2023 SR - adding rear speakers

My utility SR access cab has no rear speakers. Anyone know if they are pre wired making adding rear speakers fairly easy?

 

I just bought the same model last week

 

This YouTube video may be helpful:
https://youtu.be/11Dm3WJ5Zj4

 

And part 2:
https://youtu.be/cI8OG0Oz47E

 

And a part 3:
https://youtu.be/EK_lGUX8yMM

 

Sound improvement will be minimal by adding rear speakers.

 

I don't have my taco yet so I'm dependent on reading accounts and reviews and I've been hearing this exact same conclusion over and over. I was waiting for a part 4 of his video series giving a demo/review now that he's added the speakers. If the rear speakers are as ineffective as I've read, I'll leave them stock and just replace the fronts. That being said, does anybody know what the 6 speakers are crossed over at? The dash tweeters appear to be just highs. Are the front doors woofers only and the high end ONLY comes from the dash? And are the rear speakers full range? Or are all 4 door speakers full range?

 

Why not ask the YouTuber?

FWIW: there are small 2channel amps that can take line-level or audio-level input, and can even be controlled via a phone with Bluetooth. Conceptually, you cut the wire harness that comes out of the head-unit and feed the rear speakers, and route the wires on the connector side into the audio-level inputs of the amp, and the output of the amp gets fed onto the wires going to the speakers for those two channels. I don't know how great that would sound, but these things are small enough to fit behind the Head Unit, or at least someplace upfront or even under a seat, approx $110.
For example:
https://www.crutchfield.com/p_110JA2B/Jensen-JA2B.html

 

This isn't just taco specific: this is all vehicles. The entire driver audio enjoyment comes from the front stage. The rear is just for the passengers. You aren't watching movies trying to get 5.1 positional surround sound in a car.

 

Like others have posted. Don't waste your money on rear speakers if you don't plan on adding an amp.

 

That hasn't been my experience at all. My current vehicle is an OEM BOSE system. I have the rears at +2 and I have full audio surround (not 5.1 but spatial presence) which sounds incredible especially using audio mixed for dolby headphone surround. Two vehicles ago I had a Honda where the head unit was made by Alpine. Sounded great once I replaced the crap speakers. I faded a little more to the rear than the fronts. Based on what I'm reading on the 3rd gen tacomas, that's not even possible. Front audio alone is for poors.

 

I'm shadow banned. I gave some "REALLY dangerous" advice during Covid on a Covid video. I told people to drink lots of water, get plenty of sun (for vitamin D), exercise, and eat healthy. And I've been shadow banned since.

 

The audio experience in the truck is disappointing, but it is a truck. I say, don't waste your time on anything expensive if you haven't put some serious sound deadening material in the vehicle, specially the back wall.

For the cheapest and smartest upgrade, listen to music reproduced with some fidelity. Skip AM, FM, and grrrr SiriusXM. Listen to something with high-dynamic range, engineered for great separation. One of my GOTOs is Alan Parson's, known for engineering Dark Side of the Moon, the Beatles, and the Alan Parson's Project. You'll be surprised at how good the OEM system CAN sound.

Stream some Spotify. Your ears will notice the difference. If you can't hear it, go to jail, do not pass go.

 

I run Audiofrog GB10 in the sail panel, GB25 in the das, GB60 in the doors with Focal Flax Evo PC165 coaxials in the rear doors powered by a Helix Eight V DSP MK2 and an Audison APS 10D sub powered by a Match M2.1. Head unit is a

$930 Pioneer DMH-WC6600NEX Digital Multimedia Receiver with Wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, 9" Floating Capacitive Touchscreen, Modular Double-DIN, Built-in Bluetooth, WiFi and Amazon Alexa

Pioneer DMH-WC6600NEX. It's a >$6k setup before you even get to the sound deadening and presumably not a poors setup.

And I still think, along with most of the car audio community, that rears are a gimmick for passengers.

But that’s the beauty of audio: it’s subjective. Grab an amp and run some.

 

LOL The kids today may never know what it was like in the late 80s and early 90s when car stereo competitions were all the rage, even in smaller towns. But I've been doing car audio since then, am certified, and was a first year member in the car audio society as well as meca. You were judged from fullness of sound for the position of the driver, (balance and fader - not merely the front speakers) when competing for sound quality. It's never been a gimmick, especially to "most of the car audio community."

