RAV 4 2018 Hybrid Audio quality

April 22, 2018

Hi all

I'm about to receive a RAV 4 2018 hybrid (here in Portugal they have launched a Pure Dark Edition that is more or less the Premium set without LED front highbeams (?), no leather nor electric seats, dark roof).

I came from an Avensis T27 that had a fantastic 11 Speakers + Power AMP sound system, from factory. Now I get a "simple" 6 loudspeakers, no external Power Amp system. For the first impression I got during the test drives the sound is "closed" (sorry for my poor english terms) with no clarity on the middle range nor high frenquencies and booming bass with no definition. JBL kit is not an option in Portugal but, as far as I've read around, it's not a problem since the kit is not very good.

I'm wondering if any of you, with similar model, had/have the same impression as me, if it's just during the first days before a "burning time", if you had replaced the loudspeakers to anything better - if so what brand/model?

I don't want to get a disco inside the car so no need for extraordinary Power AMps with huge woofers taking space from the trunck. I just need clean and defined as much Hi-Fi as possible sound :-). I listen to everything, from Heavy Metal to Debussy's piano Works.

Any feedback much appreciated.

Thank you.

May 1, 2018

Hi all

Just received the new RAV4.

The audio system is not as bad as I was expecting. However is, also, not near the good as the one from Avensis was.

The sound is flat, no 3D sensation. The highs and mids are somehow foggy and the bass is present but boomy. It's like you're listening to radio all the time, independently of the audio source.

I like the sound to be airy and well defined so I'll start with the easy part and replace the front dash Speakers to something like JBL CLUB 3020 (high sensitive - good to be connected to the OEM headunit without additional AMPs - and fits well the space). It's fairly inexpensive and I'll give it a try. The only down part is that I'll have to do some wiring changes since the feed wires for the front port Speakers comes from a loop on the front dash Speakers (???!!??) - hope the font door speakers have some kind of crossover near it.

If anyone knows about these JBL speakers or any other that would give me a detailed sound, great mids but not too harsh on the highs, sensitive enough to work with the OEM headunit, please give me an advise on it.

Best regards

Gonçalo

May 21, 2018

Hi all

This weekend I decided to see what type of loudspeaker I had on the Dashboard. It's a plastic based one, looks like just a tweeter, 20W 4 Ohm, with a big plug with 4 pins/cables on it. As far as I understood, all these cables are the in to the tweeter and out to the door's loudspeaker.

Attached the pictures of it. Hope it would help some of you who wanted to know about it.

I'm in the process of looking for a replacement of it but it has to fit on the hole and the ones considered the one of the best 8,5's (Polk Audio) on the market don't fit there. The alternative would be the cheap range of JBL. I could open a hole on the grille so the tweeter would come up freely :-) If anyone has any suggestion here would be highly appreciated.

Best regards.