Maybe that is it... my standards are already low!

The Bolero in my vRS is at least as good as the standard system in my old Mk5 GTi. I only ever use Spotify via Bluetooth.

 

Interesting because that's exactly the comparison I'm making too.  It's true that some of the music I'm listening to from SD I probably never tried in the GTi so it may not be an entirely fair comparison. Comparing the two, from memory only as I no longer have the Golf, I would say the vRS produces a clearer, purer sound in the upper frequencies, but is much weaker at the lower end. It's true the sound in the Golf wasn't anything special, but it was just good enough that I never found myself being annoyed by it in the way I am finding in my new car.

Maybe that is it... my standards are already low!

Had a Bluemotion and a GT once upon a time and coulsnt believe how bad they were, by comparison the system in the Mk4 was absolutely stonking.

I agtee the standard system is lacking in bass and general guts. The 2 treble speakers in the upper door are much more prevalent in the overall sound than the others.

 

Its certainly not as good as the Sony system in my old mondeo titanium, although the rest of the car is better in almost every way.

 

One thing I have found that helps is to set the fade very slightly rearwards with the crosshair centred on the floor space in front of the rear seats on the diagram, this seems to tame the tinny wing mirror speakers a bit and give better overall balance.

I totally agree. My O3 vRS Initial sound was disappointing and very tinny. I faded the sound rearwards and dulled the treble a touch and found it better, but still not on par with my previous Superb or Golf MK5.

However, knowing that sound systems can take sometime to bed/run in I stuck with the disappointment and started experimenting with my sound sources and their quality. After 3mths and some higher volume speaker exercise the sound has very much improved, with bass much more to my liking and the treble tinny ness reduced. The volume has to be at or above half way for the system to sound balanced. IMHO.

I have noticed (now that the speakers have been flexed suitably) that the quality of the audio source real does matter. I have an mp3 rip of a CD I keep in the car also on SD. The quality of the rip was high but it has a noticeably reduced Bass track to the CD version. Try some known quality music or different high bit rate digital formats MP3/WMA/AAC etc as some brands of head units prefer one format over another.

I would loved to have selected the Canton (excellent rep in Deutschland), but due to the fact I rarely have the car to myself and the missus does not do normal volume listening (prefers it as background noise), it wasnt worth the outlay.

I'm wondering how any of the people here who've installed sub-woofers or similar have got on?

 

(note: the following I posted on another thread and the realised it really woudl have been better here, so apols for the duplicate post):

 

Anyway, I've been in some discussion with my dealer sales rep about this issue and as a result paid them a visit today.  We compared the sound in my car with  that in another vrs with the same system to see if there was any difference.  There didn't seem to be, so we concluded that mine is not faulty but working as designed.   I had a long discussion too with the service manager who had taken it seriously, read a couple of rather long e-mails I'd sent and also the "Bolero sound system on Octavia RS III" thread on this forum that I'd sent a link to.  As it happens he used to work in an up-market car audio company which gave him some useful insight.  

 

However, the bottom line is that there's nothing that can be done by Skoda - I mean there is no optional post-sales upgrade I could buy from Skoda.  The Canton system replaces many components in the car including the wiring loom so any attempt to install it other than at the factory would be horrendously expensive.

 

However, he did recommend that I call Skoda Customer Service and let them know of my dissatisfaction.  As he said if enough people complain there's always a change they may offer either a software upgrade or even an dealer-fit upgrade option.

 

So - if you're not happy too, I suggest you do this too.

after reading on here about fading the system to slightly behind the front seats I tried that...it seems to help no end, calming the tinny treble massively

I've come from the std sound system in my 12 plate vRS to the std system in my mk3 vRS, Noticeably poorer sound quality. Shame :-(

Glad I ordered the Canton for the Vrs.

 

Funny thing is that I was lucky to have a new P1 Impreza and that didn't come with a Head unit..I didn't bother fitting one for about 2 yrs...Decatted exhaust was enough music to the ears..

