996 CDR23 stereo upgrades

Hi All I'm sure this has been covered but I can only find limited success on MK1 GT3's it seems and these are not MOST? I have a 2003 996T with the above unit (CDR23/CDC4) with BOSE/MOST and with which I am thoroughly fed up. To my mind, the stereo is overrated and unless the volume is really wound up (to cover the tyre noise!) the music is only ever average. Has anyone successfully upgraded the head unit to include IPod/Satnav/MP3 etc functions through a Becker or other unit? I accept that the amplifier will probably require replacing and the speakers having conventional wires routed to them to replace the fibre-optics. I have spoken to a car audio firm in St Albans who have given me a price but also confirmed they have never carried out this 'conversion' before! Any help on this as a winter project would be much appreciated. Many thanks Simon

1. during next tyre change get rid of the P-Zero's, far too noisy, bridgestone are much quieter 2. buy a portable sat nav to fit on dash and hard wire in if you don't like wires 3. i-trip for ipod through radio 4. take the wife on a cruise and enjoy all the money you have saved.....

I think the Becker units are over rated also. I just replaced my CDR22 with an Alpine unit from my last car (forget which model - it's a CD tuner and cost circa £400). I also added an iPod adaptor for £40. It's a great improvement over the CDR22. The standard 996 speakers are pretty good, so I'll stick with those for now.

have a look at something like the Garmin 660. This clever little box of tricks has Sat Nav, MP3, bluetooth phone, traffic alerts and camera alets too. And here's the best bit it has an FM transmitter so you get to hear everything through your BOSE without ripping your car to pieces. Although the UK versions don't have this feature yet as it 'was' illegal to transmit here, the ban in the UK has now been lifted (only last week actually) so expect these to be for sale over here very soon.

The problem with your car is the MOST bus system - you have basically got to start all over again. ITs normally the speakers which are the weak link, and even with BOse this is probably still the case, but they tend to use unusual impedance values, so finding replacements which make the most of the Bose amp can be very tricky. Start again is never going to be cheap, but you will end up with a far superior sound quality. Try prestige audio, or sqplus - both did some superb installs in 996s a few years back. Audio Innovations is a US based company, that has a good website with loads of pictures of numerous 993 / 996 and Boxster installs.

Thanks Guys I have contacted Chris at Prestige Audio which sounds very promising. I will be popping over there (not far) to have a look at the Becker Cascade unit etc. it will be good to bin the BOSE! Have a great Xmas to All Krgds Simon

Hi I am currently fitting a PCM to my 2003 C4S to solve some of the issues that you have. I have already fitted a Parrot GPS/Bluetooth unit that does play through the car speakers (Sorry speaker) and mutes the radio. I will keep the parrot when the PCM is fitted. Dension do a Gateway product that allows ipod connection and hopefully uses the PCM screen as a controller . Any info you require please let me know.. I have a spare PCM unit coming from Germany if you are interested. The cost for all the neccessary components is about £100 plus the cost of the PCM unit. It takes about 3 hours to fit. Cheers Graham