Hello,

New to the forum and Skoda's in general.

Recently become very interested in the Fabia vRS.

I can't find any reviews on the net that talk about the speaker set up and sound quality.

I have found that there are 8 speakers around the cabin - are these 4 Mid/low and 4 high/tweeters?

Can the speakers go loud?

Is the headunit any good?

Basically i currently have a very chavvy set up in my current car - Very expensive Alpine headunit, upgraded door speakers with seperate tweeters and cross overs and a massive sub and amp in the boot.

I like my music loud and bassy, typically listening to drum and bass dubstep dance etc.

I wouldnt expect the standard speakers to blow me away - has anyone upgraded them? how easy is it to do? In my saxo yuo just start pulling bits apart to change the speakers and 'pop' everything back into place again. If i start doing this in a brand new car id be crapping my pants about scratching the panals etc.

Is it worth and can i but my alpine head unit in? does it look silly and out of place?

Lots of questions as you can see - and i have many more to ask before i buy one.

Thanks

I have the new VRS mate, and the speakers are fantastic for standard.

It would appear they are front and rear, not had a proper look though.

They do go loud, very loud in fact, not had them past half way.

The only downside is things start to rattle a bit at higher volumes, this may just be stuff in my glove compartment though.

Headunit is spot on, especially with the MDI. Only gripe about it (as I have mentioned in a thread of my own), scrolling through folders via the MDI can seem slow.

Not sure about replacing the standard headunit with another one, I think you would probably struggle. In fact, I would say don't bother, the standard headunit is fine.

The best thing to do is do what I did, book a test drive and take a CD with you, then you can see exactly how it sounds for yourself, and mess about with the settings to your hearts content.

Edit: I have played drum n bass, hard rock, death metal, pop, retro stuff, etc all through it, sounds fine for each of them.

Edited 10 January, 201115 yr by Stu vRS

Thanks for the reply.

Would be good to get some more opinions as well... Anyone else?

Good to know they aren't the usual crap you get as standard

How much bass, Im definitely a bass junkie, is there enough to make your hair shake? (probably not, but thought id ask the question!)

Reason i ask about changing the headunit around is because id more than likely want to put my own sub in the boot for that extra kick I can easily assume that there wont be controlls or outputs for a sub on the back of the standard unit.

How does the Satnav unit fit in with all this? is this a seperate unit altogether? does it relplace the standard headunit or are they seperate?

Whats the MDI? is this the mp3 interface? you said its quite slow but also how easy is it to use, if i have 500 songs or 50 albums, how easy is it to get to that one song im looking for?

you get 4 tweeters 4 speakers i think 40 watt. Two tweeters are in the front window pillers and two in the rear doors next to the door pull

Not sure if the vRS has different speakers to mine, I found that anything above 18-20 on the stereo and the speakers sounded quite strained. I have swapped mine for some aftermarket ones and had the doors dynamatted and it will go all the way up to max now (although with the sub as well it would probably do you some ear damage if it was that loud for long).

If I could find my old speakers I would find out the wattage they are rated for. Think they are in my shed!

Thanks for the reply.

Would be good to get some more opinions as well... Anyone else?

Good to know they aren't the usual crap you get as standard

How much bass, Im definitely a bass junkie, is there enough to make your hair shake? (probably not, but thought id ask the question!)

Reason i ask about changing the headunit around is because id more than likely want to put my own sub in the boot for that extra kick I can easily assume that there wont be controlls or outputs for a sub on the back of the standard unit.

How does the Satnav unit fit in with all this? is this a seperate unit altogether? does it relplace the standard headunit or are they seperate?

Whats the MDI? is this the mp3 interface? you said its quite slow but also how easy is it to use, if i have 500 songs or 50 albums, how easy is it to get to that one song im looking for?

The MDI is the interface which lets you plug in numerous items such as ipods, external hard drives, pen drives, etc, and control them using the head unit.

When I say slow, I mean if you are scrolling, through say, the artists on the ipod, it can take a while to find the one you are after.

See here for suggested solutions:

http://briskoda.net/forums/topic/182848-scrolling-through-ipod-on-mdi-slow

Satnav headunit is an optional extra, mine doesn't have it, so I can't comment on that.

They certainly are bassy enough for my liking, but the dynamatting idea as mentioned above probably would be effective at getting rid of vibrations and channeling the audio better.

I'll have to have a look about this dynamatting, I've done very basic sound deadening before, but I've seen that word a lot on this forum, is it a serious job?

From what it sounds like (no pun intended) I'll need to change door speakers, if people are saying they are 'ok'... That's fine but I'd definitely want top notch. Boot is big enough for a sub so why not

I found in the brouche an item called DIN radio install kit. I'm assuming this is what I would need for an aftermarket headunit?

