My audio adventure... (non-JBL)

How I transformed my Premium Audio System into an audiophile (poser class) system for about $1,000. Ok, it is not audiophile, perhaps not even a legitimate “poser class” system, but it is light years better than stock. I have a 2022 TRD Pro with a manual transmission, so no JBL for me. Mine has the 8” screen premium stereo with navigation, six speakers and no factory sub. There are many great write-ups on the forum about a variety of stereo improvements; most explain what they did, but not all explain why they made the choices they did.

Any audio system is a collection of compromises, and the best place to start is to figure out what compromises you can live with. My compromises and preferences are influenced by the following (in no particular order): I listen to Classic Rock, Classic Country, Folk, Bossa Nova, a little Jazz and a little Classical. I’m an older guy, so I have lost some of the high-end of my hearing. I didn’t want to sacrifice any behind or under rear-seat storage. I kept the factory head-unit. (Nothing puts you in “poser” class faster than keeping the factory HU, but it is a budget-friendly compromise.) Almost all of my source material is MP3 @ 360 kbps, so not lossless, but decent quality, so speaker improvements would make a noticeable difference. I wanted more bass, but my music taste doesn’t include a lot of music with hard-driving bass, so I can be satisfied with a modest bass improvement. I prefer the sound stage up and away from my ankles, so a component setup is a must for the front doors so I can move the tweeter up higher. I listen to my music loud, but not so loud that you couldn’t get my attention with a normal speaking voice. So, I wanted more power to get the speakers closer to their sweet spot, but didn’t need a LOT more. Last but not least, I wanted the rear-door and dash-mount speakers to be functional instead of just decorative. I like a little fill in the back, and functional speakers in the dash would help move the sound stage up. Not included in my $1,000 sound system budget is a significant sound-deadening project that also helped move me toward my listening goals. My speaker choices were influenced by the fact that I prefer the sound of silk tweeters, and I can’t stay in my budget with a set of high-end Morels. There aren’t a lot of stereo stores with listening rooms around these days, but you should listen before you buy. They make tweeters out of a variety of materials, and for me, the tweeter material choice makes a BIG impact on sound. The same is probably true of woofer materials, but my ear isn’t nearly as sensitive to differences in woofer materials. Silk tweeters are non-negotiable for my taste, nothing else sounds right to me.

I decided to go with the following equipment:

1.

$250 Kicker 47KSS6904 6x9" 150 Watt Car Audio Component Speakers Pair KSS690

Kicker 47KSS6904 6”x9” components for the front doors (tweeters in the sail panels).

The 6x9 component speakers come with crossovers that provide 4,000 Hz high-pass filters for the tweeters (2nd order, 12-db slope), but the crossover sends a full-range signal to the woofers. I added inline 4,000 Hz low-pass filters (2nd order, 12-db slope) to the woofers to help keep the soundstage up high and away from my ankles.



2. Kicker 47KSC6504 6-1/2” 2-ways for the rear doors.

I set the amplifier active high-pass to 80 Hz, which is fine for the 6”X 9”s but lower than I wanted for the 6-1/2” speakers; so I added inline 150 Hz high pass caps (1st order, 6-db slope) to these speakers.



3.

$45 Kicker 47KSC2704 2.75" Mid-Range Speakers, 4ohm with Brackets for Select GM/Chrysler/Subaru/Jeep and Toyota Included

Kicker 47KSC2704 2-3/4” midranges for the dash. *I did NOT use the 250 Hz high-pass caps (1st order, 6-db slope) that were included with the speakers.

*I added 800 Hz – 5,000 Hz band-pass filters (1st order, 6-db slope) for the dash midranges, this will better limit the 2-3/4” midranges to a frequency band that they can handle well, without overpowering the high frequencies that are adequately handled by the front door component setup. It makes no sense to me that Kicker supplies 250 Hz high-pass caps for a speaker that has a published frequency range of 300 Hz – 20,000 Hz. Not to mention that it is optimistic to expect decent fidelity across that much range from a 2-3/4” speaker in the first place.



4. Kicker 47Key200.4 combination DSP and 50x4 Amp. As previously mentioned, active high-pass filter set to 80 Hz. (Another poser class move, but 50 watts is enough for me, and the Key is a budget friendly choice.) (My sound deadening project will help offset the weak amp output.)

5.

$240 Kicker 11HS8 8” 150 Watt Hideaway Compact Car Audio Powered Subwoofer Sub HS8

Kicker 11HS8 Hideaway 8” Sub (Under the driver’s seat) this is probably not the best choice, but I wanted a self-contained unit that wouldn’t take up room behind the rear seat. A few threads on the forum indicate that the similarly sized model with a 10” sub won’t quite fit under the front seat. My Seat Jackers provided a bit of extra room to work with. If you are into EDM, Hip Hop, or other styles of music with hard driving bass, you should consider something more substantial.

