My experience has been the same. The sound isn't terrible, but it's lacking. My biggest gripe is the nav audio, I can't freaking hear it over the damn music! How much difference was the stock to the Infinity? Did you notice any difference in the nav audio sound/loudness? I appreciate your write up.
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Aftermarker Sound Upgrade of 3 Front 4" speakers
- Thread starter smagicmans
- Start date
I think its more than just not hooking up the speakers, but the amps are different as well. I believe the partial premium systems do only have the 7 channels available, which is why when we use the "activation harness" it is adding the 4 A-pillar speakers by wiring parallel with the dash speakers. In the premium systems there are 14 amp channels, and each speaker can be tuned independently. This would be the best way to tune cheap speakers and an underpowered amp to sound decent.
The pillar speakers actually ARE wired, they used the same harnesses except for the connection to the amp. The wires are all there, they just don't connect to anything when they reach the amp harness location.
I use Spotify, and I swear I could tell a difference streaming from the in-car app vs from my phone. Bummer you can't choose a higher bitrate in the car, but I guess the premium connectivity uses Tesla's cell service rather than your own, so they probably want to save some bits and bytes. I considered Tidal, but I'm not convinced the increased bitrate would actually make it to my speakers. The car probably uses a low bitrate, and if I use my phone I'm limited by bluetooth anyway and couldn't get any higher bitrate than I do from Spotify. I let my premium connectivity expire, and have been using my phone and bluetooth. I'm not going to bother putting high res music on a USB stick. It would have cost pennies to give us the ability to have wired sound from a phone via mini jack or USB. Maybe its something they can do with software at some point.
How did these stack up against the scanspeaks? That price point is very appealing.
I don't remember seeing any wires from the pillar speakers, but maybe there are. But it does seem Tesla went out of their way to make the SR+ system less capable to meet a price point, but didn't save nearly enough with it.
As for bitrate, Tidal "hifi" is full CD quality when you either download within a wifi zone, or use your phone as a wifi hotspot. I also believe that it is the case that Tesla contracts for the cellular and has usage limits, which is why it is unable to give you better quality. What I found is that at a lower bitrate you could listen and say to yourself you don't hear a difference, over a longer term, say a few hours drive, you'll reach for the off switch because it just becomes grating on the ears. That's where CD quality over Tidal has its benefits, you can listen longer. And I myself do hear a difference when you play one then the other. The lower bitrate will just sound indistinct vs. the CD quality. And when I listen to true hi-res at home even CD quality starts to sound edgy.
I argued here when I first got the car that it would cost nothing to have a jack for input, but got a lot of push back for some reason. Elon wanted only digital, Elon wanted this, Elon wanted that, blah, blah, blah. I had installed one myself in my old minivan and it took 15 minutes and I didn't know what I was doing but it worked. You won't get a USB connection because those ports are for USB devices, and/or charging. The only hope is a software DLNA receiver over the wifi. There are software receivers that run on Android devices like Firesticks or Linux on Raspberry Pi, so it shouldn't be hard to do, but there is no way to install apps so Tesla would have to do it but they haven't.
They don't have the same kind of detail the scanspeaks have, however subjectively I think they're smoother and easier to listen to. We will have to see if some of that is actually the Focal tweeters. I can't speak to imaging yet, I plan to put the set in soon.
I turned off the NAV voice a long time ago, I don't need to hear it. I know where I'm going in NYC. I just thought the stock speakers sounded cheap. The Infinity at at least had distinguishable highs.
The full premium audio adds an external amplifier which drives the woofers in the doors and other speakers.
That frees up outputs on the head unit to drive the pillar speakers and door tweeters.
Without the external amplifier the head unit alone does not have enough outputs to drive the unused speakers. The Hanshow harness l has several errors which is why it breaks nav audio.
I still don't get how it would mess with the navigation sound. I've read it does, but it doesn't make sense. All the harness does, as I understand it, is put the mirror tweeter and the a-pillar 2.5" in parallel with the L/R dash. If the nav sound comes from the L/R dash speakers, it should be just as clear as the music. If it comes from the center dash speaker, as I've heard it does, that SHOULD be unaffected. The only other thing I can think of is the "frequency divider", as they call it. But really, all that should do is block lower frequencies on the tweeter and pillar wires.
