2012 Aygo Fire Speaker Question

[Aygocraig]

Hi all.

I've recently bought a aygo fire and want to change the Speakers near the window. Now, I've seen the ones in the city bug shop website and it says their a direct replacement. BUT will they fit the newest model aygo, and does anyone know if their any good?

Cheers in advance peoples.

[johnny01]

Hi Craig

I too have a new Aygo Fire and want to upgrade the Speakers, however it appears the new models have a different speaker arrangement. I believe the older models sported a cheapish paper cone speaker in the dash, which could be simply swapped over providing you can get a replacement to fit. The Fire has a small tweeter mounted on a metal bracket instead, connected to the loom via a 4-way terminal, which when unplugged stops sound reaching the door speaker (I'm talking about a 3-door here, not sure if the 5-door is a similar arrangement). The rear fader output of the head unit isn't connected to anything so the Speakers in the door and dash work 'together' in some way.

The speaker wiring adaptors advertised on the above site won't fit so save your money, but I haven't investigated the speaker arrangement to date because of the weather. However, today seems a nice day so far so I might just pop out and take a look later :)

[johnny01]

OK Craig - here's what I've found...

The speaker in the door appears to be connected in parallel with the tweeter in the dashboard. Both are rated at 4 Ohms and 15W power handling, with the tweeter protected from low frequencies by a bipolar capacitor mounted in the tweeter unit itself. What this means is that there is no crossover hidden somewhere in the wiring loom and you could replace the tweeter with a coaxial speaker and reproduce the full frequency range.

However, herein lies the problem. If you connected a further 4 Ohm speaker to the wires connecting the tweeter, you would end up with a system impedance of 2 Ohms (two 4 ohm Speakers in parallel) and this usually spells disaster for the head unit if it can't accommodate a 2 Ohm load.

I removed one of the Speakers from the door panel to have a look, and whilst they might not be the world's best, Mr T have made some improvements. It's a decent size of 16.5cm (6.5") and has a foam surround to give it a low resonant frequency. It also appears to have a coated cone material as opposed to just plain paper and this should help with maintaining structural integrity in damp conditions. The foam surround will eventually crumble but I doubt it will be an issue whilst we own our vehicles. There is also a 'twin cone' (not to be confused with a coaxial speaker with two voice coils) that aids high frequency response a little.

I wanted to fit my pair of JBL GTO 6527S Speakers here but came across a couple of problems. Although the JBL's appear to be Euromount, the Aygo's 6 screw fittings didn't line up awfully well and I couldn't even manage to align more than 3 screws and these weren't equally spaced around the circumference either! Another issue I had, which prevented me from fitting the JBL's was that the cutout hole in the door wasn't a large enough diameter for the cone surround to fit through! This is something to be borne in mind because the speakers screw to the rear of the removable door panel, not on the door itself. The Aygo speaker measures 10mm from the centre of each of the mounting holes to the foam surround, the JBL has only 6mm. I forgot to measure the diameter of the hole in the door card, sorry, but the Aygo speakers have a protruding surround diameter of 136mm diameter and these fit OK, but the JBL's 144mm diameter surround doesn't! I would guestimate that the hole is around 140mm diameter to allow for assembly errors. By the way, there are 6 equidistant mounting holes in the door card, 80mm apart centre to centre, if you need to match them up to a particular speaker. The Aygo speaker also appears to be approximately 44mm deep.

In answer to your question, you can't simply replace the dash speakers with those advertised on the website you mentioned. However, the speakers are useful finds because a lot of 100mm (4") coaxial units don't fit in the dash - my JBL GTO 427's certainly don't! There is a Pioneer coaxial that also fits in, I believe. If you were to replace the speaker in the dash with a coaxial you will need to alter the wiring to run the dash and door speakers in series, assuming your head unit can't power a 2 Ohm load and you are running both sets of speakers from the same fader channel. You could opt for JBL's wired in series with their lower impedance but I have yet to find any that fit!

