Sound upgrade...Need your inputs

[tolum]

Guys;

My car: 03 Boxster base.

I'm looking to have a little more punch on sound side. I don't want to break all windows on main street, but just want to have a little more boom in sound.

Actual setup:
Alpine CDA-9885 deck
XM Satellite Roady XT wired to dedicated aux. input in the Alpine deck
Dash top & door Porsche factory installed speakers
Rear Porsche speakers kit in rear storage compt.

I don't want to spend too much $$. Also, I don't want to start to use a jig saw and cut all the door and dash...

Need your advise. Do I need an amp? What kind will be ok?
Do I need to install a sub or change the door speakers and buy some that have sub integrated... Any advise will help.

Tks!

Thierry

[Cloudsurfer]

An amp will improve things greatly. As for subs, thats where it gets semi complicated. In my opinion, the best thing is a sub mounted in the passenger footwell, but you can manage to git the Focal 5" subs in the door panels, though you then lose a good bit of mid bass performance.

Search this forum, there are plenty of posts on the topic.

Patrick

[FrayAdjacent]

Over on another Porsche forum, a guy figured out how to mount 8" woofers in the door panels. They were shallow 8" Kicker subs, and he mounted them in the doors backwards. There was some plexiglass fabrication in it somewhere...

Of course, it was on the end of some good equipment - amps, crossovers and a good headunit. He said it sounded amazing.

If I had the coin to drop, I'd do the same thing. Probably have the speakers professionally mounted.

[Topless]

You have a good head unit. Unless you have the Bose system the stock speakers suck rocks. Putting in 4 quality speakers that match well with you Alpine will make a huge difference. Personally I think adding 8" subs in a boxster is blasphemy but to each his own. Do a listening test and compare high end speakers/no subs vs speakers with subs and decide which works best for you.

[chitowndad]

The first mod that I did on my 2001 Box was to pull the door skins and replace the Bose subs with JL Audio 6.5 inch. At that point I was running the stock amp and stock headunit which sounded much better. Wanting even more umph, I installed a new head unit and 2,000 watt 4 channel amp. I'm still using the stock dash speakers and will eventually upgrade them to MB Quartz. If you replace the door subs you'll need to make a custom install plate out of wood or MDF.

There is sooo much information on this forum about the Porsche stereo including the wire color coding (that was the tricky part that took me a few weeks to figure it out). I have several posting here on the wire color coding...

Search, print and read and you'll learn a ton!

Good luck!

-Steve