 

Steve

Ok - I called Customer Service about the sound quality issue as recommended by my dealer.  It's the first time I've called them and I found them very helpful and were taking it seriously.  However, she checked and told me that I was the first person to report this issue with sound quality.  It's been assigned to a case manager, who will investigate further and get back to me within 48 hours apparently.

 

So, it could be very helpful to all of us if others do the same and put in a call.  The number is 03330037504 (which is a true local-rate number, so free on most landline and mobile contracts).

I must admit to having kept an eye on this thread as I'm a bit of an audiophile.

I have the Bolero system in my vRS and, coming from a 2010 BMW 320D SE with the "Professional" upgrade, don't find it that bad. I usually listed to DAB radio and trackes from my SD card ripped at various rates. The lower bit rate rips sound poor, but those ripped at 320 thingies sound great.

I wonder if there was a change of parts suppliers? My vRS was built in April this year.

I'm also in the camp that doesn't find the sound from the Bolero too bad. You need to jack up the bass a bit on the equaliser but having done so it sounds reasonably well balanced.

 

Having said that, once you get above half volume it does start to get a bit harsh on the mid to high frequncies - if I turn it up that high it doesn't stay there for long!  

I'm coming from a 10 year old standard system in a Mk1 Fabia to the Bolero with Canton pack (when the car arrives).

 

I know it'll be far better than what I'm used to (obviously) but this thread still scares me whenever I read it

I'm in the Bolero is prity poor camp.  However when I connect my phone via bluetooth and play Spotify music through the radio with an equaliser setting turned on in Spotify it sounds much better.  Bass is so much better than I can get when listening to the radio.

I agree with most, it's very source specific, USB with well encoded songs, it's ok. Pity it wouldnt be trivial to put an aftermarket stereo in the mk3. Wish I was more patient, and ordered a car so I could have got canton.

I had an audiotec Fischer match amp and sub installed. It sounds very good and is a good option for those that think the standard sound is flat

When I ordered my O3, the MY15 spec sheets for Aus weren't in yet so I had to go by the MY14 specs.  The Canton audio was only available as part of a $3900 package that includes lots of cool stuff I'll never use, so I skipped it.  I was just fiddling around online and the MY15 configurator is online and Canton is now available as a stand-alone option for $600.  I'm weighing whether or not to try and add it to my order (The car is coming with Bolero).

 

On the one hand, it's only $600 for a car we'll be driving for hopefully 10 years or more.  On the other hand, that's an extra $15 a month (which adds up). Neither my wife nor I are audiophiles.  We usually listen to music at conversation level.  Most of our music is not bass heavy or beat driven.  We also have two kids who don't like loud music (but may when they're older).  And finally, we are both used to listening to pretty crappy systems.  Our home stereo is the TV, my wife's car has the stock 1996 cassette headunit with music played over a cassette adapter (finding a cassette adapter was an adventure in its own right), and my car has a cheap aftermarket unit with a couple blown speakers.

 

Is it really worth it?

I had back to back listens to both systems at one of the Brisbane dealers, and afterwards knew I had to get the canton. It's so much better.

Below I will explain the way I have overcome the shortcomings of the standard Bolero sound system in my MY15 VRS TDI, but first a little background.

 

I have been dissatisfied with the sound quality on my car since the first time I played any music in it, and have posted several times on the subject in these forums. 

 

Last week, I visited my dealer, where both the sales rep. and then the service manager spent time with me, listening to the system with a variety of musical, and also comparing my car with another in the showroom that had the same setup.

 

From this visit we concluded that

• My system is not faulty as it sounds the same as the other car we tried.
• Where the music has a very deep bass line this can come through quite strongly – enough that I could feel it as well as hear it.  If you can get hold of “Hideaway” by Keisza you hear what I mean.  I was surprised.