I have been thinking about these possibilities as well and I would consider leaving the tweeters in situ and possibly upgrading the door speakers. However, the existing set up isn't really that bad, and because nothing is connected to the rear fader of the head unit, this gives you the possibility of adding a second pair of speakers in the rear somewhere (I've opted for the parcel shelf) to double up on power and give some added bass boost.

I hope this helps but if you need any more information don't hesitate to ask, I've tried to summarise here somewhat! :D

[MikeSh]

One other option would be to replace the dash Speakers but at the same time rewire the door Speakers to the rear fader channel (leaving the dash on the front), so you retain 4 Ohms front and rear. Which is what the 'other' or older Aygos have as standard actually.

[johnny01]

True, this is an option but you don't really gain an awful lot. The tweeter fitted to the Fire isn't a bad sounding unit and probably as good as the coaxial tweeters available on anything that will fit in the dashboard. A 4" coaxial isn't going to add a great deal of boost to the volume due to its limitations - you will only increase the sound range from upper bass to upper midrange because it simply can't push an awful lot of air or respond to low bass frequencies and also because you already have a tweeter fitted so you will simply replace one with another. The tiny hole for the dash Speakers doesn't aid bass response either.

The other downside is that you will be chopping into the wiring loom to alter the wiring. There is no wiring to the rear fader channels of the head unit so you will have to add these wires and connections, assuming that you're not changing the head unit for something else. I still think the easiest route is to add a pair of decent rear Speakers and run these from the rear fader channel of the existing or replacement head unit and leave the factory fit Speakers in place. It didn't take me very long to run extra cables down the sill of the car from the head unit to the boot, far less hassle than fiddling with popping the door card off!

Of course, it's all down to personal choice but unfortunately it's not a simple case of plug and play with the Aygo

[Aygocraig]

Cheers johnny. Bang on info! Unsure what path I will take though. I may have a research, but rear Speakers seem like a viable option.

Thanks very much as its saved me taken things to bits!

[johnny01]

No problem Craig

I was 'soooo prepared' to get everything put in the Aygo as I had it in the Yaris and was surprised when everything very nearly but not quite doesn't fit! There is also an issue with the rear parcel shelf, because you might think that 6x9's fit in the recesses - they don't! Plus, I think 6.5" round Speakers are a tight fit on either side of the parcel shelf recesses. I was so determined to put in my pair of JBL 6x9's that I have started to fabricate my own parcel shelf, details of which I'll post at a later date. The 6x9's are going in, one way or another!

In the meantime, I've left in a pair of battered old Minimus 7 Speakers that I used to test the wiring I ran for the rear fader and I must admit it sounds pretty darn good! The 6x9's are going to be a big improvement.

By the way, I have replaced the standard head unit so that helps with extra power and quality, as well as being able to fine tune the tone controls to get the best out of the Speakers. Took me about a couple of hours to fit, a very easy job indeed! :)

[MikeSh]

True, this is an option but you don't really gain an awful lot.

Quite agree. It's just a way round the low impedance issue for those hell-bent on fitting 'full-range' (ish) Speakers in the dash.

[m0nkey]

There is a Pioneer coaxial that also fits in, I believe.

I have fitted Pioneer TS-G1012i that I bought here. You have to bend down (or cut off as i did) two of the mounting tangs but they dropped in easily and required no trimming underneath the speaker or of the plastic cover above.

[johnny01]

There is a Pioneer coaxial that also fits in, I believe.

I have fitted Pioneer TS-G1012i that I bought here. You have two bend down (or cut off as i did) two of the mounting tangs but they dropped in easily and required no trimming underneath the speaker or of the plastic cover above.

Great looking Speakers but how did you arrange the wiring? You can't just replace the tweeters with these Pioneer coaxials in the dash of the Fire without altering the wiring arrangement otherwise you would end up with a 2 Ohm load at your head unit. :o

[m0nkey]

Johnny, my Aygo is a 2011 Ice that has 6 Speakers as standard: 2 x 6.5" in the door (on rear fader channel), 2 x 4" in the dash (with a capacitor/filter removing high and low frequencies to them) and 2 x tweeters in the A pillars. I replaced the rubbish 6ohm one-way 4" Speakers with the Pioneers. I will take a photo of the frequency filter later.

