How good is the Bose sound system?

Hi everyone. My order has gone in for the Base Cayman (a week ago) but I need to get down to the dealer by tomorrow to finalise any options. I've agonised over wheels but have (I think) decided to keep with the standards - after all, I can always change them later. However, I'm curious about the Bose system . I've an 18 month old Boxster at present and I went for the standard audio. Whilst the car is superb I've never been terribly impressed by the audio and wondered how much better the Bose is. If anyone has had a Porsche with standard audio and then moved up to the Bose with their latest car I'd welcome an honest opinion. Please remember though, I am generally allergic to spending money

Personally, I think the Bose system is good, and much better than the base system on the Cayman S , and the base system on the non-S Cayman isn't quite as good as the base on the S... wheew, that was a mouthful. Anyway, that said, don't expect a concert-hall experience in such a small space with the motor right behind your head. It's also a personal thing, and everyone has different opinions, but IMO, if you like to listen to tunes while you drive, the upgrade is worth it - the standard S system sounded very tinny and not at all very full to me. brad

i work at an audio shop and i think u might just be better off buyin the base system then upgrading to aftermarket speakers. i personally have the Bose System but they're still paper speakers and once u upgrade to at least plastic aftermarket speaker....you'll save more money and have better sound. I recommend MB Quart. A little bit pricier than the common Pioneer and all that stuff but a lot better quality

Thanks guys. So is it easy enough to have the speakers replaced without mucking about with the head unit? I'm happy with the functionality of the base head unit and it integrates so well with the dash.

Bose is obviously better than the stock system but is a very expensive waste of money. You would have to turn the volume up to dangerous levels to hear any music when the Cayman S ' flat-6 boxer engine is in full tune!

The bose system is flat and muddy, with weak midrange. Like ALL Bose products. Highly overrated, and it only gets worse as the paper speakers wear... Dave w

I was not enamored with the Bose system on the weekend loaner I had. The quality was marginal at best IMO. When I order I skipped the Bose and will install a JL audio clean sweep, new amplification and new speakers after delivery.

I agree the Bose is not a very good system and is not worth paying for. But the real problem is the poor acoustics of the car interior, and that will prevent ANY system from sounding its best.

Does the Alcantara headliner affect acoustics significantly? I'm looking for excuses to justify the added cost of the Alcantara headliner.

I think the Bose system is OK, however it could benefit from the MB Quart speakers, which brings me to the question on how much can those speakers cost and how easy is it to replace the stock speakers?

I thought the Bose system on the 2.7 loaner Cayman that I had last week was truly awful. It sounded really artificial to me, like they have deliberately accentuated the treble and bass to make you think it is something special. I turned it off, and listened to the engine. In fact, I relish listening to music in my VW, but rarely bother in any of the the Porsches I have onwed. I've just ordered the standard audio, which is of miserably low spec for such an expensive car (no MP3? ... disgraceful) and will probably just leave it alone. If I want better sound, I'll spend my money on a sport exhaust! John H

Ok, I must have a tin ear, but I think the Bose system is fine. It's not great, but it's fine and its incely integrated. When I had my SLK32, I spent 6K on an Alpine system and while even I could tell the difference, I'm ok with the present unit. The only thing I would change is to put in upgraded speakers. Remember, I said I had a tin ear, so if you are truly able to hear the difference, tell them to keep it and opt for an aftermarket unit

I too am interested in more info on how to replace the OEM speakers with MB Quart. What sizes fit where and which models to order and how easy is it to install? -Steve

About the bass-less non-bose base base... One other thing to realize is that the base system on a base cayman does not have rear speakers (or functioning speakers on top of the dash) - all the sound is coming out of the door speakers. Yes, it looks like you have rear speakers, but there is no sound coming out of those grilles. I haven't actually removed the panelling to see what's underneath, but I have crawled in the back to put my ear against it. Plus, there is no front-rear fader control (I have PCM), just L-R balance. This was actually a disappointment when I discovered it - like I was deceived, but of course no salesman is going to say, "it may look like you have rear speakers, but you really don't on this model." The guy was clueless anyway - I bought mine when the base first rolled on the floors, so there was no information out online yet, and I had to find out from this site that there are 3 different levels of the base cayman audio (base, plus, and bose). I was well aware that I wasn't getting bose, so when I test-drove I just accepted the sound quality to be that of a non-bose system and didn't want to waste much time with it. Had I known that the base base was inferior to the S base, I would have at least spent more time comparing to see if it really mattered to me....

