following as well , looking to do the same myself

 

I guess we are along in having an urge to perform this upgrade lol.

 

I was going to post, but the "Hacking" comment made me think what I did would be of little interest.

You can:
1. Replace one or more drivers.
2. Replace the drivers and amp.

a. A standard analog amp with more power.​

b. A DSP amp that allows time alignment and EQ​

3. If you want to get fancy, #2 may also involve adding a wiring harness. Does not mean cutting stuff up as they often have an interface with connectors that interface the old and new.

I am working on a write-up of all of my RAV mods. I have been waiting on the new slotted rotors to be released and getting the powder coating of the amps done.

Crutchfield has a page where input your make and model and they start to cover what can be done.

I went with the Morel Elate Carbon 63A for the front 3-way and then a cheaper Morel for the rear doors. The A means active and you are expected to provide crossovers, which was done in DSP for my RAV.

From what I gather, the JBL system has the better interface from the head unit to the JBL amp, which allows more options. I still have the JBL amp in my system, but it is only there for steering wheel control. I used the PAC AmpPRO harness to interface the head unit with the new amp and it requires the factory amp for steering wheel control.

One annoying with the wiring is that the way they ran the wire from one speaker to another up front vs. everything come from the amp. This is where a bit of hacking was involved in order to run new write instead of daisy chaining. (For lack of a better word)

There are multiple threads on the forum that discuss the JBL system and many that discuss the non JBL system. One thing you may run across is that the JBL sub is limited. This roll-off / protection seems to occur on the sub output channel of the amp itself, not the head unit. It really rolls off the bass going to the sub. Some have bought a 3rd party box to work around it. Some tapped the signal from another channel. In my case, the PAC uses the stereo 2-channel (digital audio) and re-does everything. The downside of this approach is you lose the front to rear fader. Since I have everything calibrated for competition audio, the loss of fader is not a big deal. I have no plans to compete, I just wanted high end audio.

I can try and answer questions, but what I did may be more than you are willing to do or even want to do.

What is it about the audio that you don't like or want to improve?

 

Given the limitations of what you are working with, how does it sound?

 

I could not be happier.

I am taking digital audio out of the head unit. This goes all the way to rear and through a TOSLINK splitter. One goes to the 1000.6 amp, which is 1000 watt x 6 channels. This is the left and right door, dash and A-pillar. The other goes to a 1000.4. This is the left and rear doors for rear-fill. And then the other two channels are bridged to drive a dual 10" subs.

I have a 4-way switch to select 1 of the 4 presets on the amps.
1. Calibrated for driver in driving position with the sub volume disabled. This means the sub is locked to the calibrated level.
2. Same as 1 but sub volume is adjustable if you want more or less bass based on taste.
3. Same as 1 but the seat is all the way back and down to fit any size person in the front seat.
4. Same as 2 but seat is same as 3.

The audio is calibrated the center of the sound stage is aligned with the rearview mirror. Some songs have a narrow soundstage and is almost mono. Others are spread out and almost wrap around you. The rear fill speakers have delay set to maximum and volume really low. Basically you don't want to be distracted by the rear speakers.

Normally you would only use 8-channels of DSP, which would result in mono rear-fill. I wanted stereo rear-fill, which is why we have two DSP amps.

By using toslink from headhunt to each DSP, the conversions between analog and digital are minimized. I use wired CarPlay to get lossless audio. Wireless CarPlay gets re-encoded to lossy. I think with the home pods they have a special mode to get wireless lossless to the speakers. But those details are fuzzy.

All of the metal surfaces have been dampened using butyl rubber. A floating barrier (closed cell foam with mass loaded vinyl) covers the floor to further block noise transmission. I recently pulled out the plastic panels in the rear and sprayed them with Secondskin Spectrum. Same for the wheel well liners.

I have posted all of these photos before, but I will repost again.

Systems Unlimited did the install and Brian Mitchell tuned the DSPs.

Butyl

Toslink splitter

Subs / Amps

DSP selector w/ throttle controller, ScanGauge III and bass knob. Bottom USB is for DSP amps, top USB is for CarPlay

Cargo Floor

The silver stripes on the amps are what I plan to have powder coated red. The pattern in the acrylic is the Prime's front grill. (to scale)

Extra 12v battery

 

Not really jnterested in upgrade to audio but I like seeing the interior stripped and all the factory wiring though, great job by the way

 

The use of orange power cables for the audio was to try and match the orange cables that Toyota used for power as well.

The custom cargo floor was also done a year after the install. Twice, while driving from Modesto to Thousand Oaks, the 6-channel amp shut down because of the heat. Both times it was while passing through Bakersfield and it was 104 outside per the heat reported on the dash. Or maybe it was just Bakersfield! There was no way for the heat to escape under the factory cargo floor. The idea was to have the air escape through the speaker grill over the subs. It is a mesh grill with speaker cloth over it. One of the reasons we used the grill cloth over the mesh was to hide that the subs were offset. Had they been more symmetrical, then we could have just used the mesh and exposed the subs instead of hiding them. The acrylic also has some holes in it for the heat to rise. On the plus side, the main amp worked as it should in that it shut itself down to not overheat. Before the cargo floor, I drove 14-hours each way (WA - CA) in the winter and did not experience any shutdowns.

I also installed a bluetooth battery monitor to ensure the 12v batteries never had any issues charging. I can also monitor battery info on the ScanGauge. I have not really taken the time to customize the pages on the ScanGauge.

A note on the sub enclosure. The subwoofers have a recommend volume for the enclosure. The bottom of the sub is fiberglass molded to the floor. They filled the enclosure with water until they reached the recommended volume from the spec sheet. Marked it off, drained the water and then cut the box down to size. Not sure if I described that very well.

Testing the LEDs

Sub enclosure

Custom ScanGauge plate

 

@StaceySpears you win for most significant mod I've seen on a R4P! #respect

 

The orange wire definitely looks like factory installed high voltage wiring, maybe to professionaly installed for factory

 

Hi. I want to replace the dash speakers in my 2020 RAV4H Limited with JBL. Does anyone know what Metra or RedWolf part number I need for the connector wire? I know what it is for non-JBL, but cannot seem to find the part number for the JBL system.

Edit: NVM, answering my own post. I ran across another thread that says I need a Metra 72-8109.