Hi folks, we're picking up our 2013 Prius II tomorrow! (only 37,000km on it) and in test driving I noticed that the stock audio pretty crappy. I'm not an audiophile but I'd love to upgrade to something better without laying out a lot of $... Is the stock amp sufficient to run some half-decent speakers? I mean, is there an easy, pop-out, pop-in solution to just replace the speakers and get a decent boost, or is that unrealistic? We'd be running music from our Iphone 6s, itunes or streaming, or listening to the built-in radio. Do folks generally replace everything, or...?
There's a sticky thread with all the instructions you need here: 2010 Toyota Prius model II Head Unit Upgrade | PriusChat I think the upgrade which improves sound the most is to replace the 6x9 front door speakers. I bought some good-quality JBL's, but nothing super-expensive and esoteric. Bass and treble both improved very noticeably with this. Follow Spider-Man's instructions carefully. In particular: 1) Buy a Pop-rivet gun. A good-quality one. 2) Carefully read how Spiderman re-used the bracket of the stock speaker as a mounting bracket. He describes it for the rears, but it also applies for the fronts. So you do not need to buy a speaker mounting bracket. 3) Consider installing a little bit of sound deadening material, such as Dynamat. You don't need to go nuts and cover every square inch with the stuff. Even a little on the inner and outer sheet metal will deaden vibration substantially. I next replaced the dash board "squawkers" with better speakers, but it's a lot more work and less improvement results. But you are replacing some complete garbage speakers, so there is gain. The rear door speakers did not improve much. I think it's because I used 6 1/2" low-profile speakers. The cones don't move much. From the front, at least, I notice little quality from the rear speakers. Maybe different rear speakers, non-low-profile, would sound better, but I didn't test anything else for fit. I think they'd fit, though.
