2025 Tundra Audio Upgrade DYI vs T A C O T U N E S

After looking at the System 1A audio system these guys offer for $1,795 and knowing how my wife's LX460 JBL system sounds, I went a different route and built my own. I purchased everything from Amazon, eBay and AutoHarnessHouse.com and saved (drumroll) just shy of $1,000. It only took me an hour to install everything...OKAY, that's a lie. But the sound is incredible...NO, seriously. Watching the TT videos, helped immensely. Not only did I fall in love...okay, back to the details...I watched a lot of videos of how to easily take off the door panels, dash, the head unit, etc. and didn't need to remove the rear plastic panel behind the read seat (except to mount the 12 lb 1,100 watt BOSS 3500 amplifier and reinstall it) and I positioned the 10" subwoofer in a narrow enclosure under the rear passenger side seat. I have the two pics of the amp mounted and the subwoofer along with an itemized list of everything I purchased for the install. WORTH IT, TOTALLY WORTH IT and sounds a ton better than the JBL system in the 2025's. I attached the worksheet showing everything I purchased to build the system.

 

Bobby, did you upgrade your door speakers? Was wondering regarding front doors and pillar mount tweeters, is there a re highpass filter already for each of these speakers and are they on their own channel or parallel off the same channel.

 

I installed four of the same speakers into doors, NVX XSP65 6 1/2" speakers. I purchased the kit from Amazon

$140 NVX® XSP65KIT 6.5" Car Speakers, 600W Max, 200W RMS, 2-Way 6-1/2" Component System w/ 1" Silk Dome Tweeters & Passive X-Overs, Easy to Install in Cars/Trucks/Doors (Pair)

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B8F1BPQS?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_asin_title and strapped the 1" silk tweeters into the rear doors in-place of the crappy little tweeter that came with the truck. I also hooked-up the active crossovers on front and rear door woofers and tweeters. At first I had the 1" silk tweeters in the front right and left in the dash (more room for the active crossover under the dash), but didn't like the sound. So I purchased the 3 1/2" version of the NVX speakers for the L & R dash instead of using the 1" silk tweeters. After experimenting with one of the 1" silk tweeters in the center of the dash, I ultimately just disconnected it as it wasn't hooked up to any crossover and was overpowering the front L & R dash speakers. Sounds better. No, it sounds awesome. The tricky part is tuning the 5-channel processor, adjusting the power out of that device into the amp. The amp I bought allows a 2-8 volt input so I just made sure not to exceed 8 volts into the amp. From there, adjusting the gain to the four channels for the 6 1/2" speakers to ensure no distortion when you want to really kick-up the volume. I put a 2 1/2" pipe into a port I drilled in my shallow box for the 10" woofer under the rear seat and the bass is really pure and doesn't sound like a gang banger's Mitsubishi. All-in-all, my Tundra's sound is vastly better than the JBL system in my wife's GX460 for far, far less money. I spent just north of $800 all-in.

 

@Bobby Zee (or anyone else for that matter( @Snert @blenton ? )that wants to take me to school here, I'll listen.)
I'll start with the bottom line first:
If your sub setup works great and you're happy with it, that's really all that matters, and that's awesome.

I'm looking at your sub and that box you linked in the other thread here: https://www.tundras.com/threads/upgrading-the-audio-in-2025-trd-pro.153239/
and I'm thinking there's no way there's enough volume in that box for that sub.
My curiosity got the best of me and I did the math on the box and found specs on the sub.

Questions for you. Truly want to /trying to learn here so please don't take offensively.
Am I correct in saying you took a sealed box and ported it?
Box volume specs on Planet Audio's site for the

$53 AC10D Anarchy Series 10" Car Subwoofer - 1500 Watts Max, Dual 4 Ohm Voice Coil, Sold Individually

AC10D say: 1 cubic foot sealed and 2 cubic foot ported.
Doing the math on that Amazon box, assuming no internal bracing, I came up with .427 cubic foot internal volume.

If my math is right, and the box is now ported, it's almost 5 times "too small" from the recommended volume spec.

Ultimately my question: Is there really this much leeway in box volume for good results?
Or is there more I'm not seeing / understanding?

You mentioned a 5-channel processor, but I didn't see that listed in your "Savings over TT" file. Do you have DSP or were you referring to the LOC?

