I just finished an installation that has not panned out as planned.
My goal was to keep the factory head unit in my Toyota Highlander (in order to maintain the integrity of the dashboard, and improve the sound of the factory system.
The factory system suffered from classic under power. Muddy lows, no middle and scratchy highs.
My prior car, was also a Toyota that suffered from the same syptoms. In that case I replaced the factory head unit with an aftermarket unit that ran about 20w RMS and it improved the situation 100%.
This installation included an Alpine amp rated at 50w per channel and a line level adapter and a line level converter.
The result is a sound with muddy lows, more middle than before and very sharp highs, but not much definition. I am hugely dissapointed. One oddity, although I don't know that it matters much. The factory system has tweeters in the dash, which as I was testing during installation, I noted were independent of the door speakers as with the door speakers disconnected, I could still hear the tweeters (although they are very faint).
Several questions:
1. Can anyone diagnose the problem?
2. How do you adjust gain when you have two to deal with, the Line Output Converter and the Amp? This is a chicken and egg thing right?
3. The amp has a speaker level in. Would I be better off loosing the LOC and just using the speaker level inputs rather than the LOC?
Thanks