So I went away and did some more tests.  I don’t have any proper measuring equipment but I installed a frequency spectrum analysis app for my phone to try and understand what’s going on.  There are several of these but the one that I found worked for me was SSA (Sound Spectrum Analyzer for Android).  I then created a 5-min mp3 of white noise and played it in the car.  While this was playing I started my frequency analyser and adjusted each of the tone controls on the Bolero screen up and down between min and max settings.  The effects of the tone controls were quite visible on the spectrum graph and seem to show something rather interesting (to me anyway):  it appears that the three controls affect frequency ranges roughly as follows:

• Bass:  below 200Hz with most effect around 50Hz
• Mid:  about 800-2000Hz
• Treble:  2000-5000Hz (possibly more but my phone didn’t seem to be picking up anything above 5000Hz)

So, this information, plus the track by Keisza suggest that there may be a weakness not in the deep bass as I originally thought but in the lower-mid-range, and that the Bolero's tone controls don’t allow any way to adjust this part of the spectrum.

 

I wanted find some way to confirm this.  Fortunately I had one – an old but good mp3 player I still have that has a built-in graphic equalizer.  I put some music to play on that, connected it to the car via the AUX input, and then tweaked the equalizer until I was happiest with the sound.  Sure enough, I ended up to boosting the level in the range of 80-800Hz – the very piece of the spectrum you can’t do anything about with the Bolero.

 

By now, I had a plan.  If I could process my mp3s to add whatever equalization proved necessary, they might compensate for the deficiencies of the car system and sound OK.  This has in fact proved to be the case and I’m now rather pleased with the sound of all the music I have processed in this way.  I'm not so pleased that I've had to go to so much trouble, of course. 

 

So here's my recipe for better sound:

 

How to Pre-process MP3s for the Bolero System

 

Install the free open source application called Audacity, which is available for Mac, Windows and Linux, and can perform all sorts of manipulations on sound files including mp3s (see note below though).  I have a Mac so installed the Mac version.

 

To test the technique, start Audacity then open an mp3 you want to modify.   Then from the Effects menu select Equalization… .  You’re then presented with a graphical interface that allows you increase or decrease the level across the full frequency range.

 

In experimenting with different types of music I ended up with two different equalization graphs – one for rock and pop, another for classical.  The classical one looks like this:

 

 

And the rock/pop one looks like this:

 

 

There’s probably a lot of scope for fine-tuning these but I found these made a huge improvement.

 

In Audacity you can save these curves and recall them later – I called the rock/pop one “Bolero 3” (as it was my third attempt) and the classical one “Bolero Classical”.

 

Once you’re happy with the curve you’ve decided on, you can then apply it automatically to all the tracks on an album (or more) using the feature they call “Chains”.  Basically a chain is a sequence of actions to be performed on selected files. 

 

From the File menu, first choose Edit chains… to create one or two chains that you’ll use.  Then in the chain editor, you use the Insert button to add commands.  In my illustration you can see that I apply my “Bolero 3” equalization curve, then do a Normalize (which adjusts the level to avoid any clipping because of peaks that have been amplified in the first step), and then “ExportMP3”, which saves the modified mp3 (If you don’t include the Export step nothing is saved).  There's a GUI for the specific settings for each of these commands, so it's pretty straightforward to build these chains. 

 

To run the chain against a folder full of mp3s, just select Apply Chains… from the File menu, then select the files you want to process.  It whirs away for some minutes doing it and when it’s finished you find it’s create a subfolder called “cleaned”, which contains the modified mp3s.    

 

Once you’ve got this all setup and working it’s relatively easy to work your way through your music folder by folder, letting it process all the files.  It takes a long time but it runs fine in the background while you’re doing something more productive.

 

Note:  for licensing reasons it seems Audacity can’t ship with the libraries it needs to write mp3s, so you have to install these separately. The first time you try to save an mp3 it pops up to tell you need these libraries and tells you how to do it.  I found – certainly for the Mac version – this was quite straightforward.  

Very thorough but my god what a ballache. Lets face it you dont nowadays buy a 20-odd grand car (UK money) to have to do this to your music to get it sounding half reasonable in it.

Plain fact the sound system is not as good as the Mk6 Golf or Mk2 Octavia I had before hand.

What I have found is that the system has some artificial volume/frequency limitations applied to it; my theory is to prevent you from being in any way able to overdrive the speakers.

