Wanting to upgrade stereo and speaker bar

[Jim102]

Have a 2017 Wildcat 29rlx. It has a 4 speaker stereo for music inside the living area and outside, with Bluetooth. I should just be able to drop in a nice car stereo unit, right? And replace the 4 speakers, n and out....The speaker bar should just be a drop in from what I see...Has anyone done this? Did you do anything extra that I should think about?

Thanks,
Jim

[93Cobra2771]

I've been considering a sound bar/sub/surround sound for our TV as well.

Some have wireless subs. Once I find one with wireless rear channels that is reasonably priced I will probably get one. Sound bar will fit perfectly under the TV, front channels can mount and hid wiring very easily. those rear channel would be a bear to run wiring. But If I simply have to plug them in to a outlet, I would be golden.

OEM speakers are terrible for the radio, that is a fact.

[GordonThree]

Jim102 wrote:
Have a 2017 Wildcat 29rlx. It has a 4 speaker stereo for music inside the living area and outside, with Bluetooth. I should just be able to drop in a nice car stereo unit, right? And replace the 4 speakers, n and out....The speaker bar should just be a drop in from what I see...Has anyone done this? Did you do anything extra that I should think about?

Thanks,
Jim

I don't have a Wildcat but I did replace the stereo in my KZ. Essentially it was a drop in - new car stereo unit slid right into the bay where the factory unit was.

Speakers, they were a little trickier... the factory speakers were so "cheap" they had no magnets on the back, ok they had tiny magnets. The new pioneer speakers I used for replacement were the same diameter, but have huge magnets. So, clearance issue there. One of these days I need to fabricate some round wood trim to flush out the mounting hole a bit, as the new speakers don't sit deep enough in their holes to be flush with the paneling.

Regarding the speaker bar, do you mean a sound bar, for the television? I do not have one in the RV, but have two at home. Both connect to their TVs with a fiber optic cable, called TOSLINK. I don't know that it makes any difference in sound quality, I just liked the idea of one slim cable making the connection instead of the larger red+white rca type cable. I think one of the tv's didn't even have analog audio output, just toslink and hdmi.

[goducks10]

DutchmenSport wrote:
The sound system in the camper does not have an HDMI input. Too old I guess,

Easy solution, get a new trailer 🙂

[RollandB]

In our rig we have a IRV33 radio that the sound is Horrible. I replaced the stock speakers in the living area (4) but it puts out so little power it really needs an amp to sound good.

For the TV, I went with a Bose Solo 5, it's a smaller sound bar that fit the area we can use below the tv and sounds great. No sub so it works well in RVs limited on space. It has Bluetooth so if you have a device that connect that way it works well. Now we only use the stock stereo system for its radio.

[Strabo]

We use our IPod docking station. Easy and we have it.

[DutchmenSport]

The sound system in the camper does not have an HDMI input. Too old I guess,

[goducks10]

DutchmenSport wrote:
We purchased a new TV for the camper a few weeks ago. New TV does not have the Red yellow white speaker video output. It had only the fiber optic output. Could not hook into the camper sound system. Picked up a 3 foot sound bar and plugged directly into that. Works fine for us now. If we ever have to do it again we will make sure the next TV will have those plugs.

No HDMI?

[DutchmenSport]

We purchased a new TV for the camper a few weeks ago. New TV does not have the Red yellow white speaker video output. It had only the fiber optic output. Could not hook into the camper sound system. Picked up a 3 foot sound bar and plugged directly into that. Works fine for us now. If we ever have to do it again we will make sure the next TV will have those plugs.