Be careful about replacing just the speakers in Bose system . The speakers are tightly integrated with the amplifier and the amp is tightly integrated with the speakers. To my understanding (which is limited) Bose attempts to compensate for the acoustics of the car through extensive equalization built into the amplifier. This equalization is matched to the specific speakers they use in the car. As the resistance profile of different speakers would be different, if you change out just the speakers, you might end up actually end up with a more significant problem. I think to succesfully change out the speakers you would need to install some kind of equalization and replace the amplifier. There are some threads on ******** (and here as well) concerning this. Lots to read.

take the car to an audio shop that can do the installation. At the shop i work at...I think we charge roughly $100 a pair for the MB Quarts. Very highly recommended to get the MB Quarts

About thalf the time, I drive with the Radio off, the engine noise is the best sound you will hear . The bose system is "OK". The cabin is small and with the engine right behind you, you will have to crank it up to get decent sound. c

The Bose system is just fine for the money. Take if from someone that has done many custom systems in Porsches over the years......yes, me, myself and I......not a stereo shop.....and I know some good ones. My 928 GT is filled with MB Quarts and Soundstream amps.....and you can't tell it from stock. You won't be happy just changing out the speakers with MBQs. Like most factory installed systems they are conceived as a "whole" rather than individual parts. You most likely will have to change out the amp, redo most of the wiring, etc. Most of the time the factory amp ohm ratings are different then the aftermarket speakers you will be using. I'm not saying a great aftermarket job can't be done.....and using MBQs is the place to start......but I'm still willing to bet that a pristine aftermarket job will cost at least double if not triple what the Bose costs. It's all up to you....just be aware that you need a very good shop that knows what they are doing......or you will wind up with a disaster. If you want to spend that kind of money for tunes......bring it on, but for $950 the Bose is not bad at all for a factory system. There are better and worse for the money.

I have not heard the stock system, but I think the Bose is OK, could be better but I really didn't buy the car for the sounds, at least not the ones from the stereo! Russ

I have bose ... but quite frankly I wish I'd used the money for something else... like towards PCM so I could play MP3 files. It is the only choice that I regret

Not significantly.

I have the bose system and Ive dialed it in after a week and I think it sound just fine you have to dial in both the cd and the radio seperatley

Based on my impression after my first few days of listening to the Bose system I never would've thought I'd agree. But now that I have: - Done the subwoofer mod - Allowed for break-in of the speakers - Adjusted the settings I think the sound quality is quite good. Although I'm a bit of an audiophile I would not upgrade the system to achieve better sound. It would be nice to get more functionality though, like being able to play mp3's, bluetooth and nav. Considering hooking up a handheld or getting a PCM unit. Is there a good description of the capabilities of the PCM (the manual was somewhat lacking).

Go for the Bose . I wish I would have. The sound quility is very different. Also do the 18" rims ... the looks is very different.

What is the biggest improvement for the money on the audio plus system ( the one just below the Bose upgrade)? Adding a subwoofer, changing out the speakers or replacing the headunit?

Bose is AWFUL and has .5 ohm speakers that are impossible to replace with aftermarket. IMO order base and just replace the speakers. 2 nice aftermarket speakers will sound much better than the Bose set.

.5 Ohm? Are you sure? That is nearly a dead short and would require an incredibly high current amplifier and tremendously large speaker wire. I suspect you are mistaken. A .5 ohm speaker just makes no sense. I do not believe that BOSE is aweful. Could it be better? Yes. But if you actually spend the time to tweek it out, I believe it sounds very good. My recommendation: Go to a dealer with your favorite test CD and give it a listen. I suggest turning the surround off, the AP off, fader to the rear 3-4, bass & treble to taste. The system tends to be a bit boomy and bright. The suggested settings will bring the mid-highs to more acceptable levels (fading forward and using surround amplifies the mid highs to a harsh levels). The lows are still powerful. Many have found that stuffing the woofer port with an acoustic dampening material brings the lows to more natural levels. This is a much easier and less expensive mod than trying to gut and replace the entire system, which is what you will need to do if you want to surpass the system's abilities.

