Canton experience anybody?

[Shhhkoda]

I've ordered the SE Business with a few extras and one of them was the Canton sound system. The local dealer wasn't able to demo in the showroom they had disabled the sounds so I still haven't heard it yet. I'm making assumptions with 12 speakers and 600 watts it will sound much better than the standard, and the discounted price seemed worth it. But I would be interested to hear from anybody with genuine experience of it. I couldn't justify the cost of the Columbus so I'll be using it with the Amundsen.

 

It goes without saying anything negative I'd rather not hear right now.....but bring it on. 

[Dr Zoidberg]

The Octavia III Canton was a worthwhile upgrade for the money, and on paper the Superb III looks like it will be better.
 

[thewinelake]

There's another thread on this if that helps

[Steevie Wonder]

I was wondering the very same thing..... I had a listen to the system in an L&K combi and was very impressed, a far better quality system over the standard setup.

Needless to say if I had the choice I would 100% go for it.

Steve

[GaSelle]

It sounds great, but not worth the extra money - over here at least. In Denmark even an option like Canton has 150% tax on it. So for the Canton alone, it´s a £950 upgrade.

[Shhhkoda]

It sounds great, but not worth the extra money - over here at least. In Denmark even an option like Canton has 150% tax on it. So for the Canton alone, it´s a £950 upgrade.

That's bad news, the UK list is £600 but after discount it comes down. To be honest though it's not very often we don't get screwed in the UK compared to Europe 

[Sagalout]

I am not an audiophile by any means but the CANTON sound system is quite impressive as far as I am concerned. Possible to listen to voice on radio 4 or heavy metal at +10 with equal clarity. That is plenty enough for me. I do think it is much better than the std pack that was in the SEL exec that I had on test drive.

 

The variable surround sound makes a great difference to wide range music.

[GaSelle]

However, it does come standard on the "Style" (top spec - Ambition is "middle" and Active the "entry"). The price difference from Ambition to Style is £4000. For the Ambition, there is a "Ambition Plus" package, where you get electric boot, high beam assist, Sunset and xenon. The price for this package is £2200. That means, that the only benefit for upgrading to Style is one inch bigger alloys, Canton, LED colour strips (LED Plus) and silver roof bars. And then you´ll still be missing the electric boot and Sunset, which are £1300 extra for the Style. So it took a lot of "back and forth" for me to decide, but went for the Ambition with Plus package. So, the Canton sounds great, but not THAT much better than the standard fitted speakers, long story short

[BurialConstant]

However, it does come standard on the "Style" (top spec - Ambition is "middle" and Active the "entry"). The price difference from Ambition to Style is £4000. For the Ambition, there is a "Ambition Plus" package, where you get electric boot, high beam assist, Sunset and xenon. The price for this package is £2200. That means, that the only benefit for upgrading to Style is one inch bigger alloys, Canton, LED colour strips (LED Plus) and silver roof bars. And then you´ll still be missing the electric boot and Sunset, which are £1300 extra for the Style. So it took a lot of "back and forth" for me to decide, but went for the Ambition with Plus package. So, the Canton sounds great, but not THAT much better than the standard fitted speakers, long story short

Strange how certain stuff is expensive in Europe and we cheap, and vise versa

[Elpex]

In Estonia you can get Canton upgrade for 490€ (approx. 346£). No further taxes.

[Shhhkoda]

In Estonia you can get Canton upgrade for 490€ (approx. 346£). No further taxes.

Wow that is cheap, at that price it's a no brainer. It's hard to work out the discount for individual extra items but my extras total around £3400 and I believe I've got around a 28% discount. I wanted the Columbus over the Amundsen but couldn't justify the extra cost. However both players will play FLAC files my preferred audio format so can't wait to hear it.  

[Buzzlightear]

So, very early in my ownership experience but thought I'd post a reply to say overall I'm very pleased with decision to upgrade to Canton. Seems to me to fill the car (in my case Estate) with a very satisfying, full, sound. A noticeable improvement over the standard system to my ears.

Assuming as with most things hifi there's potential for further improvement over time as the speakers and amp settle in, this could be a very worthwhile upgrade for people who like their music.

The only downside is the rattle/buzzing coming from somewhere inside the front passenger door that appears to be triggered at a certain frequency. Would be interesting to hear if any other canton owners have experienced the same?

Probably not a popular soundtrack of choice with many in this forum (or any forum?!), but it's the 'Fast & Furious 5 - Rio Heist' album that really excites the door; particularly the track 'Assembling the team'.

Edited 19 December, 2015 by Buzzlightear

[FelisBengalensis]

I don't have that particular example, and so far haven't found anything to upset the build. Everything from classical to Rammstein is in the car.

