I was quite happy with the results of my Burmester tweeter upgrade as detailed in this thread : https://rennlist.com/forums/cayenne-...r-upgrade.html that I decided to upgrade the door speakers as well. I had found this pic detailing the speaker layout and sizes of the Bose system in the 955 and 957:



Based on that, I ordered the following Burmester speakers from Delaware Porsche Parts:

- Front dash and rear door tweeter (4 total): 7PP-035-412-A (I already had two that I installed in the dash, so I only needed two more for the rear doors)
- Front door midrange (2 needed): 7PP-035-828-E
- Front door midbass (2 needed): 7PP-035-454-H
- Rear door midbass (2 needed): 7PP-035-453-B

The tweeters come without the necessary high-pass capacitors, so I got these from Amazon:
So after removing the front and rear door panels, I discovered that the midbass speaker sizes were, uh, exaggerated a bit. The front door speaker assembly may be 8" in diameter, but the driver itself is really 6.5". Likewise, the rear speaker assembly may be 6'5" in diameter, but the driver is 5.25" Interestingly, the holes in the doors themselves are exactly the same both front and rear, as are the openings in the door panels.

So the 8" Burmesters are too big for the front. However, the 6'5" Burmesters fit perfectly, and the mounting holes line up exactly with the mounting points for the Bose speaker mounting brackets (which are riveted to the doors and will need to be drilled out). The 6.5" drivers will also drop right into the rear doors and the mounting points likewise line up perfectly. So I'll send the 8" Burms back and get two more of the 6.5s".

**EDIT** I found out that the 6.5s will not actually fit in the front doors due to depth issues, however I was able to get the 8s to fit. Please see the post below.


Front doors with the Bose speaker in the bottom. Note that this is actually a bass radiator type of speaker rather than a true midbass.



3: Bose midrange mounted to the door panel. You can also see the speaker grille opening for the midbass.



Front door speaker location with the Bose driver removed. The silver riveted mounting points line up exactly with the mounting holes on the 6.5" Burmester drivers.



Here you can see the difference in size between the Bose speaker (top) and the 8" Burmester speaker (middle). The 6.5" Burmester speaker is at the bottom.



The rear door midbass speakers. These are a standard midbass design, not a bass radiator design link the fronts.



The rear Bose tweeter attached to the door panel.



The front door panel on the left and the rear door panel on the right. You can see that the openings for the midbass speakers are identical, even though the grill on the front of the panel is smaller on the rear doors.



Rear door speaker location with the Bose driver removed. As with the front doors, the silver riveted mounting points line up exactly with the mounting holes on the 6.5" Burmester drivers.



The Bose rear speaker (bottom) vs. the replacement Burmester rear speaker (top).


So tomorrow (Sunday), I'm going to work on getting the speakers on the passenger side swapped out front and rear. I've only taken those door panels off so far, and I'll need to exchange the two 8" Burms for the 6.5" ones to do the driver's side. I was planning to swap out one side first anyway to compare the sound of the Bose vs. the Burmesters.

I am also going to change out the 2.5" speakers in the D pillars. Since Burmester doesn't have 2.5" drivers, I picked up these Dayton Audio units from Parts Express: https://www.parts-express.com/Dayton...Impact&irgwc=1 They showed up yesterday and are very nice and well-built (and heavy for such tiny little speakers - the magnet is huge). That will probably happen on Tuesday based on my schedule this week.




I'm also going to try a tweeter in the center dash speaker location. It's also a 2.5" speaker so the 3" Burmester center didn't fit, and the Bose speaker sounds awful, so it's unplugged. I'm interested to see how the front stage sounds with three identical tweeters in the dash locations. That may happen on Tuesday as well.

 

Awesome project. Very interested in how this sounds for you. Subscribed!

 

I made some good progress today. The first thing I did was drill out the rivets holding the Bose speaker brackets to the doors. Super easy and you're left with M6-sized holes.

Back Door


Front Door



As you can see, the back door has tons of depth for a speaker, but the front door has that vertical(ish) metal bar right behind the speaker opening. I think it's part of the window regulator assembly. As a result, the 6.5" Burmester midbass *just* doesn't clear it in depth. It would need about a half-inch spacer ring, and then it may end up being too deep to clear the door panel. However, the 8" Burmester midbass did clear the metal bar. The assembly on the back of the door panel that has that rubber ring around the speaker opening can be removed. If you remove that and the plastic grille on the front of the Burmester speaker, you have the clearance you need between the speaker and the door panel. Back to using the 8s for the front midbass locations as originally planned.

Removing the ring assembly from the front door panel.



The front midbass speakers dropped right into the factory mounting bracket but required new holes to be drilled in the bracket as the original Bose mids had two mounting tabs and the Burmesters have three. The mounting bracket is just plastic so no problem. I also removed the factory connector off of the Bose mids and soldered up a wiring harness using that connector to the Burmester mids.

