Mr. Merk

Were you able to use the 488 grilles you mentioned? Or did they just come with the speakers?

lml999

They came with the tweets. It was easy enough to pull the tweeters out of the grilles and slip them into the stock location on the Cayenne dash, then reinstall the Cayenne grilles.

I hate to throw out a pair of perfectly good Ferrari parts, but I have no use for them.

kvec

I dropped in the Burmester center speaker over the weekend. Just upgrading the C speaker to Burm from Bose made a huge difference in clarity. The lower Ohms show up as a louder center channel. I always felt like the sound was a little left-weighted in the pepper so having a little more oomph in the center is welcome.

Speaker looks good in its spot.


Looking at the speakers next to each other, it's no wonder it sounds so much better. Night and day difference:



Also took the door panels off to swap out the 8" woofers to Burmester. Holy smokes is that better.

Before, with the funky rear-firing Bose:


and after, with the Burmester woofer + some Dynamat:


Couldn't get the tweeters to work for some reason. Will take another shot at it this weekend.

At this rate, I'll also be replacing the woofer in the sub box in the back. Once you start...

endless_corners

When you say northshore are you talking Oahu? I live honolulu (town).

lml999

@kvec Did you have to clip off the Bose center speaker connector and use that with the Burmester?

Were the Burmester woofers a direct drop in replacement? Fit, plugs?

What was the difference in sound that you noticed?

Did you need to change the speaker grilles?

Aren't there midrange speakers in the doors too? Did you replace them?

Which tweeters did you change? What's up with them?

With my last two cars, an allroad and an A4, I used a good amount of Dynamat in the doors and wherever else I could apply it. Interestingly, the original soundproofing above the allroad headliner was a piece of cardboard. Wow. It was a much quieter car with some Dynamat and an alcantara headliner!

kvec

Mass, on the other side of the world from you

kvec

Yes, just shaved off the little tab. It's soft plastic so easy to do with a knife. Then it's a drop-in.

The mounts drop in perfectly. I created little jumper wires with spades, then posi-tapped them to the door wiring harness just above the original Bose male connector.


You have to open up the sides of female connector just a bit on the Burmester woofer. Also soft plastic; just use a knife and wedge it a little and the tabs snap right off. Easy to do and allows the spades to fit.


Posi-taps into the original harness:


Much tighter bass.

The Bose woofers have plenty of oomph but distort badly. Mud is the best word I can come up with. They seem to struggle to produce any sort of specificity to sound, just a note in the general midbass direction (and a lot of it).

The Burm are not quite as efficient but FAR more accurate. Night and day. I keep the system at +2 B / -1 T, Linear ON now. Even if you turn off Linear, you still get cleaner midbass.

I'm sure it's not as good as something from Focal, Audison, or Audiofrog, but you can't beat the drop-in fit.

Wish I'd gotten poly-fill for the big, empty door cavity behind them, though.

Nope. Grilles are on the inside door panel. Think it would be challenging to remove them if you wanted to. IIRC, the Bose grilles are plastic riveted to the door panel. Doesn't affect sound quality or fit.

Yes and no. From research, it appears those might actually be ok. Consensus seems to be: tweeters are the weakest link, followed by the door woofers, the sub box, the front center + D pillar surrounds (those 3 are all the same speakers), then the rear door components. If you're replacing all those, only then would you hit the front door mids.

Not sure how much I buy that. 90% of the volume and the entire sound stage is dictated by the front cabin speakers. Nail that and who cares about the fill?

I want to get the tweeters figured out then I might tackle those, too. It would give me an excuse to rip apart the doors again to add poly-fill.

I sourced some used rear door Burmester tweeters on eBay (p/n: 7PP-035-412-A). They're drop-in replacements to the front with some light connector mods (and caps). The ones I received appear to be DOA, though.

Bose on the left, Burm on the right.


I'm returning them and ordering new ones. Many 911, 718, and Macan owners have had surprisingly good luck with them. Porsche shares the same audio parts across its entire line, which helps out quite a bit.

lml999

Thanks @kvec . Interesting about the Burmester rear door tweets. The Burmester dash tweets are entirely different - a ribbon tweet setup that does not look like it's an easy drop in replacement.

Flygts

DO NOT put polyfil in your doors! It will hold water! If anything, dampen the doors with dynamat, or add a ccf acoustic tile behind the woofer. There are many companies that make sound deadening materials for cars. Dynamat, Sound skins to name a few.

lml999

@Flygts Great point! To that end, I've looked at a couple of Burmester woofers on eBay, and several have rust along the speaker rim. Pass.

kvec

Yeah, from what I can tell, the ribbon tweets are much finnickier than the dome tweets. I went with the dome tweets because many people had had some good success with them and they were substantially cheaper. It also seemed like perhaps they were a little more sonically forgiving. Several people tried aftermarket tweeters and ended up going back to the Burm domes because they provided goldilocks performance.

On the ribbon tweets: the dash has the rectangular cutout for them, it just has a molded piece in its place that's held in by some small plastic tabs. It would take some light surgery to remove that but I don't think it's anything too heavy. That, plus soldering on capacitors (which you'd need to do for either tweeter) should be a pretty doable project for a motivated party.

kvec

Great point. Duh [slaps forehead].

I put some Dynamat back there but just what I could fit in the woofer opening. I may have to take out the moisture barrier and line more of the door. There's still some resonance coming through.

lml999

@Flygts @kvec Where else does it make sense to put Dynamat? Any specific trouble spots? Rear hatch? Spare tire well? Under the back seat? (All of these would be for general noise abatement rather than for specific audio improvement...)

Flygts

The sky is the limit when it comes to sound deadening. I have done my front doors, and spare tire well, am planning on adding some to the back of the door panels and the rear doors when I replace the speakers. There are a lot of videos on YouTube on sound deadening a vehicle. Some guys go nuts with it. Luckily the Cayenne is pretty quiet to start with.

https://soundskinsglobal.com/

lml999

Looks like there might be a Mercedes Burmester tweeter that could be a plug and play (for the dash tweeters) as well...

https://www.ebay.com/itm/30363658379...wAAOSw83deFIBB

These look very similar to the Ferrari tweeters.