Anyone replace the front speakers with coaxials

Hey Guys, I am thining about replacing my front speakers with a pair of coaxials rather than seperates. I have the speakers in the door and dash and plan on putting the coaxials in the door and leaving the dash blank. My thinking is this. Even with seperates, the ideal installation is to have the tweeters near the mids. I figure that with coaxials, both will be installed in the same location instead of the tweets in the dash and mids in the door. Is this a bad idea or am I missing something??? Thanks all. Bobby

The best thing to do, if you are going to the time and money to replace the speakers, is to get the best thing you can for the money. The dash grill will accept a set of 4" woofers and 1" tweeter. So buy a seperates set for there. The door will accept a 5" so put a 5 coaxial there. You can shop around, and maybe near match something on the sizes. But better off to buy a good setup you like, and cut/modify the factory grill to accomodate them.

I replaced the Bose fronts with Infinity Kappa 32.5 3-1/2" coaxials. Quick and easy swap, no need to modify the enclosure. It's not the best thing you could do, but it is cheap, easy, and sounds better than the Bose components. If you have the same speaker enclosures as I do, you can put a 4" speaker there, but it does require modification to the speaker enclosures.

Yes I went with JL 4" coax with X-Overs powered by A|D|S amp very simple as I have the base stereo system. Eric

bad idea. If you have the door speakers get a three way matched set from focal, cdt, or what have you. You can beat the front stage imaging with components in the dash and the doors are for mid/low fill -

Got it, sounds like a good plan. Thanks all. Bob

What at it, can someone please tell me if it is possible to replace the headunit in 1999 996 with an aftermarket without too much mod? do they use a special harness? fiber optics? thx.

99 should be no problem. It's the 03 and later that went to a fiber optic bus.

So, Acourvil... I've been considering changing audio components on my 03 996. What's this about fiber optic bus????

The 2003 and 2004 sound system components and PCM II are connected to each other and the OBC via a MOST fiber optic bus instead of standard electrical connections (copper wire). This allows better data transfer, but unfortunately means that it is much harder to swap individual components. Theoretically, you could swap in other MOST components, although you might need to have the dealer reset something in the OBC to have it recognize the new component. That's purely theoretical, though, since there currently aren't any aftermarket MOST components. So, you can swap speakers, since they are connected to the amp with normal copper wire connections, or you can rip out the whole system and replace everything (and lose any integration with the OBC). But you can't swap the MOST amp with a regular aftermarket amp. It might also be possible to change the separate amp for the bass enclosure for the Bose system, since I think (but have not confirmed) that it is simply fed with a line level output.

hi all, this is my first time posting, so please bear with.... (I receive the daily 911 digest, but don't venture to this board more than a few times a year. After seeing all the stereo postings, yikes, maybe I should tune in more often! I might be able to help) On the 996, the non-hifi equipped cars have come with a 4" full range in each dash location and a 4" full range in each rear side location. On the hifi setup, there is a 5.25" subwoofer mounted in each door, and the dash and rear side speakers are 4" mid and separate tweeter. All dash and rear side speakers attach to the grills, and overall size is pretty much restricted to a 4" speaker there. If your car didn't come with the hifi package, then it's actually quite simple to simply upgrade speakers all around with 4" coaxials, though attaching them usually involves "gutting" the factory speakers to use their "mounting flange" to clamp the new speakers in place, and some brands are better fit than others. Even changing out the head unit is quite simple because there is no separate amp on the non-hifi cars, and a standard harness adapter and antenna adapter allow the new radio to plug in cleanly without altering the car. (If installing your own unit, email me for installation instructions, there are a few things to be aware of including powering the antenna booster, and disconnecting a security lead that interfaces with the alarm, and it seems 03 and up have no switched ignition wire in the harness, but there is an orange wire at the ignition switch itself that will behave properly-that is, it remains energized until the key is actually removed from ignition-hooray!) The factory speakers, amp, and radio, are all in my opinion, poor quality stuff that is easily outperformed by even medium end aftermarket equipment. The Bose setups now include a subwoofer in the coupes (like the 02 TT in our shop right now, drool, drool...) with dual 6" drivers that despite their large ported enclosure still somehow fail to produce quality bass. The door speakers are ported, but seem to break up at anything but a low level. Good quality speakers, a quality amplifier, good sub setup (even 5" subs behind the rear side panels in the coupes sound great!), nice clean head unit with good response and at least 4 volts of preamp voltage, all make for one spectacular true 4-way system, which is very hard to describe. I'll sit in this TT when it's all done and waste a bunch of time that I can't afford to spend listening to it, just stunned 'Hopefully this car will be done tomorrow. 'sorry for rambling, I spent the weekend in Kentucky working on a 993 TT and an SC cab, I had a blast, but I need a day off, hehe. Anyways, that's my $.02. Questions are always welcome, my shop email is [email removed] the website is www.caraudioinnovations.com I can email some directions I have for the 996. I'm sorry they're not as fully developed yet and detailed as I have for the earlier cars. (I think I've only done audio upgrades on perhaps 50 996's compared a few hundred of the earlier cars, so I keep adding and updating, and taking more pictures.) Even if you're just looking at different options, you can email me what you're thinking and I can render my opinion. -Rod