Thanks, and enjoy your new truck and improved system.

 

The interior of the truck isn't Carnegie Hall. If you do the math, I'd need a box big enough to take up a whole seat. I didn't see the value of tearing out the rear plastic liner to shove something like TT offers. The bass response is MORE THAN ADEQUATE and porting the sub, allows the lower hertz signal to occupy the larger space under the rear seat, which you didn't include in your calculations. Trust me, it works.

$60 SoundQubed Active 5-Channel Car Audio Line Out Convertor - High to Low Head Unit Signal Convertor

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09G7TQTXT?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_asin_title It's 5-Channel Car Audio Line Out Convertor - High to Low Head Unit Signal Convertor, I didn't mean "processor" it's a LOC. It's the same item, more or less, that TT calls their NTUNE6.

 

Fair enough, thanks for the info.

 

You’re a bonafide audiophile that bought a Boss audio amp? Is that what comes in the TT package? I’ve heard they repackage subpar equipment also, so could be equivalent. I’m in disbelief that your “ported box” mod creates good bass response. If it all sounds good together in your truck I guess that’s all that matters. Not sure it’s great advice to share for everyone though.

 

I have a good ear, I'm not rich. And if you want to take free advice from a stranger on the Internet, well, you get what you pay for. I definitely wasn't going to shell-out $1,795 for what TT was offering. 12,400 posts...WOW, just WOW. Now that's commitment.

 

You are correct in your line of thinking - both about box size and about things sounding good to different people.

The speaker box contributes to the back wave of the woofer, while the vehicle enclosure (cabin) contributes to the front wave of the woofer. We want to control the back wave in order to affect the influence the front wave has on what we hear. For example, if we don't separate the front and back wave by placing the driver in an enclosure or at least on a baffle, the back wave will interfere with the front wave and eliminate the majority of the bass it would otherwise produce. The port in a vented enclosure simply introduces a second resonance in to the system - the speaker driver in a box being the first resonance; if it is improperly tuned, its affects are virtually voided. At that point, you would be listening to a sealed enclosure.

Vented enclosures behave like sealed enclosures until you approach the tuning octave of the vent. In that tuning octave, the air pressurizing the vent is what makes noise - not the woofer or even the back wave of the woofer. It operates off of the principles illustrated in a Helmholtz resonator, like blowing air across the top of a glass coke bottle. If you add airspace to the bottle (i.e. - drink some fo the soda) there is more air to resonant and then pitch drops. If there's hardly any air in the bottle, tuning is very high.

Similarly, a box that is too small and a vent that is improperly tuned will no create the desired port resonating affect to contribute to the lower bass response. Ported boxes are typically larger than sealed because you want an earlier F3 rolloff so that the the vent will contribute in a linear fashion, rather than adding a big lump where the driver is already effectively producing bass. Well, most of the time that's not what we want.

I'm guessing that you are getting a fair amount of cabin gain/boost but that the vent isn't contributing much to lower bass response. You could probably simply block the port with very little affect on sound quality, but an increase in power handling and decrease in cone excursion in lower the lower bass.

The enclosure airspace acts like a spring; like a vehicle, too much or little spring can cause unintended results. Halving the desired airspace will increase the system QTC. QTC is a measure of the system sound quality factor, or system damping (not whether or not is of high quality sound, so to speak), and will generally tell you if a driver is well controlled, loose sounding, or tight sounding. I know those are horrible adjectives to describe it, but most prefer a QTS between .7 and .9; system q above 1 and below .5 can sound off - too much ringing or like the bass is slow... Think of flipping a ruler on the side of a desk in grade school: if the ruler is very long, it will take a while to come back to rest. If it is very short, it will almost instantly come back to rest and stop vibrating. QTC makes a similar type of measurement based off the driver parameters and enclosure specs.

 

In bar parlance, "I left with a 10 and woke-up with a 3." As to the lower bass response, when my wife rides with me, I don't get to enjoy the bass.

 

Unfortunately, I can relate to this.

 

man, I feel like a newbie when I read some of the technical discussions. Could someone do me a favor and see how a JL Audio 10TW3 and 12TW3 act in a ported box with a volume of 1.4 and or 1.65 tuned for 38 Hz? I am looking at prefab boxes and then thinking of building my own but it would not be as nice. I know these speakers called for a ported box around 1ft^3.