Is it worthwhile to upgrade speakers, but not the HU?

I'll soon be taking delivery on a new 2012 DC Sport with the stock single DIN JBL head unit. I plan to install sound deadening materials in the doors and roof (I'm a little OCD about road noise). Anyway, I thought as long as I had the panels off, it would be a good time to upgrade to some halfway decent component speakers. I'm not an audiophile sound enthusiast, but I appreciate a nice sound systems. In any case, I wonder what people think of this plan.

Is it a waste of effort and money if I don't bother to ugrade the HU? I don't think I'm willing to add a separate amp or sub, but could be persuaded to upgrade the HU if it was strongly recommended.

I'm worried that stock HU will not have enough power to drive aftermarket speakers. Does anyone even know the power rating of the stock JBL HU?

 

It is worth it

 

Yeah big time worth it as I did exactly what you did when I first got the truck. Dynomat and new speakers all around. Made a huge difference, wait till you pull out the factory speakers, you will laugh hysterically!

 

^^^^ I just looked at the speakers. Pretty funny. Think i could actually make some myself.

Head is def worth it. Without you have no control over high/low and freq tuning. It might actully be more benifical to replace deck before speakers. Ive tuned my stock speakers so i get a decent low bass sound. Im ok with it for now.

 

My door speakers magnet looked like a quarter. The tweeter had a bigger magnet than the 6.5.
It's definitely worth it....good speakers good amp and an audio control and ur set.

 

You will notice a little difference between stock and aftermarket in a good way. If you can spend the money to get a new head unit while your there because the stock hu thinks that it still has stock speakers and that it need the stock EQ, lowering bass and mids at higher volumes to compensate for crappy stock speakers, whereas with an aftermarket you will have better control over the sound and EQ's. IMO A really good hu is a Kenwood KDCX395 it is what I have and have had for 4 years and it's still going strong, it's a great little hu with a lot of expandability for $120 from crutchfield.com.

 

With a JBL system, each of the speakers will have passive crossovers (caps) installed. They are installed inside the speaker mount. You will notice a large improvement by simply upgrading the head unit. The only large downside is you will never have any treble in the back seats until you replace the rear speakers. I installed a Premier HU in my JBL system and the improvement was amazing, such better control over the bass. You will need an aftermarket digital adapter to run a head unit though... and if you run aftermarket speakers, the stock amp will likely not agree with them because of Toyotas different impedance. I was able to run aftermarket front speakers with it, but not rear as well. Also, the addition of aftermarket speakers will not sound any different unless you remove the little crossovers. I made that mistake first round.

I would go with the head unit. Get one with a solid 5 band EQ or better....

 

OK, I'm convinced... Along with sound deadening in the doors and roof, I'll be putting in a Pioneer AVH-4400BT head unit, a pair of Polk DXi6500 component speakers up front and DXi650's in the back. They don't appear to be too terribly power hungy so I expect it won't be necessary to add an amp. The 6500's have an RMS power range of 10-100 watts and the 650's are 6-55 watts.

I'm debating whether to put in a small 50-75 watt 4 channel amp or possibly a powered underseat subwoofer. If I was to add only one of those two, which do you guys think would provide the greatest improvement to the overall system?

 

Sounds like you got a plan. Let us know how it went.