Anyone upgraded Bose speakers and/or amp with something else?

Hi. Brand new Cayman S owner ( CDR24 , Bose , no changer) and total audiophile. The Bose system is pretty disappointing to me even after adjusting a lot of the settings (yes I know sound is subjective and there are many out there who think the Bose system is great and I am not debating that) Has anyone retained the CDR24 head unit and upgraded the amplifiers and speakers? Any info greatly appeciated.

Welcome to the club and congrats on the new Cayman . The BOSE version of the CDR24 is linked to the amplifiers via a fiber optic cable. Upgrading the amplifiers? That could be tricky or impossible. Use the search function on this board to search for " Bose Upgrade." There has been some previous discussion on this subject. I have the Bose system too. It's fine, if not spectacular. It would have been nice if they included a 7 band electronic equalizer to let us get rid of the boom in the sub. If you uncover any speaker upgrade solutions in your research, please share them with the rest of us.

I would also love to upgrade speakers or amps on mine. Apparently no one has done it yet, expect I think for a full system swap. Try search function. But if you do it on your own, that would be an excellent contribution for the site. Takes pictures. COCO

jay, I am in NYC too.. I wonder if the bose version of the headunit still puts out analog audio signals. The BEST way to do it, assuming you were hellbent on keeping a stock looking head unit, would be to purchase a used CDR24 out of a non- bose car. Then, replace all the amps and speakers appropriately. Im trying to figure out my best options as well. Although the bass is boomy and the sound isnt great with the Bose , I can live it with, and leave my audiophile needs for the home. However, I hate the interface on the CDR24 , would like to have some form of navigation, and really want some iPod connectivity. The Bose isn't friendly to any of this; how much replacement I want to do I am still trying to decide. (The ideal is to remove everything Bose in the car, from headunit to speakers)

I'd also like to upgrade too, but as time has gone on I've gained a greater appreciation for the wonderful soundtrack coming from just behind me. I often turn the radio off just to enjoy the engine sound.

I agree..but I also tend to sit in traffic quite a bit...

Hey Coco, You've been on this board for a long time. Do you remember some dude trying to upgrade his amp or speakers? He took the car to some audio shop; they screwed things up and in the end the car had to be torn apart and rewired. Proceed with caution! I seem to recall there was a picture of the car all dismantled.

Hello, I have to admit that I'm quite disappointed with the Bose sound, I also have a Bose OEM setup on my Audi A4 and though it’s 5 years older it does sound much better IMHO. The Cayman ’s setup has a BIG problem with bass control, the sub is really invasive and very boomy, I still have to play with the different surround options but it seems that the lower registry is seriously faulted! However last week I had the Dension gateway installed and while the audio shop was at it I asked about possible upgrades or improvements. The answer was wasn’t very supportive as the ‘audio specialist’ admitted that though the sound was far from good it’s very complicated today for aftermarket installs especially integrating the with the car system and PCM . If your willing to give up the functionality of PCM , display, etc. it can be done but it’s going to be expensive as everything should be custom built. Door panels, sub housing plus reworking of other standard components housing, you also have to give up precious space as amplifiers wont fit where the Bose components are placed. He wasn’t willing with fiddling around the Bose stuff….. The ‘audio specialist’ is quite a known guy over here and should be considered ‘reliable’. His final opinion: it’s not worth it in terms of cost/improvement. He was talking about 3500 – 4500 € (4500 – 5800 $).

The BOSE kinda grew on me over time. Maybe my TUBI is helping me come to this point The BOSE is fine, not the best of the best, but suitable. Maybe just changing those peaker will help, I think I remember someone saying that the speakers could be exchanged for better ones without rewiring etc. But I dont think anyone yet as done a direct swap yet. There are so many option in the marlet today, but not sufficient data. Where I live we dont have many options, I hope someone that knows this stuff can give us some guidance and options. If there is a perfect match, ill definately look into swaping mine.

i know this is a bit OT but : isnt the BOSE subwoofer unit on the passenger side floor in caymans ? i ask because in boxsters the subwoofer enclosure is right behind the drivers ear on the shelf above the engine . you wanna talk about boomy bass. try having it inches from your ears .

Taming the boom I have been disgusted with the nasty boom from the Bose sub. The Subwoofer boom can be partially fixed by blocking the port with something and filling the airspace in the subwoofer box with polyester fluff. Dismount the sub. Take out the port. Jam as much polyester fluff as you can using a long blunt stick can help. I used polyester fluff for stuffing pillows from a craft store. They also sell it at wal-mart. Plug the port with something. I used a big block of polystyrene foam like from a cheap cooler. Put the plugged port back and remount the sub. Boom is now less intrusive. These Sub modifications are basic speaker building techniques. Ports = boomy base. Sealed enclosure = lower extension but less boomy base. Polyester fluff increases the effective volume (space) inside the box. More space = lower bass extension. I also found that the boom is worse with the surround modes turned on. Oddly surround low is more offensive that medium or high. Audiopilot also seem to make the boom worse.