My earlier comment about the rear-door and dash-mount speakers being strictly decorative is based on the following:

1. The factory head-unit sends virtually no power to the rear door speakers. This is why the fader acts more like a volume control than a fader control. This is also why you need to add a digital signal processor (DSP), or a line output converter (LOC), or some other means of restoring a full-strength signal to the rear doors IF you care about rear fill. Simply upgrading the rear speakers is pointless, because the problem is in the factory head-unit design. A grossly underpowered high-end speaker doesn’t sound significantly better than a grossly underpowered factory speaker.

2. The high-pass cap on the factory dash speakers starts to cut off at about 18,000 Hz. So...most of what comes out of them is 18,000 Hz or higher. The upper frequency limit of human hearing, if you have good hearing, is around 20,000 Hz. If you are my age, the only thing in your truck that can hear unattenuated sound coming from the dash speakers is probably your dog. The high-pass caps are cutting off what little sound someone like me can hear up that high. If you listen to MP3 files that were recorded at 128 kbps, the file compression has already collapsed the frequencies above the factory crossover…..so there isn’t much of anything there to begin with. This is probably why the Subaru / DS18 tweeter mod gets great reviews. This plug and play swap would transform the factory setup, with very little sound coming from the factory dash speakers, to something more substantial coming from the Subaru or DS18 dash speakers. I believe the Subaru tweeters high-pass is somewhere around 6,000 Hz. This simple “nothing to something” transition would make a noticeable improvement to both the sound quality and the sound stage of the factory stereo setup, especially if you did nothing else. I went a different direction, but the popular Subaru/DS18 tweeter mod makes very good sense as an initial improvement. If you plan on going further with your system, you will probably find that there are better options available.

The Kicker Key install is straightforward and there are already several how-to install threads on the forum. Bear in mind that the wiring for 2016-2019 is different from the 2020+ wiring. Most people buy, build, or modify a harness that takes care of both the speaker and power wiring. I only used a speaker harness, and tapped the factory harness for power and ground. If you are adding a sub, make sure that whatever harness solution you chose has the speaker feed to the sub-woofer tapped to the FRONT speakers, between the head unit and the amp (the amp input side). The Key has a blue wire that you can wire into an ignition-hot source for a trigger, OR you can use the Key’s built-in “DC Offset” feature to go “live” when it senses a signal on the speaker wire coming from the head unit. I went with the speaker triggered DC Offset option. The good news is, that while in DC Offset mode, once the Key senses a signal on the speaker wire, the blue wire becomes hot, allowing it to be used as a trigger for the Hideaway sub.

I put the hideaway sub under the driver’s seat, and home ran the power to the battery. I have a Pro with a power seat. The sub would not have fit without seat-jackers installed. It is a VERY tight fit under there. I checked, and the passenger side wasn’t any better from a clearance standpoint.

A few notes on the initial installation…

I mounted the component tweeters to the sail panels using the Kicker provided pod mounts. Once mounted, the range of motion on the pods would only allow the tweeters to be aimed directly at the driver and passenger seats. The resulting sound was too bright for my taste. I decided to swap the band pass filters I had on the dash speakers with simple 600 Hz high-pass caps (1st order, 6-db slope). This change helped mellow out the treble to an acceptable level. Somehow, extending the upper range on the paper cone dash speakers help offset the excessive brightness of the 1” silk tweeters.



In setting up the Key for the first time, I couldn’t get it to work….no happy sound. I kept getting an “Auto EQ Fail” error. I solved the problem by moving the front seats a little bit further forward, and rerunning the setup process.

I ran the system for a couple of weeks without the sub. It was a noticeable improvement, but the addition of the sub helped immensely. The 8” hideaway sub has a strong output relative to the Key 200.4’s 50-watt output. I don’t think there would be any advantage to going with a bigger sub unless you had a more substantial amp. At present, I’m probably running at the upper limit of the Key while the hideaway sub is closer to the middle range of its overall potential.

I’m happy with where I landed, but it took some fiddling and tweaking to get here. Although the result I ended up with could be improved with a larger budget, I was able to land on something that is bringing me a lot of listening pleasure. It is in a different universe from the factory setup.

Thanks to all of you who contribute to this forum. The ideas you have shared provided a lot of direction for my journey down the sound rabbit hole. I hope there is something here that is helpful to someone else.

 

Awesome write up! I will be coming back to reference this in the future

 

You’ve given me lots of ideas….
So far, I just dropped the DS18 tweeters in…. What a drastic improvement in mid to upper range when running off factory power. Key amp appears to be the way to go, but now impossible to find. I have more planned. Trying to figure out $$ vs quality and ease. So far, I’m at $100 spent. So far well worth it. I hope that like you I get something way better at the end.

Looking for input on the lower items -

Did you run the component 6* 9, tweeter and dash speakers all off the same channel? How did you have them wired in ?
What volume did you tune from with the key? It seems like the entune 7” has different eq settings at low volume vs high volume. It seems to have more treble related to bass at the higher volumes.

Do you hear the rear soundstage when it’s amped?