Bose midrange (left) vs. Burmester midrange (right).



Wiring harness using the factory Bose connector soldered to the Burmester mid.


New Burmester midrange in factory mounting bracket. The speaker needs to be positioned with the mounting tabs in this orientation to clear all of the mounting posts on the door panel.


The new Burmester midrange mounted to the door panel.



None of the Burmester speaker terminals were marked positive or negative, so I used the old battery trick of figure out polarity. You connect a battery to the speaker terminals and if the cone moves outward, the polarity is correct. If the cone moves inward, the polarity is reversed. This way I made sure that I had the polarity correct for all of the new speakers before soldering on the connectors.

A AA battery works great for this.



Moving on to the tweeters in the rear door. As mentioned, the Burmester tweeters don't come with high-pass capacitors, so they need to be added. Quick and easy to solder them in across the positive terminal. Interestingly, the factory rear Bose tweeters are wired out of phase with the other speakers in the car. I'm guessing it most likely has something to do with the spacial processing modes that the Bose system has via the PCM. If you remember from my first post, the positive and negative terminals on the Burmester tweeters are reversed compared to the Bose tweeters. For the rear tweeters, plugging the factory connector into the Burmesters with no wiring modifications meant that the Burms would be in-phase, which is how I wired them. Besides shaving the side tabs off of the factory connector, this was plug-n-play.

Bose tweeter.


Burmester tweeter.


The factory bracket mounted to the door panel with the new Burmester tweeter.



Now to the rear door 6.5" midbass speakers. These are truly a drop-in using M6 bolts. The factory connector comes off of the old Bose speaker easily and by soldering on some male spade connector leads to the new Burmester drivers, I was able to make a wiring harness that connects to the factory plug in the door.

**EDIT** Like the front doors, remove the speaker trim ring from the back side of the rear door panel to get proper clearance for the Burms.

Spade connectors to connect to the factory Bose plugs.


Front (left) and rear (right) Burmester midbass speakers with wiring harnesses done and cloth tape wrapped.


Rear midbass installed.



As mentioned above and in the previous post, the 8" Burmester front midbass drivers clear the metal bar behind the speaker opening just fine but don't line up with the factory mounting points. Fortunately it's easy to drill new holes into the metal of the inner door to mount the speakers. Care needs to be taken to mount them in the right position to clear the bottom left post of the door panel retainer clip. Other than that, fairly straightforward.

Burmester 8" midbass mounted in the front door.


The front plastic grill removed to have the proper clearance for the door panel.



Right, so, how does it sound compared to the Bose? Much, much better. The Bose midrange speakers are truly awful. Like a bad clock radio awful. The Burmesters are much smoother and don't have that nasally honky sound that the Bose mids have. You really don't notice it until you A/B the Bose mids against something good and then they become almost unlistenable. The midbass is much more pronounced and detailed. The Bose midbass is practically non-existent compared to the Burmesters. One interesting thing I noticed is that there are some details to the music that sound great on the Burmesters which are completely missing in the Bose speakers. One example is on track 1 of Fleetwood Mac's "The Dance" (The Chain). In the intro there is a rhythmic quick triple high-hat succession that sounds airy and detailed on the Burmesters, and is nearly totally absent on the Bose speakers. If you are specifically listening for it, you can hear it a little but it is very muffled and muted. The comparison between the two speaker brands is like night and day in this regard.

So was it worth it? Undoubtedly yes. I was surprised that even in cases where things didn't just drop in, like the front door speakers, there was an easy solution to making it work. Everything was removed, re-wired, and installed with simple hand tools, a drill, and basic soldering skills. All of the factory wiring harnesses and connectors were retained. The sound is much improved. For me, this upgrade was a home run. As with the tweeters, I expect the new speakers to sound better and better once they get more broken in.

I still need to install the left side Burmesters front and rear, which should go more quickly now that I've figured out all of the quirks. After that is the Daytons in the D pillars. I still don't know what to do about the sub yet. I tried to pull it the other day and the back left retaining nut is just spinning on its mounting post. So not exactly sure yet how I'm going to resolve that so I can pull it out. The new Burmester 8" midbass drivers add a lot of punch up front, so maybe the sub won't be necessary to upgrade, although I would like to at some point.

I'll update this thread again once the rest of the speakers are installed, hopefully by Tuesday.

 

I installed the left side font and rear Burms today.

Wow. Just, wow.

More tomorrow. I'm going back out to the car. Probably should hook up the battery tender.

 

Needs a sub. Ordered one.

 

So are the new speakers the same impedance as the Bose ones you replaced? Sorry if I missed that detail in your post.

 

yes.

(ICIH: That info is behind the link above in the first post, which points to more detail in the original thread focused on teeeters, I believe.)

cheers

 

Thanks Crozzer.

