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Prius Audio Upgrade

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DJ Q
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Prius Audio Upgrade

Postby DJ Q » January 4th, 2019, 7:29 pm

Next month makes one year since I've taken ownership of this vehicle, so it's been too long for me to upgrade my audio. I still believe that for a stock system, it wasn't too bad.

So let's just get into it.
I'm including some pics of scrapping the door since I haven't seen many of these online.

#1 - Door Panel Removal

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In this picture, there are two screws that need to be removed. I'd suggest a pry tool to remove the plastic piece behind the door handle. The second screw (already removed in this pic) is in that little pocket behind the window switches.

#2 - Door Panel Removal

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Pull the silver piece upwards. This can be done with your hands, no tools needed. It always feels like it's going to break, but it's fine. After you pull that piece up, the windows switches need to be pulled up as well then the plug behind it, disconnected.

#3 - Door Panel Removal

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Be VERY careful here! Begin pulling the door card. It'll just pop out. Best grip I got is to the side of the speaker. When it pops out, lean toward you and look in. You need to disconnect three things. To the bottom of the pic (which is my view looking down, so it's actually the top of the door) you see a white and a green plastic going into you door handle. Lift them out of place and turn the wire till the ball simply lifts out. Failure to do this carefully is how I broke it on my Fielder.
Secondly, the door has a light to the bottom. Reach in and disconnect the power to it. Failure to do this is how I almost broke the passenger side before taking pics of this one.

#4 - Door Panel Removed

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Here's the stock 6 x 9. I took a video of it playing and couldn't really capture how it struggles at times.
6 x 9 Toyota risers aren't readily available here so I went with the idea of a user on another forum
to simply cut it out and re-use the same bracket. This was the most difficult part for me to do... not because it was hard physically... but I had to take a knife to a speaker. I'm sorry to add to the murder toll :-(

#5 - Speaker cut out

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If you're going to do this, to make it easier for you, you just need to start the cut then pull on the surrounds. The material is pretty strong so it will unstick before it rips. After that, I just used a hacksaw to cut out the bracket. I forgot to take a pic of the new 6x9's installed, but it's a pair of Pioneer TS-A6986. These speakers are special to me because it's the first pair of speakers I ever purchased... 13 years ago. It's the first time they're ever being properly amplified.

#6 - Stock Speaker connection

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I'm so glad I didn't have to cut the stock speaker wiring. The plug actually comes out. I just re-soldered the new wires to run to the speaker. Yes, I know my soldering skills aren't full 100.

After both plugs were done and speakers installed, I tested them on the Head unit to ensure everything was working before proceeding.

#7 - Power Cable Run

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This is by FAR the easiest power cable run I've ever had to do since the battery is in the rear of the car.

#8 - More Power Cable

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It's like they knew I wanted to run 4 AWG cable

#9 - Power plant

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YES the floor's super dirty.
This is below the driver's seat. ENSURE TO DISCONNECT THE BATTERY BEFORE THIS STEP.
I didn't take pics when removing, but those two plugs are from the seat it self. White is for the seatbelt, yellow for the seat airbag. Just my advice because it took me ages to figure it out...
With the yellow plug, when you press on the inner white tab, the outer yellow part comes up first, then press that same white tab again to release the whole plug. Damn near broke the thing out trying to figure this out.

#10 - Harness

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I'm using the stock Head Unit for now so I bought the harnesses to avoid any cutting. This is, by a huge margin, the neatest wiring I've ever done. The darker blue wires below will receive power from the amp and send it back through the stock plug, while the light blue wire is the remote turn on. What looks like a single black wire above is actually taking the original feed from the head unit to send to an RCA converter which will then be run to the amp.

#11 - Tweeter removal and replacement
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So here's the old vs the new. What's not pictured here is the stock plug that I removed from the old tweeter. I needed that later.
The speaker replacing the tweeter is a Faital Pro 3FE200.

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#12 - Factory Plug speaker jump

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So here's the original connection to the tweeter. The factory wiring runs to the tweeter, has a capacitor to block unwanted frequencies then send the full range to the factory woofer. I ran those blue cables you see there then simply plugged the tweeterless connection right back in to allow the original door speaker wires to be used.

