RCD-510 sound quality issues?

Hi all,

Recently bought 2010 JSW and it feels like the sound is a little off on it. Specifically the highs and the mids (mids to a lesser extent). Even if I adjust the treble and mid all the way down, I still feel like they're too high, and "cut the ears". This is independent of the media that's being played (CD, radio, ipod, etc.) Maybe the cross-over is not adjusted appropriately, or bad firmware? I don't know.

Now, I must say that I'm coming from a premium sound system in Acura TL, and of course I wouldn't expect this to be as good as that, but at the same time I think it should not "cut the ears" either.

Can anyone weigh in on this with your experience?

Thanks!

I was able to adjust the "equalizer" enough to get decent sound for media and CDs, but the FM is the worst I've ever heard in an auto system many years, and must be due to the FM circuit design. It's as if it was designed with stereo output out of phase.

dwpc said:

I was able to adjust the "equalizer" enough to get decent sound for media and CDs, but the FM is the worst I've ever heard in an auto system many years, and must be due to the FM circuit design. It's as if it was designed with stereo output out of phase.

Click to expand...

I agree with this. I don't really listen to FM because there aren't any stations I like to listen to in my current location, but satellite radio sounds like garbage too. I guess that's to be expected due to some horrendously low streaming bitrate--not the receiver's fault.

CD and media (with a decent bitrate) sound good in my opinion.

EDIT: I have a Golf without Dynaudio, so I don't know how different our audio systems are.

dwpc said:

I was able to adjust the "equalizer" enough to get decent sound for media and CDs, but the FM is the worst I've ever heard in an auto system many years, and must be due to the FM circuit design. It's as if it was designed with stereo output out of phase.

Click to expand...

dwpc, what's your "equalizer" setting? Like how many "clicks" to the - or + side of the middle?

For my Golf, with Dynaudio, I think the issue is the placement of the front tweeters. They are very close and firing almost right in your ears. Using the fader to move the sound between the front and back seats was the single best improvement for me. I also adjusted the equalizer to reduce treble, but I think the fader was the most important adjustment.

My equalizer looks something like the representation below. Treble slider is completely below midpoint ( | ), mids above midpoint, and bass below midpoint. Fader is adjusted about 3 to the back. It can still sound harsh at times, but sometimes it is also pretty darn awesome with great clarity and pretty good thump. It depends on the song and/or the station, but it can sound great.

My equalizer representation
___ ___ ___ |___ ___ ___ Treble
___ ___ ___ |___ ______ Mid
___ ___ ___ |___ ___ ___ Bass

For my tastes...ymmmv

dmitripr said:

dwpc, what's your "equalizer" setting? Like how many "clicks" to the - or + side of the middle?

Click to expand...

Treble: -7
Midrange: 0
Bass: +5

Fader: +4 (Front)

Works for me.

That's an interesting setting! It indicates full emphasis on bass and the front speakers. I don't know what Dynaudio is, I don't think I have that in my 2010 Jetta Sedan - are you getting the 'sound space' experience, like sitting in a large concert hall, or are you getting the 'headphone experience' where you seem to hear the sound directly inside your head?

I am amazed that get any decent definition out of your speakers with that reduced amount of treble.

not sure if we ever found out which system the OP has, but i have the non-Dyaudio one, and my EQ is much more balanced than the Bass-heavy one's posted.
a lot depends on what kind of tunes you prefer... i'm not pumping any gangsta rap, so the Bass is good for me at E or +1.

i may not be a complete audiophile, but i am a musician - and from rock to reggae i feel like the standard RCD-510 has pretty passable sound... decent, but by no means outstanding.

My RCD-510 sounds harsh and metallic

I'm not an audiophile but I do appreciate sound systems that are accurate, detailed, and sound good. The RCD-510 is none of those in my humble opinion. I admit that my ears have taken a beating from years of music and motorcycle & bicycle wind turbulence, (yes, I do wear earplugs), so I wasn't sure if it was the RCD-510 or me. To find out, I have been comparing the RCD-510 to my home stereos, iPod earphones, and even the non-Monsoon stereo in my 2002 Golf TDI. All sound considerably better than the RCD-510.

