2013 LC Audio Upgrade (2 Viewers)

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Joined
Jan 6, 2022
Threads
11
Messages
166
Location
Minnesota
Been reading the forum for the last two months.

Just purchased my first LC. Had a Acura RL in high school, Toyota Sequoia in college and now finally had the funds to get the dream car the Toyota Land Cruiser. Black 2013 Toyota Land Crusier with 100k miles on it. I plan on keeping it until my 40’s come.

Glad to join the family and wonderful LC community.

My whole life I have had after market audio equipment in my cars because my older brothers and cousins always had them and did competitions at Audio King and Best Buy back in the days.

I’ve been researching a ton of threads such as the “adding factory subwoofer” and all the other good informative stuff by guys like Grinchy, Murkman, TomCruis etc.

I know the issues and how hard it is to incorporate the stock JBL system with aftermarket amps and subs.

My first plan was just do get the LC2I Pro Line Out Converter and transfer my old mono 1200 Kicker Amp and L7 15 to the LC. I know this is very possible since many people have already done so.

After driving the LC for a month, I realized that the speakers are decent but nothing special.

My question to all the brothers who have already gone down this road before me, is this set up possible?

1) LC7I which is the 6 channel Audio Control Line out converter.

2) Aftermarket 4 channel amp with two new speakers in the corner dash and 2 new speakers in the tail gate. Since these locations offer full range signals: Highs, mids, and lows.

3) Mono 1200W amp with the L7 15 subwoofer.

This would all stay with the stock head unit of course.

Thanks and I await your comments, wisdoms and replies before I go on this journey of upgrading my dream car.
 
Here is a photo of the new 13 LC next to my 04 Sequoia.

Don’t mind the snow and ice. It’s a damn ice age in Minnesota this time of year lol

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A 15 inch subwoofer? Where is that going to go?
Haha it will go in the trunk. I will be pulling the 3rd row seating. I’ve had it for 5 years now.

I’ve always had a 15 solo baric since high school. Had one in my RL and then moved it into my Sequoia then it got stolen when my car got broken into the one time I fall asleep at my cousins house in the inner city.

So after my Sequioa got violated, I kinda went overkill to replace all that was lost. I got a top of the line compustar car alarm with window shock and car tilt. Then I wanted to replace my 15 that got stolen. I got a custom birch box built for it.

I love it.

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Funny story; The day before I bought my 13 black LC, I went to go test drive a white 13 LX.

The LX had 122k miles but was about 4 K cheaper than the LC which had 100K.

Drove the LX around 9am; liked it but didn’t love since the car was caked in ice and snow and they didn’t have it ready for me. There was a slight vibration at the wheel wells. I told them to detail it, defrost the whole car and I would be back later in the evening to drive it again and potentially purchase it.

Came back at 630pm and the sales associate said someone just came 30 mins prior and purchased the LX.

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You'll find some good potential space under the passenger seat for an Amp or DSP. If you do find a full range output on the JBL amp post it up. I suspect the hatch speakers will be filtered low (for the sub). They might still have highs though.

Document what you end up with!

Are you going to put some sound dampening in the hatch area for that box?

No one has experimented with a MOST decode box (GM for example), are you looking at that?
 
Obligatory

 
After some talks with Crutchfield and Audio Control.

I’m going to start the audio rebuild in steps.

Step 1: going to add the 15 L7 Solo Baric, Kicker 1200 mono watt amp and LC2i Pro.

Also changing the Dash Corner Speakers to some Alpine Type S. Center Dash to a JBL Concert Series. Tailgate to Infinity’s.

Step 2 later in the Spring will change out the speakers in the door and add a 8 channel Amp and DSP to control the output levels for all the speakers in the car.

Will update when things occur. Right now just purchasing parts but won’t actually put the audio in until another month when it’s warmer outside and I can spend some time to pull the 3rd row out.
 
Great topic. Subscribed.
 
Great topic. Subscribed.

Thanks. I chose the 4 inch Infinity 4032x for the Tail Gate because they are 3 ohm, 35 rms and have a higher sensitivity over 92 DB. The JBL 4 inch will replace the speaker in the center dash. It is a 3 ohm, 30 rms and 90 db.

The stock speakers of the Land Cruiser are all 2 ohms and around 20-25 rms so you can’t put in super powerful speakers or components to replace them because the car can’t power them right to make them effective.

In the corner dash, I’m putting two 4 inch Alpine Type S-S40 which are 45 rms. They are the main mids and highs in the front of the land crusier where us drivers always sit.

Here’s a little video of a demo of those Alpines in a stock factory radio set up: they will make a big time improvement without needed an aftermarket amp.




All the speakers I have chose will be plug and play. You won’t have to make any big adjustments to make them fit in their holes and slots. I’m the not most mechanical person so I don’t want to have to cut and do a ton of work. The speakers, I’ll put in myself. Our factory JBL amp should be able to power these new speakers and give a much better sound then the cheap paper speakers we have now.