#13 - Wire Runs

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Ran speaker and RCA wires through the center console. Was pretty surprised when I saw how dirty in there was.

#14 - Final placement

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This is the last picture I took before completing. As simple as everything looks here, thanks to lack of proper tools in some cases, new discovery in others... this took me two days to do.
Patience was running low coming down to the end so please forgive me for the lack of pictures.

There's three things left to do:

1) For some reason I'm not getting signal from one of the leads from the head unit. Ruled out the RCA, amp and pre-amp so it's either the converter, bad solder, or the adapter itself. Right now the front is playing a mono signal.

2) Subwoofer to go in a custom fiberglass enclosure.

3) Get some proper wiring looms to enclose the speaker wires.

Will update when I'm actually completed.

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Soochi boi
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Re: Prius Audio Upgrade

Postby Soochi boi » January 4th, 2019, 8:57 pm

Bump good DIY effort ...

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nervewrecker
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Re: Prius Audio Upgrade

Postby nervewrecker » January 4th, 2019, 10:45 pm

Ahh boi, men from back in the days.
Keep.it.coming.

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Re: Prius Audio Upgrade

Postby kavaninho » January 4th, 2019, 11:05 pm

nice DIY..patience running out at the end is the devil, dont rush it

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Re: Prius Audio Upgrade

Postby Rovin » January 5th, 2019, 11:35 am

2 models of 3" i seeing on faital website so ur 3" is Fe22 ? ... if u hooked it up yet how is d fine highs from it seeing they claim all d way up to 20k ?


wa going orn wid d pwm20 & ds18 bai - low budget build ? ...

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Re: Prius Audio Upgrade

Postby nervewrecker » January 5th, 2019, 2:13 pm

I suppose is a budget build. Cant vex with a man building on a budget.

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Re: Prius Audio Upgrade

Postby kavaninho » January 5th, 2019, 6:58 pm

Rovin's Audio wrote:2 models of 3" i seeing on faital website so ur 3" is Fe22 ? ... if u hooked it up yet how is d fine highs from it seeing they claim all d way up to 20k ?


wa going orn wid d pwm20 & ds18 bai - low budget build ? ...


Apparently the build is on a tight budget. Those 3" go quite high, however, on axis alone. OP's configuration points them towards the windscreen so I guess its a risk.

OP let us know how the sound works out for you.

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Re: Prius Audio Upgrade

Postby nervewrecker » January 5th, 2019, 8:38 pm

Different people have different taste in sound yes.
Mario is a meca competitor and iirc iasca, last I took a listen to his vehicle I found it very bright to me. Seems I like it kinda dull and relaxed compared to others. So I guess taste in sound varies from person to person.
He may like how that sounds but I may not.
Same way he may not like how mine sounds.

Edit, dont get me wrong on Mario system eh, its very balanced and no ear fatigue, very detailed etc. Seems my taste is just dull.

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Re: Prius Audio Upgrade

Postby black start » January 5th, 2019, 10:35 pm

Looking good man. Real men fraid to dig in their prius. Hopefully this helps some of them...

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DJ Q
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Re: Prius Audio Upgrade

Postby DJ Q » January 6th, 2019, 8:25 am

kavaninho wrote:nice DIY..patience running out at the end is the devil, dont rush it


Wasn't rushing. That was just with respect to stopping to take pics.

Rovin's Audio wrote:2 models of 3" i seeing on faital website so ur 3" is Fe22 ? ... if u hooked it up yet how is d fine highs from it seeing they claim all d way up to 20k ?


Yep goes all the way up. Actually bought these because of a post from TK! Effective from 250hz all the way up.
I have the 8 ohm version too and it's still ridiculously loud. Actually had to turn them down a bit.

Rovin's Audio wrote:wa going orn wid d pwm20 & ds18 bai - low budget build ? ...


Lol was waiting to see who'd mention it first.
Yes it's meant to be very low budget.
Notice I'm still using the stock deck.
Been hearing a lot of people saying that these DS18 amps aren't bad so decided to try it out myself.

