gen. 4 JBL

I rarely have backseat passengers. And I like the music LOUD. I'm experimenting with fading almost to the back speakers, turning volume up higher, going for the surrround sound experience. After 7 years in crap gen 3 base stereo I want to take advantage of the aclaimed JBL premium experience.

 

I live in Ireland and have the Gen 4 Prius. Paid extra for the Premium 10 speaker JBL setup as it was in the 2010 Prius I had and I loved the sound. I am to be honest a little dissatisfied with the sound and the audio etc in the new car. For a start it takes ages for the bluetooth to automatically connect into the phone. This was not the case with the older car. One gets these warning messages about data and confirm and I wish to know is it possible to overide these. I need to open the gate with the phone and sometimes when I get into the car have to wait a minute before the car will connect to make the phonecall. I am very curious to know from any UK excell owner if there is an amplifier underneath the drivers or passengers seat for the JBL. Also I am having difficulty playing the USB as if its not MP3 it does not play or stops and starts if flac. To be honest I feel there is very little difference it the JBL premium sound in my new car and the normal speakers in a Prius. Observations or info would be very much appreciated

 

My first Prius had the JBL system, then for 7 years A Prius with the base crappy system, now I have a 2016 JBL premium and I feel like I'm home again. The head unit and navigation seem familliar, no problems. Connectivity is fast and secure, navigation and radio start without any lag. The speakers are loud and clear at all speeds and road surfaces. These were problems in my gen 3. Sometimes the Bluetooth gets confused about which device to connect to. I'm in the US and can't answer as to if we have the same systems. Good luck! Irish clover.

 

Junk. Upgrade to focal or better. JL amps and JL w7 sub


the bat cave

 

I have a 2016 4 touring with the 10 speaker system. When I first got the car I was disappointed with the sound and thought it was really lacking in bass. Finally I realized that the passenger front bass speaker in the door wasn't working at all. Had the dealer look into it at the 5k checkup and they found a pin had popped out of the speaker connector. After they fixed it the difference was night and day. Sounds great now, the best stock sound system I've ever had.

SM-N910P ?

 

Anyone know what the ratio of JBL vs non-JBL Prius... Perhaps this is on goodcarbadcar. I'd like to evaluate one with a JBL in SoCal.

 

Resurrecting this thread because it seemed like an appropriate place...

I rented a Corolla last week; didn't get the year but it was probably a 2017 as it had TSS-C and a touchscreen headend similar to the Prius. It was still a base model, no JBL.

All I can say is: wow, it had terrible audio quality. Tinny, distant sound with no bass even after adjustments. Compared to the Prius JBL, it was night and day. I don't know how much to attribute to Prius v Corolla, or JBL v base, but I was happy to return it and fly back to my Gen4 w/ JBL.

 

For the curious there is a plastic box under the passenger seat of my UK Excel, on the outboard side (the air vent is inboard). I like the JBL system and mostly listen to mp3 files from the usb stick or talk stations on digital radio. Some tracks are better than others which I put down to the recording, Kraftwerk's Elektro Kardiogramm certainly makes use of the subwoofers. Most tracks sound nicely detailed and I enjoy picking out something new.

 

JBL amp on my Gen 4 is under the driver's seat

 

Oh geez. Is the JBL system in the 2nd gen prius any kind of bar at all? I have a 2009 6 touring (remember they collapsed the 8 trims into 6 for the last two years) and it's easily the worst stock sound system I've had in any car while my SC430's Mark Levinson and my Tesla's upgraded Ultra High Fidelity sound systems are the best stock systems I've experienced.

I was hoping the 2019 Limited JBL system would be a massive upgrade over my 2009's amazingly crappy sound.

 

Had a chance to listen to the 10 speaker system. It's a massive improvement over the Gen 2 JBL system. That said, highly disappointed that the the A2DP profile only supports the SBC codec for non iOS devices. What's worse is that the SBC bitrate used is a lot lower than the maximum the codec can handle on that profile and the sound is distorted and clipped in typical low bitrate SBC fashion.

Even using the Entune app and plugged in with a USB cable, it still transmits audio over BT. The only possible way to make it sound decent is to use a usb drive. Entune is a joke and it's unfortunate that Toyota didn't any of the higher quality codecs. aptx, aptx hd, ldac...lots of options none of which were used.

This means iOS will be the only usable smartphone audio source either through USB or BT(because of AAC which is pretty good and in the case of actual AAC source music files, lossless).