OEM Audio Plus 2021 SR5 Premium Installed and Thoughts

I just thought I'd do a quick little write up on the OEM audio upgrade I installed yesterday. First off I want to say I have a third row so the sub is abit different from all the pics you see on their site. Secondly OEM Audio's customer service is unreal. I had to call them a few times throughout the install to ask quick questions and they were great every time. There were a couple things that were changed from 20 and up due to the new head unit. There's an adapter harness for the speakers and the amp has been lowered under the seat instead of sitting right next to the bottom cushion. The ports now face forward as opposed to sideways as some of the directions say. One other thing not outlined in the directions was that there were two blue wires on the back of the harness that were unused. This was one of the calls I had to make. Another was that the magnets on the front 6x9's were smaller. They changed a few things so I wanted to make sure.

If I had to complain about one thing it would be that I didn't opt to get the separate amp for the subwoofer allowing me to independently control it. The 6x9's in the front are very bass heavy so I have to turn the bass all the way down to be happy. The sub still provides bass at this level. I'd just as soon have the bass behind me.

The speakers alone were worth the upgrade. The speakers provided with the 4runner from Japan were garbage. I think they produced too many in the 80's and are still using them. They were a joke. All in all I'm very happy. I do wish the front speakers were 6.5's like the others so the bass wasn't as prevalent up front but that's my only nag about the whole thing. The hardest part of the installation was routing the harness behind the glove box. I had my 8 year old with skinny arms help out. Make sure you have a "stick" for lack of a better word to try and push a solo wire from the head unit area to the passenger side then attach that wire to the harness and pull it through. Works pretty well. I'll get some of the random pics I took added in a second.

Oh I did forget I had to route the sub harness a little different to get some more length as it would have been about 6 inches too short routing it the way they wanted me to. Instead of routing it around the back, I had to move it forward a bit and under the tracks for the third row.

 

Pics

 

What is your skill level? Speakers look nice! Any kind of electronic mods scare me because of my lack of knowledge.

 

I can tackle most anything but this is literally plug and play. the scariest part is pulling panels off. Do it on a warm day so things are a bit more flexible. I didn't even take the rear door panels all the way off and I didn't disconnect the handle cables at all. As I said the most difficult part was threading the wiring harness behind the glove box.


It's for my wife so I'll see if it passes her test today when she listens to it.

 

I also recently installed the OEM audio + kit in mine and like Baron, the biggest pain in the ass was running the wires to the head unit behind the glove box. I would recommend a wire fishing tool and getting a kit of trim removal tools. So far I'm really happy with the result, the stock speakers are absolute trash. They are paper thin and clearly the cheapest things they could slap on. The O+ 6x9's for the front are definitely bassy and you could get away with just upgrading those with an amp and not get the rear sub. I'm glad I went with the entire kit because it does produce a very well balance sound and I can actually hear the music clearly with the windows down on the highway. You could not do that with the stock speakers because you'd need to almost max out the sound and then everything just sounded like mush.

Oh and pro tip to make re-installing the door panels easier. There is this piece that slides into the door frame to keep things from falling into the window channel, remove that from the door panel, place it on the door frame. Now you can just line up the holes and get the door panel installed. I could not get the door panel installed without removing that piece and it took me about an hour of fighting the door before I was able to figure that out.

 

yeah that happened to me on the passenger side and I was like wtf..........oh it stayed on this time. yeah makes it a breeze. Would you have done the separate sub amp marchy? Kind of wish I would have as stated earlier.

 

You know what, I don't think i'd get the separate sub amp as I'm personally happy with the current set up. But I can certainly see how having the ability to control the sub separate from the speakers would be a benefit to tuning the sound to the individual preference. the nice thing is that assuming you ran both power wires to the engine bay, you can easily add it.

 

yeah should be a 20 minute job tops.

 

It would take me 20 minutes to open the box..

 

Maybe a half hour the wiring seriously all in place

 

I did OEM + speakers only along with Subaru tweeters and all doors and tailgate every inch sound deadening. All I can say - WOW, because it made such huge difference. Clear crisp sound from speakers and Lexus like nicely quiet interior.

 

Did you do a write-up or separate post detailing your install? I'm curious as to what all you did, especially the sound deadening.

