Love the way your mind works. I've tested every factory speaker I pulled out just to learn how they arrive at the sound most people don't mind listening to their entire lives. It's interesting to think about 1) what was done to produce a pleasant sound at moderate volume for the listener and 2) what the bean counters were willing to pay for. Engineers work to produce the best sound for very little cost to the manufacturer. It's a guarantee you won't get any bass below 50Hz (80Hz for vehicles with no subwoofer) but they are usually good about adding some amount of bass even if it's fat, muffled and lacking definition. The midrange is usually pretty flat and the tweeters always get sharp at the top end of their range to remind the listener they are there. I'm actually surprised this budget system has some eq built into the amplifier response. The biggest issue is of course when you turn the volume up, everything falls apart and the combination of amplifier harmonic distortion and speaker distortion is like a dog chewing your ear off.
Glad you got a VAG car they are a great platform to build on! *apart form the head unit 🤣🤣 Although in my golf, I use the factory head unit and a Nav TV Zen V interface. The upgraded stereos in these cars were so much better, they had Dynaudio branding in the head units and drivers were made by Dyn and sound amazing for OEM, they even run full active I still use my dynaudio woofers and tweeters in my build just run them off much bigger amps front and rear. Ok upon more research maybe the skoda weren't offered with dynaudio lol. Still a good platform, look forward to seeing where you take this 😊
I ran my headunit into a Kicker KeyLOC and it corrects a lot of the factory signal. However, I didn't realize how bad the sound and imaging was until I skipped the headunit and went digital into the DSP.
Welcome to VAG ! you can code so many things about the sound, not sure if your radio is a MIB2 though, MIB2 is 6x~20w RMS, only use 4 channels most of time) Is there a "5.1" option on this car with subwoofer and central speaker ? according to the car radio reference, you can flat all the speakers output, and modify original time alignment applied, even with all avaible eq settings set to 0, the headunit is heavily EQed.. You can even enable the 5.1 factory system, so the output become low level (because there is a amplifier on the 5.1 conf) and you can connect them to any amplifier. it's not easy and better to verify 2 or 3 times before applying the modified coding or maybe you can break something lol, not easy task and need some time, just need a phone app and a good obd dongle Surely it's easier to change the headunit, but you lose often some car settings like tire pressure etc
Thanks for the video!!!! Great work. I have a VW Amarok with a very similar system. No matter how I adjust the stereo..it sounds bad and is very fatiguing and no bass below 80Hz (measured with REW). As a cheap improvement without a full rebuild, I've considered using Poweramp app from my phone with the individual parametric eq function. Perhaps an acceptable house curve and be obtained after EQing
In my experience even the most premium of factory systems will have similar faults. Even when they actually employ an amplifier separate from the head head unit, none of them have a power supply to kick up the voltage to the amp chips. Since they all work off 12 to 14 volts supplied by the car, each channel will be around 20 useable watts. They compensate by adding channels for each driver and sometimes bridging two for subs. Additonally some, as in honda vehicles, are also tasked with noise cancellation which further degrades the output. I have yet to come accross a facory amplifier that has its own built in power supply.
in my vw passat i used a audiocontrol lc7i that fixed the bass roll off and converted the high level to low then added a 2 amps 1 on the sub and crossed over the factory mids i was quite happy. my standards may be low?
@ appreciate it. I’ve often wondered if speakers deteriorate over time in vehicles. Home speakers are protected more from the elements and temperature swings than car audio. I’ve been doing home audio since the late ‘80’s and a brief flirt with car audio for a decade around that time. I recently got back into car audio. It’s been fun!
@@ryandalrymple5636 car environment for speakers is not that bad as everyone imagines. It's not like the speakers are being soaked in water in the doors 😂 yes it's cold and hot, but most factory speakers are paper that doesn't care about that. Automotive speakers use good glue, so nothing really can happen to them. Power and common sense is what breaks speakers in cars, not the environment.
@RAW-CAt I have Alpine Optim8, HDZ-65c and Morel MPS 4.400 driving mids, Optim8 to tweets and rear fill coming from Amp Pro flat. The Optim8 is very distorted above lvl 28 on the DSP but OScope shows no distortion. I'm not sure I want to keep the Optim8 due to distortion but being only for tweets at -10db and rear coax, what do you think?
