Speaker upgrade

You won't have to solder them in. What speakers are you thinking about? You can modify the tweeter pod to fit other tweeters within reason.

Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.

 

Cheap or even expensive speakers won't sound much different unless you upgrade/add an amplifier under the seat.

 

First step is, does your JBL system already have an amp under the seat and which speakers it powers. Can you post photo of current speakers and amp?

As for shopping for an amp and a speaker, just find least expensive that have better numbers on the spec sheet than your current ones.

 

You might want to upgrade the sound isolation/padding. That's the thing that's holding back the audio more than anything else. When they designed the Prius, they realized it's pretty quiet and didn't need all that much (unless driving near a Harley or diesel pickup) so they didn't put a lot of money and time into the sound padding. Also, there's a lot of the car's audio energy that's going out into the world, instead of being contained in the car. I can hear my wife's book on tape every time she pulls into the driveway. I tried listening to the car's audio system sitting in park in a quiet place. It wasn't as bad as I first thought.

Unfortunately, upgrading the sound padding isn't that easy. There's at least one thread on that here - maybe not for your generation, but the process will be the same.

For me, I gave up on having true high fidelity audio in the car. I get it if you're not at that point yet though.

 

This is precisely what's wrong with all car audio... A vehicle is one of the worst places in the world to listen to a high quality sound system. People who spend big money on car audio are being scammed by a market that knows only sound engineers are going to realize they're selling garbage. Just upgrade with cheapest speakers and amps and you'll notice a big difference from OEM.