[johnny01]

Ah cool - I just wondered about that because the OP has a Fire as I do and the arrangement is different, where there is a capacitor'd tweeter in the dash and a 6.5" in the door wired to the front fader with nothing connected to the rear fader. He can't easily replace the tweeters for the Pioneers without rewiring. Thanks for the info :)

[m0nkey]

As you can see, the pink and purple wires go into a white connector which splits the feed into two.

One set goes to the tweeter in the A pillar (notice the Peugeot logo in the plastic :D)

This looks like it has a capacitor filter to remove low frequencies.

The other set goes through the filter into the 4" speaker that I have replaced with Pioneers.

I used some wiring converters from eBay that cost less than £2 delivered.

It means the car can be put back to standard quickly if needed.

Also you don't have to worry about which is +ve/-ve as the wires will only fit one way.

These show the Pioneer and tweeter in position

[johnny01]

Ah, I see what you have done now - thanks for the pics :)

I'm interested in what sound you are getting from the Pioneer coaxials because by leaving the crossover in the loom you will still be restricting the frequencies sent to the speaker. The crossover looks like a simple capacitor + choke arrangement and this can be set up in two ways, either as a high pass or a low pass filter. To make a bandpass filter for midrange use usually requires more a complex arrangement. If it's a high pass filter (restricting bass frequencies going to the original small speaker and allowing the speaker itself to naturally attenuate high frequency response) then you should get better sound from the Pioneers. However you will then have two tweeters working each side and might have allsorts of 'phase' issues making it hard to get a balanced sound.

If it's a low pass filter attenuating high frequencies from the small Speakers then the tweeters in the pioneer coaxials should hardly be working at all although you might get some improvement in bass response and midrange detail.

With my apologies to the OP, whose thread we appear to have hijacked ;)

[Aygocraig]

Crack on! It's all very useful.

[m0nkey]

It's definitely taking out the bass frequencies. If I put the fader to the front then I only get mids and highs. When I ran the pioneer directly off the pink/purple wires there was a lot more bass.

[johnny01]

How weird...

The sound system appears to be almost set up in a bi-amp fashion, with the front fader supplying the mids and high frequencies and the rear fader supplying at least bass if not full range to the Speakers in the doors. This is the kind of set up you might find in an expensive Hi-Fi where you can balance the sound properly using a pair of stereo amplifiers but in a car of the Aygo's limited audio ability it's a total waste of available power from the head unit.

If you could somehow filter out the mid and high from the Speakers in the doors (making a 3-way system of bass, mid and high speakers) then you could feasibly re-wire and run all the existing Speakers from the front fader of the head unit and free up the rear fader to add another pair of speakers in the rear of the car somewhere. But doing that isn't easy. Or remove the 100mm speaker from the dash altogether and re-wire the door speakers and tweeters to the front fader, freeing up the rear fader (this is more or less how it is in the Fire). Or possibly wire the door and 100mm dash speakers in series but then you would have to disconnect the A pillar tweeters or add a resistor in series to power them as little fill-ins, all run from the front fader and again this would free up the rear fader of the head unit for you to do with as you please.

Not easy...

[rajivrattna]

As you can see, the pink and purple wires go into a white connector which splits the feed into two.

One set goes to the tweeter in the A pillar (notice the Peugeot logo in the plastic )

This looks like it has a capacitor filter to remove low frequencies.

The other set goes through the filter into the 4" speaker that I have replaced with Pioneers.

I used some wiring converters from eBay that cost less than £2 delivered.

It means the car can be put back to standard quickly if needed.

Also you don't have to worry about which is +ve/-ve as the wires will only fit one way.