Has anyone reading this tried getting to the speakers? How easy was it to change them, including the tweeters? Risk of causing damage? As I mentioned before, in my saxo its a case of sticking my key in the speaker grill and twisting/pulling. That's french cars for you though

On a side note, I booked a test drive for Saturday lunch time, very excited!

Just seen the hard drive idea in the link above from stu vRS. That's really good, my alpine head unit can take usb sticks but when you start plugging hard drives in it just takes ages to load every time you turn car on again.

From what people are saying, that system is quite quick and doesn't need reloading - massive plus

Just seen the hard drive idea in the link above from stu vRS. That's really good, my alpine head unit can take usb sticks but when you start plugging hard drives in it just takes ages to load every time you turn car on again.

From what people are saying, that system is quite quick and doesn't need reloading - massive plus

Yep, you can just plug it in and forget it's even there!

That is of course till you want to put some more music on it.

16gb Pen Drives work equally as well (solid state too!)

you will be surprised how good the standard speakers and hu are. They are better than a lot of budget aftermarket speakers which is what I found out. If you just add a separate sub and amp and deaden the doors it will sound good. You only upgrade the speakers if you're into hi fi or want to compete/ into spl. For normal everyday listening they are fine.

I'll have to have a look about this dynamatting, I've done very basic sound deadening before, but I've seen that word a lot on this forum, is it a serious job?

There's loads of different brands of sound deadener in the market but Dynamat is probably one of the more famous (and expensive ones). So instead of dynamatting you could, do silent coating, brown breading, anti Vibeing, Stinger Road killing, and lots of other '..ing'.

There's loads of different brands of sound deadener in the market but Dynamat is probably one of the more famous (and expensive ones). So instead of dynamatting you could, do silent coating, brown breading, anti Vibeing, Stinger Road killing, and lots of other '..ing'.

Is it a hard job mate?

I wouldn't mind doing it as the only thing which annoys me about the speakers is the vibration.

you will be surprised how good the standard speakers and hu are. They are better than a lot of budget aftermarket speakers which is what I found out. If you just add a separate sub and amp and deaden the doors it will sound good. You only upgrade the speakers if you're into hi fi or want to compete/ into spl. For normal everyday listening they are fine.

How easy/hard is it to add a sub to the standard setup? I use preouts on my current headunit and my sub amp only takes ?aux leads? (the red and white ones)

How easy/hard is it to add a sub to the standard setup? I use preouts on my current headunit and my sub amp only takes ?aux leads? (the red and white ones)

The standard hu does not have pre outs so you will need a high to low converter (line out converter). or you could get a dsp or other oem integration such as time alignment. not cheap though. A high to low converter cn be bought for only a few quid but it probably won't give you many volts pre out. I would use the rear channels so you can fade/adjust the balance between the sub and the front speakers. You can still keep the rear speakers using a high to low converter.

that sounds like a right ball ache and also leaves it with having to have the amp turned up high to boost the signal.

also leaves you screwed if you want to change the settings on the fly.

people have said its not worth changing the headunit for an after market but it seems silly not to when i have a two hundred quid alpine with bluetooth parrot iphone aux mp3 and all the eq settings for high mids and my sub plus pre outs. basically i suppose what im asking is two things..

-has anyone put an aftermarket headunit and if so does it look stupid or alright?

-and is there anything amazing that id miss from standard headunit (not sat nav unit)

it's possible to get good quality sound from the standard hu, I'm using a fancy lineout converter/dsp which gives me 8volts pre out for the sub amp , a lot cheaper than a top end hu.

the standard hu (Dance model, the newer models have 'Swing' model so I can't comment on those) has built in dsp to change the mids, bass and treble individually, a bit like having a 3 band equailiser. I keep everything in neutral with 'loud' turned off for better sound quality.

you could always just feed a high level signal (speaker outs) into the amp's high level input and run speakers /sub(s) off the amp(s)

Edited 13 January, 201115 yr by fabia55

Is it a hard job mate?

I wouldn't mind doing it as the only thing which annoys me about the speakers is the vibration.

my doors are deadened slightly (not the whole door) and there is no vibration at all. I can turn it right the way up to 25 or 26 and there is no rattling at all, apart from really thumping bass but that's because it's coming from my sub vibrating the number plate. normally i listen to volume at 16-22 depending on road noise although I do have it set so that the faster i go the hu will increase volume gradually, another reason to keep standard hu.

i'm not an expert in installing sound deadening but i know how difficult depends what you're usin as some are quite flexible, some are sticky back peel off stuff. some may need be warmed up to make it bend easier. i would say it's not too difficult if you are comfortable with taking off the door card and sticking it on.

Edited 13 January, 201115 yr by fabia55