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Speaker Upgrade from JBL "Premium" System

Discussion in 'Prime Audio, Electronics, and Infotainment' started by 7707Prime, Mar 4, 2019.

  1. 7707Prime

    7707Prime Junior Member

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    Hi all,

    There is a really great thread that @orangebang did over on the Gen4 forums on how to upgrade the speakers on the non-Prime and non-JBL setup here: Prius 2016 4th Generation: How to remove door panel" and my speaker install. | PriusChat. His directions worked almost flawlessly for me on my upgrade, but there was one head-scratcher I ran into, and I wanted to throw in some additional JBL details that I found.

    The main difference in the installation process is that the dash speakers are wired differently. Crutchfield does not have an adapter for them, so you will need to reuse the wiring harness from the factory speaker unless you want to cut into the car's wiring harness.

    20190302_133107.jpg 20190302_133130.jpg

    Here is a comparison of the stock JBL dash speaker to the aftermarket ones. Orange = JBL.

    20190302_133151.jpg

    You will cut the wires at the solder points above. The cables factory-marked with the blue dot are the positive leads. You only need to reconnect one set (green and black OR yellow and purple) to the new speakers.

    20190303_144421.jpg 20190303_144436.jpg

    Finally, a look at the difference between the door speakers. Again, the orange are the stock and the others are the aftermarket. My jaw about hit the floor when I saw that even the JBL system gets the same "marshmallow" speaker magnets that the stock speakers get. So far I have only done the dash and rear door speakers, but there is already a night and day difference in the sound quality. I don't expect any more differences from his directions on the front doors, but will update this post if I find any.
     
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  2. 7707Prime

    7707Prime Junior Member

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    Did the front speakers over the weekend. No differences in the directions, however, the front door speakers are woofers only, with a little bit more magnet than the rear speakers. Again, the orange is the stock JBL speaker.

    20190309_131024.jpg 20190309_131036.jpg

    After installation, the full-range speakers in the doors only produce bass, and the bass needed to be turned way down in order to get speech sounding mostly intelligible again. I'd call the upgrade an overall success, but may look to an aftermarket amplifier down the road to get full-range sound all around if I can't get the speech fidelity where I'd like it to be.
     
  3. Delbert

    Delbert Junior Member

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    Can anyone explain why there are 4 wires connecting to the dash speakers? I showed the picture to a local Best Buy geek and he couldn't explain it. If you don't reconnect the correct wires, is some frequency range possibly lost? Are the dash speakers bi-amped?
     
  4. 7707Prime

    7707Prime Junior Member

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    It's because there is no internal connector between the tweeter and the woofer terminals on the dash speakers, like there are on the rear speakers, so a separate input is needed for each driver. Not sure why they chose different setups per set of speakers, but knowing car manufacturers, it probably saved a quarter or two per vehicle sold...

    I am getting good highs and mids (and some lows - the new speakers have resistors for a crossover frequency around 120Hz) off of the new dash speakers just using the black and green wires.

    Still having issues with certain spoken vocal frequencies, which I think is a confluence of factors - the radio stations I'm listening to, resonance in the dash from extra bass, and the equalization of the stock head unit/amplifier. Cranking up the mid range 3-4 pips helps, but isn't a full cure. However, music OTA or via Bluetooth sounds positively amazing with the new setup.
     
  5. Delbert

    Delbert Junior Member

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    Did both left and right dash speakers have 4 wires connected? Or did the left have 2 wires and the right 4? The colors in this diagram don't match your pictures. Thanks.
    upload_2019-3-21_22-15-33.png
     
  6. 7707Prime

    7707Prime Junior Member

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    4 wires on both dash speakers.
     
  7. Delbert

    Delbert Junior Member

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  8. Delbert

    Delbert Junior Member

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    I've been communicating with a very nice man named Gage at Crutchfield about the dash speaker connections, trying to understand why there are 4 wires connected to each speaker. He cannot find a wire diagram that matches the colors shown in the pictures above. He asked if 7707Prime(installer above) might have noticed whether the color of the wires where they connect to the speakers might change to a different color at a junction of some sort shortly after the wires dive deeper into the dash. If 7707Prime noticed a color change, please share. Could this possibly shed some light as to why 7707Prime is only getting low frequencies from the door speakers? I am anxious to switch out my harsh-sounding dash speakers! Thanks again.
     
  9. 7707Prime

    7707Prime Junior Member

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    The front door speakers appear to have some kind of a high-pass filter on them, so that only low frequencies pass through. Nothing was visible with the door panel off, so my guess is that this is a function of the amplifier which is supposed to be under the driver's seat.

    The dash speakers appear to use a variant of the door speakers' wiring harness - in retrospect, the connector looked very similar but I didn't actually try it out. Two leads only - the green and yellow both go to one wire (the positive lead - used a multimeter to figure it out), and the black and purple go to one wire (negative lead).
     
  10. Delbert

    Delbert Junior Member

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    Thanks.
    May I ask how you ended up choosing the Inifinity 3032 for your dash replacement? Curious how they sound compared to the stock JBL. Did you consider other options?
     