I turn the treble and midrange down about halfway and boost the bass a bit. Sometimes the front speakers seem to lack bass, other times they don't sound that much different from the rears. I have noticed that the RCD-510 sounds decent on simple music (like a single acoustic guitar playing) but really falls apart on more complex material. All of it sounds a bit garbled and metallic.

Sometimes I just turn it off in frustration. The pleasure of listening to music is just not there for me. It sounds to me (MS in Electrical Engineering and experience way back when with concert sound) that the problem is a combination of distortion and possibly some phase-shifting of the sound. There may be some clipping (saturation) distortion involved too but that typically only happens in systems played at high volumes. This seems to be there at all volumes.

It would be great to go to VW with some specific information about what the RCD-510 does wrong musically. I'm not referring to the iPod slowness and start of song skipping issues. Does anyone know if firmware updates have had any effect on sound quality?

Just for grins, try listening to only one speaker or only one pair of speakers at a time and post what you learn here. For example, turn the fader all the way front and the balance all the way left. Then fade to the back and see how the front and rear left speakers compare. Then try pairs. You can also try this with bass, mid, or treble only up and the others down. See if you notice any canceling of sound from any pair being on. That's a sign of reversed polarity on one or more speakers. VW did that with '02 Jetta woofers.

I'm starting to wonder if some of the speaker and/or head unit wiring may be connected wrong, putting one or more of the drivers out of phase. The only sure way to find out is to pull the components and check them. Can anyone tell me how to pull the head unit? I'm not sure I want to rip my doors apart.

If you have a VAG-COM, try running the radio output test. I did that and the front woofer sound levels were much lower than the rears. If I run just the rears while listening, the system sounds a little better than running all speakers.

My next step is to compare my stereo to a coworker's who just bought a 2010 JSW with RCD-510. I'm also going to make or buy an audio test CD to see if that tells me anything when I play it through the RCD-510.

I love the car, my fourth VW diesel. I really dislike the stereo. It's a good example of VW and Blaupunkt focusing on features and glitz and badly missing the mark on the basic function of a sound system - Good Sound!

Sorry about the diatribe. Am I being too picky? Maybe, but I never had any problem at all with the sound quality of any of the other 12 VWs we have owned. Many of them seemed quite good for OEM stereos. I haven't swapped in an aftermarket stereo since my '86 GLI. OK, I'll stop now!

LexDM3 said:

I'm not an audiophile... OK, I'll stop now!

Click to expand...

care to rephrase that?

LexDM3, you seem quiet knowledgeable in the sound engineering space. What kind of settings do you have on your rcd-510? Do you recommend just doing the fade to the rear speakers?

Looks like you're still doing your "research", let us know what you find out.

The goal of equalization should never be to "boost" frequencies. When applying an equalizer to sound, you should always "cut". Now it is a bit difficult on a car stereo since there are only three bands (Low-mid-high).

But filtering the frequencies, then compensating by increasing the volume will improve the sound. If you boost anything to above 0db, you will add more distortion, and more stress on your speakers. As we all know, we do not need to add even more distortion ...

Here is how mine is setup. My bass is really low because I have a subwoofer. Without a sub, I would keep the bass at 0db, NOT higher, otherwise you will blow the woofer, and possibly the crossovers to the tweeters.



Treble [--|------=---------]
Mid [----|----=---------]
Bas [--|------=---------]
Bas no sub [--------|---------]

Hope this helps.

I have the RNS-510 with Dynaudio, but I came back to comment anyway

I know there are lots of complaints about the new VW radios, from bad Sirius reception, to iPod skipping, and just generally about poor quality sound. Today I listened to and old Doobie Brothers album that I had previously loaded on the Hard Drive. The album was Minute by Minute, I think it was album of the year back in the late 70s. I recorded the songs from an old CD onto the computer at the higher bit rate using iTunes and loaded the songs on the Hard Drive with the SD card.

