Audience Head Unit Problems

[Eponymous]

Has anyone else had problems with the Audience Head Unit?

My story is as follows:-

When I orderered the car i couldn't find out much information on the audience/sound system but I wanted the MP3 functionality and it wasn't my money (company car) so i ordered it.

I collected my car (as signature) 2nd week of June.

Everything was fine save for a buzzing/rattling from the front door speakers at moderate (not loud) volume. No worries, I'll give it a month, see if anything else crops up then get it sorted.

When I got the car I wasn't blown away by the sound but it was a very noticable improvement over the Stream with plenty of power and the head unit displayed MP3 tags (selecable Artist/Album/Track/Filename) scrolling accross the screen. I had read in another thread this was a feature which was added/enabled after a particular build week, so I was glad as I wasn't sure if I was going to get it.

Even so, I didn't think it was worth the

[Johnnyc]

I understand the stream and audience HU's are manufactured by a Ford owned company. There are rumours that this is somehow related to the 'mysterious' problems these HU's seem to be having. Maybe that's why the scroll function was removed. I can assure you though, this scroll function is probably only turned off in the factory programming. A firmware upgrade/downgrade disc would sort that out if you can get hold of one

Personally speaking I wasn't overly impressed with either system for sound and as for mp3, you are stuck with less than 35 albums if you encode at a decent 320kbps. You can't display track info on the maxidot and I found the audience woefully slow to load disks too.

I'm going for a standard stream. Does everything the the audience does except you get a remote 6 cd changer and single disk in the HU (allowing 7 cd's in total) and get 4 less spkrs and no amp. There are even reported cases on here were the remote changer was found to be able playback mp3's but i'll not count on that.

I'll be using the aux input on the stream (provided on the newer models) with my 40Gb mstation HDD mp3 player.

I'm not bothered about losing 2 speakers in the rear and I plan to install mids and replacement tweeters myself in the front anyway. Even a cheap set of components and amp would sound better than the factory audience setup. The weak point (sound quality wise) will be the Stream HU which I plan to keep for the climate/PDC shared screen info.

The upgrade to audience is not worth

[mrkev]

I've got the audience unit and had little problem with it. Sound wise I don't think it sounds anywhere fantastic. An aftermarket solution would sound loads better I'm sure. If I could figure out how to turn the amp on with another HU I would be very tempted. If you turn the volume up a bit it makes the door trim rattle like crazy - think they should of installed some sound deadening in :-)

I've got the MP3 tag info working correctly too, although the other day it said 'UNAVAILABLE' instead of the track name. This was cured by moving to another folder and back again - strange that one.

[lozparry]

I seem to be having a few problems, with my Audience HU.

1. When I rev to about 2500rpm i get a vibration noise from the head (this is with six mp3 discs in, I have tried with normal cds yet but can't see this been the problem) no noise without the discs in.

2. every so often the cd that I'm playing plays but I can't adjust/ change turn up/down volume,stop etc, so have to turn off/on.

3. I do get the tag info, but do have some problems trying to skip folders/tracks, I know that you can change the settings in options.

Generally, as I have said before I think the sound is OK, I have the extra speaker option that has the amp under the pass seat?

PS I've never had a modified/qualify sound setup in previous cars just bog standard so it is a step up in quality and sound for me.

[Johnnyc]

A lot can be acheived through changing to quality speakers and using after market amps. That's why I stuck with the Stream. Obviously the the improvement is limited by the sonic ablities of the HU. Then again if you upgrade the speakers and add a decent amp, is your system likely to sound any worse than someone just adding an aftermarket HU to the car and using the standard speakers as many people do?

[patnmand]

I stayed with the Stream too, on the basis that upgrading with aftermarket speakers would be as good and a lot cheaper than the

[Johnnyc]

There are industry standard mounting holes for speakers that manufacters adhere to. I can't imagine Skoda would be any different in this regard.