So yes, fading everything to the front is a poors setup when it comes right down to it.

 

All good choices. Give Elton John's Rocketman a try. A well balanced system will sound incredible with it, especially when the hi hat comes in. A system with too much bass or one crossed over too low will sound like trash.

I pretty much only listen to personally ripped audio on a USB thumbdrive. The sound quality is within my control and I don't get stuck listening to music I don't like. I'm on the road a ton so music and audio quality have always been important to me. My current vehicle is the only one I didn't feel the need to change anything. My soon to be delivered Taco was always planned to have audio upgrades, just not sure how much yet. I'm going to start with speakers and if that doesn't cut it, I'll have to decide between amps or a head unit replacement with amps. I'm hoping to keep the stock head unit but am not against replacing it.

 

Competitive car audio is alive and well I promise you. https://iasca.com/ still hosts competitions along with many, many others including DIYMA: https://www.diymobileaudio.com/forums/12-volt-events-team-diyma.28/

But SQ comp audio and what you're running in your car aren't the same thing. The rest of us, and I assume you since you're somehow satisfied running OEM Bose while living in a world of competition audio, live in reality where you have to make tradeoffs.

To be clear: nobody is talking about "fading" rears. We're talking about literally disconnecting them and not running rears. Because unless you're pulling your backseats, you're making tradeoffs in terms of watts from an underpowered amp either off stock or jammed where you can safely put it. And delivering more power to your front stage will deliver more bang-for-buck than starving your front sound stage to "surround sound" from your rears. I run a set of $750 rears because I have the watts to spare on my amp because I don't run a single thing -- not even a strand of speaker wire -- from the stock setup and I don't starve my $3k fronts by doing so. If you're running off the OEM head unit, or even an aftermarket head unit, without a big amp then you're going to wish you didn't starve your fronts, too.

There's a whole AV forum where we talk about this and more, though: https://www.tacomaworld.com/forums/audio-video.12/

 

Back in the day I had no problem doing a rip and replace on a new car. On every new car purchase except my current Nissan, I've done it and always on used cars. Most of the time the car went from the lot straight to the shop for a full teardown. When I test drove my Nissan with the Bose I was satisfied with how it sounded. I'm not doing sound competitions anymore. I'm not trying to shake house windows a block away. I'm not trying to impress anybody. Just trying to listen to good music with clarity when I drive cross country. Eventually you get tired of tearing apart your entire dash so you can put tweeters in the air vents and a custom LED that blinks when your alarm system is armed. I am committed to tearing out the entire interior and doors for sound deadening though. Since I've never owned a Taco before I want to do the simple stuff first and see if I'm satisfied. I keep my vehicles at least 10 years so I don't mind putting "enough" money into it. One thing I have always done is making everything look stock. No visible sub boxes, no decals, no fancy speaker grills. To the prying eyes of Chicago, everything has to look stock. My TRD OR will be without outside decals and badges within the week of delivery.

Thanks for the link to the AV forum. I posted my first post there today asking about the stock system, just trying to understand how it's setup from the factory. One thing I will say about TW is the forum is loaded with knowledgeable and helpful people. I've learned so much in the month or so I've been lurking. It's already helped my decide on a lot of things I need to do (or not do) that I may not have figured out on my own in the years I'll own it.

 

I too commit to everything looking stock and fortunately since my truck came from the factory with JBL, I can use all of the stock grills with much more expensive hardware behind them.

One name you'll hear a lot in the AV forum is MrMarv. He doesn't use Tacoma World or the Internet very much anymore but just FYI he is very much still alive, well and doing custom behind-seat-hidden-OEM subboxes and amp mounts, you just need to give him a good old fashioned telephone call: https://www.instagram.com/mrmarvsplace/

 

Telephone only? I respect that.

I ordered an access cab and will be pulling out the rear seats, though not for a sub or anything audio related but for a platform. I play in a semi-professional band and will put gear there when driving to and from shows. I outgrew my Nissan Rogue and had to go with a truck for my gear plus lighting and sound. JBL wasn't an option for my build unfortunately. I wanted to go with OEM JBL and just replace all the speakers and live with it. But that wasn't an option so now I'm kind of in the "keep it simple, stupid" mode with the "Premium Audio with Nav" stuff. I have no idea how good/bad it sounds. So I just read what others are doing and going from there until it comes in.