 

There is nothing difficult about sound deadening and since I had door panels off for speaker install, access was a breeze. I used poly roller and plastic trim remover to get in each door nook. You only need to cover inside of external door skin, therefore 36 sq. ft. of material is just right. Note that fully insulated rear gate will need stronger struts to open as intended (Gobi or Strut Depot have ladder struts that work perfectly for this). I used this stuff which beats Dynamat price by a mile and its quality is superb:

 

I noticed that even with just the upgraded speakers my rear door sags. Thanks for suggesting strut depo, just ordered a set of stronger struts.

 

I looked at the OEM kit this morning. It's pricey ($1799!) but I'm glad to read a fairly good review of it. My beef is that their sub blocks access to my jack stand. Granted, I don't go in their very often but why they chose the left side of the 4R instead of the right is beyond me.

 

Because it’s a pain with the electric stuff there but you can get it right hand. The sub lifts right out btw

 

Looks nice Here's a question. Will one be able to fit a double din radio in place of the stock head unit ? Thanks

 

I emailed them awhile back asking about getting the single sub option on the passenger side so it wouldn't block the jack. The short answer is yes.

Here's the actual response:
If you prefer the sub be on the passenger side versus the driver side, at the time you place your order, in the notes section, please make your request there. Also, follow up with us to ensure that your order is processed with your special request.

 

Pricey for sure, but it comes with all the wiring you'll need. You could build yourself something for less, but then you need to figure out all the wiring, brackets, etc... Ask a local shop to build you something like this, it'll end up costing upwards of 2k (at least it did in the few places I reached out to locally). I also enjoyed the idea of having a project to tackle on myself.

For your jack access concerns, the sub is not attached, it slips in place and can easily comes pops up so you can get access to the jack storage. And as you said, you won't be going in there often, so its truly a minor inconvenience IMO.

 

I got the speaker + amp (no subwoofer) but returned the amp.

The amp is supposed to perform better at higher audio levels + change the actual signal to their sound signature matching the speakers + speakers/material/etc. for the car.

However, I cold not hear ANY difference with or without the amp, which was about half my cost. I couldn't hear any difference, friends couldn't hear any difference, and audio recordings showed no difference. So really no clue what's going on there...

But yes speakers alone are a very nice upgrade and their customer service IS indeed amazing.

 

Hmmm wonder what they’d have to say about that. Haha.

 

Did you try to adjust the ( gain control for the amp )? That makes a big differnce with the amps my gain is set at a little less than half way and it sounds a lot louder than just the speaker upgrade, & with the amps i tried it both ways just upgraded speakers and with subs & speakers it was louder then just the speaker upgrade. Just the speaker up grade is night and day but the amps do make a difference when you dial in the gain control.

 

Pretty sure there isn’t a gain knob.

 

I don't remember any gain knob. Just infotainment volume + ability to swap out "sound profile" or whatever on the amp itself, which helped clarify you can def make it sound diff (I only experienced worse) but in the proper setup I saw no difference.

 

Huh. I don’t have a clue how to do any of that. .

 

In the install video on OEM’s website the gain control is at about 7 minutes in on the video the wire connection is at 4 min. The wire plugs in the amp at remote plug and the gain control connects to the cable.
https://youtu.be/67mBc6CX1y4

 

Well if that’s the case I don’t have one of those knobs but I’m thinking it might just be for the dedicated amp for the subwoofer I could be wrong though if anyone else got the set up without the dedicated sub up and has that game control knob I’d like to know.

 

Not sure if the gain control comes with the speaker & amp system, i bought my system form a member. The system came with sub and amps but i did the speakers first then just the amp & speakers withs gain then added sub & amp to see what the difference was each time

 

Would you install the sub woofer and amp if you had to do it again? I am wondering if they are worth the extra coin.

 

I have both side subs they take up a lot of space & have to remove them to get to jack and or the tail lights, driver side comes out easy the pass side i have bolted down with one bolt were the tie down was.I need to take the speaker out of the sub box to remove the box pass side, if had to do it again i think i would just wish the subs were easer to take out. The hardest part was running the wires for the amps and subs all the rest was easy.