CunningLinguist

I don't have any more info for you Adane. They just said they had taken the dash apart and adjusted it. I would recommend getting in touch with Skoda in Reading. If they fob you off I can email them. Good luck. It can be very frustrating! My name is Wooldridge, if you want to give them a reference to check their records.

You'll need to start from a lossless format, eg CD to benefit from flac format. When converting to a lossy format like mp3 or aac, compression is used to reduce file size but this loses some of the original data. You can not get this data back by converting from aac or mp3 to a lossless format like flac.

I did suggest that but they talked about the output from the headunit being optical only and therefore not a good option. I don't fully understand the reasoning to this.

The original Canton speakers are fed via the 570W amp under the passenger seat. My understanding is that each speaker is fed by a separate channel and each channel covers a restricted frequency range. This was why the output from that amp had to be combined to get a full band signal before feeding it into the digital processor.

Here are some pics:

I picked up my new Octavia VRS TSI 5 months ago. As I'm something of an audiophile, I opted for the Canton upgrade but I've always found it slightly disappointing. It is not a bad system so to speak, I would even go as far as to say that it sounds "quite good". But the sound was certainly not as weighty as I'd hoped, even with the subwoofer maxed out. And with the volume up high, the amplitude of the bass frequencies seemed to be reduced (perhaps to protect the speakers and reduce the number of warranty claims?) So I decided to invest in an after market upgrade with the aim of a louder, clearer, weightier sound. On my previous car, a 2007 Honda Civic, a friend helped me to carry out a custom upgrade and whilst it did improve the sound, it took us several months to complete (working the odd Saturday here and there) and the end result, whilst louder did not seem very refined or well balanced. To avoid a repeat of these problems, this time I approached John Kleis, a car audio specialist in Reading and they have now completed the upgrade. They have done a fantastic job as the sound quality now surpasses anything I could have imagined! The plan was to take the outputs from the amplifier under the passenger seat and feed them through to the boot into a digital processing unit (Audison bit Ten) before passing it in to a 1000W amp (JL Audio XD1000/5 v2). There were complications here because the output signals from the amp all covered a restricted range of frequencies to be sent to specific speakers. So to overcome this, the outputs were combined via another box (an AudioControl LC8) to get a signal across the complete frequency range before passing it into the digital processing unit! The front component door speakers were replaced with Hertz ESK165Ls and an 8” Hertz ES200 Subwoofer in a ported box was added into the boot (with banana clips for easy removal). The various boxed components have all been secured neatly underneath the boot floor and are therefore hidden away. The balance and fader controls in the head unit still work as do the subwoofer settings. To reduce road noise, a considerable amount of sound insulation was added into the front doors and around the boot cavity. I also had the sound generator disabled by the dealer. The total price for the upgrade including labour was just under £2000 but the resulting sound quality is mindblowing. The system seems to particularly shine for vocals and jangly guitar solos. The guitar solo work within Nils Lofgren's "Keith Don't Go" from the album "Acoustic Live" is particularly stunning. There is plentiful bass even with the subwoofer well below the maximum setting, but it never overwhelms the rest of the frequency spectrum. Apparently the upgrade would have been considerably easier without the Canton upgrade. The technicians at John Kleis were very knowledgable and took a lot of care to calibrate the digital processing unit using microphones and audio signal analysis. If anyone is considering a similar upgrade and would like to sample the end result, do let me know and I can demo the system for you. I live in Basingstoke.

Interested in this myself for a VRS hatch. Dynomat perhaps?: http://www.dynamat.com/

Any chance you could post details of the amp and sub you had fitted? I have Canton and the sound quality is generally quite a good balanced sound, but somewhat lacking in powerful power when you turn the volume up.

But surely it uses the same DAC for music files on the sd as the USB, no? If you're playing lossless flac files (or to a lesser extent high bitrate mp3s) off the sd card it should be fine.

Ditto. Try removing the SD card and check the navigation still works. It should do. I have now added a 128GB card (link below) and loaded it with music and some videos. It works fine. http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00CX8SJDM?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_search_detailpage

You're right, it was the overlay what done it. It wasn't until I showed the guys at Reading the picture with the overlay on my phone that they acknowledged the issue.

They just said they had taken the dash apart and adjusted it. It can't have taken them very long as I got a call to say it was finished just a couple of hours after I dropped it off.

After a 12 week battle to get the instrument panel levelled, today it was finally sorted out and I am absolutely delighted by the result! Every time I sat in the car, it was irritating me, so I took it in to my local dealership in Basingstoke and after some time looking at it, they acknowledged that the instrument cluster was not level and arranged an appointment to get it straightened. But after leaving it with them for a day (during the week at considerable inconvenience), they told me that when they'd compared it with another vrs, they found it was the same and so they did nothing about it. Very frustrating. So I contacted Skoda UK and sent them a photo with grid overlay which clearly demonstrates the issue. See here: https://db.tt/cZRArnWp Maxine from Skoda UK arranged for me to take the car back into City Skoda, Basingstoke for it to be "compared with another vrs" one again but I explained that I had lost faith in them and that I'd prefer to see another dealership. So they arranged for me to take the car to Ridgeway Skoda in Reading. The first 2 people that saw the car did not acknowledge the fault, and I was told that if they adjusted it "it might throw it out somewhere else". Not very confidence inspiring! But then service advisor Andy Bridgewater did acknowledge the fault, got it booked in and today (to my considerable surprise) it was fixed! The car is now how it should have been when I picked it up 3 months ago, but I am just delighted it has been sorted and that my persistence finally paid off.

Yes - I'm using a 128GB Class 10 SD card for my Columbus and it works just fine. This is the one I bought: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00CX8SJDM?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s01