Here from the US, love your videos. If you’re still designing systems in ten years I’ll look you up to help with my next build. Right now I’m running 3-way with front and rear subs with some expensive drivers and a Helix BT, considering switching to a HU with digital out to my Helix DSP instead. Thoughts on BT versus HU digital? I’ve watched your videos on both, but haven’t seen you summarize the pros and cons.
My phone doesn’t support it, but I imagine future phones will relatively soon. Has Helix BT always supported AptxHD? I don’t remember it being on the specs when I bought mine but it says it does now
I installed a Match pp82dsp in my Hummer H2 (using stock headunit) and just finished adding a SMSL PO100 dac using optical output. The bass and mids sound tight and punchy, the highs are crystal clear. By far, currently my best sounding system.
i have my whole door sound deadened with damplifier pro, but with some low frequency songs i still get resonance with the sb acoustics sb17cac35,. don't know what to do next
@RAW-CAt I've crossed then 80 - 150 it's just some songs at loud volumes i still get resonance despite all the work i put in deadening the doors. maybe i need the sound barrier foam on top🤷
@@RAW-CAtthat's a very bad solution for sub to play lower than 70-80. I used two JBL Fuse 8" + passive rad subs under seats. You cannot replace that energy with sub. I have a four way 8" + 6.5 in doors + 3.5" + berrylium bliesma tweeters
@@RAW-CAti have neodymium audio system speakers and i feel like it sounds better when i cross them at 50 hz its just feels nicer when its closer to youu and you can feel the bass on your body. Surprisingly i dont hear any distortion
It dosnt. DSP headunits still sound shite connected to that. It's not correctable. Like most headunits. Unless you can get optical out. New cars are nearly all useless for audio. Once all the functions go though headunits it's game over. Just get an older car.
Thinking about purchasing the umik-2 for my personal car audio use, as well as my church. Do you recommend it? I watched your video over it, but I’ve got a ton of other questions regarding the programs to use. Can I message you on another form of social media?
Surprised by the poor output of the headunit. Judging by ear, headunits in vw and škoda seem to make more power than others, but now I know why it didnt sound that good.
If you are using your factory head unit high level outputs into the DSP, you still have a crap signal, just amplified. The response and bass roll off can be "fixed" with EQ, but the signal will not be clean.
What if you didn't use the doors for mid bass at all and enclosures under seat? and basic pods for mid and tweeter on dash. Something that can be done by mortals in a couple days. Doors suck.
If you're very lucky your HU might have external amp and you could grab a clean low-level signal to work with, but with 3w of power, I doubt it has an external amp...
Sounds Exciting. VW's aren't as bad as Japanese in terms of build quality of interiors. Will be waiting for your objective data. By the way which damping are you planning use? And more idea, try to use EV vehicle power cable this time, they have higher temp rating and are sheilded as well, they should be same price as car audio cables but much better quality.
this will be a very interesting project to follow. It will teach us all a ton.
Love the way your mind works. I've tested every factory speaker I pulled out just to learn how they arrive at the sound most people don't mind listening to their entire lives. It's interesting to think about 1) what was done to produce a pleasant sound at moderate volume for the listener and 2) what the bean counters were willing to pay for. Engineers work to produce the best sound for very little cost to the manufacturer. It's a guarantee you won't get any bass below 50Hz (80Hz for vehicles with no subwoofer) but they are usually good about adding some amount of bass even if it's fat, muffled and lacking definition. The midrange is usually pretty flat and the tweeters always get sharp at the top end of their range to remind the listener they are there. I'm actually surprised this budget system has some eq built into the amplifier response. The biggest issue is of course when you turn the volume up, everything falls apart and the combination of amplifier harmonic distortion and speaker distortion is like a dog chewing your ear off.
Couldn't agree more, well said👍
Cheers from Tijuana Mexico! Thanks for all your vids, have been learning a lot from them!
🎉 Thank you so much for your time and energy! Really looking forward to following this project!🥳
Glad you got a VAG car they are a great platform to build on! *apart form the head unit 🤣🤣
Although in my golf, I use the factory head unit and a Nav TV Zen V interface. The upgraded stereos in these cars were so much better, they had Dynaudio branding in the head units and drivers were made by Dyn and sound amazing for OEM, they even run full active I still use my dynaudio woofers and tweeters in my build just run them off much bigger amps front and rear.
