Are all standard VAG stereos this bad?

[Rjbell]

Overall i'm happy with the octavia vrs. The two niggles are both audio related. Firstly TSI really doesn't sound very nice. Secondly the stereo is really bad. Coming from a Ford there stereos always sound half decent. Do all VAGs sound this bad or do they cheap out on the budget brands?  Still, its almost a £30k car, i was expecting more.

[FrankNicklin]

Cant fault my Amunsden unit. Volume is loud, very loud and the sound control is spot on, great base. DAB is clear and SD media is great. In the last 10 years I’ve had 3 Ford’s, a Quashqi, and a Honda Civic and the audio in my Octavia SEL tops the lot.

Edited 27 January, 2021 by FrankNicklin

[Deerfoot]

I came from a Volvo and the Skoda audio is very poor in comparison.

 

Oh, the Volvo seats were much better than my Octavia’s seats also.

 

 

[Rjbell]

The rears are not even worth having. I faded to the rear only and it's absolutely appalling. I can't fault the abmunsden unit. It's the speakers that are the problem I think. 

[Swirly182]

2 hours ago, Deerfoot said:

I came from a Volvo and the Skoda audio is very poor in comparison.

 

Oh, the Volvo seats were much better than my Octavia’s seats also.

 

 

Slightly unfair comparison between a premium and non-premium brand! My dad's old Saab also had a fantastic standard sound system. 

 

Do you use Android Auto? This exaggerates the issue further. Still, it's better than the stereo the Qashqai we used to have. 

[paulski]

What year is your Vrs if you don't mind telling us.  Pre 2015 seems the worst from what I've seen on here. I have 2016 March registered with Amundsen and am happy with its sound over both Bluetooth and from Sd card of Mp3 files copied from CD to Itunes (yes I said CD...lol),  and I used to have big ICE back in my younger days.

 

There is a mod for the tweeters (capacitor gets changed)  in the front as they let too much mid through and can distort,  just search for it on here.

 

Door cards come off simply from what I've seen.

 

I do agree the rears are utter rubbish and sound awful. 

 

Nearly took the plunge and got local installer to pop some component Focals with cross overs or pioneers without for around £450 but just never got round to it as it's not at all bad if fader is fully to front.

Edited 27 January, 2021 by paulski

[Ecomatt]

All systems ideally should have a bias towards the front to retain the stereo image. I have the Canton system in my car and the rears do very little work.

If you look at ICE installs of old (max power days) most did away with the rear speakers and just had two upfront and a sub speaker in the boot. I find car systems are hit and miss. I had a 2012 Focus Titanium with the Sony upgrade pack. Sounded fantastic and that was without a sub. Then got a new 2015 Focus ST3 with the Sony pack and sub. Sounded awful. 

[Rjbell]

10 hours ago, paulski said:

What year is your Vrs if you don't mind telling us.  Pre 2015 seems the worst from what I've seen on here. I have 2016 March registered with Amundsen and am happy with its sound over both Bluetooth and from Sd card of Mp3 files copied from CD to Itunes (yes I said CD...lol),  and I used to have big ICE back in my younger days.

 

There is a mod for the tweeters (capacitor gets changed)  in the front as they let too much mid through and can distort,  just search for it on here.

 

Door cards come off simply from what I've seen.

 

I do agree the rears are utter rubbish and sound awful. 

 

Nearly took the plunge and got local installer to pop some component Focals with cross overs or pioneers without for around £450 but just never got round to it as it's not at all bad if fader is fully to front.

The facelift model.

 

I've only used the radio so far. I'll try the fading the rears out. This might be what i'm hearing and not liking. I might tweak the mids as well.

 

Thanks.

[Swirly182]

I think lack of sound deadening is also a factor. Changing only the speakers may not do much. Buy several miles of Dynamat to shove in the whole car as well...

[varaderoguy]

Seen this problem with the Amunsden system on F/L cars.

 

Make sure you are on 0478 firmware version which fixes a lot of audio problems. 0475 and below sounds dull and thin audio. Then go and long-code and enable Skoda Surround. My Scout sounds amazing with this combo. Our VRS with Amunsden and a Canton system in comparison is rubbish.

[misor1994]

Some time before, I did some improvements to gain better sound quality, as it was quite poor, no matter what audio source I was listening. I applied butyl and foam plates to the door to dampen the vibrations and get better and more robust sound. Some say that this process itself increases the quality so much that no other mods are needed. I do not agree...however, I did not want to change the speakers, so I tried to put the DSP Axton A530 between speakers and head unit. Much much better and I have been using it for 3rd year now without any issues at the OEM speakers.

 

I recently upgraded from Columbus MIB1 to Amundsen MIB2.5. After the retrofit, I coded the vitrual subwoofer and skoda surround. Tried to turn it on for a while and it was awful  Sound was like in a can, but I do not say it might not help in purely genuine setup without DSP, because i did not try that.

 

To compare with other VAG models...I had Passat B7, basic sound system (8 speakers) and the sound was much better than sound in my Octavia before upgrades. Same with Passat B8. Superb II with sound system was also very good. 

 

 

 

 

[varaderoguy]

10 hours ago, misor1994 said:

I recently upgraded from Columbus MIB1 to Amundsen MIB2.5. After the retrofit, I coded the vitrual subwoofer and skoda surround. Tried to turn it on for a while and it was awful  Sound was like in a can, 

Oh, if you have gone from a Columbus to an Amunsden then the sound won't be as good. The amplifier is not as good. On your new setup, make sure that the eq is set to flat and let Virtual Sub and Skoda Surround do its work. What firmware are you running?

