I bought a new Toyota Camry ('08) and I'm a little disappointed with the stereo system. Is it just me, or is the sound kinda dim and distant, no matter how you adjust the fader and bass/treble settings?

I had a Monsoon system in my previous VW-Passat, and I really want to have the same quality and presence of sound in my Camry...

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"The favorite American pastime is not baseball, it's moral crusades."

Monsoon is a higher-end audio system than whatever your camry is coming with, likely decently generic speakers. If you want a good sound, you're going to have to purchase new speakers, or puchase new speakers with an amplifier, depending upon how far you want to take this. Usually a good set of low/mid-end pioneer speakers are pretty good... anything high-end will require a separate amplifier, and will blow out the speakers eventually if underpowered.

Did you buy the optional JBL audio package?

It's kind of irrelevant I suppose, since your ears are the judge of what sounds good. If you want your audio to sound better, you're going to have to upgrade your speakers and amp(s), maybe head unit as well.

Like Fibonacci said, it depends "how far you want to take this" and how much money you want to spend.

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Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.

---JFK---

A fight is not won by one punch or kick. Either learn to endure or hire a bodyguard.

Forget about winning and losing; forget about pride and pain. Let your opponent graze your skin and you smash into his flesh; let him smash into your flesh and you fracture his bones; let him fracture your bones and you take his life. Do not be concerned with escaping safely - lay your life before him.

---Bruce Lee---

start by getting a new reciever/head-unit. I have upgraded head-units and many cars with factory speakers. Just doing that modification alone yielded better sound quality.

I don't have JBL -- that only comes on XLEs. I have an LE.

Even if I DID get a JBL, it's a crappy system (as far as commercial systems go), so it's not really worth the expense.

My question is, do I change the head unit and stop there, or do I concentrate on the speakers/amp. Changing BOTH is not an option for me. too expensive

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"The favorite American pastime is not baseball, it's moral crusades."

change the head unit first. i know a kid who upgraded speakers and amps on a stock head unit and the system still sounds crappy (and he used good equipment too). It doesn't matter how good your speakers are, if your source sucks than the sound outputted through them will still suck.

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Was driving a rental last week for work and noticed how the whole centre console really looks to make it way to hard to change the deck over. Seems to me like you'd be stuck with what you buy, unless you get someone to redesign the whole piece?

I dont like the JBL 6 cd changer. My mom's got busted after 5 years of use... :-(

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OK so here's an update on my situation:

I ended up changing my entire system. I got a new head-unit (Alpine CDA-9885), new professional speakers (all 6 of them - Polk), and an external amp, Alpine 4-Channel. The CDA-9885 is hooked up to the external amp; there is no internal amplification, for maximum quality. In short, everything about my current system is now top-of-the-line. I spent close to $1500 on this ordeal!!

Don't get me wrong, the sound is very clean and crisp, but... it's not warm, or mind-blowing in any way. I really miss the warmth. The people I showed my new system to all liked the clean sound, but they said, "It sounds like a very good stock system, but nothing more," and I agree. Of course, this is a 1000x better than what I had originally in my Camry. But in my VW-Passat that I had before this car, even the original Monsoon system was much warmer and more pleasant than this!!! Even the stock systems in other cars, like Nissan, sound better than what I have now! How could this be?

Does anyone know what's responsible for warmth and smoothness. I mean I picked the CDA-9885 at the recommendation of friends who swore it was "the best in sound quality," everyone keeps saying that. Or is it the positioning of the speakers in a Camry? The two sets of speakers are far apart, so maybe they don't provide any ambience...

I'm so frustrated with all this shit, and with all the "experts" who think they know what they're talking about, I'm just about ready to trade in my Camry

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"The favorite American pastime is not baseball, it's moral crusades."

Have you tried using the equalizer at all? Normally, I don't like using equalizers because it alters what the artists had intended when making the track; however, because of the resonance properties of your doors and what not, you may have to use an equalizer and boost the bass - and maybe a bit of the mids.

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You wouldn't believe the amount of bullshit artists when it comes to this (pretty complicated, as it turns out) subject.

Everybody has some advice to give me. From 18-yr-old kids who think 'if it's loud, it's good' without knowing shit about quality, to a 23-yr-old Tweeter employee who swore my system would "scream" but then failed miserably, to various store owners who try to push their own products on to me...

I've come to the conclusion that the number of audio specialists (particularly car audio specialists) is extremely small. Beware the "advice" of amateurs and idiots.

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"The favorite American pastime is not baseball, it's moral crusades."

What model amp did you use? And which Polk speakers did you get? Are the component and are you using the crossovers that come with them?