amp but that post above states that if one could take off stock amp completely all speakers still continue to produce sound but with no gain.
it contradicts wiring diagram, how does it work anyway? Where actual speakers are connected to if not directly to stock amp outputs?

 

One thing to keep in mind is the imaging that was attained with the factory system. You have a good ear for audio so what are your thoughts as to just replacing components in the system? Will the sound be purer/clearer with better components or will some of the fuzzy logic that has been implemented be lost? I too am curious to what a sensitive ear will hear. Good luck and keep us posted.

 

I would not mess with the audio.
1) A guy on the Turbo forum tried a Reus and it was not a fun adventure. https://www.6speedonline.com/forums/...stall-wed.html

2) Then there's this guy whose car never even made it to the installation. https://www.6speedonline.com/forums/...ed-advice.html

This is part of the reason why i make Bose a "must have" option even though i feel that Bose is the worst system in a high end car that I have seen. Mod the engine all you want but the electronics are off limits to me.

 

Check out this instal: http://motormusicmag.com/news/378/19...rsche-997.html

Talk to some high end installers and see if they can show you some work they did on a 997.

As for some 2 way fronts, check out Hertz Mille or High Energy series. Super nice speakers!

 

I looked at that install. Impressive but it went too far - I do not want to remove PCM as I think it will ruin Porsche`s image. I just dropped $3K into native nav install specifically because I did not want to remove PCM. You may find it odd perhaps but I do not want to alter car image at all and PCM is a major part of it.

As of drivers I was thinking about this:
http://computershopper.com/shoptalk/...nd-convertible

Will take time to find them but I love B&W. Will see. There are some other options as well from low high end segment, I`ll need to look. but I honestly think B&W should be the best available choice, their midrange drivers are magnificent.

Biggest challenge is to cut into schematics of current signal bus, again, I think it should be possible to cut into outputs of stock amp, challenge is to figure out if stock wiring has any crossovers or other circuitry after amp.
Also it would be nice to figure out if it`s possible to find pre-amp outputs there, but it is highly unlikely to happen. It`s just cutting into amplified speaker outputs significantly limits choice of high quality power amps.

May be somebody will answer on Renntech forum, will see. Most installers I think do not overcomplicate this task and simply drop their own wiring to bypass stock. It actually probably makes total sense as I highly doubt Porsche used even 12 gauge wires for their speakers. It`s the only difficult part of this project, really - to snake set of new wires across the car.

 

There are no fuzzy logic there, really.
They have very bad location for bass drivers in front doors, definitely not enough air for drivers plus even slightest increase in bass output makes entire door frame to resonate. Rear speakers simply lack clarity. So I guess most logical approach is to put bass to the rear of the car and put good midrange units into doors. I'll have to think about it. Pretty standard approach would be to put 5 channel amp - 80 or so watts per channel plus about 200 for sub. 2 channels would feed doors midrange and front tweeters, other 2 channels - bass in front doors and midrange in rear, and some small 6.5" perhaps sub in the back. Or may be even simpler - 4 channel amp and an active sub in back, it should be simple thing to find slim tube-shaped sub and bolt it in permanently to shelf behind rear seats. It should not be really large, but as bass in doors should definitely be reduced it has to go somewhere.

I will probable leave that center speaker alone, I am not sure what to do with it at all and what is the purpose of it. If I only could find where is pre-amplified stereo signal in this car it would be terrific but I have a feeling no one really knows this. Stock amp gets signal over optical bus, so the only way to get to it is probably to cut that stock amp open, and even after that most likely it will not be simple.

So it depends on how far to go with all this and remain within some reasonable budget. I want to try to put there something with Audissey system as in my Onkyo PR-SC885, that is the best available technology for sound improvement. Problem here is to find a unit that could use outputs from stock amp and process it with Audissey. I know Alpine makes sound processors but I doubt if it can accept amplified speaker signal. And I do not have another stock amp to vandalize it. And if you want to keep PCM you cannot really drop stock amp out of the system. So it seems to be a tricky thing, but I think it must be doable.

 

Believe me - electronics are much simpler to work with than mechanical things.

All you need to know are schematics and wiring diagrams. That you take a scalpel, cut lines you do not need, solder into ones you need and feed your add-on system. Nothing that much complicated, you just need to know where and what to cut.

Bose by itself is just hype, they have no name in high end audio and most of their 'ingenious' advantages are shameless copies of somebody else`s technology.

Best compact solution modern electronics can offer is a sound processor with Audissey Multieq system and some class D power amp with ICEpower licensed from B&O. Wonderful technology, really almost as good as best old solid state class A. Plus you`ll need good midrange drivers. Boston Acoustics is lowest segment, Dynaudio makes some, B&W now on this market as well - there are options. As sub - in closed car compartment it does not matter, only stupid tens go after 12" or so, smallest available good quality sub will do just fine to accompany midrange units.