I've got a harness coming, but I decided I'm going to do a DSP so I'll just use it as a path from the DSP to the speakers.
The harness disconnects the centre speaker. At least would in my car, which is why I won't install one. That is why the navigation audio stops working.
They also wired the 'frequency divider' wrong. In another thread someone cut one open and discussed the errors.
It is fine if you are using it to get at the connections without cutting up the factory harness. I'd probalby buy one for that.
The Hansshow harness is notorious for not quite getting the connections right. That's why I didn't go with it when I did my car a few years ago. There were so many variations of the wiring in the car, and then the harness had to match that, and it never did because they just couldn't keep up with the changes.
Errors yes, however the AMD version of the Hansshow speaker activation harness doesn't do anything with the centre speaker which handles Nav Audio. I have perfectly usable Nav Audio, though I choose to mute it.
What version of the Hansshow harness do you have that breaks the Nav Audio? (Year of car?)
The schematics related to audio are (or at least were) available on the Service Tesla website for each version of the car which was nicely broken down by Premium audio vs SR+/RWD and Intel VS AMD etc.
Attached is one of the pages I referenced a lot when modifying my Hansshow harness and breaking out the door woofer signals to add a subwoofer to a RWD.
Yes Tesla changed things, but it's all clearly documented. And because of right to repair, this information was public and at the time I did it, it was also free.
I guess I'll have to figure out which are the center wires and leave those connected to the factory amp. For that matter, I guess I'll have to figure out which are ALL of the speaker wires. I sure hope I can find a pin-out somewhere, haven't looked yet. My DSP is going in on Friday along with some new door speakers and tweeters, and might as well put my sub in! I hope my wife doesn't expect to see me at all on Friday, maybe Saturday too.
You can get a harness cheaper on Amazon and even cheaper direct from China. I went with the Hansshow because I figured there would be a better shot of it being wired correctly with all the different versions being specified. But if I knew at the time I was just going to hack it up to tap the speaker wires I'd have just got a cheaper one. Hopefully the Hansshow one shows up soon. That's another benefit of Amazon, you know when you'll get it.
JBL 4086AM 8 channel. I don't have a ton of money to blow on my tunes. Got it for $300, 40w RMS X8 at 4 ohms. Software has all the standard adjustments, signal summing, remote subwoofer level control. Reviews are great, and I watched a guy benchmark it at more than its advertised RMS, should do even better with 16volts I imagine. I was happy with my last car that had a Pioneer Premier head unit, no other amp except for the sub, that was probably 22w RMS, so I don't think I need a bunch of power. Just need more tweekability.
I'm currently looking at some Skar NPX8-4 for the front doors. They are neodymium and have only a 2.3" mounting depth, slightly shallower than the Focals you recommend but which are out of my price range. I'll need to pick some tweeters for the mirror spot, too, and will probably tune the highs out of the Infinitys I put in the dash.
I have a 2023 Model 3 RWD and have installed the Infinity 4032 (3) n the dash and Focal 8" in the doors. Highly enjoy the sound over the stock speakers but always looking to tweak. Has anyone completed any or both of the following upgrades and did it added any benefits to the system -
1) replaced the rear door speakers
2) activated the A pillar & door tweeters
1) replaced the rear door speakers
2) activated the A pillar & door tweeters
1) I have Scan Speak 10F's in the rear doors, the FaitalPro 4FE32 should also fit. The infinity may not fit.
2) There are speaker activation harnesses that will activate those speakers, the implementation isn't always the best, I used a modified Hansshow harness, but others have had misswired versions etc. So there is no easy reliable answer given these Chinese products don't seem to be consistent quality.
Considering the FaitalPro 4FE32 for the rear doors.
Since you completed both the rear door speaker replacement and A pillar & door tweeter speakers activation are there any noticeable improvements to the listening experience over having just the dash & door speakers replaced?
Which one of the 2 (rear doors or speaker activation) is a more noticeable improvement to the listening experience?
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