Yes, the impedance on all speakers is the same between the Bose and the Burmesters. I'm not sure if the D-pillar speakers Bose speakers are 2-ohm or 4-ohm, but I'll check that in a little bit as I'm going to swap them with the Daytons shortly (which are 4-ohm).

 

I installed the D-pillar Dayton Audio midranges today. I ended up gutting the Bose speakers down to their trim rings to retain the factory mounting points and connector. Unfortunately I forgot to measure the impedance of the Bose speakers before I destroyed them. They are the same speakers as the center channel, so I'm pretty sure they are 4 ohms, same as the Daytons.

Bose (left) vs. Dayton (right).





Bose speakers gutted to just their trim rings and OEM connectors.




Daytons wired to the OEM connectors and trim rings in place, ready to install.




Daytons mounted to the OEM D-pillar brackets. There is plenty of space in the D-pillars behind the trim to accommodate the larger magnets.



As I alluded to in my post yesterday, I installed the left side Burmester speakers front and rear and gave the system a test run yesterday. I was honestly blown away by the sound. I knew it would be an improvement over the Bose, but I was not prepared for how much of an improvement it is. I'll try to articulate how the Burms sound. They are very natural sounding. Very airy and detailed while at the same time rich and full. Each instrument and voice are discernible as their own separate musical element without any one overpowering another. No one part of the musical frequency range overpowers another. The highs and mids are superb. Detailed, airy, and natural, with the tweeters and midrange speakers complementing each other nicely. The midbass has a nice visceral kick and is very detailed. All of the speakers complement each other well and work together harmoniously. You can crank this system and it just comes alive even more. No harshness whatsoever. Not fatiguing in the slightest. You just want to listen for as long as possible and try all sorts of different music on it.

This isn't just "better than Bose good", or even "very nice for a top-of-the-line factory audio system" good. This is just good, period. Really, really, really good.

If I ever get a 958 or a 9Y0, the Burmester system is going to be a must-have item.

As I also mentioned yesterday, it needs more bottom end. The Bose "sub" isn't cutting it. You get a vague bass note from somewhere in the rear of the car. I ordered this guy from eBay yesterday. Supposedly out of a 2018 Cayenne. It looks like it's meant to fit behind the left side trim panel, where the removable "door" is, behind the rear wheel arch. I'll see if I can make it work in the 955. If not then I'll sell it and figure out something else. Or keep the speaker from it and do a custom enclosure where the Bose sub is in the spare tire well.





Now, what to do with all of this...?

 

I’m thoroughly obsessed with this project. Thanks for taking the time to investigate and catalog every step of this process. It’s been a HUGE help to those of use who are perpetually underwhelmed by the stock Bose system. I’m not necessarily an audiophile, but I enjoy a well-balanced, rich, and textured audio listening experience. The more I read about your progress, the more I want to bump this project to the top of my list (but the suspension overhaul MUST come first…..oh so tempting tho!).

Other than the diameter, have you taken any readings of the stock Bose sub? Any knowledge of the specs on the Amp? A custom enclosure is tempting, but I may start looking into some 5.25” options that could fit the enclosure and still get driven by the Bose amp.

Also, are you running the stock PCM, or do you have a head unit with EQ capabilities? I’m
contemplating the RennKit PCM CarPlay upgrade, and wonder how this setup behaves with more tunability.

All sounds so exciting. Please keep the updates coming!

 

Thanks! It's been a fun proof of concept.

I haven't taken readings on the Bose sub yet as I cannot get that back left nut off of its stud (it just spins), however, based off of this eBay listing, it's a 5 ohm (because of course it is) single voicecoil driver. The amp is a 100W mono amp. You would *probably* be fine with a 4-ohm sub if you want to drive it with the Bose amp.

https://www.ebay.com/p/2228948436

https://rennlist.com/forums/cayenne-...-autobahn.html

I have a Dynavin N7 in place of the PCM. It does have EQ capabilities but I have not had a chance to play with them yet. I will definitely do some fine tuning at some point soon.

 

Ah bummer! Finding a 5.25" 5ohm sub may prove to be a challenge.
I may have to dust-off the old fiberglassing skills and try to make my own sub enclosure. This may also give me the opportunity to go with a dual-voice coil sub!

Thanks for the info!

 

What would be the best bang for buck if one were to only replace lets say, 2 of the speakers?

 

Yeah, the closest drop-in I have found is this JL Audio speaker: https://www.ebay.com/itm/16569274260...uxo000b2n00004

It's not exactly a subwoofer, more of a 5.25" midbass and only goes down to 53Hz (I don't know what the frequency response range on the Bose sub is). It's rated for 4 ohms, which would probably be OK with the Bose amp. Really though, I'd probably just replace the whole enclosure and go with a good 10" sub, or keep the Bose sub as-is.

 

Replace the front dash tweeters and unplug the center channel: https://rennlist.com/forums/cayenne-...r-upgrade.html