  11. Koenos

    Koenos New Member

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    Can the explanation to the 4 wire question not have a simple answer? Namely that the JBL amp has a build in crossover. I read a few topics about previous generation JBL systems and they also talked about the digital processing. So the difficulty is, if you ever want to add an amplifier, to find a full spectrum output. Either directly from the head-unit or (high-level) behind the JBL amp.

    I'm about the upgrade my installation too, so far these are the options:

    1) replace all eom-speakers (still use the JBL amp), I'm afraid I will not be able solve 2 problems. Low bass is not enough and highs are not crisp enough?
    2) adding a sub-woofer in the back on solution # 1(tapping into the front door signal (already filtered) high-end converter to a sub-amp)
    3) only adding a sub-woofer
    4) finding a full-range signal to be linked to an all-round amp (for the last option I have not found any answers)

    I would love to go for option 4.
    Anyone any experience with tapping into the rear door speakers? I hear some say these are full-range?
    But their is a good chance that the low-end is limited. Taking 2 signals could be another option? Rear-door for mid+high and Front-door for the low.

    Not an easy mission. However great to read all the input on this forum. Looking forward in finding some answers.
     
  12. 7707Prime

    7707Prime Junior Member

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    No complaints here with the low bass after my upgrade.

    My one lingering issue is that resonance inside the dash is making it hard to hear some voices (mainly on newscasts and similar, music is fine). My suspicion is that the factory dash speakers had a much higher crossover frequency than the aftermarkets do. I am looking into some of those foam speaker baffles to try and solve the issue, as per some RAV4 World users with the JBL Premium system they do help.
     
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  13. 7707Prime

    7707Prime Junior Member

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    Final update on this one:

    After a lot of tinkering with diagnosing the resonance issue, I narrowed it down to the front door speakers and not the in-dash speakers. Finally, the missing piece of information came up when reading a post by @Elektroingenieur about the JBL system information over here: Any info on JBL speaker system specifications and amp install? | PriusChat.

    The long and the short: the front door speakers are SIX Ohm, not FOUR Ohm. In other words, the new 4 Ohm speakers I installed were being overdriven, causing the overabundance of bass. So I took a quick trip to Fry's, and picked up two of the following:

    20190629_134230.jpg

    2.2 Ohm resistor with 25W rating. I installed them in-line on the white positive lead to the speakers, secured them to the back of each speaker to prevent flopping and potential damage, and reinstalled both speakers. Powered on the stereo system afterwards, and voices were back to normal with minimal effect on music.

    Still very happy with the new sound, and very happy that this project is now complete.
     
  14. tillyvick14

    tillyvick14 Junior Member

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    Hello, I have a 2020 Prime XLE and am pretty underwhelmed by the speaker quality. My understanding is that the XLE does not have the JBL speakers, although it does have the 11.6” multimedia display. In this scenario should I be able to simply replace the factory speakers with better quality upgrades? Is this something I should be able to do myself with zero experience working on car audio? Thanks very much for your help!
     
  15. Mark57

    Mark57 2021 Tesla Model 3 LR AWD

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    Before you spend a bunch of $$, go into your audio settings and bump up the bass, mid, and treble one notch. I think you'll find that makes a big difference. I felt the same way on mine until I did that. I also don't play crappy 128 bps stuff or the radio. (garbage in, garbage out) All my stuff is max bit rate VBR MP3 or FLAC. Try that first.
     
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  16. tillyvick14

    tillyvick14 Junior Member

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    Thanks, yeah I’ve been messing with the EQ for months and am only playing high quality stuff. The speakers just seem to be a big step down in quality from the 09 Prius that I had before.
     
  17. 7707Prime

    7707Prime Junior Member

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    You should be able to do the door speakers without too much fuss, so long as you're able to use a trim puller tool and drill out the rivets in the doors. The dash speakers are more complex and will require some wire cutting and/or soldering.

    I highly recommend reading Orangebang's writeup in my original post above to see the entire process on a non-JBL system, and then you should have enough information to make your decision. The stock speakers don't have much in the way of a magnet for a driver, so there will only be so many adjustments you can make before needing to step up a modest notch or two on the speakers.
     
  18. maxidream

    maxidream Junior Member

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    how to find connector from old speaker to new speaker ?
     
  19. RunningFox

    RunningFox New Member

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    I took off my passenger door panel, A pillar and top dash cover that holds the speaker and HUD/etc while trying to find a squeak/rattle. Its something else, but I'm also in the mood to upgrade the audio. Its super sad how lame the system is without the dash speakers, as the rest of the system is just mid and lows.

    I've already got the 4ch amp and LC8i picked out so I don't have to worry about impedance matching. I still need to pick out some good door speakers, but I have the rest taken care of. Wiring will be another issue, but thanks for the info from the post. These dashes are so much easier to take apart than my auto oem vehicles i work on.
     
  20. mcdesign

    mcdesign Junior Member

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    Thanks for the commonsense advice, Mark. I will try this simple approach and was considering new speakers too but don't want to deal with cost and installation. I do miss the great factory bass in my Buick LaCrosse, though.
     
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