4th Gen JBL replacement

If given the choice to build a Tacamoa I would prefer basic suspension and a basic head unit. I could modify the truck the way I want it. I wanted the vented power seats, Tow package, moonroof, Sport Package look, and sliding rear window. If Toyota could build what I wanted without the $8k premium package I would be thrilled. I often drive with all windows and moonroof open stereo pounding heavy metal driving 80 or 12 down the highways. My Gen 3 went through the same process, although it was not 4x4, and I Love the driving features of the Safety Sense 3.0, for those days I am driving stop and go down the highway. I sold my Gen 3 with 85% residual value after 6 years of driving, which made pulling the trigger on the upgrades easier.
Getting an SR5 and upgrading the Audio, suspension, tires, and rims, would be the logical choice to make exactly what you want. No doubt, it would be a better financial decision.

 

Oh yeah I definitely want the TRDSport package look, but is safety sense 3.0 part of that or part of the Sport Upgrade package I’d have to put and get the power seats and JBL in hand? I really can’t remember now.

 

Safety Sense is on all models.

 

Ah ok. You gave me a scare there for a minute. I’d sure love vented seats too tho. I can live without moonroof and sliding rear window as I got an upgraded rear window w sliding panel on current Taco and never use it. Maybe couple times. I’m sure I’d use it if it was power controlled from drivers seat.

 

Bob, sent a pm...
You went with the 50m killmat?

 

I ordered a box of 50 and 80, with a plan thar went to shit when only one box showed up. The idea was 80 on the metal and 50 on the plastic.

 

So at the end of the day did they deliver the 80, or the 50?
Are you sourcing from Amazon or you have a cheaper source?

 

Whatever happened to "Taco Tunes" ?
I seem to remember there was them and OEM Audio+ that offered plug n play options for Toyotas....

 

they ripped off a bunch of people and got banned.... years ago

 

Both companies?

 

I am new here. I have no idea what happened in the past. I have been in contact with Taco Tunes and they have 3-D scanned their truck and in the process of fabricating a box. All the harnesses, amps, and speakers are ready to go. Just waiting on a decision in regards to direction they’re gonna go on fabricating a sub box. Sounds like an option…
They got their truck last week, already have a 6.75 installed in the front door with an adapter plate instead of a 6 x 9.
I’m looking at all options

 

Anyone running a Taco Tunes system or listen to one in a Tacoma previous gen and their thoughts of it?

 

Taco turds

For the longest time they had the name blocked and it would come up as **** on the forum

 

Same goes for OEM Audio+??

 

I am new to the forum and thought I’d post an in-depth discussion on what I did to overhaul a woefully inadequate stock sound system in the 2024 Toyota Tacoma.

BACKGROUND
I bought a basic entry-level 2024 Tacoma TRD Off-Road because I thought the ~$9k upgrade to get the premium stereo, a larger infotainment screen and a few other things I don’t need or want was just too expensive. I don’t do any serious off-roading, I just do dirt-road overlanding for fishing and hunting trips. So, the base model works great for my needs. With the $9k I saved, I’ve opted to re-invest in three areas that mean more to me: a) replace the horrible stock audio system, b) install a roof rack with light bar and c) install a retractable hard tonneau cover with cross bars to carry my 9’ Scadden pontoon boat for fishing. The rest of my narrative focuses on the audio system.

THE INADEQUATE STOCK SOUND SYSTEM
The entry-level basic sound system design uses a JBL head and speaker components shared by Toyota and Subaru. The speakers consist of:
· two 3” dash speakers, paper-coned, total weight each 4.6oz (mfgr'd by Panasonic)
· two 7” round front door speakers, paper-coned, total weight each 11.6oz (mfgr'd by Panasonic)
· two 5.5” round rear door speakers, poly-coned, total weight each 6.0oz (mfgr'd by Pioneer)
[photo of OEM speakers, attached]
[photo of OEM front door speaker location, attached]

The speaker frames are molded plastic throughout and all are stamped as made in Mexico. The magnets in the speakers are drastically undersized and as such the voice-coil and cone travel is minimal as well, making the entire system sound thin, nasaly, low-midrange woofy and just plain horrible. They just aren’t designed to move air and make quality sound. To evidence the cheap, flimsy construction of the speakers, look at the total weight of each speaker noted above. I am a long-time musician and audiophile, so sound field clarity and definition is very important to me. That means punchy clear bass, clear vocals/instrument mids and crisp/clear highs with no semblance (think of a nasty hissy spoken “S”).

