The Stig

My wife and kids demanded that I fix the sound system in the car this year. So not one to argue with a chance to upgrade parts on the car, I set out sourcing an economical solution to suit my requirements.

I don't consider myself a hardcore audiophile, but I do like my tunes. I know about the inherent drawbacks of the cabin and I was on a bit of a budget given the engine out work I completed in the summer.

So the goals were:

1. Keep the all-in price below $500
2. Improve the sound quality (current speakers were buzzing, not working, or falling to pieces)
3. Not compromising cabin space by installing a subwoofer
4. Bluetooth and head unit control of my iPhone playlist
5. Reduce some of the cabin creaks and rattles coming from the rear deck

I settled on the following parts:
Alpine CDE-1438BT head unit, and B-Quiet Extreme Sound Deadening.

JL Audio C2 400x rear speakers


JL Audio C2 650 Component speaker (6.5" woofer and tweeter)


I won't bore you with photos of door card and rear deck removal, as there are loads of other threads covering the steps.

You can see the mess of the rear deck. Lots of cracks and tears. There was a lot of sympathetic resonance when running through the gears at high rpms. It was getting annoying.




The popular sound deadening products are stupid money up here in the Great White North, so thanks to some snooping on the 944 board I was able to find a Canadian company that offers a really neat product at a significant savings. It's called B-Quiet Extreme. It has a foil front with a rubber, peel and stick rear.


It lays out pretty easily.



I made sure to get into as many nooks and crannies as I could.

Here's a pick of the rear speaker in place.


I wanted to re-use the factory grills if possible. So I needed to use some foam to get the grill to fit tight as the new plate was a bit smaller than the original.



For the fronts, I figured I'd lay down the B-Quiet as well since I had extra. I made sure to secure the woofers to the door frame rather than the door card.



It took some cutting and shimming to get the speaker positioned properly. That was the hardest part. I was not able to re-use the factory grills for the woofers since the new ones are 6.5" in diameter. I used the new grills which have a nasty chrome ring. I will plasti-dip or use a marker or something to make it all black. I was able to re-use the stock tweeter grills.


The cross-over, though clunky, fit in neatly into the cavity under the door handle.

The beauty of the new head unit is it displays all the song info as well as controls iPhone playback.


I have not decided where to mount the bluetooth mic. Given that I don't take many calls while driving the 964, I may just leave it in the map pocket for now.

Cheers,

Lemass Automotive

Good work.
I have located my mic under the dash point at my seat. It works very well if you just speak down a little bit

92C2Targa#119

My microphone is on steering column. Works perfect. That's a nice B-Quiet product. Let us know how it works for the 964

Dr Mitch

Nice write up!
I just got some new rear speakers - the little tweeter in the middle sits a bit high for the stock speaker grills though - so I'll have to be creative as the ones that came with the speakers don't look good.
Will have to source some of the B-Quiet as well - where did you get it from? Cost?

I have my front speakers in already, but haven't installed the crossovers and tweeters as I have the RS door cards - there are little perforations in the card for the main speakers, but nothing for the tweeter - I'd prefer to NOT have any grills on the cards - maybe a few little perforations over where the tweeter would be may do the trick.

Did you install an amp or do you find sufficient sound from the headunit?

Cheers!

Mitch

The Stig

Gents - Thanks for the mic location suggestions. I'll try those positions and see how it goes.

The B-Quiet stuff comes in 3 flavours for dampening. I knew I was going to keep the existing black padding on the rear deck in place so I went with the thinnest dampener. It's 1.5mm think. They also sell sound absorber (padding) which may be suitable for the engine bay side firewall.

Another reason to go with the thin stiff is because the door skins are pretty tight too, so there was no sense in going overboard.

Here is a comparo of their products. (no affiliation etc) http://www.b-quiet.com/compare.html

I bought the 50 sq ft roll. Ended up being about $100 with tax and shipping.

We've had some -25degC and lower temps these days so I haven't taken the car out much lately. However, I had to go for an emissions test today and it was a balmy +6degC. The rear deck is very quiet and now squeak and rattle free. No more sympathetic resonance either. The doors are also quieter. There were certainly no rattles from them and it still has that distinct 964 metallic ka-chunk when it closes.

So overall, I'm very satisfied with the product. As I put more kms on the car, I'll be paying close attention to the sounds.

Mitch - I did not add an amp. The HU has more than enough power for my listening needs. As for my tweeters, they were slightly deeper than the previous ones. I made sure to push in the sound dampener and the plastic film so that it would accept the depth of the tweeter. It was a close shave.

Tokyo Joe

Great info and write up thanks!

Next mod on mine as it still has the original cassette player and sound is terrible. Did you come across anything where you can just plug in a sim card instead of an "i" contraption?

Thanks,

TJ

sml

Speakers will perform better with a solid mounting rather than a floppy door card.

My sound improved 100% just simply screwing the speaker into the predrilled holes in the steel door frame cutout.

RAASpeedster

Great work. Very professional looking. Just out of curiosity do you have the original radio and was it a CR-1 cassette deck? If it works and you would like to sell it please PM me. If I don't find the original radio I am going to use the Alpine Unit you used.

The Stig

@ TJ - I did not come across anything with a sim cart. Sorry.
@ RAASpeedster - the HU that came with the car was an aftermarket Alpine unit. It didn't have many toys on it, so I upgraded.

FlyinTomato

see that 3rd empty slot amount those *****. You can drill a hole and put your mic there. You can make it look factory if you use some kind of grit to fill the hole

I think someone from the forum has done it.

The Stig

Brilliant idea. Ta very much.