May have to try that this weekend, Paul. The bose has so much boominess to it, yet minimal midrange. You would think a "sound engineering" company like bose would have a clue. The bose cayman is just about some of the worst sounding stuff I have ever heard in modern car. Its a porsche , and Im not driving it to be in a audiophile paradise, but it could at least be a tolerable setup. I wonder where the "heart" of the bose problem is: the speakers or the amp, which is doing much of the "tuning" of the sound.

Thanks Paul for posting the do-it-ourself fix for the sub boom. At least now that my system has had a chance to run-in the sound is much more musical than when I took delivery. Rich: I agree, even though I have little regard for Bose outside of their headphones, I can't imagine how a project leader could have signed-off on the Cayman set-up. Yes, thank goodness I don't see the Cayman as an extension of my living room. It's still weird that they would create such an disjointed premium stereo in a car this expensive.

Fully upgraded stereo. Hi all, I was completely disappointed with the 'upgraded' bose sound system so I took my car to Imagine Auto to have a completely custom stereo put in while they were doing some performance upgrades. They work on Porsche's as their bread and butter and the owner Stephen was able to get the new Pioneer Avic Z2 head unit working fine in the car along with 2 new amps and all new speakers. Wasn't easy (or cheap) by any stretch of imagination but it sounds GREAT. 7" touchscreen with Nav, sat radio, bluetooth, IPOD control, USB and aux inputs... The head unit won't fully integrate with the Cayman's CAN but the differences are minor; the station and song being played on the radio doesn't feed into the display in the dash/gauge area(but its on the big touchscreen so who cares!), and the head unit doesn't accept the digital speed sensor output from the CAN so it can fine tune the nav data but the car doesn't throw CEL's and the nav works just fine based just on GPS data. He custom made a faceplate that looks fine (and way better than what I could have done!) but not as good as I'd like. (NOTE: found the threads on the CANBUS kit and OEM type faceplate from Japan for this head unit, and another on the wire to tap for speed sensor pulses. I'm buying one of the faceplates ASAP and I'll have my local stereo shop tap the speed sensor wire to solve that one remaining issue and tighten up my nav function! Check out the related thread titled "AVIC D3 Installed". Basically my point is that its POSSIBLE to put a completely new sound system in the car and GREATLY improve the sound. (I'm telling you its night and day!) Not to detract from Stephens work to keep the CAN happy it seemed to me that the hardest part he ran into was shoehorning new speakers into the car that can handle higher power but that part can be done by any qualified stereo shop that is used to working on high end cars; dealing with the CAN bus requires someone used to working on Porsche's though as well as finding a spot to mount in all those expansion modules I added for the head unit and Stephen's a pro. Stephen originally got 8" woofers and upgraded 3" 2 way mids/tweets working in the doors but the awesome bass eventually caused highly annoying rattles/squeeks to develop in the passenger door and the set up simply wasn't ideal for good sound at the elevated power levels I had (but it still sounded GREAT compared to stock!) so I took my car into a local shop here in houston (Car Toys on I-45 N in the woodlands...) Originally I just wanted them to isolate the rattle and fix it but after talking about it we're moving the woofers into the back end inside leather covered custom fiberglass enclosures that will form fit into both sides of the rear luggage area without extending out into the 'usable' main part of that storage space. ie: they won't extend out beyond the edges of the hatch opening and only fill the small shoebox sized space on either side. Then in the doors/dash they're putting a 3 piece component system composed of 6" mid bass and a 4" mid range speaker with the tweets going into the stock dash location. (the high powered deep 'woofer' bass will be coming from the new 8" woofer enclosures in the back...) The old stock rear speakers were replaced by Stephen with 5 1/4" Polk components custom surface mounted into the stock location with 1" tweets custom mounted into the cover of the strut tower. I'm not planning on having the other shop change the new back speakers unless we find out that we need to upgrade them to get better 'fill' once we upgrade the fronts. Stephen put a Polk Momo 4 channel amp into the front boot with a false floor thats level with the top of the amp so you can see the amp but the connections are protected if I put anything in there, and the 2 channel Rockford Fosgate woofer amp is mounted under the passenger seat. (won't work if you have the adaptive sport seats!) I'll post before and after picts and I'll be going to Croctoberfest too so you can see/hear it first hand there .