There was one positive find as we began to install a new sound system. Under the front passenger seat is a small noise-cancelling processor. That was unexpected and even though we ended up bypassing it, I thought it to be a nice touch of Toyota to make an otherwise mediocre stock sound system sound a tad better by fighting off interior cabin road noise.

FIRST THINGS FIRST – INSTALL SOUND DEADENING MATERIAL
The road noise in the 2024 Tacoma is ear-numbing head-ache inducing horrible – no wonder they opted to design in a noise-cancelling unit. Before my audio upgrade, I took a 1500-mile road trip and found the road noise made my ears tired. I was a multi-million mile flyer during my working years and relate the road-noise in the 2024 Tacoma to be akin to airplane cabin rumble – both can just plain tire you and your ears out over a long-haul.

To combat the horrible in-cabin road-noise, I installed sound deadening material on all outer metal surfaces that surround the passenger cabin. This included all doors, the back wall between the cabin and the truck bed and some of the floor. I chose Amazon Basic brand deadening material based upon this independent study: https://resonixsoundsolutions.com/best-sound-deadening-material-independent-testing-data/. I crunched the numbers and couldn’t beat the price-to-performance of the Amazon Basics brand.

Just with the sound deadening material alone, it made the stock sound system perk up and I could hear more clarity and sound-field definition, but the nasaly upper-mids and woofy low-mids and lack of high-end clarity still existed.

Lesson Learned – sound deadening material is THE FIRST thing you should do in any vehicle to reduce in-cabin road noise.
[photo of back cabin wall sound deadening material installed attached]

THE SOUND SYSTEM I INSTALLED
I opted to invest in a complete sound system over-haul, far exceeding even the best JBL system Toyota can offer. I had a local vehicle audio professional install these components:

DASH TWEETERS: Audison AP 2 MV mid-high drivers (https://audison.com/product/ap-2-mv/)
PASSENGER DOORS: Audison AP 8 woofer (https://audison.com/product/ap-8/)
REAR DOORS: Audison APX 6.5 Coaxial mid-woofer (https://audison.com/product/apx-6-5/)
SUBWOOFER: APBX 8 Active 8” subwoofer in enclosure, a 10-inch subwoofer wouldn’t fit the space (https://audison.com/product/apbx-8-as2/)
DIGITAL SIGNAL PROCESSOR: 800W 14 channel D-class amp and signal processor (https://audison.com/product/af-c8-14-bit/)
DIGITAL REMOTE CONTROL: programmable remote sound controller (https://audison.com/product/drc-ac/)
[photo of circular remote control installed, attached]
Hi-Res BlueTooth receiver: Audison B-CON (https://audison.com/product/b-con/)

The subwoofer enclosure was installed under the rear driver-side seat. It fit nearly perfectly with only adding a fabricated block underneath to support the enclosure. The downside of installing it in that location is it takes away some under-seat storage. A fair trade-off in my opinion.
[photo of subwoofer and enclosure, attached]

The programmable controller was installed in the little unused cubby hole on the dash just to the right of the steering column.

After the install was completed, we took about 3 hours to completely fine-tune the system by placing a mic at ear level on the driver side and playing pink noise throughout. We used the very comprehensive Audison bitDrive software to tune the system (https://audison.com/bit-drive/) by eliminating phase issues and adjusting each speaker’s output to the Harman sound profile curve (https://dekoniaudio.com/articles/what-is-the-harman-curve/).

RESULTS AND PLAYING MUSIC
With the sound deadening material and audio system overhaul installed, I have a much quieter interior sound space and can clearly hear sound field separation, clarity and definition across all octaves from 20Hz to 16-17kHz (I can barely discern music above 16-17kHz even though the system will process it). Plus, when I take Bluetooth calls with my cellphone, most people have no idea I am in my truck; they think I am at home – it’s that quiet.

I use a Bluetooth (BT) enabled DAP (digital audio player) to play my music at 192kHz/16-bit (the limit of my BT codec) even though my music is recorded with a higher bit-rate. That’s more than enough definition for my aging ears. I did run a tone-gen sweep to identify any residual frequencies that just didn’t like the interior of my Taco. Just a few low-mid frequencies caused some plastic parts in the interior to rattle/hum/rumble and until I figure out where those parts are, I just reduced the dB of those frequencies with my DAP EQ until the rattle/hum/rumble disappeared and saved the preset.