The amp and woofer, I will pay a shop to do it and tune it.

So far I have spent $280 for the speakers which will replace 5 of the 13 in the LC.

The line out converter is $120. Also got a 4 gauge wiring kit from Amazon from a company I have been using since high school, KnuKnoceptz. The wiring kit is $70.

So so far I’m at around $470 spent. Using a sub and amp I already have. Those two are the more expensive purchases for anyone really looking to upgrade.

Will continue to update this thread when more things are accomplished and finalized.

Thanks and hope anyone else having similar concerns or dreams for the LC or LX can find this helpful or entertaining.
 
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Been reading the forum for the last two months.

Just purchased my first LC. Had a Acura RL in high school, Toyota Sequoia in college and now finally had the funds to get the dream car the Toyota Land Cruiser. Black 2013 Toyota Land Crusier with 100k miles on it. I plan on keeping it until my 40’s come.

Glad to join the family and wonderful LC community.

My whole life I have had after market audio equipment in my cars because my older brothers and cousins always had them and did competitions at Audio King and Best Buy back in the days.

I’ve been researching a ton of threads such as the “adding factory subwoofer” and all the other good informative stuff by guys like Grinchy, Murkman, TomCruis etc.

I know the issues and how hard it is to incorporate the stock JBL system with aftermarket amps and subs.

My first plan was just do get the LC2I Pro Line Out Converter and transfer my old mono 1200 Kicker Amp and L7 15 to the LC. I know this is very possible since many people have already done so.

After driving the LC for a month, I realized that the speakers are decent but nothing special.

My question to all the brothers who have already gone down this road before me, is this set up possible?

1) LC7I which is the 6 channel Audio Control Line out converter.

2) Aftermarket 4 channel amp with two new speakers in the corner dash and 2 new speakers in the tail gate. Since these locations offer full range signals: Highs, mids, and lows.

3) Mono 1200W amp with the L7 15 subwoofer.

This would all stay with the stock head unit of course.

Thanks and I await your comments, wisdoms and replies before I go on this journey of upgrading my dream car.

I’m reading this thread with interest because I used to play around with audio in cars I’ve owned. I have 3 questions for you.

To your ears, what are the problems with the factory system that you plan to improve?

What audio source will you be using and is it attenuated/compressed?

Are you planning any insulation or sound deadening to reduce road/wind noise and extraneous vibrations?
 
Have you figured out how you plan to feed signal to a outboard amp yet. @grinchy has already mentioned it, finding a full range source to use with a line converter hasn’t really been documented yet.

There are basically 2 options:

Option 1: Grab signal from between head unit and factory amp.

There has to be at least one clean 2 channel source there, either analog or digital. The MOST interface grinchy referred is digital. This route you’d lose a lot of controls from the OEM head unit, as I think all tone/volume/balance/fader controls are in the factory amp that you would essentially be bypassing. This is how LX is configured, LC could be different.

Option 2: line out conversion post OEM amp

I think there is a thread out there that has a good breakdown of what signal each speaker is getting, or was possibly heading that way and then died. Someone was going to run recorded frequency sweeps to verify where the filters were.

For example, we know there is no full range output for the front speakers. Although 4 channels of line converter and amplifier could easily be stacked to cover the signal range.

Really everything after getting the front stage is trivial, in that it doesn’t really matter, just get something making sound in rear and you will be fine.

From memory in other threads, the rear doors have one signal split with a inline “crossover” for the tweeter. (I believe the 4” speakers in front and tweeter in A-Pillar are the same configuration). The rear hatch is a single full range speaker possibly filtered from lower frequencies.

To me this means you need a minimum of 6 channels of line converter (+1 for sub) to get a reasonable approximation of the factory JBL setup. That would be 4 for front, 2 for rear (split to rear doors and rear hatch).

On the sub front, I doubt you will find many on this forum willing to duplicate dropping a 2+ cubic foot box in their cab. Here, most would be interested in maximizing the OEM sub location. There are already a few threads on that.
 
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I’m reading this thread with interest because I used to play around with audio in cars I’ve owned. I have 3 questions for you.

To your ears, what are the problems with the factory system that you plan to improve?

What audio source will you be using and is it attenuated/compressed?

Are you planning any insulation or sound deadening to reduce road/wind noise and extraneous vibrations?
The sound is good but not great. I have to turn it to volume 35-40 with an aux cable to get it to the level where I can really jam out in the car to hear the highs, mids, and lows. It’s like a decent level above stock. Stock is crap. Decent level above that is average. Like Bose “premium” and JBL “premium” isn’t really premium.

I use the aux and usually play music from my phone library because they are 320 kbps audio files. It has the best output for music in my opinion over Bluetooth, radio etc.

I will dynomat the trunk for sure because that’s where my sub will be going and maybe the doors in the second phase when I change out those speakers. I want to see how much rattle there is first with the aftermarket sub in the trunk.