[ScoutCJB]

On 27/01/2021 at 16:13, Rjbell said:

Overall i'm happy with the octavia vrs. The two niggles are both audio related. Firstly TSI really doesn't sound very nice. Secondly the stereo is really bad. Coming from a Ford there stereos always sound half decent. Do all VAGs sound this bad or do they cheap out on the budget brands?  Still, its almost a £30k car, i was expecting more.

 

I had a Oct 3 2016 with Columbus and thought the sound was poor and thats coming from an Oct 2 2010 with Amundsen which I thought was very good.  I think the issue is sound proofing/deadening in the Oct 3.

Fading the rears makes it worse.

[ahenners]

I don't think sound proofing is the issue. Sure it could use a little more, but my MIB1 Columbus and Canton with some tweaking of the settings and a quality source sound fantastic imo. I'm picky about this sort of stuff as well, I have £300 Sennheiser earphones for example.

[misor1994]

13 hours ago, varaderoguy said:

Oh, if you have gone from a Columbus to an Amunsden then the sound won't be as good. The amplifier is not as good. On your new setup, make sure that the eq is set to flat and let Virtual Sub and Skoda Surround do its work. What firmware are you running?

 

Columbus MIB1 itself sounds awful (without canton). My Amundsen is running at 0478. Today I set the equalizer of the amp to be flat, then turned on skoda surround and virtual subwoofer. I have to say the sound was better than flat, but worse than my EQ presets. This amp has its own EQ settings which can be set via phone app. 

[ScoutCJB]

16 hours ago, ahenners said:

I don't think sound proofing is the issue. Sure it could use a little more, but my MIB1 Columbus and Canton with some tweaking of the settings and a quality source sound fantastic imo. I'm picky about this sort of stuff as well, I have £300 Sennheiser earphones for example.

 

Your definitely right on sound source - I found SD card to be variable on quality, the CD/DVD sounded far better than SD overall.  I do thing soundproofing (even just the front doors) would have made a difference, recollecting my younger days and fully dynamatting my old MK2 Golf taught me that but ultimately there's no getting away from the fact the Oct 3 setup just seems poor.

Edited 30 January, 2021 by ScoutCJB

[ahenners]

1 hour ago, ScoutCJB said:

 

Your definitely right on sound source - I found SD card to be variable on quality, the CD/DVD sounded far better than SD overall.  I do thing soundproofing (even just the front doors) would have made a difference, recollecting my younger days and fully dynamatting my old MK2 Golf taught me that but ultimately there's no getting away from the fact the Oct 3 setup just seems poor.

 

Weirdly I've actually had very good results with Amazon Music HD streamed over Bluetooth. Source wise it's lossless and close to cd quality I believe, not sure how much it is compressed etc. from the Bluetooth streaming but it sounded fantastic. Excellent sound at close to max volume with no perceptible distortion.

[paulski]

10 hours ago, ahenners said:

 

Weirdly I've actually had very good results with Amazon Music HD streamed over Bluetooth. Source wise it's lossless and close to cd quality I believe, not sure how much it is compressed etc. from the Bluetooth streaming but it sounded fantastic. Excellent sound at close to max volume with no perceptible distortion.

Amazon music over Bluetooth sounds cracking too for me on my Amundsen Mib2. Mp3 files copied in Itunes to SanDisk SD card at 160kbs sound absolutely fine to me as well. For nostalgic indulgence, I'd love my old Sony headunit and its 6disc changer, that moved between 4 cars in its life, (still in the cupboard and in working order) but all our cd collections, now move in your pocket theses days. 

[ChoonDoode]

dont know if it's because I've the Columbus and the Canton system, but I'm more than happy with the sound quality

[ScoutCJB]

19 hours ago, paulski said:

Amazon music over Bluetooth sounds cracking too for me on my Amundsen Mib2. Mp3 files copied in Itunes to SanDisk SD card at 160kbs sound absolutely fine to me as well. For nostalgic indulgence, I'd love my old Sony headunit and its 6disc changer, that moved between 4 cars in its life, (still in the cupboard and in working order) but all our cd collections, now move in your pocket theses days. 

 

It was only last year I got rid of my Alpine headunit with flipout screen, 12 disc changer and DVD/Nav changer - I brought the HU and CD changer in 2002 and the Nav in 2006.  I hadnt used it any of it since 2011.  The remote was almost the size of a small phone 

I know what you mean about nostalgia .... very nearly kept it!

[TheWanderer]

Wouldn't bother with Canton, it's overpriced and I don't think that there's much (if any) improvement on the standard setup.

 

If I decide to have another RS then I doubt very much that I'll be having Canton as an upgrade. 

[shyVRS245]

Perhaps it works better in the Superb liked it in my 2016 SE, missed it in my 2019 Sportline Plus and happily reunited with a Canton system again in my 2020 SEL. Sounds great listening to Planet Rock which is the only station I have on.

[Ecomatt]

11 minutes ago, shyVRS245 said:

Perhaps it works better in the Superb liked it in my 2016 SE, missed it in my 2019 Sportline Plus and happily reunited with a Canton system again in my 2020 SEL. Sounds great listening to Planet Rock which is the only station I have on.

Planet Rock....so Radio 2 then

[shyVRS245]

3 minutes ago, Ecomatt said:

Planet Rock....so Radio 2 then

My Dad listens to Ken Bruce but then again he is............79.

[TheWanderer]

So Shy's always banging something out in his car!

 

Oooo Matron.