You wouldn't have to buy a cdr24 or PCM from a non- bose car in order to install new amplification and speakers because you can simply have the dealer reprogram the headunit through piwis to think the car has sound package plus. You will however have to run all new wiring because the car's wiring loom was made for the Bose system and all the speaker wiring that you normally have between the headunit, SPP amplifier, and speakers isn't present. Also, there was a user (Newporscheguy) who added a subwoofer to his Bose system using the line signals from his rear speakers. You could do this and simply remove power from the Bose subwoofer and achieve tighter bass. Anyways, the fiber optic is only between the headunit and the Bose amplifier , from the Bose amplifier there are 9 analog speaker wires that output to each speaker. One could use an audio summing device like the JL clean sweep to capture a full range line signal and then hook that up to an aftermarket amplifier, and change out all the speakers but not have to run any new speaker wires because they are already going to the speaker locations. You would of course have to change the speakers because of the resistance difference. In my opinion changing amplification and speakers on a Bose system isn't difficult, changing the headunit is. But if you are going to change the amplification and speakers, you might as well change the headunit too and have more features. - Suneet

Paul Ho's sub mod = A SUCCESS!! I just completed the sub modifcation with the polyester stuffing, it made a NOTICEABLE difference in overall Bose sound quality. Eliminated much of the boominess associated with the Bose , and really cleaned up the sound throughout. Bass still is very present in the car on the low end, but much sharper and appropriate for music. After that, I started fooling with the settings ( CDR24 ). Usually I never adjust a factory radio much (whats the point) but I found, with surround on (which yields "better" sound) and the fader set almost completely on the front, the stereo sounds much clearer, better vocals, and a better "soundstage." The back speakers, along with the sub (which I fixed) seem to be the sources of much of the muddiness of the Bose sound. Who knows, I may actually be able to tolerate this setup. PS. Ill be posting in the article section in a day or so; I documented the sub mod process in detail with pictures, its pretty easy.

I posted the article (FINALLY) for anyone interested in Paul's Fix: http://www.planet-9.com/reviews/showproduct.php?product=141&cat=5 :beer:

Good tip on blocking the port and stuffing the box of the sub. One other suggestion, but I don't know the exact configuration of the sub/amp set up. One could play with the LF filter config on the sub for volume/phase/cutoff and make it adjustable (adjust until you are happy and then tape the pots and stuff it into the sub cabinet). Or, are there filters on the other speakers so there is not too much overlap? Might take some tinkering but for those who like to tinker it may be interesting. Or replace the sub cone with something higher end.....Just suggestions - I like thinking about these things more than I like doing them!

I'm going to do this "mod" soon. Thanks!

I just set my bass to -3 or -4, treble up at +5 or +6 Surround set to High. And it sounds just fine I am a guy who has upgraded every stock stereo in practically every car I have owned, I do not intend to waste any money fiddling with this one. It is more than adequate, definitely not audiophile quality (nowhere near in fact), but good enough.

That is the way I had mine set before I did the sub mod. A $5 pillow and 20 minutes of work, and the filled sub sounds dramatically better than any fooling with the EQ on the headunit could yield. Its more a factor of the sub chamber than quality of the driver. Filling it tightens up the sound (at the loss of output, like building an sealed subwoofer enclosure) However, the car still has plenty of bass, which I feel is a factor of the large door speakers. I didnt have time to experiment, but I would gather just disconnecting the bose sub would prob give better sound

I tried just disconnecting the sub too. It sounds better with the sub stuffed and connected than with the sub disconnected. -Paul Ho

There may already be direct replacement BOSE speakers. Clearwater Audio manufactures replacement speakers for the Mazda Miata BOSE system. I put this 0.5 ohm system in my Miata and it sounded awesome with the stock head unit and amp. I bet the Clearwater speakers would work fine in the Porsche BOSE systems if there were no fitment issues. BTW the BOSE speakers are unbelievably light and cheap. The Clearwater units are real speakers with heavy magnets. Now we just need to find a guinea pig. Maybe Ken could convince Clearwater there is a huge market for Porsche replacement speakers? Clearwater Home Page Click on the Online Order link top left of page.

Just did this to my Cayman , and boy what a difference. Actually feel like there is some dimensionality to the sound system. Is the first time I've enjoyed the sound of the Bose system . Thanks again.

I just did it, and while I'm very happy w/ the sound improvement, I'm having no success getting the sub. reattached - those rails are stubborn! Any tips? Thanks in advance!

2 cents on this topic: My perception is that the Bose system sounds better with the windows down. With the windows down the bass doesn't seem to boom. Because I like driving with the windows down anyway this seems to be an ultra -low tech solution to the booming bass. Your mileage will vary. My brain-ear setup could use a retrofit I am sure.

If you fill the sub, you get the same/better effect than the windows down "solution" At the heart of many Cayman issues (trunk clunk and audio) is the cabin overall has some odd pressure/resonance issues. About reinstall and the rails: Make sure the sub is in the right places for the rails to engage (aft of the mounting position) hold it firmly against the center tunnel, then slide it forward into position. May require some tapping with your fist to get it to line up just right with the fastener hole.

