Canton ... or not?

[FabFabFabia]

26 minutes ago, OldKaroq said:

 

Wow. I barely understood a word of that!! 

You'd understand if you heard the Canton system.

[OzzyP83]

So I’ve been playing around with my standard setup with Amundsen head unit. I’m actually very pleased with the standard sound. I set bass to +7 mid +2 treble +4 and get a very punchy natural sound out of it. When listening to classical music you can really hear the nuances of individual instrumentation and hip hop has all the bass and punch you could ask for.  If I can get this quality of sound out of standard setup, I can only imagine how much better the canton must be. 

[patrolman]

I have it but it came in a car I bought from stock as it had all the other items I wanted would I order it again I don’t now it seems better at high volume and the music my daughters listen to 

I wanted a spare wheel so not a big issue for me 

but I think I would have liked the dash top storage bin instead of a speaker 

[FabFabFabia]

57 minutes ago, OzzyP83 said:

I can only imagine how much better the canton must be

You really can't! I wish I had stuck with the basic system.

 

29 minutes ago, patrolman said:

I think I would have liked the dash top storage bin instead of a speaker 

I agree, the Canton centre speaker is middly and pointless -  keeping the dashtop storage would have been better had I have had the choice.

[OldKaroq]

18 hours ago, FabFabFabia said:

You'd understand if you heard the Canton system.

 

I have the radio on sometimes on longer journeys. So probably a few times a month. Canton would be lost on me, I'm afraid!

 

I do like to hear the DSG change gear though.....Im more of a petrol-head than a music buff!

 

[BoxerBoy]

On 14/07/2018 at 08:40, FwineF said:

Hello all ... my first post! I have an opportunity to change the spec on my Karoq and I’m wondering if I should remove the Canton upgrade. 

 

After reading a previous post about how difficult it is to set things up so that it sounds good (poor stereo due to centre speaker etc), a previous car with a similar set up that I didn’t really get on with and now a new Ibiza with an excellent standard system, I’m wondering if it’s really worth the money!

 

Your views would be much appreciated. 

 

Thanks

 

Yes. Immediately.

[FwineF]

Luckily I did! Replaced it with the digital dash which, as a bit of a neek, I love. Standard system when set up properly is actually fine. Lacks a little deep bass but then I'm not a fan of grime so it doesn't matter much!

[OzzyP83]

On 03/12/2018 at 12:31, FwineF said:

Luckily I did! Replaced it with the digital dash which, as a bit of a neek, I love. Standard system when set up properly is actually fine. Lacks a little deep bass but then I'm not a fan of grime so it doesn't matter much!

I listen to a lot of grime and it’s pretty good for it hahaha, better than my Octavia lol

[FwineF]

[Michael G]

I'm not keen on grime but fortunately we've got a good hand job car wash nearby oo err.

[darock]

Despair not, FabFabFab,  Canton is not all bad and I have come up with a simple solution for the tonal issue.

The issue, according to me, would be too many high mids, 1-5 kHz range, and not enough low mids 200-1000Hz.

Resulting in hard rock music like AC/DC or Led Zeppelin sounding too agressive. Voices sound papery. Quack.

The Canton equalizer cannot fix that with its 3 bands (bass/med/high). Leave these flat (0/0/0).

I'd suggest to go Bluetooth and use an equalizer with a smartphone application with enough computational power.

My Huawei P20 Lite easily does the job but it's brand new and not cheap. It's also got 64 GB storage which helps.

I suspect audio processing is not that computational intensive so older samsungs may very well do the job. 

Foobar, a freeware, is perhaps not the best UI you can get but a) no pesky commercials b) open source and

c) seems to be supported by music lovers who care about signal processing. There are many others.

You can enable / disable the equalizer among many effects clicking a checkbox for quick comparisons.

My settings are:

55Hz = -2    77Hz = -1

110Hz / 156Hz / 220Hz / 311Hz / 440Hz / 622Hz / 880Hz = 0

1.2kHz = -2     1.8kHz = -4        2.5kHz / 3.5kHz = -6   5kHz = -4

7kHz / 10 kHz / 14 kHz / 20 kHz = 0

DON'T amplify with positive corrections to avoid clipping distorsion.

That's a start but I can listen to Thunderstruck and Dancing Days without cringing.

This does not work with USB so we don't get the nice covers displayed.

Hope this helps.

 

Jeff

Edited 7 December, 2018 by darock

[FabFabFabia]

11 minutes ago, darock said:

Despair not, FabFabFab,  Canton is not all bad and I have come up with a simple solution for the tonal issue.

The issue, according to me, would be too many high mids, 1-5 kHz range, and not enough low mids 200-1000Hz.

Resulting in hard rock music like AC/DC or Led Zeppelin sounding too agressive. Voices sound papery. Quack.

