Skoda Kamiq - Best in Show?

It's about the journey, not just the destination

Skoda Kamiq – Best in Show?

Cristian Vasile is a butcher by trade. He has worked in six countries and now resides in Sutton, South London. A confirmed Skoda fan, he agreed to show us around his superb Skoda Kamiq, Montecarlo.

This almost brand-new sporty compact SUV features an upgraded chassis and a 1.5-litre engine boasting 160 bhp. It can go from 0 to 60 in 7.5 seconds, so it is a roomy family car and a great performer on the road.

Christian has been a music lover all of his life. He confesses that he was the lad who would be shouted at by neighbours who wanted him to turn his music down. But it wasn’t all rowdy music emanating from the family home. His dad was an engineer but also sang opera. He has fond memories of his dad returning from work and sitting in front of his Hi-fi with a glass of wine, listening to opera to wind down at the end of the day.

His early wanderlust seems to have diminished, and he has been resident in the UK since 2016, having previously settled in five different countries before arriving and settling in the UK. He has a wife and an eight-year-old daughter. They spend a lot of their leisure time pursuing their three big hobbies: cars, music, and wildlife photography. Most weekends, the family travels to destinations nationwide to capture pictures of wildlife and plants. This is a passion for them and a key driver in his decision to save for a significant system for his new car.

Christian has worked as a butcher for 25 years and now produces Biltong. He has continually upgraded the audio in his cars, nearly all Skodas. His previous car upgrade triggered a period of saving money for a significant system. He took that car to BCSS in Coulsdon to see what could be done on a budget to improve the bass. They furnished him with an active subwoofer and sent him on his way. He was extremely grateful, knowing they had done an excellent job at a great price.

As Cristian began his search for audio brands, he discovered many new names. However, two brands, Hertz and Audison, consistently stood out. Despite their significant price tags, Cristian was undeterred. His father's wise words, 'We are too poor to buy cheap things,' resonated with him. This sentiment encapsulates Cristian’s commitment to saving for a system that would provide him long-lasting satisfaction.

Once he received the car, he immediately went to BCSS with a shopping list. His brief was for as discrete a system as they could manage. This is quite a standard brief these days. New technology speakers can perform well even given the constraints of their position in the vehicle. Digital Signal Processing is also of great benefit in this endeavour. Christian likes a lot of top-end. He wanted the tweeters to reproduce the highest frequencies possible. He also likes a lot of bass and insisted on two 10” subwoofers! A challenge indeed.

Fortunately, BCSS is one of the most experienced specialists in the country. With years of experience building systems with big bass, they do not get many calls for this these days, but I am sure they relished the challenge.

Cristian settled on Hertz Mille Legend speakers up front. These are mounted in the standard positions. The standard tweeter position for tweeters is in the A-pillars on the vehicle. Although perhaps not strictly on axis, it is a good place for them to be. The ML 280 tweeters are superb performers. With a bandwidth of 1kHz – 28 kHz, they met the high top-end requirement. However, they can blend perfectly with the ML 1650 woofers that sit low in the doors as they reach so low. The doors have been slathered with sound deadening, ensuring most of the sound remains inside the car and preventing undesirable panel vibration. The tweeters played very wide in the audition due to their ear-height mounting position, but the whole sound stage was extraordinarily open and well-balanced.

An Audison FORZA AF C 8.14 bit, eight-channel amplifier runs the front speakers actively, with bridged channels feeding the ML 1650 woofers and single channels to the tweeters. The two remaining channels drive a pair of Audison Prima APK 165 2-way speakers in the rear through the supplied passive crossover. It would never do to leave Cristian’s daughter without music!

The built-in bit DSP helps cement the image and balance the System. Cristian has two settings: one for solo listening and a family setting where the image is centred around the middle of the dashboard. These are easily selected via a DRC controller mounted behind a small flip-down panel to the right of the steering wheel. The same DRC offers finger-tip control of the subwoofer level, which is handy when moving.

The boot houses two Audison Prima APS 10 S4S, 10” subwoofers in a custom-built enclosure. These are shallow-mount subwoofers that only require 10L to operate correctly. They have an 11mm excursion, so they move plenty of air despite their shallow depth and are also highly efficient. In our listening tests, the bass was MASSIVE. They are hidden under the boot floor. The enclosure uses up most of the space in the spare wheel well. There is just enough room to house an Audison SR 1.500 monobloc amplifier. The amplifier happily pumps out 800 Watts into 2ohms as in this case. Each speaker can handle up to 800 watts of peak power.

Cristian prefers to stream his music from his phone. Therefore, he opted to get BCSS to install an Audison B-Conn Bluetooth receiver. This fantastic little box can receive Bluetooth sent via the LDAC codec. This means he can stream at up to 24bit 96kHz, or, in other words, Hi-res. Fortunately, he uses an Android phone, as iPhones do not support the LDAC codec. His streaming service of choice used to be YouTube. There is a lot of hi-res content on YouTube. However, he has switched to Tidal and is enjoying the quality even more.

I wanted to listen to his track selection to get a proper sense of what Cristian was looking for sound-wise. Fortunately, despite being a fan of high-end and bass, there was variation in his track selection. Sometimes, I am met with a list of purely electronic club tracks. There is nothing wrong with that, and I enjoy the genre. However, auditioning a vehicle can leave me needing more insight into a system's full capabilities.

Cristian informed me that the car was returning to BCSS the week after our visit for a tune-up. This is best done with at least 10 hours of playing time in the speakers. I would guess this was easily achieved!

Among the many we listened to, one notable track was Mahmut Orhan, Vesaire Boral Kibil Remix. The hypnotic electronic bass line underpins a sparse soundscape featuring Middle Eastern flavours. In this car, it sounds completely immersive. Beats are kept to a minimum with no contrived melody line. The sound is well-balanced, and the speakers play very wide. There was also a discernible depth to it. The tight bass line was deep and lustrous, with maybe just the slight hint of a mid-range disconnect. If I was right, this could all be down to set up and fixed very quickly. I enjoyed how it played, even with a rudimentary setup. I also enjoyed the other tracks listed in the Top Five accompanying this article. Everything we threw at it sounded great, with no apparent flaws, just hints that there was even more to come.

In conclusion, as I was saying goodbye, Cristian expressed his pleasure with his new system, saying, “It is not all about the destination, but also about the journey.” This is another sage observation that I will be adopting from now on.

Thank you to all who were involved in getting this system together. It truly adds an additional level of class to this car.