To replace your stereo, I -VERY- highly recommend using an aftermarket dash kit and wire harnesses. If you ever want to sell your RAVie, you are not only a bastard, but you'll be able to cleanly reinstall your stock stereo so you won't have to sell your new stereo equipment. In other words, not only will you be a bastard, but all of your wire harnesses will remain intact, so NO wire splicing involved in the stock wiring. That RULES!
If you're interested in upgrading your stock head unit to an aftermarket din sized head unit, here's 
.
The 2001 RAV4 IS ABSOLUTELY a double-din compatible dash. That means you can fit 2 standard din sized units one on top of the other... if you wanted to. My RAVie has gone and will go thru quite a few head unit setups. The picture above is the first one I installed. It was the 
previous top-of-the-line DEH-P9000R. An absolute KICK A$$ unit with more features than anything else out there at the time that I got it. Has the awesome OEL display that was really bright and high resolution, and most importantly, it has EXTREMELY precise sound quality with a 13 band EQ, built in DSP, and pre-defined time correction. Second phase of head units was to add a DVD player. I opted to temporarilly install an el-queso cheap-o Pyle because I had it laying around my garage from a previous install, so I nixed the dash kit and mounted the dual-din setup below:
That El-Queso DVD player also played VCD/SVCD, and MP3s. Had me doing cartwheels when I first thought about it, but reality kicked in with the next topic of discussion. If you're interested in upgrading your stock head unit to a double din setup, here's .
The next head unit change was to swap out that Pioneer with a killer 
. The Pioneer was already a few years old, and it did not play MP3 CDs. For you ancient people, MP3 is a compressed format of sound files(music) which allows you to fit about 10 times the amount of music on one MP3 CD as you can on a normal music CD. The drawback with MP3s is that their compression algorithm works by not saving certain less used frequencies of the music spectrum, meaning a trained ear(like mine) can hear subtle missing frequencies of an MP3. Most people who sware MP3s(128 bit before you flame me) are as clear as CDs only say so only because their music systems are lacking a full frequency spectrum anyways, so of course an MP3 would sound "normal" to them. My tastes are slightly more picky, so my systems usually distinguished MP3s rather obviously. That's the main reason I didn't jump on the MP3 bandwagon so quickly.
Then Alpine came out with a line of head units with a feature called "Media Xpander", which strategically boosts the frequencies to compensate for what was removed from the MP3 in the first place. Couple this feature with their user-definable Digital Time Correction feature that allows you to set delays relative to the distance between the position of each speaker and your ears so you can virtually achieve perfect stereo separation, and the result, in 12V geek terms, is perfect "imaging". As much as I loved that Pioneer unit, listening to an MP3 thru that old setup(fed by that el-queso Pyle DVD/MP3 player) sounded like listening to an MP3. However with Alpine's features, listening to an MP3 sounds like listening to a normal music CD. I have VERY picky ears, but I can't tell the difference. Way to go Alpine!
Most recently I updated DVD players to this ghetto 
. The Pyle played MP3, DVD, VCD, SVCD, CD, and your mother. Being that the Alpine had MP3 and CD, I just wanted a plain-jane DVD/VCD/SVCD player. Plus the silver color didn't really match anything else around it.
The stock speakers are weak. Worth repeating in Swahili. THE STOCK SPEAKERS SUCK *click*click*click*!!! It's very easy to sit in your RAV for the first time, listen to the stereo, and go out and spend $50,000 on a whole new stereo system.... But wait! Save some money... replace those stock speakers! Swapping speaks is by FAR the easiest/cheapest way to get the most dramatic improvement. The stock stereo your RAV came with really isn't a bad head unit, however paired up with those stock clumps of magnet/magnette and paper cones, the RAV stock stereo sounds HORRIBLE!
Where's the Beef, Toyota? I've seen bigger magnets on headphones! The most annoying thing that you've probably noticed from these ghetto speaks is a really affluent boomy sound at about the frequency of listening to a radio talk show and a guy is talking. The voice sounds absolutely horrible. Transfer that to music and it means that every drum beat sounds like you're beating on your hood. As any 2nd grader would guess, you are experiencing lower frequency drop out caused by improperly baffled transducers, along with resonating metal from your doors. This, of course accentuates the fact the the stock speakers *click*click*click* SUCK! $500 replacement door speakers alone will not fix this, so don't just pull your wallet out yet. This can be fixed. Rather easily if you're like me, or rather difficult-ly if you are not...rather cheaply if you believe simple physics, or rather expensive-ly if you believe salesman instead. The trick is the subject of the next topic.