Well I have to say I think that album sounded as good as I have ever heard it sound. I have heard the songs on other systems when they seemed very muddy and just not quite right. Today with the RNS-510 and the Dynaudio system, the songs were crystal clear with a perfect amount of bass. It really sounded great!!!

My Sirius stations can sound good or not so good, depending on the song and/or the station. Sometimes, the Sirius really can sound pretty good too. It doesn't always sound great, but I don't know if that is the song or the station or maybe both sometimes. I do like the commercial free music mixes that are songs I do not have in my own library. I have tried to go back to FM, but the commercials just kill me.

Just saying mine is pretty good, so it isn't always all bad news on the forums.

ksing44 said:

I know there are lots of complaints about the new VW radios, from bad Sirius reception, to iPod skipping, and just generally about poor quality sound. Today I listened to and old Doobie Brothers album that I had previously loaded on the Hard Drive. The album was Minute by Minute, I think it was album of the year back in the late 70s. I recorded the songs from an old CD onto the computer at the higher bit rate using iTunes and loaded the songs on the Hard Drive with the SD card.

Well I have to say I think that album sounded as good as I have ever heard it sound. I have heard the songs on other systems when they seemed very muddy and just not quite right. Today with the RNS-510 and the Dynaudio system, the songs were crystal clear with a perfect amount of bass. It really sounded great!!!

My Sirius stations can sound good or not so good, depending on the song and/or the station. Sometimes, the Sirius really can sound pretty good too. It doesn't always sound great, but I don't know if that is the song or the station or maybe both sometimes. I do like the commercial free music mixes that are songs I do not have in my own library. I have tried to go back to FM, but the commercials just kill me.

Just saying mine is pretty good, so it isn't always all bad news on the forums.

Click to expand...

The RNS-510 and the dynaudio speakers make a huge difference. The dynaudio speakers a far superior to the standard. Dynaudio are reference type speakers. They also make studio monitors and high end home audio speakers. The RNS-510 is made from a different manufacturer than the RCD-510. Overall much better quality components compared to the "premium" 8...

You are lucky to have the dynaudio/RNS-510 setup. I would have opted for it if I was given the option. However, us lowly Canadians didn't have that option

soundchk said:

The RNS-510 and the dynaudio speakers make a huge difference. The dynaudio speakers a far superior to the standard. Dynaudio are reference type speakers. They also make studio monitors and high end home audio speakers. The RNS-510 is made from a different manufacturer than the RCD-510. Overall much better quality components compared to the "premium" 8...

You are lucky to have the dynaudio/RNS-510 setup. I would have opted for it if I was given the option. However, us lowly Canadians didn't have that option

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I like Canadians and I apologize. I didn't intend to rub anyone's noses in the RNS vs. RCD thing. Looking back at the OP, I guess this really was an RCD-specific post. For the record, it seems plenty of others also complain about the RNS system too, even with the Dynaudio. Good luck to all of you with your RCDs.

ksing44 said:

I like Canadians and I apologize. I didn't intend to rub anyone's noses in the RNS vs. RCD thing. Looking back at the OP, I guess this really was an RCD-specific post. For the record, it seems plenty of others also complain about the RNS system too, even with the Dynaudio. Good luck to all of you with your RCDs.

Click to expand...

No need to apologize. Nothing wrong with enjoying something that you paid for. Enjoy your beautiful sound

ksing44 said:

I like Canadians ...

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and I like Pittsburgh. My favorite hockey team AND my favorite baseball team reside there Lots of nice hills for TDI awesomeness too

Want to do some tests on your car's stereo?

This discussion got me rolling on trying to figure out what the story is with my RCD-510. I thought I'd back up my diatribe of last night with some work on this.

I hunted around for some free audio test CDs. I downloaded Bink's test CD from his website, pulled it into iTunes as WAV files, and deleted the dangerous DC offset files (Tracks 50-51) and the equally dangerous square wave files (Tracks 54-55). These will fry your amp and speakers so get rid of them right away.