These show the Pioneer and tweeter in position

I am really intrigued by your speaker wiring. In the third photo you show the pioneer 4inch speaker with the old filter and capacitor still attached so that the speaker only produces mid range frequencies like the old paper speaker that you threw out. To me, it means that the coaxial pioneer speaker is not functioning as a coaxial at all. To get the full range out of that speaker you need to splice into the white wire (positive pole) and white wire with black line (negative pole) before the filter and capacitor connection. By doing this, in effect you are by passing the filter and capacitor. This produces a true wide frequency. One problem with this technique is that there are going to be two tweeters firing now, one in the coaxial unit and the other on the A pillar. That can be adjusted at the radio equilizer level by reducing the tweeter volume. I actually increased the bass volume and left the tweeter vol as it is at zero. I used Hertz coaxial for the dash. The sound is lot fuller and better. BUT the weak link (now exposed) is the door speaker. It has ok bass but poor mid range. That will be the next project!

[eygo]

if you want to improve the sound quality by replacing the audio why dont you just rewire the system as well using crossovers so all of your filtering issues have been addressed 3 way for the rear and 2 way for up front then use a good quality ofc speaker cable maybe gold plated spades for all of your connection this is what i have done in years gone by,doing it this way you can then revert back to the basic original setup when you come to sell

[Jan van de Wouw]

To get the full range out of that speaker you need to splice into the white wire (positive pole) and white wire with black line (negative pole) before the filter and capacitor connection.

Or even simpler: unplug the conector at the purple/pink wire and plug the coaxial into that.

This disconnects the tweeter in the A-pillar and gives full range to the 4" coaxial...

[JesusmSanchezl]

Hello all,

Are the Aygo Fire and the Aygo city the same car but in different countries? I ask this because I own an Aygo City 2012 in Spain and have the same problem as the OP. I would like to replace the Speakers but I am confused on how to and which Speakers should I get.

[FROSTYBALLS]

Hello - welcome to Toyota Owners Club.

It is the same car as the Aygo sold in Spain. Trim levels vary from market to market.

In Spain you have two trim levels - the Aygo Live and the Aygo City.

In the UK, the Aygo Fire was one of the trim levels.

However the range was revised in August 2013, and we now have seven trim levels as follows (in ascending order): Active; Active Plus; Mode; Move; Mode with Air Con; Move with Air Con; Move with Style.

[JesusmSanchezl]

Thank you!

I got installed some 17 cm Pioneer coaxial speakers: 2 in front doors + 2 over the trunk cover shelf (I left the tweeters in the dashboard as they are). Even though the sound is clearly better than with original set of Speakers, I am still not convinced by the quality that the head unit delivers. So far I hear mostly the higher frequencies more than lower ones and I have no idea why is this :(

I have seen that it is possible to upgrade the radio firmware via USB to (I suppose) get new software options on audio management (i.e. eq, fader, etc).

Where can I get this upgrade? is it good to do it?

Is there any other solution that you guys could recommend me?

[SandyCat]

Is there any point changing the Speakers in the Aygo? The sound quality from the stereo seems terrible to me. Where I get a really good range with decent bass and clarity in my Fiesta our Aygo sounds very weak and all top end. Turning up the volume just makes things worse. If this is normal then it's very poor in a modern car I think.

[irongrill]

Thanks to everyone for all of the information above. I eventually replaced the original dash Speakers with

Pioneer TS-G1021i 10cm/4" Dual Cone Speakers suggested above and the door Speakers with

Pioneer TS-G1721i 17cm/6.5" Dual Cone Speakers.

I used the original wiring to power the door speakers and ran new cables from the dash to the head. So that one pair of spekers are 'front fader and one pair on the rear rear.

The audio improvement is worthwhile, it's now possible to listen to the radio comfortabley on the motroway which was not possible witht the OEM setup with the advantage there is no visible evidence the car has been modified. However this is not HiFi. Even with twice the power (becuase now using rear speaker output as well as front) and these pioneer speakers which I chose becuase of their particulalry high sensitivity, the head is beginning to distort at higher volumes so if you like to listen to crank you music up loud this is not the solution for you.

I also installed a hands free bluetooth sytem with potent 100w+ Class D amp, and stremaing music through this shows the speakers are more than capable. In retrospect it would have been much better to have bought a new more powerful HU with built in bluetooth handsfree so that radio/CD also benefited from the improved amplifier rather than just streamed music. Downside of this latter solution is that if you have to park park your car on the street like me, the HU is likely to attract unwanted attention.