[eurotraveller]

It’s all relative and very much also depends on how spoiled you are.

 

I test drove a new SIII with the standard system and found it quite disappointing, so expected a big improvement with the Canton. Yes, it's better, but still no match for the Harman Kardon-branded system on our 6/7-year old C-class Mercedes, and that really bugs me – especially since I rarely tire of preaching that paying for ‘premium’ car brands is foolish (the Merc is my wife's car).

 

Okay, maybe the acoustics are naturally better in a saloon car that an estate, but still.

 

Of course I’d rather have it than not and as it comes with the L&K package, fine, but would I pay a lot extra for it? No.

[thewinelake]

When I've got mine, I shall have a go at recording the sound of the Canton (both when it's new and after a few weeks) and comparing to the sound of my Volvo C70 (factory fitted power amp & speakers, but Pioneer head unit). Maybe if anyone else with a standard audio car is near me (in North London) I could add a standard audio comparison. 

I'd be using a Zoom H2 digital audio recorder to do this and would be interested to know if it will give a realistic impression of the effects.

Ideally one would record a bit when the car is stationery with the engine off, with the engine on and when driving (maybe on a bit of motorway/dual carriageway) which might help demonstrate if the DSP makes any difference.

One question would be what tracks I should be playing.

Generally when testing audio, I like to play classical piano music as that has pretty demanding dynamics, but I guess some form of rock/pop would also be useful. Maybe even spoken word.

Edited 27 January, 2016 by thewinelake

[Shhhkoda]

When I've got mine, I shall have a go at recording the sound of the Canton (both when it's new and after a few weeks) and comparing to the sound of my Volvo C70 (factory fitted power amp & speakers, but Pioneer head unit). Maybe if anyone else with a standard audio car is near me (in North London) I could add a standard audio comparison. 

I'd be using a Zoom H2 digital audio recorder to do this and would be interested to know if it will give a realistic impression of the effects.

Ideally one would record a bit when the car is stationery with the engine off, with the engine on and when driving (maybe on a bit of motorway/dual carriageway) which might help demonstrate if the DSP makes any difference.

One question would be what tracks I should be playing.

Generally when testing audio, I like to play classical piano music as that has pretty demanding dynamics, but I guess some form of rock/pop would also be useful. Maybe even spoken word.

It will be interesting to see and hear the results but as you probably know online audio reviews are notoriously difficult to represent, all depending on the quality of the mic on the unit you are using to record it with, only you will know if it gives a fair representation. I've seen some What Hi fi review of other car audio on You Tube and they don't even bother to try and recreate the audio they just give a verbal description of the sounds, so I for one would be satisfied just with your impression and comments, especially compared to other car audio systems. An A-B comparison with the stock system would be interesting, generally people seem to think the Canton is worth the price especially if you get a bit of a discount, it all depends how much weight you put to having half decent sounds in the car.  

 

For music choices something you are familiar with always works best rather than some demo disc which to be honest can sound good even on an average system. As you say good quality keyboard recordings have really good dynamics, rock/pop music from the 70/80s is generally good but later stuff tends to fall victim to the loudness wars and sounds horribly compressed at times. Sadly most stuff on You Tube falls into 2 categories, esoteric jazz ensemble or thumping house/trance music.

 

I'm still waiting for my car, it's moved from March/April to Jan week 4....hang on that's now and no news yet....but if and when it does arrive I'll do a review and upload something. 

[thewinelake]

One thing I have discovered is that if I make a video, I'll have to share it via Google Drive or DropBox rather than YouTube, as that tends to mangle the sound and introduce all sorts of strange artefacts.

Possibly an audio upload to soundcloud or suchlike might be best.

[l4wrence]

I'm happy with the Canton, and I've come from a fully customised audio system in my previous car (although a rather old system). Maybe it will help if we said what our preferred settings were? I always like to tweak things to my preference. I'm going from memory here but I didn't feel I needed to change much away from the default. At some point I'll go and check my actual settings but roughly I think I set the following after some auditioning (I mostly listen to pop / dance / electronic genres in 320 mp3 format):

 

Balance / Fader - leave in default (central)

Canton Optimisation - Front

Canton Surround - +1

Canton Equaliser - Individual

Treble: +2

Mid: -1

Bass: +1

Subwoofer: 7

[SuperB-Nl]

I think best way to test it is playing flac files from sd/usb and recorded file uploaded to soundcloud.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Mike66]

I think it's better than the standard system, but not as good as previous A6 with Bose. I think having a speaker in the parcel shelf helped the A6, whereas the superb doesn't have the speaker in the rear.

