Sound Doctor — Local services in Camarillo

This is not a 5 Star business.

I found Sound Doctor Camarillo 911 after searching for a shop to install new speakers/sub and amp in my 2016 BMW. I picked them for their supposed "expertise" and "attention to detail".

Unfortunately I'm regretting ever letting this shop work on my car.

They finished the install on the same day as I dropped off the car, I paid in full and drove home, not quite satisfied with the sound on the ride back. There was a strong hissing sound from the speakers, even with no input source / audio off. There were many signs of a poor installation, the door panel molding / rubber liner was mis-aligned and pinched when they re-installed my door panels. Clearly a rushed job, in hindsight I should have spent more time at the shop testing the system before paying, but I really trusted them to do "quality control" - laughing at this now.

I contacted David @ Sound Doctor 911 and brought the car back the next week, they acknowledged the hiss and re-tuned the amplifier. At this point I learned there was no audio controller installed in the car, which explained the poor sound. I also learned that they installed a Marine (for boats) 5 channel amplifier, not the correct configuration for the number of speakers +subwoofer in my car. David agreed that the sound was "underwhelming" and installed a basic audio controller to try to improve the sound.

After they had my car for two days and plenty of excuses, the sound is still poor to this day. The rear component speakers do not even produce sound, I tested this by using the fader in my head unit, the front speakers do produce sound but not clearly. Almost all of the mids are coming from the FACTORY center console speaker. The subwoofer produces bass as it should, but the box they installed contains all of the bass in my trunk, there is no porting.

Now that I have had a few weeks to drive the car and listen to the sound system installed by Sound Doctor 911, I am writing this review because it is clear that this company would rather just take your money, keep their profit margins high and hope you don't notice when they cut corners on a job.

At this point, I am done with this company and I wouldn't bring my car back if they offered the parts and labor for free.

I am going to keep the speakers they installed, but due to the poor installation and wiring, I will have to pay another shop to re-wire the system. The amplifier they sold me is useless and I will have to resell it and replace it with the correct amp, same with the audio controller.

Waste of my time and cash, lesson learned for sure. Aftermarket speaker projects and the car audio business in general is tough for consumers, make sure you do plenty of research on the actual parts being installed in your vehicle and get a second opinion before signing anything. Don't be swindled by smooth talkers with good...

These guys are by far the best around. I'm going to break my review into 2 categories, my experience with my personal vehicle and its audio installation and my experience working with them through the company I work for.

Personal: I brought my 2018 Toyota Camry into the shop with an audio system that had previously been installed by another, might I say, well reviewed shop, that had sounded horrible, very loud from the dash tweeters and speaker and quiet from the doors, a big issue. This previous shop had charged me $2400 for 4 door speakers, dash tweeters, a JL Audio FiX86 and a $200 alpine 4 Channel amp, all to which sounded terrible and had many audio quality issues, and some low volume distortion. Upon bringing this into the shop, the guys could immediately hear the issues and new the exact fix. They suggested getting a set of nicer Focal 6x9 Triaxle speakers for the front doors and rerunning the dash speakers to allow for independent gain control of the door and dash speakers, allowing for the doors to have more volume and compensate for the loud dash speakers. After this install, the system sounded unbelievable, the crossovers were set perfectly for the speakers and the system now sounded very warm and well rounded, which I couldn't say about the previous setup. They also removed the distortion coming from the speakers and added sound deadening. I've never been happier with how my car sounds until now.

Company: I work for a drone contracting company called SkySkopes. We use drones to inspect power lines for power companies. With this were presented with an interesting set of problems. We need to be able to charge our large drones ALL DAY with no breaks, Idling the vehicles all day to power our chargers. Form working with the Sound Doctor, we have been able to have reliable, powerful charging systems installed in our vehicles, able to handle 1000W of constant power draw at Idle with no issues at all. They helped us eliminate issues like dead batteries by installing Ignition switch cut offs to save the batteries from being drawn dead by a left on inverter and many more issues and have helped draft new installation plans for our new upcoming fleet vehicles that will be going into the field come 2023 that will be more reliable and easy to use. With these vehicles, aside form the Charging Systems, they will be installing new emergency lighting setups into our vehicles which will help keep our vehicles and crews in the field visible and safe.

From the extensive experience I've had with this shop, I couldn't recommend them more, for any electronics install you could need. They are the shop I recommend to anyone who needs electronic or audio work done to their vehicles because of their trustworthy and honest work that they do.

Photos coming soon for the company...

You know how things seem too good to be true so you don’t believe them? I held off on my opinion because I was blown away by Dave the owner at Sounddoctor911 and thought “no way could it be this great, there must be something that will go wrong”. But it didn’t. It just kept getting better and better.

I find that customer service in general is far different than it used to be when I was a kid. I often feel that the person is bothered by having to serve me. But being at Sounddoctor911, it’s like being Dorothy seeing the farm in black and white and then stepping into the colored world of Oz.

Dave knows how to make a customer feel valued and respected and individualizes his service for the desires and pocket depth of the person. He never made me feel dumb even though I am truly ignorant about sound systems.

I never felt pressured to spend more yet he gives higher end options if you ask for comparison choices, and will answer honestly about advantages and disadvantages rather than trying to convince. This is so important to someone who is ignorant about sound systems.

There were several things he did as special touches that no one would expect:

He entrusted me his car for the day while he worked on my speaker replacement and sound deadening. Unbelievable.

He put wooden bases under the speakers rather than the plastic simply because it was going to work better even though that wasn’t in the original estimate for no extra cost.

He kept answering my calls and emails about details of my online research before we firmed up choices.

He discounted it as far as he could considering my budget. He gave me something free because he had misjudged what I would need for the set up and held to his original estimate instead of calling me to say he had to charge more if he went this direction.

He took pictures and updated me along the way.

He had me come in to hear the sound before he reinstalled he seat to be sure I liked the sound settings.

After wards he encouraged me to listen for a week and come back with any desire for setting changes.

I did return and he advised me on management of my self adjustment bass and treble settings on my dash for different types of songs to optimize enjoyment of my wide variety of genres.

He guaranteed all his work.

On top of all that he is kind and genuine. And Juan the tech was so polite and patient waiting for me to listen to several songs before putting the seat back in.

I’m coming back for all...