I have the 400W Meridian Sound System currently in my Defender (chip shortage). Not satisfied with the sound quality at all, speakers often buzz (more of distortion than a rattle) when listening any podcast and certain songs...it also sounds quite tinny. I'm not an audiophile but it is quite annoying, especially on daily commutes.

Not really willing to do a custom option as there are not many quality audio shops in my area.

Question is, can the LR dealer upgrade from 400W to the 700W Meridian Surround (or even signature) on my Defender, has anyone had any experience with that? Mine is a 2023.5 X-Dynamic HSE P400.

 

More info , long read :

https://landroverforums.com/forum/20...rs-yet-110870/

 

I struggled with the same issue since I enjoyed the 700 watt system in our 2021 Defender until my wife "stole" it from me and I had to order another one for myself. I ordered the 700 watt Meridian and got stuck with the 400 watt. My dealer told me that the 400 watt system has a different wiring harness from the 700 watt due to the additional speakers and they would not even attempt to do that upgrade. I do have 2 excellent car audio shops here in the Boston area and quotes on a custom sound system replacement ranged from $8K to $15K. I decided that was a lot of money I would never get back at trade-in. So I decided to just do a front woofer and tweeter speaker upgrade myself along with adding some sound deadening. Bought these: https://www.crutchfield.com/p_091165...a-165W-XP.html

Tweeters were fairly easy to install. Panel easily pries off, need to trim 3 plastic tabs with a multi-tool to create a flat mounting surface. Remove the tweeters from their metal mounting cradle. Then JB Weld the tweeters, add some extra wiring and connectors and you are done. Takes about 20 hours for these tweeters to come to full life and they sound fantastic. Far better treble and voices. Even bluetooth phone calls sound better. No more "tinny" sound that you noted.

Woofers were unusable. Sounded worse than OEM and I determined it's because both black wires that connect to the OEM woofer have positive power. Not the usual positive and negative wires that connect to typical speakers. So the woofers are now in my daughter's Honda and sound great there.

You can buy just the tweeters separately but they are the same price as the whole kit I bought: https://www.crutchfield.com/p_091TBM/Focal-TBM.html

In conclusion, for $2K, the 400 watt system now sounds far better and I can live with it.

 

I had the same problem with my speakers. They always sounded bad and blown on phone calls or when listening to podcasts. What ended up being the issue was the door insulation. The dealer took the front doors apart and added in more insulation and the rattles and blown sound are now gone.

You can test this by pushing on the tweeters when you hear the poor sound quality and see if it gets better. While the sound is not Mercedes or BMW it does sound much better now.

 

Great to hear its not just me! Thanks for the solid advice Paul, I might just do what you suggest (installing the tweeters and sound deadening). A few questions tho:

- How easy was it to wire the tweeter? Is it fully integrated with the car's sound system (for example, when one changes audio settings in Pivi Pro, will those speakers change seamlessly?)

- Do you know if it affects warranty or anything like that? Can the original OEM tweeter be reinstalled?

- Any drawbacks you can think of?

Hopefully the sound quality can compete with the 700w!

 

You need a basic wire stripping and crimping tool like this one:

You need plastic trim pry tools to remove the tweeter panel, like these:
https://www.crutchfield.com/p_126CR3...nel-Tools.html

OEM tweeter basically falls out when you take off that trim piece. Once you cut the tabs off the trim piece to create a flat mounting surface and glue-in the new tweeter, it's not reusable with the OEM tweeter. You would need to order new trim pieces to reinstall the OEM tweeters. (Or get used ones from that LR salvage yard in Tampa.)

I used JB Weld epoxy to glue the new tweeters to the plastic trim pieces and let them dry overnight. Be sure to attach the wires to the tiny wire mounting clips on the tweeters before you glue them in. Note that there are positive and negative mounting clips on the tweeter. I bought this kit of assorted connectors when I changed speakers in an X5:

Crutchfield sells speaker wire by the foot, order 2 feet.

You will need to cut and splice the wire, red is positive and blue is negative.

I bought this padded tape to wrap around the wiring and connectors to prevent rattling:

I doubt this would void the warranty and nobody would know different tweeters are under the OEM tweeter grills.

 

Thanks very much Paul!

Final question:

Do they have to be Focal Utopia M Beryllium Tweeters?

I'm looking into these, as they would be easier to import into my country:

-Brax Matrix ML1, they have 4ohm, but is slightly larger (28mm compared to the Focal 25)

-Brax Graphic Gl1 MK2, 4ohm, size more similar to Focal (25mm)

In other words, do I have other options to go for other than the Focals?

 

No, I'm sure you can use other tweeters. There is quite a bit of space under the silver grills. I removed the silver grills when gluing to be sure the tweeter was centered over the opening. (Just bend a small metal tab to remove the silver grill) I think the only problem would be using a tweeter that comes with it's own grill attached and it can't be removed.

 

custom car audio is just that. a shop can make anything fit but will it retain its oem look. If you are looking at those focals and price point you are doing a full high end build. You need good clean power to get the max benefits and DSP

i completed a full audio build with Morel speakers with custom A pillar tweeter and mid range pods. it’s looks pretty oem which was the goal. moving the mid ranges out of the door location made a huge difference in sound quality. The oem mid range location fires directly into your knees and and is blocked by various grills etc.

if you are going to do it right and enjoy amazing sound you will have to shell out close to 10k

but once you get it done you won’t be disappointed. The defender cabin is great acoustically with the right equipment

 

I totally agree Ehloo, only issue is I'm from a country that doesn't have any trustworthy custom car audio shop (truly they are all terrible). Would've loved to a full custom job and have the Defender sounding like the new S-Class!

That's basically why I thought to replace the tweeters with some high quality ones, and do some sound deadening myself. I think that would increase the quality just enough so that I'm satisfied.

Initially I wanted the dealer to attempt to upgrade the meridian sound system to meridian surround or better but realize thats improbable.