So here again it comes back to knowing dimensions and having sneaky hands to do all the wiring. Nothing complicated, just time consuming.

 

It's only the BOSE system that gets the signal over the optical bus. The standard system is a fairly traditional system with a twist.

The PCM of the regular system has a regular built-in 4 channel amp just like the one you'd find on any aftermarket HU. The built-in amp drives the front mids and tweeters and the rear speakers, and the crossovers are mounted at the speaker locations.

The twisty part is how the external amp works, it accepts speaker level signals and is fed by the same signal as the speakers (the outputs from the HU are basically spliced before they reach the speakers), and from that the external amp drives the front door woofers and the center speaker.

This setup causes some trouble if you want to run all of the speakers from an aftermarket amp, you'd basically need new wiring to any speakers that is currently driven by the HU.

Hope this is of some help at least.

 

There was a very graceful install posted here a while back, but I can't find the thread. It was shockingly simple! First, you can certainly put stronger mid-bass drivers in the doors without them rattling to pieces. It has been done successfully before. Mdrums named a few manufacturers that make nice shallow mount drivers. Morel also has a 9" driver that should work fine. As of now, no one knows how good of a quality the actual mids and tweeters are in the stock config. The stock system has a crappy 12WPC amp that probably clips at regular volumes. Certainly, the tweeters have a nice peak around 10K Hertz, which makes them "ring". Could be that firing them off the windshield is a bad idea too!! Imaging is fine in the stock system and no one seems to know how the center channel is derived.
Anyway, what the poster of the install that I am referring to did, is take out the crappy amp...which seemingly could be anywhere in the car! It has been reported to be in the PCM module itself, or under the passenger seat, or in the front trunk. LOL!
Anyway, this fella found his under the passenger seat and discovered 4 sets of speaker wires and used them for high-level inputs, thereby negating any loss of signal processing by porsche. (should preserve the imaging too, since it seems the center channel is some type of a L+,R- or vice versa derivation) He put a cute JL class D amp under there and found a ground and 12V and shazzam! = instant clean 50WPC. (the amp has a speaker level remote-on sensor) You can do this type of install easily and then see if the result is what you want. If not enough, you could always swap out the speakers after that. I really can't see a drawback to this type of a system. It requires no cutting and simply gives you a bit of cleaner volume. I bet it deals with impedance variations better too.
I sort-of cringe thinking about "bass in the back"! When I was a youngster, I was a car stereo installer and competed in IASCA. The only time we put bass in the back was when we could not fit it in the Front!! Sub-Bass may be omni-directional, but the harmonics from your trim are NOT! And without increasing the midbass in the front to disproportionate levels, you will not have a solid and credible soundstage. Porsche was kind enough to leave some options on the table to get down to 40HZ or so in the front nearfield. I would suggest going that route first and then seeing if sub bass is really needed. If so, get a low FS and low Qts driver (they make them as small as 6") and use the stock bose enclosure as form and get to fiberglassing! The only thing is that you would then need a more complex amp 4+1 with a summing output.

 

Yes, it helps, but it seems odd why on wiring diagram Sheet 21 it shows on ASK amplifier outputs for all car speakers, not just for door woofers. It sort of assumes that ASK amplifies all channels. Weird. See attached. If you could help me to understand that - it could be like 50% of project itself.

So you say essentially all sound comes from brown B Plug on PCM2.1 unit, right? If so ASK can be simply discarded from the car without any complications, then essentially all connections from PCM to speakers should be cut and then re-routed to come from trunk area where new amp will be located. That makes sense.

I wonder what the heck sound can be if they really 'spliced' outputs to speakers and did feed `em to amp inputs concurrently with woofers sitting on same thin wires. Moronic design.

 

+1!
Do you think porsche is aware of this!

 

If you look a bit closer at FL+/- and FR+/- you'll see that those pins are connected to PCM, front midrange and front tweeter, so those are actually inputs into the amp and not outputs. You'll see the same thing for RL+/- and RR+/- as well, but you don't see the actual wires going to the rear speakers in that case, they just show a + sign for the 'splice' in that case and a reference to sheet 21B.

There's not really a problem with a output connected to both a woofer and an amplifer. It's a pretty common practice in the aftermarket world if you just want to hook up a subwoofer to a OEM system to just splice the rear speaker wiring and add a hilevel converter there while still using the rear speakers.

 

So essentially bottom line was not to alter anything much and not to remove stock ASK amp but put in something above it like Infinity Kappa Four I thought of initially and replace woofers in doors.

Issue here is that post above suggests that half of speakers are getting amplified signal from PCM directly and half - from ASK amp. So if we boost signal on half of speakers but leave tweeters coming from PCM it will ruing sound scene severely I afraid.

 

And yes, all the sound comes from the brown plug at the back of the PCM. The black and brown plugs looks like standard ISO plugs and the brown plug is the plug running all the speaker wiring on a regular aftermarket HU as well so it makes a lot of sense.