If you play a song really loud that has some rather challenging mid/low bass frequencies you will find during breaks where the bass eases off (dance/house/garage music particularly) the music becomes significantly louder to the point the treble becomes incredibly shrill and almost uncomfortable to listen too, as soon as the bass cuts back in it quietens back down again.

With some music its extremely obvious. Also its probably the only car ive had where its possible to turn up the volume from above middle volume all the way to full without the volume increasing significantly and/or causing mass distortion.

They've either done this to reduce the chance of blown drivers (after all tweeters tend to take much more abuse than bass cones as they dont move so abruptly) or perhaps the cheap standard paper cones are not much cop so theyve done it to hide their inadequacies...and very poorly if so.

Whats annoying is in a car like this the standard system should sound good and the upgrade considerably better again, whereas the standard system is mediocre at best and the canton v good but probably not worlds better than a standard Mk2 8 speaker system (which whilst not subtle was both extremely loud and bassy).

If I happen to buy another Octavia for sure I would not buy one without Canton. Id say for anyone who really likes music its a necessity not a nice to have.

Edited 13 August, 201411 yr by pipsyp

Still waiting for my stealers to spit and polish my Octy before I pick it up, but being someone who's into music, this doesn't bode well. Having said that, I solved the same challenges in my previous fabia with a full amp/speaker upgrade so I may well have to repurpose that setup for the Octy.

 

Alancha's comments are interesting, as they suggest the problem could be "fixed" with one of the fancy DSP thingies available from the likes of JBL (like the MS-8, though it's expensive), or even a messy-but-cheap approach like this: http://caraudiosecurity.com/procoustics-ms-2-car-audio-optimizer

 

Above doesn't help directly with the can't-turn-volume-up-past-half-way-without-it-limiting-bass problem though. I *had* heard (not that I can remember where) that there's a way of connecting VCDS to tell the stereo that it has an amp connected, and so to not perform any DSP jiggery-pokery. Does anyone know about this? Unless the Canton upgrade comes with a different stereo (I don't know), then you've got to assume any internal DSP is disabled as part of the upgrade? 

 

I do agree though, we shouldn't have to be resorting to these methods on a £20K+ car. I didn't mind too much on my less-than-£15K fabia, but this is a bit silly now. Our Mk1 Octavia suffered from the same problem, but that was nearly 10 years ago and the car itself was a darn site cheaper at the time...

I'd be interested if someone could do the same experimentation/analysis on a Canton/Columbus system, as that has (as I understand it) a different equaliser system for the 5.1 surround sound.  If no-one gets chance (or can be arsed, which would be fair enough), then I may well do this when I finally get hold of mine (18 days and counting, woooo!).

Yes, as pypsyp says, it is indeed a lot of trouble to go to and really shouldn't have been necessary. but if it improves my enjoyment of music in this car, which I like very much otherwise and plan to keep for some years, I hope I'll feel it was worth the effort.

 

It does occur to me though that if I'm right that the main problem is a weakness in the lower-mid-range coupled with a lack of any way to adjust this part of the spectrum, then Skoda could perhaps help us by providing a software upgrade that adds a fourth tone control focused on the 200-800Hz range, and perhaps rebalances the equalisation a bit at the same time.   I assume these adjustments are digital so no hardware changes would be required.  

 

I've had no follow-up from my call to Customer Service yet - I called them a week ago and was promised a call back within 48 hours, so that's a little disappointing.

Could be that some physical changes make a difference too. Adding sound deadening material to my fabia's doors exposed some previously muffled frequencies, so it could possibly help here too.

Could be that some physical changes make a difference too. Adding sound deadening material to my fabia's doors exposed some previously muffled frequencies, so it could possibly help here too.

I have canton and it definitely could do with some deadening in the doors as the door cards vibrate a lot.

I suppose you cant expect to get a larger car for a good chunk less money without some obvious cost cutting; but putting a pants stereo in a car nowadays is a travesty as far as Im concerned.

I can live with doors that clank when shut with the windows open and a prop instead of gas struts for the bonnet but a poor stereo is much more diffficult.

sure you can go down the line of installing a (relatively expensive) in-line amp/DSP and sub but you really should not have to.