Installing a Sound Actuator (Soundaktor)

A while back I saw a friend who had installed a device that generates engine sound inside the cabin, called a SoundAktor / Sound Actuator. The sound is generated into the cabin through the windshield, which acts as a large membrane.

I checked the price and figured it was cheap enough and interesting to try. The following components are needed for the installation:

• 5G0907159 – the Soundaktor unit; many VAG group models have their own mounting bracket for it, otherwise there’s no real difference, so you can take any part ending in …907159 — in my case, it’s from a Golf R
• 4H0907601D – the speaker, the actuator itself
• 4H0973702 – connector for the speaker
• 4F0973706 – connector for the unit
• 6 wires, preferably 0.35 mm² and of different colors, plus pins for them
• Fuse tap
• M6 nut with washer

I gathered all the components from various shops and salvage yards, it came out to about 2000₴. I made the wiring and crimped the pins myself.

The Audi A3 has a designated spot for the unit under the cowl panel on the left side, but I decided it would be better to mount the unit inside the cabin, somewhere near the panel by the left foot — it’s dry there and needs less wiring.

The speaker, on the other hand, is installed centrally at the base of the windshield under the cowl panel, in the engine bay.

To be able to bolt on the Soundaktor speaker, you need to remove the cowl panel, which opens up access to the mounting point.

In my case, 2 wires need to be routed from the cabin into the engine bay to reach it. I wrote about how to route wires from the cabin into the engine bay in the post about installing PLA 3.0, where I ran the wiring through the grommet near the driver’s feet.

The wiring diagram is fairly simple: two wires connect the unit and the speaker, two wires are the CAN Drive bus (Low and High), one wire is power, and the last wire is ground.

Next, everything gets connected and put together. After assembly, all of it needs to be coded.

I hooked up the CAN bus slightly wrong at first — I should have connected to CAN-Drive (CAN1), but instead connected to CAN-Extended (CAN5), and the unit seemed to be recognized and flashed fine, but no signal from the engine ever came through.

I connected to the CAN bus at connector t17 near the sill:

The wiring diagram for the CAN bus connection is as follows:

Soundaktor unit	→	Connector t17
PIN 6 CAN High	→	PIN 1 CAN High
PIN 5 CAN Low	→	PIN 2 CAN Low

Now for the coding:

After all these steps, a new option — Engine Sound — appears in the Drive Select menu, under the Individual mode.

The sound the unit produces can be changed by swapping the unit’s parameter set; ready-made parameter sets already exist for this purpose — mqb-soundaktor, as well as an online parser.

So far I’ve only tried the sound from the Audi TT RS. Not bad, but there’s a slight rattle at the start; after that it’s fine. I checked the speaker and it’s mounted securely, so the issue might be in the sound file itself — I’ll try other firmware later. You can pick whichever one suits your taste.

UPD 5.03.2024: tried the sound from the Audi RS5 and liked it a lot more, no rattling on this one. Also disabled the Soundaktor sound for Comfort mode — thanks to Alex for the help.

That’s it.