2014 Canadian TRD Sport Audio Upgrade.

First post - Please be patient if i am breaking rules, but let me know I need to learn.

Brand new Tacoma TRD crew 4x4 Black. Never been so in love.....Yet need to upgrade the stereo. I like the integration of the head unit with the truck, just wish is sounded better. Looking for recommendations without upgrading the front end unit. Basically the sound of the current system is hollow, need a fuller richer sound. Came from a 2010 Acura RDX...., only thing better was the sound. Please help suggest speaker set up and even brands.

BTW My new taco is amazing... pics coming soon.. TRD exhaust and more to come..!!

 

Welcome eh

 

Welcome Newbie.

The head unit is not your problem. The speakers suck.

Put in better speakers. Probably 6.5 round front and rear. You'll need mounting adapters. And new tweeters of course.

Pack in some Dynamat insulation in the doors.

And if you want to get more involved replace the wiring with heavy-gauge copper wires.

Then, you can consider an AMP. A good 5-channel MOSFET.

And only then, after all that should you consider replacing the deck. The deck is the least significant part of the sound system.

 

Wow Quick reply's this community rocks!!!!. You are right the speakers suck ..eh. Going to start with those, my biggest fear is to replace the head unit; maybe I've never had better but I think its really good from a functional stand point. I'm heading to my local audio warehouse tomorrow, see what happens.

 

Welcome

A 8-10" subwoofer will give you richer sound as well. Check out ********* they have factory style sub boxes that fit behind the rear seat. Just make sure there's outputs for it on the factory deck, not sure about the new model units.

 

Thank-you... I'll check them out for sure. I'll also be sure to post a write up about how things go, would like to see how far you can go without upgrading the head unit.

 

Welcome aboard!

Now, I haven't played around with the new Entune units in the 2014 but I knew my 2013 non-JBL touchscreen was the first to go. I liked the touchscreen however it was sluggish and seriously lacking in volume. With the tuning profile on my Alpine deck (EQ and T/A), it really made the stock system tolerable until I could get the speakers upgraded. Just some food for thought.

I know someone mentioned *********, however - caveat empor. There is a bit of negative press on here from forum members. Just make sure you research whatever outfit you go with for equipment. I hate it people get screwed over . Been there, done that.

Right now, I'm running Hybrid Audio Technologies Imagine 6.5s in component mode in my front doors. It might be more expensive in Canada, but I paid $299 for mine. I would recommend trying to find them and give them an audition to see if that's what you need. Paired with my JL 10TW3, it puts the music in my ears

If you're looking for someone to talk to about system setups and knows his craft - call Mr. Marv. He's designed and built just about any kind of subwoofer box you can think of for these trucks and also installs this stuff everyday. I think he said he was working on an car with an active HAT Legatia component set when I called him earlier today.

(Marv's contact info is in the system install guide/thread sticky'd to the top of this forum)

 

Welcome to TW.

There are a lot of options you can do. Stereo builds all depend on how much money you want to spend and what you want to hear. The sky is the limit when it come to audio. Some people are ok with stock, others drop 20k into a system.

However, the speakers in your truck are just crap. The head unit isn't worth a damn either when it comes to sound quality. The stereos they put into stock cars are very flat and *can't get loud without distorting. *(depending on what you think loud is)

If you want to ditch the Stock HU the bank account is the limit for a new HU. If you plan on keeping it look up the JL clean sweep. It's your best bet to get decent audio.

 

Hello all as I am new to this forum and to Toyota, my wife on the other hand has always had a hybrid from Toyota and convinced me to try a Tacoma when I wanted a new truck. I have to say last December I decided to go look for my next Truck and never made it past the Toyota dealership.

I basically have the same question and would like some direction.

Anyways I have a 2014 Tacoma Double Cab with Entune & Nav and couldn't be happier with most things. Where it is lacking is in the sound department. I do not want to lose my nav or any of the other Entune features so I have been looking into processors. I don't want, nor can I afford to spend 20k as posted above, but a couple k sounds reasonable to have some decent audio. I need it to go at least twice as loud(as I am already deaf) and decent bass would be nice. My current plan is to replace all the speakers with a higher quality mid and tweet and add two 10 inch subs behind the back seat. If I do this will only adding a processor for my amps suffice, or will I need to add crossovers and eq's as some sites recommend?

I plan on doing the install myself to save some coin to buy better equipment so any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I do not want to hijack this thread but could not see starting a new post when the question was already asked.

 

I would recommend 86'ing the factory head unit if you can. But I understand the appeal for keeping it since you paid Toyota a ton of money for it. That being said, if you're going to keep it, look into using an Audison bit or Audison Prima device to integrate factory sound to aftermarket sound. It all depends on your budget. If you don't want to spend a ton of money and you don't necessarily need to make it really loud, I'd be willing to bet that with some fine tuning the Audison Prima 5.9 would be a huge improvement to your system without replacing the factory speakers (you will want to add a sub if there isn't already one). The factory speakers aren't good at all by any means, but I believe that what bottlenecks sound quality the most in most factory Toyota stereo's is that god awful signal coming from the head unit.