I then renamed the tracks so the titles said what they contained. Use the document describing the CD or I can send you my file names if you want. For example, I renamed "track56" to "56 White Noise" and did this for all tracks. I then copied track 5 (1000 Hz sine wave) up to track 51 for back-to-back comparison with track 52, a reversed polarity 1000 Hz sine wave. I made two iTunes playlists. One has tracks 01-56, the other has tracks 45-59.

After burning two audio CDs from the playlists, I did a quick listen in my car tonght. Here's what I know so far:

1) I'm really not sure that I trust my ears completely. They have a few miles on them (I'm 56) and I have tinnitus, a constant ringing in my ears. That's why I'd love to have others try the same thing. That said, I do hear music fairly well, well enough to believe that the RCD-510 has issues. I'm going to try the tracks on CD and on my iPod with other stereos and headphones to find out if they sound better on those. Gotta isolate the problem, right?

2) When I played the CD tracks in the car, it certainly seems that the midrange and upper midrange is muddy. A sine wave should sound pure like a flute. These tones sound complex, not clean. That's distortion. Bass seems OK (see below) and the high end is decent.

3) On bass notes, the door panels resonate. No surprise there. If you do this test, clean out the door pockets first.

4) I KNOW that I'm hearing variations in volume and I believe even pitch between speakers when I change the balance and fader controls while listening to some sine wave frequencies. I'll try to make some notes of what I hear on different tracks.

Is anyone willing to try this out on their car? I may check with the author of the audio test CD to see if I can post my two CDs somewhere. That way we'll be working with the same filenames and disk contents.

Are we having fun yet?

herbert68 said:

That's an interesting setting! It indicates full emphasis on bass and the front speakers. I don't know what Dynaudio is, I don't think I have that in my 2010 Jetta Sedan - are you getting the 'sound space' experience, like sitting in a large concert hall, or are you getting the 'headphone experience' where you seem to hear the sound directly inside your head?

I am amazed that get any decent definition out of your speakers with that reduced amount of treble.

Click to expand...

I think it shows that the tweeters are overamped relative to the others drivers and that the "premium" system is not particularly well balanced. My front-biased fader setting is mainly to get more balance between the F/R drivers, plus I think any strong sense of sound from the rear is unnatural and a distraction.

LexDM3 said:

This discussion got me rolling on trying to figure out what the story is with my RCD-510. I thought I'd back up my diatribe of last night with some work on this.

I hunted around for some free audio test CDs. I downloaded Bink's test CD from his website, pulled it into iTunes as WAV files, and deleted the dangerous DC offset files (Tracks 50-51) and the equally dangerous square wave files (Tracks 54-55). These will fry your amp and speakers so get rid of them right away.

I then renamed the tracks so the titles said what they contained. Use the document describing the CD or I can send you my file names if you want. For example, I renamed "track56" to "56 White Noise" and did this for all tracks. I then copied track 5 (1000 Hz sine wave) up to track 51 for back-to-back comparison with track 52, a reversed polarity 1000 Hz sine wave. I made two iTunes playlists. One has tracks 01-56, the other has tracks 45-59.

After burning two audio CDs from the playlists, I did a quick listen in my car tonght. Here's what I know so far:

1) I'm really not sure that I trust my ears completely. They have a few miles on them (I'm 56) and I have tinnitus, a constant ringing in my ears. That's why I'd love to have others try the same thing. That said, I do hear music fairly well, well enough to believe that the RCD-510 has issues. I'm going to try the tracks on CD and on my iPod with other stereos and headphones to find out if they sound better on those. Gotta isolate the problem, right?

2) When I played the CD tracks in the car, it certainly seems that the midrange and upper midrange is muddy. A sine wave should sound pure like a flute. These tones sound complex, not clean. That's distortion. Bass seems OK (see below) and the high end is decent.

3) On bass notes, the door panels resonate. No surprise there. If you do this test, clean out the door pockets first.

4) I KNOW that I'm hearing variations in volume and I believe even pitch between speakers when I change the balance and fader controls while listening to some sine wave frequencies. I'll try to make some notes of what I hear on different tracks.