I am completely satisfied with the new sound system overhaul. Yes, it’s a bit spendy, but music is important to me and since I intend to run this truck for at least 10 years, an audio upgrade was imperative.

Well, that’s it, hope this helps others in the quest for high-fidelity in the 2024 Taco.

 

I don't know them.

 

Some things to consider for everyone tearing their audio systems out...

1. The speakers (and all the other parts in vehicles today) must be as light as possible in order to hit CAFE standards that the government (US and others) are mandating. There is a direct correlation between vehicle weight and fuel economy. Don't be too mad at Toyota or any other OEM for trying to balance weight versus performance, be mad at the government for making the rules that all of the OEM's need to play by. This also applies to smaller displacement engines and electric vehicles, this isn't the OEM's wanting to get rid of V6's or V8's... They're being forced to.
2. There is a difference between types of magnets, neodymium or ferrite. A speaker can have a very small neodymium magnet and have more magnetic force than a big ferrite magnet, which saves weight (see point #1). It's not just about the size...
3. There is a separate amplifier for the 4th gen JBL system, look harder... It's probably in the same general area as other Toyota's, just not the same as the 3rd Gen Taco...
4. The subwoofer could be using an infinite baffle strategy where it vents outside of the truck, therefore it doesn't need an enclosure. I believe one of the Toyota people interviewed mentioned that the subwoofer vents outside. If this is the case, the subwoofer "sees" all the airspace it needs without needing to take up all that space and weight of a big volume enclosure. This is not a new speaker technology and has been used in boats forever, in fact many aftermarket marine audio manufactures specifically call out certain models as infinite baffle or free air use. Also, see point #1 and imagine if the rear panel behind the seat had to be 3"-6" forward to allow for an enclosure. The the cabin gets smaller...

If you don't like the sound of the 4th gen JBL it might be worth adding something like a JL Audio OEM integration (formerly Clean Sweep) and a programmable digital EQ that you can tune yourself. I suspect that EQ is impacting the system as much as the speakers... System should be similar to other Toyota vehicles, so 8 amplified channels with 10 speakers (A pillar tweeters (2), IP midrange(2), center channel(1), door woofers(2), rear midrange(2), and subwoofer(1)).

 

No room behind that sub lol . I what was Toyota thinking … u will get no bass being mounted like that .

 

Hi there @eclipse19 - you offer some very good points there...all are certainly applicable to the 4th Gen Tacos with the JBL audio upgrades.

It's worth mentioning for those who buy a 4th Gen Taco without paying the ~$9K upgrade to get the JBL system (like me), we get a substandard stock OEM 6-speaker system and do NOT get a subwoofer or a separate amplifier. For this base non-JBL OEM system in 4th gen Tacos, the amp is built into the head and there is no harness or wiring lead to a subwoofer. [See my earlier post regarding my audio upgrade for the base non-JBL OEM audio system using Audison equipment].

I'll add to the sage advise of @eclipse19 that if you paid extra for the package that has the upgraded JBL sound system - leave well enough alone and use it! I test drove Tacos that had it and I was generally pleased - I wouldn't sink more moola into a decent JBL system to get marginal gains. But since I opted for the base model '24 Taco with no JBL system, it was worth the investment for my ears.

Options to consider:
A) I'd say if you don't like your system, do this first - install sound deadening material inside of all exterior surfaces; it does wonders and may just have you lusting your stock OEM system after all.
B) If sound deadening material doesn't do the trick, consider replacing the stock OEM speakers. Of course, this is a much more expensive proposition and often you will find that you will not get measurable results with higher-end speakers, if at all. Then, after your big speaker investment with little gain, you'll be dissappointed and wonder what to do next. From experience I can tell you that unless you do what @eclipse19 says and integrate a DSP (JL Audio, Audison, etc), you won't get measureable gain out a a straight-up speaker replacement alone. I went all-in and added an Audison DSP/amp and subwoofer in my system build and I can tell you that the Audison system I installed sounds on-par or better than Toyota's JBL system and is much, much more configurable. But that was the (spendy) route I took and it may not be for all.

Anyhews, this is a good discussion and thanks for reading my observations and input.

 

Awesome info from both of these posts. Just a quick correction on one point, the JBL system comes with the upgrade package, so it can be had for ~$4.5k.

I'm not as familiar with audio as you guys are, could either of you let me know if EQ settings on apps like YouTube music would provide some of the benefits you mentioned?

Thanks for all the info!