Your brain/ear are fine. Bass response is VERY dependent on the room (or in our case the cabin). Most home speakers and subs (assuming a basic degree of proper engineering and quality) will measure pretty flat in the bass frequencies (down to there low end cut off point) if you took them outdoors. But as soon as they place them in a room, the frequency response in the bass goes all to hell. Openning the windows on the Croc would be like knocking a wall down in your home, as far as its potential affect on the acoustics. Brian

Guys, couple questions on this mod: 1. How much polyester fluff will this thing take? I bought 8oz of polyester fluff and kept stuffing the sub and the sub took it all! Do I need to stuff more in there? 2. Is this a potential fire hazard? I took a look inside the sub and saw some metal stuff (electronics maybe?). Hope the polyester fluff aren't flammable or won't short circuit anything...

It took quite a bit, although I used the fill from a pillow, so I dont know the weight of it (8oz does seem like a fair amount) Were the electronics exposed? Polyester is non-conductive and relatively non-flammable, so it should be safe (also talking about low voltage here) It is common to pack subwoofer enclosures with this material, and I haven't heard any safety concerns before.

The only wires inside of the sub enclosure are the low voltage wires from the amp to the actual sub-woofer speaker. The amp is outside the enclosure behind a metal shield. The stuff I used was for stuffing children's toys and was non-flammable (blah, blah, blah). It came in a bag the size of a big bed pillow. I used about a third of the bag. The more the better. -Paul Ho

Bose sub mod Just finished this mod and indeed it sounds better. THANKS

I have to disagree. Ports do not equal boomy bass. Sealed enclosures do not extend lower. More space inside and enclosure does not equal lower extension either. I am not saying that what you did doesn't make the system more pleasing to your ear, but your theory is all off. Vented enclosures always play lower than sealed enclosures, and if built and tuned correctly they will be tighter, louder and handle more power. The idea is to make the air in the port vibrate at the same phase as the speaker. This creates a vacuum and pressure in the enclosure that is 180 degrees out of phase with the back of the woofer cone. This reduces the woofers excursion and increases it's power handling while simultaneously producing 3 db more sound. In order for this to work properly, the volume of the enclosure and the size and length of the port have to be carefully tuned. By adding fill to the woofer, you are detuning the enclosure. You can't take a vented woofer and make it sealed. That can have bad results. All woofers have different electrical and mechanical characteristics. During the 60's two audio scientist, Dr. Theile and Dr. Small, documented these characteristics and how they affect the sound of a loudspeaker. They essentially created the Theile/Small parameters that are still used today to design loudspeaker enclosures. According to the Theile/Small principles, the ideal enclosure type for a loudspeaker can be predicted by looking at it's Efficiency Bandwidth Product (EBP). This is the loudspeaker's free air resonant frequency (Fs) divided by it's total electrical loss coefficient (Qes). Fs/Qes. If this number is in the area of 100, a vented enclosure will be best. If it's in the area of 50, a sealed enclosure will be best. There are some woofers that can work either way, with and EBP of 75 or so. But in this case, an ideal sealed enclosure would be roughly half the size of an ideal vented enclosure. So assuming the woofer in the BOSE system has an EBP of 75 and can swing both ways, by sealing the vent you are essentially turning it into a sealed enclosure that's way too big. Bringing me to your next point. Making a sealed enclosure larger than it's ideal volume, as calculated using the Theile/Small formulas, you do not get more or deeper bass. Instead you get a lower Q. The Q of the enclosure describes the way the enclosure's output approaches and extends into it's natural roll off. Sealed enclosures roll of at about 12db per octave. That means that if the enclosures roll off, sometimes its f3, is 50 hz, then it's output is 12 lower at 25hz, one octave down. A Q of 0.7 is typically refereed to as ideal among audiophiles. On a graph the output would be flat until it's f3 where it would smoothly roll off into a slope of 12db per octive. A Q of 1.0 is typically referred to as boomy. It looks like a distinct hump right before its roll off. A Q of 0.5 is typically refereed to as vague, tight and overdamped. By sealing the BOSE woofer, you are likely to achieve a Q of 0.3-0.4. This would look like a droopy indistinguishable transition between full output and it's f3. By stuffing your enclosure with polyester filling, what you are doing is changing the effective volume of the enclosure because filling like that is usually more compliant than the air it is displacing. This is then detuning the enclosure, which makes it less effective, therefore less boomy (because BOSE systems are usually intentionally made to be boomy), which may sound better to your ear. The dangerous part is that if you change the tuning of the port, the enclosure system looses the perfect out of phase resonance of the port which adds control and power handling to the woofer. Once detune, the port basically is just a whole that will allow the enclosure to unload (displace all of it's air) which will drive the loudspeaker into over-excursion at high output levels, where the speaker destroys itself.