 

Mike

[Rado11]

After one year experience I am already sure that the CANTON sound system in current Skoda cars is the worst sound reproducing thing i have ever heard in my life. Not because the hardware would be bad or the engineers would not know how to design it an how to set it up properly. The reason is Skoda marketing department's decision to force aggressive sound equlizer settings with Permanently(!) playing high frequencies much louder than is the original sound recording. That can create some first "wow" effect, but it is incredibly annoying for any longer listening of any music. And the worst thing is that you cannot  switch it off! The available treble adjustment works just on limited subset of the crippled frequencies. Ordinary Car audio from the 80's reproduces music with higher fidelity. Otherwise the Skoda cars are great. But do not spend any money for this parody of a hi-fi system.

Edited 23 March, 2017 by Rado11

[Shhhkoda]

12 hours ago, Rado11 said:

After one year experience I am already sure that the CANTON sound system in current Skoda cars is the worst sound reproducing thing i have ever heard in my life. Not because the hardware would be bad or the engineers would not know how to design it an how to set it up properly. The reason is Skoda marketing department's decision to force aggressive sound equlizer settings with Permanently(!) playing high frequencies much louder than is the original sound recording. That can create some first "wow" effect, but it is incredibly annoying for any longer listening of any music. And the worst thing is that you cannot  switch it off! The available treble adjustment works just on limited subset of the crippled frequencies. Ordinary Car audio from the 80's reproduces music with higher fidelity. Otherwise the Skoda cars are great. But do not spend any money for this parody of a hi-fi system.

Well after my first year I have to disagree, saying it's the worst ever is harsh.  If I'm honest there are some things I find disappointing.   

Firstly the rear door speakers are only mid and tweeters which I think contributes to the overall sound lacking warmth.  You can compensate a little with ‘individual’ sound settings but the overall effect creates a hole in the middle sound with the sub in the boot. In the driving seat it’s ok, but for rear passengers it’s not great.  I really think if they had fitted subs and tweeters in the rear doors it would be a big improvement, if I knew a bit more about car audio I would look into replacing them.

Secondly the sub could be better, it lacks low bass and trying to compensate with the sound settings on some material creates a ploddy bass sound.

Thirdly the preset sound settings are rubbish and pretty pointless.  

But having said all that there is an awful lot to like.  The individual sound setting for bass/mid/treble and sub are pretty good and the wide open spatial sound you can generate is very appealing.  The  midrange is really good without sounding squashed and forward, probably the dashboard speaker helps with this. For the overall sound I wouldn’t call it aggressive in any way, it’s very smooth and open and produces a proper audio sound. It can sound good at low levels but also encourages you to turn it up.  I use FLAC files and on the right material it’s as good as anything I’ve heard up to £1000.

Personally I’m glad I’ve got it and wouldn’t be without it, on a scale of 1-10, I would rate it as 7.5 which for the money is good enough for me.

[englishswede]

Horses for courses I'd say. I owned several brands of car all fitted with the standard factory sound system.  VW, Volvo, Ford, Vauxhall amongst others, and they've all been ok. They've played my music and I've been happy at that that.

Last year I hired a brand new BMW 435 for some fun which came equipped with Harmon Kardons 16 speaker surround sound system. When turned up to 3/4 or more it would make my chest cavity vibrate and my soul scream. This is a good thing! The sound was detailed and warm at any level, but like the car itself it just wanted to be pushed!

So when ordering our new Superb there was no doubt in my mind that it should be equipped with Canton. Not because I had listened to the system, but because having experienced Harmon Kardon in the BMW I knew I needed something more than the standard offerings (I had been previously content with).

Imo Canton was well worth it. I agree it's a shame the rear door speakers offer no bass at all, although I travel mostly in the front so it is not a major deal. The extra bass bin in the boot can be a little flat sometimes (this is comparing to HK) but when set at the right level it adds a bit more low end pleasure. There is a lovely dynamic in the front of the car however. Sound when turned up can easily fill the cabin, and at times can resonate in the body. Not Harmon Kardon proportions, but you can feel the music through the sheer volume. It is certainly nearer up to HK than down to the standard car stereos I have previously owned. At low levels I find there to be good overall detail and particularly decent clarity mid range. The equaliser can be played with a little, so as to fine tune. Again, far better than anything i had previously owned, but not up there with HK either. All in all I can say I'm very happy with it. Thumbs up, can't complain. I got what I hoped and expected...

 

[freelunch]

@englishswede Yeah, just about right. I've had mine up as loud as I can stand it and not noticed any distortion. I don't see much point in the surround sound and the subwoofer is just a dull thud, but the system repays hi-res sound files.

[2slo7]

Priced itself out of the market for me, not because I wouldn't pay for Canton but because I refuse to pay for Kessy which, for UK cars, you have to order together.