Cubbington

Chipping in as I upgraded the system in mine last summer, as the standard setup is, in my opinion, rubbish. I Dynamatted most of the car, fitted custom-fit Focals front and rear, along with sub in the boot and couldn’t understand why the rears sounded so much worse than the fronts. I also fitted an Audiotec-Fischer Amplifier which is completely configured via PC. The amp has a setting whereby you can measure the input signal for time, phase and frequency response, so you can set it all to a flat response. Surprise surprise, the rear outputs of the standard amplifier are all over the place, and it needed a bit of tweaking to get rid of it. That being said, I agree with previous comments regarding using just the front speakers, and with the measurements I’ve done using a calibrated mic, the system sounds amazing, and much better just using the fronts and the sub (wasted money on the rears if I’m honest). Have a look through the Octavia 3 projects and you’ll see my thread there. Pity it looks like a company car’s on the way and I’ll be selling the Octy after all that work! Cheers, Nick

Are you using an iPhone or Android device?

Hi All, About to hit the button on getting a Google Nest thermostat installed after doing some research between Nest & Hive. I was initially drawn to Hive as the controller drops into where the original thermostat is fitted (hall), and they also do smart TRVs for the radiators, whilst Nest doesn’t. I prefer the look of the Nest controller, but will need a bit of tidying the wall to mount it cleanly in place of the original thermostat as I like the clean look of it without the surround, or as the Google manual suggests put it in a regularly used room...ironically have just decorated the hall! We’ve also got Philips Hue lighting throughout, and Nest integrates with Hue, whilst Hive has it’s own lighting and smart home integration. I really like the idea of the Smart TRVs as we’ve never been able to get an even temperature throughout the house, but it’s not a deal-breaker, and there seems to be a lot of bad feedback regarding the Hive TRVs on their own forum... Honeywell do a system called Evohome which is supposed to be excellent, but is way out of our budget and has an awful looking controller! Initial outlay for both Nest & Hive is pretty similar. So throwing out there to anyone who has either system, and read your thoughts & experiences. Thanks, Nick

Hi All, Hope you're all staying safe and healthy. This is taking some time, and I still have the speakers to do, but just wanted to post some pics and info on the system upgrade I'm currently working on. The standard system isn't too bad, but I wanted to improve things without changing the original display, nor have visual evidence of different speakers. I've already spent some time Dynamatting the boot floor, spare wheel well, tailgate, under rear seat bench, bonnet and front doors, and just have the rear doors and rear quarter panels to do. As such, my research lead me to a German brand, Audiotec-Fischer; they do plug and play systems for the main German car brands, and their Match range has various amplifiers, speakers, subs, wiring harnesses & looms designed to just drop in - the main systems are for BMW. Unfortunately, they've discontinued the VW specific 6.5" component speakers, which have the exact same mounting for the tweeter in the front doors, so I went for their Helix F 62C 6.5" components. I also had a look at Focal, as they make a specific VW component set, but the connectors/wiring in VW is different to Skoda, so they aren't plug and play for us either. I really liked the look of these, as the tweeter fittings are the same, and the speakers include the deep baskets for the mid-bass drivers. I went for the M5 DSK Mk2 amp, which can be mounted virtually anywhere, as it runs cool and has a tiny footprint. It's also configurable via a laptop to enable so many settings it's a bit mind-boggling! The amp install's been pretty straightforward with the harness and loom in place; I plugged it all, switched the headunit on...and it worked! I was able to remove 28 wires from the plug and play harness, as it's a generic VAG compatible unit, so everything's wired - by my reckoning, it was about 8.5m of little wires acting as aerials I got rid of! The increase in performance was really good; a lot more grip, control, detail, and obviously louder at the same volume level. Not satisfied with that, I bought a Rockford Fosgate amp wiring kit, and ran a direct power feed from the battery to enable 'high output' mode. This is one of the programmable settings, and there's a warning in the manual not tenable it with the standard loom, as the current draw can peak at 40 amps and damage the existing wiring loom! Thanks to @JohnnyType2's excellent write up on his install, I was able to find the loom through the bulkhead, and whilst I'd planned to use that, directly below I discovered another part of the rubber grommet directly below protruding for a wiring loom that my car doesn't have! I made a tiny hole, fed a draw wire (a straightened coat hanger!) through from inside the car, taped the cable to it, and pulled it back through into the car. Oddly, the negative cable was only 18" long, so whilst I couldn't get this onto the battery, I put it onto the mounting point for the dashboard. With loom fitted, and amp connected, I switched the system on...and nothing! Total schoolboy error, I'd connected positive & negative around incorrectly (too much time out in the heat I think), once connected correctly, I tried again and nothing. Thankfully, it was just the fuse in the amp's wiring harness that got taken out, and not the amp... Fuse replaced, all was working as it should, phew! Next was to connect the laptop, and enable the high output mode. It was very easy to do, and nice that you get warnings before enabling the high output mode. All settings changes are live, so you can hear what you're doing - I thought I was saving the file name with the date, pressed '2' and that disabled output channel '2'/front right, pressing 2 again enabled it! The difference between the two output modes was night and day, significantly better than plug and play/low output mode. There's even more control and detail - hard to believe I'm still running the standard speakers actually! I just took the photos below, with the software in demo mode - it was too bright yesterday to take any pics of the screen. The images below are of all the other setup pages; crossover and equaliser, input/output configuration, time alignment & real time audio analyser - I think you plug a microphone into the computer and it'll do 'room' correction as you find in home cinema and some high end audio amplifiers! The amp is five channel, and has a separate sub output, this can also be configured for a centre channel if you don't have a sub...as our cars have the centre speaker mount for the Canton system, I might just buy a cheap speaker to try this out; the bass response with just the standard speakers is fine for me, but it's good to have options. Configured for now, I put some anti rattle tape and velcro strips on the amp, stuck it in place behind the screen (it's a 30 second job to pop the screen out if I want to make changes to the amp settings), and then cable-tied it to keep it in tight: Thanks for reading this, and I'll update when I get the speakers in! Cheers, Nick