996 door speaker enclosure

So I'm guessing the purpose of these things is to give the speaker an enclosed back space to provide a better sound, they do seem quite ornate though. My 996 has already had the door pockets cut out with speakers fitted by a previous owner but the sound quality is still lacking, would anyone know if there is space to fit these behind a 'non speaker' door panel?

The enclosure provides for a specific interior volume space, and is tuned accordingly. There are some very specific mathematics for where specific frequencies resonate. If you've ever seen a Bose Wave radio apart, you'd see the intricate "tunnel" where it's ported, kind of looks like a longer ear canal. This is where the incredible low bass sounds develop from such a tiny speaker. The enclosure in your 996 is also tuned to attenuate different frequencies, and is there for a purpose. I see guys just swapping out speakers and relocating stuff randomly, that's why all the mixed results. Sorry, I'm an audio engineer, and it's a little unreasonable to expect fantastic results from car audio without "doing the math", every little thing can make or break the end result, even the interior volume of the passenger compartment is a factor. Anyways, who needs a radio in a Porsche!??

Did the non-Bose cars with door speakers have these boxes? Or only the Bose equipped cars?

My 2000 has Nokia speakers in an enclosure that looks just like that.

To answer your question, I'm pretty sure they fit behind the standard door panels. FWIW, the sound quality is going to suck by modern standards no matter what unless you add a sub somewhere. I'm fighting this myself. I have Focals in the door with tweeters in the dash. The sub enclosure options are kind of limited, especially for cabs like mine, but coupes have some more options I think. I'm debating between a passenger floor box (like the factory Bose system) and a behind the seat option, but I think you lose an inch of leg room.

My non bose car has those pods. I replaced the speaker with a jbl 5 1/4 speaker and it sounded aweful. I think the factory amp has built in x-overs for each set of speakers. Once i replaced the amp the sound got much better. I still have some tuning but know its decent. I was trying to keep the factory radio but i think thats going too.

One thing to note is that the original Haes (non-Bose) door speakers are 2 ohms. Replacing them with anything other than 2 ohms will give you lousy sound from the original amp.

Not only are the door speakers 2 amps, but that amp splits the 4 channel out from the deck to 6 channels (on my '99 with hi-fi (door speakers) and the hayes/nokia NON bose). There are also 2 different door speaker boxes, one for BOSE and one non-BOSE. I changed out just the speakers but the sound wasnt great because of the wrong impedance. I removed the amp and used those wires (they are the speaker wires if i recall) and straight plug into a radio harness through the firewall plug on right side of battery. EDIT: Apparently there are 3 different door enclosures, one BOSE and 2 non bose.

Thank you all for the responses, all very useful. To add a little context to my question, my 996 came from the factory without the factory speakers in the doors but some have been fitted by a previous owner by setting speakers into a piece of wood siliconed to the back of the door card, with the sound exiting through the hole for the door pocket (the backs of which have obviously been cut away). It doesn't sound great. My thought was to retrofit some of the speaker enclosures into the doors in the hope that they would fit behind my 'non speaker' door cards without a problem, then hook them up to the third party amp that is already driving the existing door speakers fitted by the PO. This is partly to improve the sound quality in a hope of introducing some kind of bass tone into the car, and partly to return the doors to look more stock by removing the black mesh that covers the door pocket openings. I was hoping the speaker placement would be such that I could hide the speaker behind a black net fabric inside the pocket so at a glance the door pockets looked unaltered, I accept that the sound quality would be slightly muffled by being obscured by being situated 'inside' the pocket, but that's how they are already. So moving on... I guess as Gulliver suggests the enclosures are tailored specifically to the speaker, so in essence could any of the 3 enclosure shapes be determined to be 'best' in themselves? Also I'm assuming a 20 year old speaker will have now seen better days, so assuming I graft a new speaker into one of the enclosures is the above consideration a mute point anyway? Oh and Gulliver; it's true as having owned the car now for a few months I have come to question whether I need a stereo in a Porsche at all! Ultimately I like the idea of a central console delete and cubby hole where the original radio would have fitted, but for now my 5 year old little man likes to listen tunes when I take him for a ride, hence for now the stereo needs to stay so I may as well make it sound better than it does currently