Adding a woofer and woofer amplifier and tuning it to be overly sensitive would bring you the biggest benefit. By making the woofer amp at least 6db more senstive than flat, you wil be forced to reduce the BASS setting to make the lows more accurate. By doing this, you will also be reducing the low frequencies being delivered to the remaing speakers, which will effectively act like a high pass filter to the system. That will allow you to reach much higher output levels among the remaining speakers without distortion so you can match the output of the woofer. Changing the speakers will have little effect unless you also add an amplifiers. These are tricky to interface with the Porsche sound systems. Replacing the head unit would provide little benefit in sound, cost a lot, and be very difficult to properly interface with the system.

I have a 2000 ML320 Mercedes SUV and many years back replaced the Bose speakers with MBQ. Many folks said that it wouldn't work/wouldn't sounds good, etc. but after 8 yrs, it still sounds fine; the MBQ's are wondeful speakers. I now also have a 987S 2007 with the Bose system . I don't listen as much to the Bose since I like listening to the engine, but I would assume (based on my experience with the ML320) that it would be okay to just replace the speakers with MBQ if one wanted to??

No, there are no such thing as 1/2 ohm speakers, but I can now see why you said that. If you took an ohm meter and tested any speaker, you will get about 1/2 ohm. That's because an ohm meter measures resistance by passing a direct current through the load, and if you really look at what a speaker is, it's just a piece of wire wrapped around a metal form that rides inside a magnetic gap, so it really should measure out at 0 ohms, but because we haven't mastered room temp super conductors, there will be some small resistance. A speakers impedance is actually an imaginary measure of it's effective load when presented to an alternating current and actual resistance is a function of frequency. At a speakers resonant frequency, it's resistance will peak as high as 70 ohms. But at other frequencies it will fall as low as 3 or 4 ohms. The mean of these measurements is the speaker's impedance. I gets a lot more complicated because of a speakers inductive and capacitive properties, but we'll leave it at that. Let's just say you can not get an accurate impedance measurement with a multi meter. What makes it hard to replace a Bose speaker is the fact that Bose speakers are usually unusual in their frequency response. If used alone, the speaker would sound undesirable. But Bose usually matches these unusual speakers with speaker specific equalization inside their proprietary amplifiers. Anyone who's ever listened to a set of Bose 901s knows what I am talking about. They contain nine 4" drivers yet they hit low and hard as if they were much larger, and the speakers come with a EQ that makes it impossible to use other speakers with the 901s. When you replace these speakers with a conventional speaker that was designed to be used without equalization correction, the results can be undesirable. Because of this, replacing Bose speakers usually necessitates replacing the Bose amplifiers with them. This presents the next challenge. Bose amplifier use a balanced input from the head units. A balance input has a high and a low and the system cares only about the voltage difference between the two. The high wire will have a + voltage and the low wire will have a matching - voltage. All aftermarket head units use unbalanced outputs, meaning one polarity of the output rests at ground and the other provides voltage. Balanced inputs are superior at rejecting noise, but more expensive to make. The two are not compatible. So this makes it hard to add an aftermarket head unit to a Bose amp , or to add an aftermarket amp to a head unit made to work with a Bose balanced output. So the head unit has to go too. There are adapters that will convert an unbalanced output into a balanced output. This is good news for the Corvette owners with Bose . But not for Prosche owners. Porsche does not use a balanced output. Nor do they use and unbalanced output. They have employed the use of a digital fiber optic output system to transfer audio to the Bose amplifier . This system is called a MOST bus. Media Oriented System Transfer bus. Audio data is transmitted digitally at many megabytes per second via fiber optic cable to the Bose amplifier where there is a digital to analog (D to A) converter that turns it back into audio. No aftermarket amplifiers have a MOST fiber optic input. This is why it is so hard to upgrade a Porsche Bose system with aftermarket components and why I said you need to gut and replace the entire system with thousands of dollars worth of audio equipment to surpass what the Bose already does. Sorry about the technical rant. Hope it helped.

Thanks for the techical rant. So all Bose systems aren't alike? Thats weird! Porsche , Corvette and Miata must all be different. I wonder how Clearwater managed to come up with Bose replacement speakers? Thanks for the explanation again :cheers: