rossinio

The default bridgestones were so bad, I didn't really believe it until I changed to the as5s

I heard a good trick is to do a before and after drive (at speed) with the boot empty vs full (usually of holiday stuff) to see if that makes a difference. The biggest thing is still the tyres though. Annoyingly road surfaces in the UK are generally very bad, it is only when you get to good tarmac you really notice the difference. I also did silentcoat under the bonnet and bought the skoda cover to go over it which may have helped a bit. Mine is all just silentcoat to stop vibration with closed cell foam over the top. Without the mass loaded vinyl it is not finished yet. https://www.deadening.co.uk have loads of stuff.

Another vote for Goodyear Asymmetric 5, make sure they have right amount of air in them for best results, I added recommended for 4 people. The Bridgestones it came with were garbage in comparison. I have also done a fair bit of noise insulation in boot, under rear seat but still not got around to adding the mass loaded vinyl I bought a year and a half ago.. I also haven't touched the door panels, and the buzzing noise in right door panel decelerating between 3k and 2k without using pedal seems to have temporarily vanished.

Fronts were just a pain with axle stands and a jack, I had to remove some soundproofing once I tried to put it back together as there wasn't enough room above the wheel arch liner round the wheel. I would love a garage and a flat surface to do this stuff on, it would make it a lot easier.. I've already done the boot (but not above the wheel arches) with silentcoat 4mm and 6mm CCF. It did make a difference, but MLV will make more. Doors is after everything else I also did under the rear bench seat with silentcoat/CCF but not sure if that really did anything. On calibration, I just had another go with the umik-1 and used the RTA with the automatic mode, from 100 - 1k, then 1k - 10k, then 10k -18k. I did front left and right and it has made a big difference (and is much easier than doing it by ear or with REW etc). It's on my other laptop but I'll get screenshots of the EQ. I also did input alignment with the input signal analyser to get things flat first. I'm routing FL->RL and FR->RR, my rears are 4db lower than fronts and it seems much more sensible. For some reason I got better sound with "4 channel Input Front/Rear" in the routing mode section, needs another look as previously I did have it on 2 channel input. Very tempted by the Focal IS165VW, but will be when I get to doors. I didn't realise you could just pop out the rivets (and that they are plastic). It's not obvious from photos and I thought you would need to drill them out. If everything is a straight swap then it seems like a good idea, do you need to buy extra connectors for the speaker cables or do you reused the existing ones?

Thanks, when I get a chance I'll go through the videos. I'm still not 100% happy with it, mainly due to lack of isolation from road noise and a sound that has bass but feels unbalanced. MLV is next in the boot area when I get time.. I did the arch on the front right (from outside the car, after removing wheel and arch liner) with silentcoat 4mm and 6mm closed cell foam but tbh it doesn't sound much different to the left when I am the passenger. It was a lot (lot) of effort and I should have done the boot mlv instead. Getting the interior panels off to reach the rear arches isn't obvious from the workshop manual but I'm going to try removing the covering panel next to the glass above the rear seats. Once you have full access to the rear arches it looks like you have quite a lot of room for silentcoat/ccf/mlv which should really help. Main improvement so far is still the tyres, going from awful Bridgestone Potanza S001 to Goodyear Asymmetric 5 has completely changed the amount of road noise. Still cheaper than the amp I see quite a few people now saying the M5DSP sounds much better on high power mode. Is it really that noticeable, even with stock speakers? Also, how did you remove the rivets for the stock speakers? Another annoying creak seems to have appeared but only when the passenger is in the seat, sounds like plastic creaking but need to be the passenger for a while to isolate it. Thought it was the speaker at first..