Dash Center Speaker Question

Watufaka · Nov 17, 2024

Is this a speaker for music?

I installed a Beat Sonic amp. Of course, I had to remove the dash center speaker to install the amp. Sounds greats. Today, I popped open the cover and notice no vibration from the speaker while listening to music and noticed no sound from it too. I'm am 100% sure I plugged back the wires to the speaker during reinstall.

treadmark · Jan 6, 2025

Mine plays music. I have the JBL system and do not have the Beat Sonic device.

jptruck · Mar 31, 2025

Can someone please spec a Center speaker that fits in that spot? Some have made 3.5" work, but it seems like it's a 4" speaker, width-wise. Crutchfield has no recommendation. There's a clearance issue with the head unit below, as well. Not sure it's good to have the magnet of the speaker attaching to the head-unit's case.

It's an easy-to-get-to speaker. I'm just trying to find that magic "it fits" easily.

I know Kenwood Excelon KFC-X3C 3.5" has been mentioned in other threads. Can't say I've tried it yet. Any others?

ferrari1898 · Mar 31, 2025

As I understand it the Beat Sonic is only a 4 channel amp and does not power the center / or subwoofer. Just the door speakers / tweeters (as they are inline per my understanding). Likely something is not plugged in right. In a past live when I upgraded the stereo I made a point to test everything before putting it back together to avoid hours of issues and cursing.

jptruck · Mar 31, 2025

ferrari1898 said:
As I understand it the Beat Sonic is only a 4 channel amp and does not power the center / or subwoofer. Just the door speakers / tweeters (as they are inline per my understanding). Likely something is not plugged in right. In a past live when I upgraded the stereo I made a point to test everything before putting it back together to avoid hours of issues and cursing.

I have beatsonic and it is definitely powering center. Sounds like a Toyota issue

ferrari1898 · Apr 1, 2025

jptruck said:
I have beatsonic and it is definitely powering center. Sounds like a Toyota issue

The specs on their website for the amp is 4 channels @ 45W. I am pretty sure it is power the door speakers only. The other speakers (center included) should still work, but they are not being powered by the Beatsonic.

jptruck · Apr 1, 2025

OK...I'm telling you they obviously are being powered by the Beatsonic. The Beatsonic was described to me as a pre-amp (by Beatsonic). How that power is distributed through the JBL head unit seems to be a great mystery. The center channel (and corners) in mine are certainly in use, and certainly louder than before.

ferrari1898 · Apr 1, 2025

jptruck said:
OK...I'm telling you they obviously are being powered by the Beatsonic. The Beatsonic was described to me as a pre-amp (by Beatsonic). How that power is distributed through the JBL head unit seems to be a great mystery. The center channel (and corners) in mine are certainly in use, and certainly louder than before.

Well I may take a look at it again.

sirdizzle · May 1, 2025

ferrari1898 said:
Well I may take a look at it again.

Curious if you figured out the issue...
I'm debating on the beatsonic amp myself.

ferrari1898 · May 5, 2025

sirdizzle said:
Curious if you figured out the issue...
I'm debating on the beatsonic amp myself.

I have a couple issues with the amp (though general reviews are rather solid).

1 - The specs say it is only a 4 channel amp, while some have claimed it powers all the channels. I suspect the front door and tweeters (along with the rear door and tweeters) are on the same channel with a resister inline to block the bass. I do not know for sure if the amp handles only those channels or all of them. Some people claim it improves all of them; which may or may not be true and/or could merely be by improving the door speakers it improves the general sound stage as a whole.

2 - The amp itself is a Class AB, not a Class D amplifier. Class D operate much more efficiently and produce much less heat. Class AB tend to be better regarded for sound quality; for this sort of application I tend to prefer a Class D amp.

3 - While the amp is by no means plug-n-play (in my opinion), I really do not like the idea of hiding the amp in the dash. A longer cord so that it can be mounted under a seat would have been so much better to handle the heat and tuning.

jptruck · May 5, 2025

I posted this elsewhere...Finally got all the speakers swapped (including center which required semi-custom install), and added Bestsonic (along with sound dampening).

The key, for me, was to keep the speakers centered in the settings. Any moving of the cross front or back kicked out certain speakers (or cut their sound significantly). I'm basically running centered on everything, including bass, mid and treble now. Huge improvement over standard set up.

I had accidentally hit the "up" arrow on the centering speaker portion of the settings, moving it forward two notches. My doors basically went out of service when that happened. I also noticed a large difference in replacing the center dash speaker. The old one just was no jelling with the Focals I had installed.