2007 Camry Hybrid Speaker Upgrade Sounds Terrible - Please help.

[Saturnman]

I have a 2007 Camry Hybrid with the JBL Premium stereo. I just upgraded the speakers (with 2 sets of Infinity 692.31 6x9's and 1 pair of Infinity 10.9t dome tweeters) and the resulting sound is a disaster.

Although the bass response is much cleaner than the JBL rumble that I used to get, I have lost most of the mid-range and the tweeters in the dash are too strong - even sounding distorted.

Thinking thru the install, I believe the problems are as follows:

1. The original rear speakers appeared to be bi-amp'd with 2 sets of leads coming from the amp from each speaker (one pair for the tweeter and one pair for the woofer). Since the Infinity's only have one pair of leads, I had to only use one pair of wires for the rear deck speakers (I used the leads that powered the oem woofers). Thus, I'm only getting low end sound from the rears... no mids or highs at ll.

2. The original front door speakers were only woofer and when I hooked up the Infinity's, I'm only getting low end sound.... no mids or highs at all. It appears the JBL amp is EQing the output to only send low end to the doors.

The end result is that since I'm not getting any mids from the 6x9's, I have to turn up the volume which results in too much highs. It sounds like an extreme version of a Loudness switch (treble and bass and nothing else).

How can I get out of this mess?

1. To get full range out of the rear speakers, can I connect both sets of wires that were feeding the oem 6x9's?

2. Is there any other way to get full range output to both the rear and door 6x9's?

3. Any ideas on why the Infinity tweeters would be distorting? I hooked up the crossover that came with the tweeters but they don't seem clean. Cymbal crashes are distorted and I'm only getting the very highs... no warm sounds.

4. If I have to replace the amp (since it appears that options 1 and 2 above are amp related), where can I get a wiring diagram to figure out where/how to replace the amp.

Thanks in advance for any assistance. I never thought upgrading the speakers would result in such a horrible decrease in sound quality.

[njerald]

I love these amateur parts replacement "upgrading" stories.............

[gdanaher]

Originally Posted by Saturnman

I have a 2007 Camry Hybrid with the JBL Premium stereo. I just upgraded the speakers (with 2 sets of Infinity 692.31 6x9's and 1 pair of Infinity 10.9t dome tweeters) and the resulting sound is a disaster.

Well, put the old ones back in. Seems simple enough. The system you have was designed to work well in your car. The reason they didn't install your new speakers as oem is that they didn't sound good. Young, spoiled drivers.

['02 XLE V6]

07-08 JBL wiring without Navigation:
http://crutchfield.custhelp.com/cgi-...i=&p_topview=1

07-08 JBL wiring with Navigation:
http://crutchfield.custhelp.com/cgi-...luZm9ybWF0aW9u

I have to 02 JBL system w/out Nav. I replaced my rears with Infinity Kappa 6x9 2-ways. It's been awhile but, I'm pretty sure I cut the rear speaker wires before the split for the tweeters, (eliminating any crossover/filter) and spliced in a line to the Infinitys. They sound great! Give me a few and I'll post a pic of the factory speaker.


The Infinity front tweeters are known to be very harsh/metallic. If the crossover is adjustable, it has been recommended to set them at -4 for a much better sound.

So far, I haven't touched the door speakers to avoid the issue you are having with them. You can bypass the amp and install a new one. You will lose some bass. I won't attempt this until I can add a sub with it's own amp. Although it's for an 02-04 JBL setup, the following thread will give you an idea of how to tackle this issue:
http://community.crutchfield.com/for...ead/23376.aspx

[Saturnman]

Thanks for those Crutchfield links! That's a huge help. With those diagrams I can now see that the crossover is inside the JBL amp and that there are actually 2 pairs of wire for _each_ of the rear speakers (1 pair for the woofer, 1 for the tweeter). Thus, grabbing a signal before the crossover isn't possible on the 2007+ amp.

Like one poster said above, I may actually drop the OEM tweeters back in just so I can figure out if my 'problem' is simply due to the Infinity tweeters being too shrill for the implementation. The 6x9's did indeed tighten up the bass quite a bit... so I'd like to keep them.

Some other posts have mentioned that upward firing tweeters into the windshield aren't such a good placement anyway. The oem 'tweeters' that were in there seemed like small mid-range speakers that likely handled the midrange better than the Infinity tweeters.

Other than that, swapping the amp might be the next step. Has anyone swapped the amp out and kept the headunit with good results? Did you use a Cleansweep or 3sixty.2? I'm trying to keep the headunit due to the Hybrid readouts that are in there that I'll lose with a HU swap.

['02 XLE V6]

Hey Saturnman, just wondering if you made any adjustments and if so, how have they worked out?

I'd like to replace my door speakers with 6x9's and some Dynamat to get a tighter and cleaner bass response but I'm hesitant. I'm also considering components in the doors, but without a sub and amp, it's not going to happen for me. I really don't have the money for all that right now.

[MAP1234]

To the OP...Are the Ohms and max wattage the same as your old speakers? Different specifications can have a HUGE impact on the sound quality.

[Saturnman]

02 XLE V6, I've learned quite a bit over the past few days and unfortunately gdanaher's above post (while probably a little sarcastic) turns out to be right.... at least in the 2007 with the JBL Premium option.

With the OEM Headunit and the JBL "Premium" amp/speakers, there simply appears to be too much EQ-ing/crossover gaming going on with the Premium setup to swap in 'generic' aftermarket speakers. Unless you take out both the Headunit and the JBL amp (which I don't want to do because of the hybrid readouts in the headunit), the speaker replacements create a worse sound as JBL appears to be EQ-ing their amp channel to compensate for the cone characteristics of the paper woofers, for instance.

The "Distributed Subwoofer System" in particular must be expecting cone excursion/delays/abnormal frequency responses that the Infinity's, at least, didn't have. The end result was a bass that can best be described as out of phase. The end result was loud, didn't distort, but the sound never sounded in phase (and I switched the speaker leads just to make sure I wasn't accidentally out of phase with the wiring). And the general EQ of the sound was all effed up.

I ended up putting the oem dash tweeters (which are really mids too) and oem rear deck speakers back and only ended up keeping the Infinity 6x9's in the door. Having the Infinity's still in the door did tighten up the rumble a little bit, but probably not worth the money/effort given the small boost they give to the end resulting sound.

MAP1234, the Infinity's were 2 ohms which, according to another post I read, was what the OEM JBL amp/speakers were setup to do. (Can anyone confirm that?)

Morale of the story, for me at least, is that unless you want to take out the headunit _and_ amp of the JBL Premium configs, don't bother upgrading the speakers. ....unless, of course, anyone knows of a aftermarket headunit that will handle Toyota's hybrid readouts

[njerald]

Only believe about 50% of the so called information posted in this forum:

Front tweeters, 2 ohm, 20 W
Doors, 2.2 ohm, 36 W
Rear midrange - 2.2 ohm, 36 W
Rear coax tweeter - 6.5 ohm, 18 W

[Dna_splice]

i wonder what would TN be like w/out Njerald?