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Re: Prius Audio Upgrade

Postby VexXx Dogg » January 6th, 2019, 3:10 pm

Vibes!!

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Re: Prius Audio Upgrade

Postby evolution7tt » January 7th, 2019, 9:57 pm

nervewrecker wrote:Different people have different taste in sound yes.
Mario is a meca competitor and iirc iasca, last I took a listen to his vehicle I found it very bright to me. Seems I like it kinda dull and relaxed compared to others. So I guess taste in sound varies from person to person.
He may like how that sounds but I may not.
Same way he may not like how mine sounds.

Edit, dont get me wrong on Mario system eh, its very balanced and no ear fatigue, very detailed etc. Seems my taste is just dull.


We all hear differently. I liked your killer midbass. I retuned my car since...

OP, good DIY stuff here. I like that you went with the Faital in the dash locations. I listened to a stock Prius already and those locations are wonderful.

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Re: Prius Audio Upgrade

Postby nervewrecker » January 7th, 2019, 10:47 pm

a day when I in your town I shall check you for a demo.
that bassline tho, rawr

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Re: Prius Audio Upgrade

Postby DJ Q » May 28th, 2019, 10:59 am

DJ Q wrote:1) For some reason I'm not getting signal from one of the leads from the head unit. Ruled out the RCA, amp and pre-amp so it's either the converter, bad solder, or the adapter itself. Right now the front is playing a mono signal.


So I've finally figured this out.
It's the weirdest thing.

The left channel is coming out the deck at speaker level and the right channel is at line level.
So I had to pass the left channel through the speaker to line converter and the right channel is run direct.
Spent a long time balancing the two sides and now it plays well.

How does that even happen though?

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Re: Prius Audio Upgrade

Postby Ted_v2 » May 28th, 2019, 5:58 pm

how that ds18 amp treating u so far? im dying to try one.

heard noting but great reviews so far.

im not to keen on the brand, i had a 1800w mono from them, could barely rough up a pioneer. 20ampx2 rating.

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DJ Q
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Re: Prius Audio Upgrade

Postby DJ Q » May 29th, 2019, 10:55 am

Ted_v2 wrote:how that ds18 amp treating u so far? im dying to try one.

heard noting but great reviews so far.

im not to keen on the brand, i had a 1800w mono from them, could barely rough up a pioneer. 20ampx2 rating.

No complaints thus far. Doing what I need it to do. Loud and clear.
I was surprised when I realized how hard the bass was hitting.


DJ Q wrote:
DJ Q wrote:1) For some reason I'm not getting signal from one of the leads from the head unit. Ruled out the RCA, amp and pre-amp so it's either the converter, bad solder, or the adapter itself. Right now the front is playing a mono signal.


So I've finally figured this out.
It's the weirdest thing.

The left channel is coming out the deck at speaker level and the right channel is at line level.
So I had to pass the left channel through the speaker to line converter and the right channel is run direct.
Spent a long time balancing the two sides and now it plays well.

How does that even happen though?


Anyone have feedback on this???

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DJ Q
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Re: Prius Audio Upgrade

Postby DJ Q » June 12th, 2019, 11:21 am

Anyone??????

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DJ Q
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Re: Prius Audio Upgrade

Postby DJ Q » December 30th, 2019, 2:26 pm

UPDATE:

Deck has been upgraded to Pioneer w4500NEX
People... time alignment is the best thing ever.
Never knew what I was missing with SQ.

Next step is for some deadening and replacement of the 6x9s

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Re: Prius Audio Upgrade

Postby Rovin » December 31st, 2019, 12:00 pm

now watching this thread is a whole yr ole yes

like i said a million times b4 sound deadening makes a world of difference ...

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Re: Prius Audio Upgrade

Postby Ted_v2 » January 16th, 2020, 7:10 pm

i never diggup with time alignment yet, whats the way you set it up?

measuring tape?

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DJ Q
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Re: Prius Audio Upgrade

Postby DJ Q » January 21st, 2020, 2:35 pm

I used measuring tape as well as the auto EQ mic.
Results were very close so it vouched for the validity of the Mic's results.
Only thing that was off was the subwoofer's distance.

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