For a short period in time, Porsche stopped offering Bose for the 992 due to supply chain issues. Unfortunately for some that ordered the Bose option they ended up with the standard audio system. This is probably just a weird blip in the history of the 992. Unlike the manual transmission option that is no longer available – which is something my millennial brain just cannot process – the $1,600 Bose option appears to be back. This basic stereo is such a unicorn, that we don’t even have wiring diagrams for it in Mitchell ProDemand. Bose and Burmester are the only diagrams available.
In July a client reached out to me that owned one of these unicorns. He inquired about what was available for a Porsche 992 stereo upgrade. He was the owner of this 2023 Porsche 911 Carrera T (manual transmission, of course). An absolutely gorgeous vehicle with a very mediocre base audio system. He loved the car, but was disappointed in the standard audio.
MATCH UP 10 DSP for Porsche 992 Stereo Upgrade
To tackle this Porsche 992 stereo upgrade, I drew on my experience with other vehicles. His situation was not unique. We have assisted many BMW clients with similar upgrades due to the same supply chain issues. In those vehicles we install a MATCH UP 8 or 10 DSP amplifier using a vehicle specific harness for a very clean, minimally invasive audio upgrade. Using the factory speakers and the powerful audio tools within the DSP we are able to completely transform the listening experience. For many of our clients, this is all they need. They are often surprised and overwhelmed with the result. For others, we also upgrade the speakers as well.
I wasn’t exactly sure how many speakers this car was equipped with. It had all the same speaker grilles as the Bose system so I knew it had the potential for 11 speakers:
- Center channel
- Front tweeters
- Front 4″ mids
- Front 8″ midbass/subs
- Rear 4″ mids
- Rear tweeters
Without a solid diagram or taking the car apart, I couldn’t be certain how many speakers the car was actually equipped with. I also wasn’t sure if any of the tweeters were tied in together with their respective midrange’s and a passive crossover OR if they were all on separate channels.
Originally I was planning on using the UP 8 DSP, but I always like to plan for worst case scenario. I erred on the side of more channels and recommended the UP 10 DSP with MEC Analog. This would cover all 11 speakers separately if equipped and if we needed to run everything actively. Even if the car only ended up needing 8 channels, it would future proof the install. This would cover us for any future speaker upgrades if we were to fill all of those speaker slots with higher quality components run actively.
I knew what amp I wanted to use, but I needed to figure out what wiring harness would be needed to create a clean, seamless installation using a T-harness style connection. The problem was there was just no info out there about this vehicle!
Researching Porsche 992 stereo upgrade parts
Using MATCH’s upgrade finder, I did see a T-harness listed, the PP-VAG 2.6. It looked like your typical Porsche, VW/Audi 9003 style connection. This was promising, but I still wanted some real world verification that someone else out there had used these parts with success. The search continued. I scoured industry groups on Facebook with no luck.
However, I landed a few hits on Rennlist that listed these same parts. In one post they used the UP 8 DSP and another poster used the UP 10 DSP with MEC analog in. Both appeared to use the PP-VAG 2.6 wire harness. This was promising. One poster mentioned something about 2 wires in the harness being mixed up, but for a seasoned shop, this didn’t sound like a big deal to me. We could always re-pin the harness if needed.
Executing the Porsche 911 Base Audio Upgrade
With all the parts figured out, it was time to get the car in the shop and execute the plan. I love it when a good plan comes together! It was a bit tricky to find where the T-harness would connect. We assumed it would be behind the glove box or display, but no – it was under the center console far forward. You can see it at about 3:47 in our video documenting our experience below.
Once we found the the harness, John got busy and quickly found out which 2 wires were not pinned. The driver’s side woofer was not lined up in the harness.
After correcting this, he checked phase and toned out all of the speakers. He also checked resistance on each speaker. What we found was the front door woofers measured about 2.5 ohms. The front 4″ midranges were 4 ohm and the rear 4″ component set was about 2.5 ohms. I had concerns about this because the main channels on the UP 10 DSP are technically only 4 ohm stable. They will tolerate 3, but 2.5 would be pushing it.
After getting everything wired up John made a nice little notch out for the amp in the passenger floor. A very important aspect of all of our installations is keep appearance stock. We don’t want clients to see any of the aftermarket equipment if we can help it.
That is one of the many reasons I like to use the MATCH UP series DSP amplifiers – they are incredibly compact which helps us to deliver a stealth installation that looks factory, but performs robustly with depth, punch, vibrancy, brilliance and accuracy.
MATCH UP 10 DSP – It’s all in the tuning
The MATCH UP 10 DSP has an unfathomably small footprint measuring at 1.81 x 5.71 x 6.42″. It features 8 channels of power at 65 watts RMS at 4 ohm plus an additional 2 channels pushing 90 watts RMS at 4 ohm or 160 watts RMS at 2 ohm. However powerful this amp may be on paper, it’s true super hero powers lie in the DSP tuning software that Audiotec Fischer has become known for.
To learn more about this incredible software, check out the knowledge base at Audiotec Fischer’s website here. Here are just a few of the audio control features we have at our disposal:
- 30 bands of equalization per channel
- Input analysis & input equalization controls
- Extensive crossover network options for frequency, slope and type (Butterworth, Linkwitz, Bessel, Tschebyschev + Q factor)
- Various phase adjustments
- Various sound effects like augmented bass processing, center channel processing + front processing
- Digital time alignment
- Built in RTA & more
These extensive tools allow us to re-engineer the audio coming out of the factory stereo and extract maximum performance out of the original speakers. It is shocking how big of an impact this can make on a base audio system.
This Porsche 992 stereo upgrade sounded amazing. It was exactly what our client was looking for. It brought out the dormant performance potential that was just waiting to come out of the standard Porsche audio speakers. After hearing it for the first time, our client told us the sound is beautiful! But we did encounter a snag.
Nothing ever goes according to plan
I’m still not positive if this was a wire harness issue or Porsche over the air update issue, but I’m leaning towards a harness issue. While the car was here at the shop (end of July/early August 2024), several times the car tried to do an over the air update and each time John declined. When the client got his car back, he accepted the over the air update, but recalled seeing a message that one of the updates failed. After that, he found the stereo would intermittently say “Goodbye” and shut down. A few hours later, it would be fine. I know now, there was a definite issue with that later July/early August update as others experienced the same issue with failed over the air updates.
At the time, we weren’t sure what was causing the issue. We got the car back to the shop and brought it to an old friend at our local Porsche dealership. He performed the update manually. A few days later, the same thing happened again. We assumed there must be something else either not pinned right in the PP-VAG 2.6 or maybe it was missing some CAN info or just seeing extra resistance that it didn’t like. John ended up taking apart the T-harness and only utilizing the speaker wire portion of it, and reconnecting the original stereo harness for everything else. After that, no more Porsche PCM quirks and everything remains beautiful.
Since we completed this install, Audiotec Fischer came out with a new harness for the door woofer variation, the PP-PAM 92b. Moving forward, that is the harness we recommend to complete a Porsche 992 stereo upgrade with the base 8 speaker audio system. Despite the hiccups encountered, the end the client was very happy with the end result. Since there was so little information out there on this audio package, I wanted to share our experience. Hopefully this will make it easier for anyone else in the same situation.
If you are interested in upgrading the stereo in your Porsche 992, check out our shop Sounds Incredible Mobile. You can call or text us at 203-778-3300 or come see us in Brookfield, CT. Have you upgraded the stereo in your vehicle using a MATCH UP DSP amp? If so, let me know what you think in the comments below.
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