Rear speakers volume adjustment

ed@ny · Jul 3, 2010

Hi all,
Just purchased a Prius III a week ago, like it so far. But one thing I have not figured out is how to adjust the rear speakers volume. My Prius has a JBL system, the two front speaks are quite strong, but the rear ones are not. On my other car, Camry, the volume can be easily adjusted to make either the front or rear speakers loud / light / balanced. How to do this in Prius? I believe it must be capable of doing such a basic thing, right?

Thanks,
Ed

stream · Jul 4, 2010

You can adjust the fade control, when listening to an audio input, by pressing the sound button, then adjusting as you like.

More info in the manual.

RRxing · Jul 4, 2010

Page 319 in the manual.

fairfieldwizard · Jul 4, 2010

You will only be able to adjust this a little. There are other posts on this forum- common complaint with the JBL system- sounds great overall but rear door speaker volume is very low.

Thai · Jul 6, 2010

This is what i have posted in the past about this intentional muting of the rear speakers:

Thai said: ↑

This is intentional. Prius JBL system is a 2 channel (stereo) system. It is not a surround sound system. The rear channels/speakers are mainly there for 2 reasons:
1. provide ambience for front driver and passenger (very minor role)
2. more importantly, provide and support the front stage...so that the rear passengers still hear all sounds coming from the front of the vehicle (in front of them) and not from the sides of the doors.

If the rear speakers were more powerful, then the rear passengers' sound stage will not be good because all sounds come from the rear door that they are sitting next to. Think of it like sitting in a concert. The sound comes from the front stage, not from the sides. At the same time, the front driver and passenger should NOT be hearing too much sound coming from the rear either (such as when you have loud rear speakers)...again, think of being at a concert...do you want sounds to be blasting from the back row?

To play around, just fade the sound to the rear of the car...and sit in the rear bench and see if you like it. FOR ME, i much prefer the factory setting. I always think back to what a concert sounds like.

This type of setting (front bias) is quite common in most (if not all) modern uplevel sound systems from the factory. So, no, there is nothing wrong with JBL system.

The rear speakers consist of a midtweet (like the front dash speakers) and 6.5" round subwoofer per door. The subs are there to augment the bass for the rear passengers (along with the 6x9s in the front doors)...in what JBL calls, DSS (distriubted subwoofer system). The midtweets are high up in the doors to keep the sound stage in front and high, not at your feet. I must admit that Toyota/JBL really thought this thing through. I probably prefer another set of 6x9s in the rear doors (for more bass output), but this may have been a packaging problem since the rear doors are smaller than the fronts and you would lose the water bottle cubby. My guess.
Click to expand...

Craigmri · Sep 18, 2010

OK peeps, I'm a newbie here and I too noticed the rear speaker volume to be weak even if I was to fade all volume to the rear using the touch screen on the JBL. This is normal?

Craig

Rear speakers volume adjustment

ed@ny New Member

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