The Canton equalizer cannot fix that with its 3 bands (bass/med/high). Leave these flat (0/0/0).

I'd suggest to go Bluetooth and use an equalizer with a smartphone application with enough computational power.

My Huawei P20 Lite easily does the job but it's brand new and not cheap. It's also got 64 GB storage which helps.

I suspect audio processing is not that computational intensive so older samsungs may very well do the job. 

Foobar, a freeware, is perhaps not the best UI you can get but a) no pesky commercials b) open source and

c) seems to be supported by music lovers who care about signal processing. There are many others.

You can enable / disable the equalizer among many effects clicking a checkbox for quick comparisons.

My settings are:

55Hz = -2    77Hz = -1

110Hz / 156Hz / 220Hz / 311Hz / 440Hz / 622Hz / 880Hz = 0

1.2kHz = -2     1.8kHz = -4        2.5kHz / 3.5kHz = -6   5kHz = -4

7kHz / 10 kHz / 14 kHz / 20 kHz = 0

DON'T amplify with positive corrections to avoid clipping distorsion.

That's a start but I can listen to Thunderstruck and Dancing Days without cringing.

This does not work with USB so we don't get the nice covers displayed.

Hope this helps.

 

Jeff

Thanks darock, it's not just the peaky upper mids that you mention that bother me, it's mainly the slight distortion/clipping on things like strings, digital reverb and female vocals, whatever the source and file quality. It's as if the factory have overdriven the system a bit to get more loudness at the sacrifice of audio purity. The sound system definitely needs more EQ bands (even the cheaper Seat Sound has 5) and it should have a sound overload limiter on the amp to prevent distortion (but the amp is sealed so nothing to fiddle with here either). As I listen from SD card and also live radio then your EQ suggestions, while valid, would not apply to me, and while I stream my iPod over Bluetooth the iPod's preset-only EQ choices make it sound different, not better. I might download Foobar for iOS and give that a try. Interestingly, this morning, after getting fed up with constantly fiddling with the EQ in the Karoq, I set the sound profile to Canton (what does this mean?) and this seemed to be the better of most evils. Still a little toppy but nothing for me to fiddle with so the wife is happy even if I still grimace a bit when Abba come on. I leave my subwoofer on max, and the balance fader two taps towards the rear. Sound focus Driver or Front. I'll let you know how I get on living with this latest setup. I wish now I had bought the car with the basic sound system and then got someone to add an amp and good speakers, but it seems you can't remove the Canton amp or even change the front door speakers as they are 8 ohms when every other brand of door speakers are 4 ohms. If anyone on this forum can throw me a glimmer of hope, re: upgrading the sound system, that would be the one Christmas present I really need :-)

[darock]

To the original poster, I would advise to go for canton if you are going to listen to music with a recent smartphone using BT equalization with foobar or else. With the tonal correction, the sound is very articulate and pleasing. Female voices can be very impressive. Maria Creuza and Vinicius de Moraes, this style.

If you're going to listen to radio or through USB. I only tried SBC codec for now. Will report on Apt-X and AAC codec later.

 

Based on what I know of Dynaudio, I would expect the basic stereo to be good too.

[Codename47]

I have a 2015 Octavia with Canton. Although a different car than Karoq, Canton sound system was a big disappointment: better bass than standard system, but it only sounds great in mid volume. You cannot spot a difference in low volume, but when you crank up the volume high, the speakers start rattling so there is no use of the high volume once the sound is unpleasant.. 

[darock]

Overall, I am quite pleased NOW with the Canton stereo, no rattle here, just a brightness that can be corrected.

Once this is fixed, it gets VERY good. The amplifier is probably decent class-D and does not distort much, crystal clear words.

The bass lines are very easy to follow too which is not easy to achieve in a car.

 

Codename47, at low volume, you need to another tonal correction, function of the volume level, Fletcher-Munson curves etc. to hear differences.

Another thing that you can do a lot more easily with a smartphone.

 

Edited 20 December, 2018 by darock

[FwineF]

I removed Canton from my options and I’m fairly happy with the standard system when set up properly (see advice from others re bass/mid/treble). A decent set of fronts and an amped sub in the boot would improve it but I’m not sure I can be bothered. I’d rather have a nice holiday!

[shyVRS245]

8 minutes ago, FwineF said:

I removed Canton from my options and I’m fairly happy with the standard system when set up properly (see advice from others re bass/mid/treble). A decent set of fronts and an amped sub in the boot would improve it but I’m not sure I can be bothered. I’d rather have a nice holiday!

Agree with the above just recently tweaked my standard set up from advice on here to increase BASS and reduce TREBLE.

