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Old 01-12-2007, 03:34 PM   #1
Wonko The Sane
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Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: central PA
Posts: 165
Better sound in my boxster, episode 1: Hope for those of us with the leather storage

My first offensive in the attempt to battle the lame sound system that Porsche felt the Boxster deserved was the installation of the Pioneer DEH-5800MP mp3 CD player in the deck.. The deck is awesome, as I expected, and really brought out the sound capability of the stock speaker and amp system, however, no amount of sound balancing will make up for the lack of speakers in the rear.

This is the result of my second attack. This one involved a set of Kicker KS6.2 component set which is a set of 6.0" low-mid woofers and 1" tweeters, these are powered by a MTX Roadthunder RTP202 amplifier. The goal of this system: Give me much more low and high-end presence in my audio stage, and take up no real useable space. The first was easy, since the stock system really lacks definition in all of the extreme ranges. The second was the kicker.. how do you get good sound out of a car like ours, which has no real "free" space.. Here's my answer:

http://www.whoistouching.us/gallery/view_album.php?set_albumName=StereoInstall&page=1

This gallery outlines how I installed this in my car, the whole process, I'll have a few highlights in a bit.

I used the useless leatheresque pouch behind the seats, underneath the rollbar to house the speaker system, and the utilized the stock CD changer location for the amp and a capacitor to keep it from being hungry. I still use the stock mounts for the pouch, so it removes just quickly as before. The speaker connections are quickly disconnected by a normal wiring-harness style quick disconnect.

A few highlight pictures:



6" speakers from the rear



Tweets from the front (with the seat folded down)



Amplifier installation.


Overall impressions: This system sounds A LOT better than the stock, obviously. The bass response is alright, I want a little more, though. The car really sounds a lot fuller, and the sound stage is once again restored to equillibrium.

Stage three:

Now I have a baseline, I know where to improve on. The first problem: I can hear the woofers being a bit overdrive, so I'm going to enclose the boxes, so they have a static supply of air, which should help that a lot. At this point I'll also put in two 3 1/2" speakers in between the seats (in the pouch), which will help balance out the side-weighted high ends (since the tweets are on the extreme outside edges). I'll hopefully have this step done in the next two weeks or so.


I hope this gives you some ideas on what you can do to help your sound system without making your passenger keep their feet stationary
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