Ok upon more research maybe the skoda weren't offered with dynaudio lol. Still a good platform, look forward to seeing where you take this 😊
I ran my headunit into a Kicker KeyLOC and it corrects a lot of the factory signal.
However, I didn't realize how bad the sound and imaging was until I skipped the headunit and went digital into the DSP.
Welcome to VAG ! you can code so many things about the sound, not sure if your radio is a MIB2 though, MIB2 is 6x~20w RMS, only use 4 channels most of time) Is there a "5.1" option on this car with subwoofer and central speaker ? according to the car radio reference, you can flat all the speakers output, and modify original time alignment applied, even with all avaible eq settings set to 0, the headunit is heavily EQed.. You can even enable the 5.1 factory system, so the output become low level (because there is a amplifier on the 5.1 conf) and you can connect them to any amplifier. it's not easy and better to verify 2 or 3 times before applying the modified coding or maybe you can break something lol, not easy task and need some time, just need a phone app and a good obd dongle
Surely it's easier to change the headunit, but you lose often some car settings like tire pressure etc
Thus car trim is pretty basic, no sensors, no backup camera pretty much it has nothing. I will.be swapping the head unit.
Yeah in this case should be the best option, just missed your power output measument, 3w lol, this should be their cheapest headunit
Nice review! Poor Schkoda. Can't wait to see the deadening comparison.
Thanks for the video!!!! Great work. I have a VW Amarok with a very similar system. No matter how I adjust the stereo..it sounds bad and is very fatiguing and no bass below 80Hz (measured with REW). As a cheap improvement without a full rebuild, I've considered using Poweramp app from my phone with the individual parametric eq function. Perhaps an acceptable house curve and be obtained after EQing
In my experience even the most premium of factory systems will have similar faults. Even when they actually employ an amplifier separate from the head head unit, none of them have a power supply to kick up the voltage to the amp chips. Since they all work off 12 to 14 volts supplied by the car, each channel will be around 20 useable watts. They compensate by adding channels for each driver and sometimes bridging two for subs. Additonally some, as in honda vehicles, are also tasked with noise cancellation which further degrades the output. I have yet to come accross a facory amplifier that has its own built in power supply.
in my vw passat i used a audiocontrol lc7i that fixed the bass roll off and converted the high level to low then added a 2 amps 1 on the sub and crossed over the factory mids i was quite happy. my standards may be low?
Waiting until you listen to a BMW before 2018 with their basic-system, you'll find out a whole new world of bad :D .
😂😂😂
?: how much of this could be attributed to the age and deterioration of the speakers and speaker material?
Not much. If speakers are in good shape, they don't really deteriorate. They can have torn surrounds, but these seem to be ok. They are just cheap.
@ appreciate it. I’ve often wondered if speakers deteriorate over time in vehicles. Home speakers are protected more from the elements and temperature swings than car audio. I’ve been doing home audio since the late ‘80’s and a brief flirt with car audio for a decade around that time. I recently got back into car audio. It’s been fun!
@@ryandalrymple5636 car environment for speakers is not that bad as everyone imagines. It's not like the speakers are being soaked in water in the doors 😂 yes it's cold and hot, but most factory speakers are paper that doesn't care about that. Automotive speakers use good glue, so nothing really can happen to them. Power and common sense is what breaks speakers in cars, not the environment.
@RAW-CAt I have Alpine Optim8, HDZ-65c and Morel MPS 4.400 driving mids, Optim8 to tweets and rear fill coming from Amp Pro flat.
The Optim8 is very distorted above lvl 28 on the DSP but OScope shows no distortion.
I'm not sure I want to keep the Optim8 due to distortion but being only for tweets at -10db and rear coax, what do you think?
That is too little information to work with. I have no idea about EQ or gain structure. I really doubt your issue is the Optim8 amp.
@RAW-CAt 24db LR all gains at zero except tweeters at -10db
Thanks for the response, love your detail
Oh and only auto tuned, no manual eq yet but professional tune is next.
I'm working on learning REW with your videos
Here from the US, love your videos. If you’re still designing systems in ten years I’ll look you up to help with my next build. Right now I’m running 3-way with front and rear subs with some expensive drivers and a Helix BT, considering switching to a HU with digital out to my Helix DSP instead. Thoughts on BT versus HU digital? I’ve watched your videos on both, but haven’t seen you summarize the pros and cons.