Is anyone willing to try this out on their car? I may check with the author of the audio test CD to see if I can post my two CDs somewhere. That way we'll be working with the same filenames and disk contents.

Are we having fun yet?

Click to expand...

I can test this out on my '10 JSW. Can you post the files here with instructions (if any)?

I don't believe there is a lot of improvement one can do with this sound system.... It's the most hi-tech factory installed car audio I've owned but the sound quality is not so great. The most apparent shortcomings for me were the lack of clean high frequency and deep base.

I find the Stock audio system in my 2010 JSW to be fairly decent. I too need to increase the bass a little, but leave mid and treble in the middle.

I have the base system, without Nav.


This is coming From a Honda Riegline with the supposed upgraded audio system.

I moved the fader to full front. It helps alot.

I am a semi audio-phile... And do not find the stock system that rewarding.

My biggest two beefs are:
1. The front door panels resonate badly on any bass note.
2. The tweeters are very weak. They have no crisp clarity to them.
... + 3. Of course the car needs more sound deadener applied, especially in the doors.

Frankly I am surprised that some people think the highs are too bright.

The first step is to fade to the the front stage, the rear at 50/50 is way too dominant. After that I went one tick up on trebble and one down on bass.

Basically, you cannot do much with this system IMO w/o major surgery.

Granted I just came out of a full tilt system in my Suburban (yes, diesel). German MB Quart components all around off a PG ZX450 and a single 15" Adire Audio Brahma off a MMATS 1400.1. I love the MBQ titanium tweets - crisp! So moving into anything else is a downgrade.

Even most "high-end" automobile factory upgraded systems suck. You do not get much for the 500-1500 upgrade.

If you really want to learn and upgrade the stock system take some on this website, specifically the SQ forum: www.diymobileaudio.com

Double posthttp://forums.tdiclub.com/showthread.php?t=287338&highlight=stereo+upgrade+worth

I am an audiophile and found the RCD-510 to be painfull to listen to for long periods of time. I drive 1hr each way to work. I had to upgrade and found I could upgrade to NAV with Voice Recognition for the iPod and full functioning Bluetooth for under $1000. Add to that I sold my RCD-510 for $500 in 2 days on VWVortex.com and I'm a happy camper. Here's the thread I created on the install and opinions.

http://forums.tdiclub.com/showthread.php?t=287338&highlight=stereo+upgrade+worth

seems like lots of issues with the 510 but no mention of the rns315 which is installed in some vw's and will be in all 2011 golfs with nav systems. Anyone out there have the rns315 with dynadio?

I don't think it's the radio itself, but the speakers and maybe factory eq settings. For just a little more than the cost of the Dynaudio system you can integrate a nice amp and three way system from Rainbow or Focal that will sound way better than the Dynaudio system. Add just a little more for a sub and you will have an audiophile level system.

Add an amp and upgrade your speakers, it will make all the difference in the world. I added an EQX, amps, and upgraded speakers...wow.

I can't remember what my settings are, but I'm very pleased with the sound out of the JSW. Compared to my previous sound systems, where all were custom $1K+ systems, it sounds better to me. The only shortcoming is the bass IMO, but not enough for me to put a sub in there.

Reviving this thread for others. I'm having pains(literally) from my RCD 510. My ears hurt and ring after listening to the stereo(mainly SX radio but even FM sucks). I do little/no sd card or phone connection. That's always been more pain to me than it's worth.
But back to the sound. Pitiful. Shreeking highs that hurt my ears, especially vocals. Seems to be getting worse than better(so much for 'breaking it in').
Probably will go the amp and speaker route. Don't want to replace the unit because it works so well with the phone for phone calls and matches the car(hate the aftermarket 'light show scene'...lol) but don't want to replace the unit and still have bad sound from bad speakers if that is the case.
Any chance these are wired out of phase like the 2002 Jetta was?
Also it is just possible those of us that grew up listening to analog will just never accept digital as "music to our ears"?