[edbostan]

I have never thought a car environment is good for hi-fi listening. You sit not in the centre of the speakers and the acoustics are random with road and tyre noise intruding in the cabin. Bass/mid range speakers are usually in the doors and the tweeters elsewhere while rear seated passengers (don't know as I rarely travel in the back).

[FabFabFabia]

On 02/12/2018 at 19:31, BoxerBoy said:

 

I actually prefer listening in the car to listening at home. It's just that the limited tone controls on the head unit do nothing to tame the high-mid frequency peak of the harsh Canton sound. Even replacing the door speakers is a no-no because they're 8 ohms when every other speaker on the market is 4. And patching in an equaliser is another problem because the amp is connected to the head unit by an optical cable. Hopefully I'll find an answer one day.

[darock]

FabFabFabia, you can try inserting a one or two ohms, power-dissipating series resistor to a speaker you feel is at fault.

The amp acts as a voltage source with very low output resistance, typically a few milliohms.

It's not power efficient, expect a watt lost to heat but it's cheap and beats replacing a speaker.

 

Edbostan, my home stereo is a lot better.

Allthough there is this irritating fridge compressor that I hear from the pizza joint every few minutes.

Acoustics is random too at home, I have a nasty low frequency resonance that I haven't been able to get rid of yet.

Pretty sure many people spend more time listening to music in their car than at home, for lack of time or consensus.

I will never hear the lower frequencies in a car.

Under 62 mph, the karoq is rather quiet.

 

Edited 30 December, 2018 by darock
typo

[FabFabFabia]

3 minutes ago, darock said:

FabFabFabia, you can try inserting a one or two ohms, power-dissipating series resistor to a speaker you feel is at fault.

The amp acts as a voltage source with very low output resistance, typically a few milliohms.

It's not power efficient, expect a watt lost to heat but it's cheap and beats replacing a speaker.

 

Would such a resistor effectively "pull out" the upper midrange hump (around 3kHz) or just generally reduce the tweeter's volume (similar to sticking some foam over it). If you could point me in the direction of a recommended resistor I'd muich appreciate it as this is a new area to me.

 

 

[darock]

FabFabFabia, a run-of-the-mill speaker has an increasing impedance over frequency, much like a coil with a resonance of sorts at a lower frequency.

See for instance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_characteristics_of_dynamic_loudspeakers#/media/File:Speaker_impedance.svg

The resistor R acts as a voltage divider and reduces the volume most where the speaker impedance Z is low: Z / (Z + R).

With the impedance curve above, that would be in the 100 Hz - 2000 Hz range which is not ideal if 1 kHz - 3 kHz is what we aim at.

But since the resistor is dirt cheap, it's worth a try.

More on speaker impedance http://education.lenardaudio.com/en/05_speakers_3.html

 

grey type common power resistor:  https://www.ebay.com/itm/10x-Ceramic-Cement-Power-Resistor-5W-1-ohm-Best-Price-/261583787315       

green type common power resistor: https://www.vishay.com/resistors-fixed/power-5-to-25/   

 

Still, why won't you give a shot to my suggestion with playing music from a Bluetooth android smartphone and foobar 2000 ?

it's a lot simpler to implement, check the attachment

 

Jeff

[Livrishind]

Stay with the original equipment. Just as good, in my humble opinion. And you get a great cubby hole on top of the dash. Result!

[darock]

Quote

after getting fed up with constantly fiddling with the EQ in the Karoq, I set the sound profile to Canton (what does this mean?) and this seemed to be the better of most evils. Still a little toppy but nothing for me to fiddle with so the wife is happy even if I still grimace a bit when Abba come on. I leave my subwoofer on max, and the balance fader two taps towards the rear.

 

obviously, I set the tonality options to Canton first thing too, it does make sense otherwise. 

The equalizer setting addresses the issue with upper mids being too bright in Canton mode.

 

[FabFabFabia]

1 minute ago, darock said:

 

obviously, I set the tonality options to Canton first thing too, it does make sense otherwise. 

The equalizer setting addresses the issue with upper mids being too bright in Canton mode.

 

Thank you for posting your recommended Foobar2000 settings, they do indeed make a great difference to my iPod music in the car but I wish my Playlists could be imported from iTunes/iPod. The only trouble is that I also like to listen to radio quite a lot so for that it's the default Canton sound again. If I can find someone knowledgable near to me then I'll certainly have a try at fitting resistors to the tweeter feeds in the A-Pillars (knowing my luck if I try it myself I'll set the airbags off or break a retaining clip). Or I could replace the tweeters for "softer sounding" ones - I'd replace the Canton door midwoofers too but these are 8 ohms and all others in the world are 4 ohms. It could well be that a simple adjustment in the amplifier's crossover frequency would sort it all out for me (if only I knew how) or even adding a simple equalizer after the amp might do it. I do appreciate all your suggestions.