For daily BT is fine especially if your phone supports AptxHD.
My phone doesn’t support it, but I imagine future phones will relatively soon. Has Helix BT always supported AptxHD? I don’t remember it being on the specs when I bought mine but it says it does now
@@chef_yt the newer ones are, the old ones most likely not.
I installed a Match pp82dsp in my Hummer H2 (using stock headunit) and just finished adding a SMSL PO100 dac using optical output. The bass and mids sound tight and punchy, the highs are crystal clear. By far, currently my best sounding system.
Have you ever used an Audio Control LOC with stock head units? Night and day performance, fixes all the rolloff bs.
i have my whole door sound deadened with damplifier pro, but with some low frequency songs i still get resonance with the sb acoustics sb17cac35,. don't know what to do next
Doors should not play lower than 70-80Hz. That region is for a subwoofer.
@RAW-CAt I've crossed then 80 - 150 it's just some songs at loud volumes i still get resonance despite all the work i put in deadening the doors. maybe i need the sound barrier foam on top🤷
@@Hunter-pk7ym Put dampener on door card as well and add foam layer to stop reverberations inside the door.
@@RAW-CAtthat's a very bad solution for sub to play lower than 70-80. I used two JBL Fuse 8" + passive rad subs under seats. You cannot replace that energy with sub. I have a four way 8" + 6.5 in doors + 3.5" + berrylium bliesma tweeters
@@RAW-CAti have neodymium audio system speakers and i feel like it sounds better when i cross them at 50 hz its just feels nicer when its closer to youu and you can feel the bass on your body. Surprisingly i dont hear any distortion
Fantastic video. How does the DSP correct all that bad stuff from the factory HU when it gets a high level signal?
It dosnt. DSP headunits still sound shite connected to that. It's not correctable. Like most headunits. Unless you can get optical out. New cars are nearly all useless for audio. Once all the functions go though headunits it's game over. Just get an older car.
or just ignore the hu connection and use bluetooth receiver, bluettooth dsp, bluetooth amp, or external dac/ external bt dac for music @@jondonnelly3
@@jondonnelly3 Helix has an input signal analyzer option and dynamic equalization to eliminate the contour function.
It would be interesting to see what the DSP (Helix) actually does with this signal and what it actually corrects.
When i tested the resistance of the speakers in an old Octavia, at the radio wires, i got only 4 ohms with the tweeter removed or not wtf
Thinking about purchasing the umik-2 for my personal car audio use, as well as my church. Do you recommend it? I watched your video over it, but I’ve got a ton of other questions regarding the programs to use. Can I message you on another form of social media?
Feel free to jump into "RTA in cars" FB group and shoot your questions.
Surprised by the poor output of the headunit. Judging by ear, headunits in vw and škoda seem to make more power than others, but now I know why it didnt sound that good.
Somes are not so bad, but this one should be the cheapest one
So im clear, cuz my minds going on me, my helix dsp negates the crappiness of my oem headunit in my car correct?
If you are using your factory head unit high level outputs into the DSP, you still have a crap signal, just amplified. The response and bass roll off can be "fixed" with EQ, but the signal will not be clean.
What if you didn't use the doors for mid bass at all and enclosures under seat? and basic pods for mid and tweeter on dash. Something that can be done by mortals in a couple days. Doors suck.
If you're very lucky your HU might have external amp and you could grab a clean low-level signal to work with, but with 3w of power, I doubt it has an external amp...
At least you can put an foam ring on the expensive speaker door
Sounds Exciting.
VW's aren't as bad as Japanese in terms of build quality of interiors. Will be waiting for your objective data.
By the way which damping are you planning use?
And more idea, try to use EV vehicle power cable this time, they have higher temp rating and are sheilded as well, they should be same price as car audio cables but much better quality.
How much better would it sound with *just* a new head unit
That we will find out in the upcoming video😉
100x better with any quality unit pioneer kenwood
The cheapest kenwood double din would be loads better and feed it 3.5mm from a 20 quid dac connected to a phone.
What is your end goal about midbass? I mean position.
Your Š is good but now try Ř :)
System design will be discussed in an upcoming video.
@RAW-CAt Ok