Included are photos of the OEM “JBL Synthesis” Premium Speakers: from the corner dash, center dash and trunk from Crutchfield.

They are junk. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. They are cheap paper crap.

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Have you figured out how you plan to feed signal to a outboard amp yet. @grinchy has already mentioned it, finding a full range source to use with a line converter hasn’t really been documented yet.

There are basically 2 options:

Option 1: Grab signal from between head unit and factory amp.

There has to be at least one clean 2 channel source there, either analog or digital. The MOST interface grinchy referred is digital. This route you’d lose a lot of controls from the OEM head unit, as I think all tone/volume/balance/fader controls are in the factory amp that you would essentially be bypassing. This is how LX is configured, LC could be different.

Option 2: line out conversion post OEM amp

I think there is a thread out there that has a good breakdown of what signal each speaker is getting, or was possibly heading that way and then died. Someone was going to run recorded frequency sweeps to verify where the filters were.

For example, we know there is no full range output for the front speakers. Although 4 channels of line converter and amplifier could easily be stacked to cover the signal range.

Really everything after getting the front stage is trivial, in that it doesn’t really matter, just get something making sound in rear and you will be fine.

From memory in other threads, the rear doors have one signal split with a inline “crossover” for the tweeter. (I believe the 4” speakers in front and tweeter in A-Pillar are the same configuration). The rear hatch is a single full range speaker possibly filtered from lower frequencies.

To me this means you need a minimum of 6 channels of line converter (+1 for sub) to get a reasonable approximation of the factory JBL setup. That would be 4 for front, 2 for rear (split to rear doors and rear hatch).

On the sub front, I doubt you will find many on this forum willing to duplicate dropping a 2+ cubic foot box in their cab. Here, most would be interested in maximizing the OEM sub location. There are already a few threads on that.
The 8 channel amps that I will use in step two is going to be an Amp and DSP built in together.

Debating if I want to spend $800 on the Alpine PXE 850 or $400 on the JBL 4086 or $600 for the Audio Control DM 810.

All 3 of those units will be able to pick up the signal from the factory JBL and control and EQ whatever speakers I want.

I’ve been searching all over the internet for who has done it. Grinchy did it with the Alpine. A ton of people who the Tundra and Tacoma with the “premium JBL synthesis” used the JBL 4086 to add more amplifiers. TomCruis from this forum used the Audio Control DM 810 to grab the signal from the factory JBL amp.

Here is his review from Crutchfield explaining his process.

As for me I’m going to start first by grabbing the bass signal from the stock subwoofer, putting it into a LC2i Pro Line Out converter to feed my mono amp and subwoofer.

If you don’t want to add a big box, you can just buy a better 8 inch sub, use the oem space and power it with a 300-400 watt rms amp. The stock JBL amp will not be able to give you the power you need to push it the way you want it.

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Here is TomCruis post about his successful upgrade


Here is another members success just adding a better subwoofer and mono amp to power it using a cheap Line out converter


I will be tapping my signal from the factory subwoofer in the trunk with my LC2i Pro line out converter.

I’m not gonna touch the stock amp until I get the DSP.
 
As long as you have your ducks in a row. The ML system in my LX is fine for 98% of the time for me, so I probably won’t mess with it. Other than adding a Grom VL2 at some point. Up until my last car I have gutted and replaced the stereo in every vehicle I’ve ever owned.

Ive softened in my old age I guess, even my home stereo is just a shell of the systems I used to run.


This thread has a lot of good info in it, including the back story for TomCruis’s journey.

Thread 'Factory Subwoofer Info Guide'
Factory Subwoofer Info Guide - https://forum.ih8mud.com/threads/factory-subwoofer-info-guide.1193993/
 
Also, you might look into the Dayton DSP408. It’s considerably cheaper than the processors mentioned. (Even if you used 2, though I suspect you could get away with one).

There is also the MiniDSP C 6x8 automotive. This would allow you to pull the 4 channels for the front stage as well as one pair to drive the 4 rear speakers.

Might be tougher to get a local shop to install those since they aren’t typical car stereo brands, even if they are designed for the application.
 
To clarify
LX570 Mark Levinson has regular 2 channel and Coax digital out from source / at the amp.
TLC JBL Synthesis uses MOST between the source and amp so there is no 2 channel low level signal. There might be a coax, I don’t recall.
Perhaps some simple work inside the sources to tap the low level signals directly, before they get encoded could be possible.
@Eric Sarjeant when you did the full amp system do you recall how you got the source signal - did you use a MOST decoder?
 
Here is how I control the Alpine dsp. It closes right in for that stock look when parked.

Watching with interest to see how the speaker replacements go, I’m pretty interested in this.
I am very satisfied with the dsp, basic tune plus subwoofer, but improved clarity and imaging wouldn’t hurt.

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