Want to upgrade your stock door speakers? Here's some hints on to take your doors apart. There's a lot of talk about compatibility with which speakers will fit. Worse case scenario is that you have a 6-1/2" speaker mounted in your door, and your front windows will not roll down all the way; they stop about 1" from being rolled all the way down because of hitting the speaker magnet. Definitely not all 6-1/2 speakers will do this, and many can avoid this by using the [Scosche SAT6 adapter], or even de-gutting the original stock speaker and using it as a spacer. If your speaker has a deep enough magent, you're pretty much out of luck. My 6-1/2" Rockford FanaticQs are such a beast, however that slight un-roll-down-ability is something I totally forget about, and can totally live with.
Thought I'd mention this while I'm on the topic of speakers. I'm a definite proponent of using compression horns. They are exteremely efficient speakers that produce sound the exact same way your hose squirts out water when you put your thumb on it. The technology relies on "wave guides", which is a fancy term for the speaker lens that reflects and disperses the sound from the speaker. With Alpine's awesome imaging, the compression horns sound unbelievable! In the picture below, you can see the small grill covered "plates" under each side of the dash. Totally out of the way and easy to forget they're there. If you shut your eyes while the stereo is playing, you can almost point out where each band member is standing... easy to forget you're listening to speakers!
Touchy subject for some people. To Dynamat(or equivalent)... or not to Dynamat(or equivalent)... that is the question! The subtle answer... YES YES YES. You may think this is overkill, and it may be up to a point, but is it really? Consider this... take one of those empty coke cans stacked up by your monitor(you slob!) and place it on a flat surface, and flick the can slightly with your fingernail notice the sound. Now gently grasp the fingers around the can and notice the different sound while flicking it. You've just passed 1st grade physics and invented the solution for that boominess! All you have to do is drive around with one hand on each of the 5 doors, while the 6th is on the roof!
Actually, this solves part of the problem. Everything that makes a sound when you can knock on it with your knuckles, or tap it with a finger or equivalent appendage, has a resonant frequency. The put-your-hand-on-it method quiets, or "dampens", the resonant frequency of the can so that it doesn't ker-FLING as loud, so putting your hand on the metal of the doors will fix the speaker's sound waves from ker-FLINGing so loud(a la "boominess"). Remember when I mentioned before that this is just part of the problem? There's a little more to it. Speakers also have a resonant freqency, which is a frequency that it most naturally produces sound.
Short lesson in Finite State Automata 101. Ever tap on a speaker cone? Don't be shy to admit it. I think we all have. Ever notice why it sounds different when it's in a sealed speaker box? The sealed box is "tuned" to resonate near the same(ideally) frequency as the natural frequency of the speaker itself. The magic then occurs in that the boxed speaker produces sound very efficiently and much more effortlessly... meaning you get more quality sound for the money! The big secret is controlling the air behind the speaker...which brings us to our good ole' door speakers. Using Dynamat(or equivalent) by enclosing all of the airspace inside the doors will make your car speakers more efficient. It's not rocket science here. Every speaker installed in a sealed box will produce better bass than that same speaker installed on a box made of pegboard. In a pegboard box, cone movement causes the air behind the speaker to freely travel to the front of the speaker. In terms of sound travelling in waves, sound waves are cancelling each other before even reaching your ears, and what occurs is a loss in lower frequencies. Once you pull your door panel off, you'll see all of the airspace free to move to cause this cancellation, but without even popping off your door panels, it's more than evident by that annoying boominess. No flames here. I'm not talking about subwoofers yet, so hold back your "what about ported boxes?" logic.
So the real answer to the question you forgot. YES... Use Dynamat(or equivalent) for 4 VERY good reasons; 1) take away the resonance of the metal door, 2) Control the air behind your speaker, 3) Prevent ambient sound , or road noise, from entering your vehicle and interfering with your music, and 4) it's REALLY cheap... if you can believe me! If you wanna Dynamat(or equivalent) your doors cheaply, here's to remove your doors. You can get the dynamat cheaply at 
. Do a search for "9709T19", which is High Temperature Mastic. Sells for under $15 per 32" x 54" roll. For absolute best results, seal ALL the air behind the speaker so that it cannot reach the front of the speaker.
UPDATE(12/19/2004). In case you haven't noticed, I put on the cool shiney stuff bought on eBay for about $100 a roll. Put 2-3 layers pretty much everywhere except the roof. Right over the old generic black stuff in the doors too. Pretty quiet ride, but more importantly, I can listen to the tunes at lower levels and it still sounds crystal clear!
if you have any questions. Happy RAV'n!
