Jim said to me "I can't believe we have being lied to all this time"
This is a troubling statement to read for several reasons. AWESOME GTI is well informed of our tuning philosophy and seemingly felt the same. AWESOME GTI also did not suddenly pick up a dyno over night. They've had one for quite some time now and had every ability to check the power gains of our software in house any time they pleased. They were present on our calibration trips to their own shop to tune European cars in years past. They were right there in front of us, looking at the exact same data as everyone else. They've had dyno day shootouts and many customers from all makes of cars and all mods on their dyno for years now so tuning philosophies differences have been clear for years.
id like to hear what APR's thoughts are on this! 
Below is what I wrote on another thread. I've removed a few things to make this more in response to this thread.
First, I'd like to touch on APR's Conservatism/Aggressiveness at different stages with regard to how hard the turbo is runIn the case of stage 1 and stage 2 software, we are a bit more conservative compared to our on upgraded turbo software. But in all cases we do not cross the manufacturers specified levels for exhaust gas temperature. Another area where we don't run 'wide open (or shut rather)' is with the wastegate. With stage 3 software and our k04 software, we leave some headroom so the turbo can make up for differences in altitude changes and for small boost leaks and several other reasons. It also leaves some headroom for minor differences which inherently exist in all things in nature. When calibrated in house at APR we are not running wastegate duty cycle at 100% during an entire pull. 100% wastegate duty cycle means the wastegate is fully shut and all exhaust gasses are going through the turbo running it as hard as possible. For the MK6 typically with stage 1 and stage 2 you'll see less duty cycle towards redline. With our k04 and stage 3 setups (depending on engine size and turbo size) you may see a more aggressive approach where more of the turbo is utilized. This depends on many different variables, but for the most part, OEM turbo software will be less aggressive.
When running a larger turbo such as Stage 3, running it harder has a higher percentage gain than smaller turbos such as the OEM. With an OEM turbo, running harder will in some cases get more power, however the percentage gain is much smaller. This is another reason why we typically leave more on the table since running it harder doesn't make a tremendous difference. There are trade offs to running it higher and harder and our engineers chose not to do so.
Lastly, especially with stage 1 we like to make power but we like to keep things on the safe side. Most customers want it this way. Also, being under warranty, we don't feel it's fair to VW if we were to just run the turbo as hard as possible, risk failure, and then pass the bill off on them. That in our opinion is dishonest and that's not what we want to do. (Please keep in mind, I'm not insinuating other tuners do this, I'm simply stating another reason why we don't run the turbo at 100% on the mk6)
Secondly, I'd like to touch on APR's Conservatism/Aggressiveness at different stages with regard to component protection.Each and every APR stage, from stage 1, to stage 4, has component protection enabled. What this means is as EGT's rise, we will run less aggressive fueling maps which will run richer in order to cool the exhaust gasses. For those who do not know, in many cases, running richer will result in a slight power loss, however, the fuel will actually cool down the exhaust gasses and will prevent EGT's from crossing the manufacturers limits.
You can see this on the dyno and it's even possible to see this on the road.
If you were to log air fuel ratio and do pull after pull after pull on the dyno or on the road, you'll see after a while (especially on the dyno where there is VERY limited air flow), the air fuel ratio will become richer. This is 'component' protection. The lower limit, or richer air fuel ratio can be adjusted by the tuner. It can be set to the exact same level as the 'performance' map too, thus when it comes time to cool the exhaust gasses by switching to the other map, the other map will be the same and the air fuel ratio will not change.
Not all tuners disable this feature, I'd like to make that clear, but this is an excellent reason why 1 guy with APR software can put down 1 power figure, and then you can go to the same dyno and put down less. If there is less airflow over the engine or if your car is hotter, it can switch to a mode where it's protecting the engine from harm. You'll put down less power but there will be nothing wrong with your car. Remember, cars drive ON THE ROAD, not on the dyno. There is far more air rushing throughout the engine bay, intercooler, radiators, etc cooling it down when it's on the road compared to the dyno. With these protection routines in place, it makes is possible to run the car in brutal conditions w/o harming the engine or turbo.
Stage 1 with the OEM exhaust will be the most affected power wise from component protection. It's less aggressive and will be safer. This is larger in part due to the restrictive exhaust right next to the turbocharger. It gets hot quickly! So once you remove this restriction and go to stage 2, the restriction is gone and it does not get quite as hot as quickly. This is why we can run more 'aggressively' while actually not running any hotter. It's actually less aggressive in a sense since the restriction is removed.
Third, I'd like to touch on the power difference between the APR and Revo files in these dynosI personally do not have data in front of me other than 1 dyno graph of 1 pull with Revo map vs some APR file.
Now, looking at the two graphs, it's clear in these two dyno plots the REVO pull is making more power. This is clear as day and anyone can see it.
Could this data be faked? Absolutely.
Do I personally believe it's faked? I personally do not believe it was 'Faked'.
Could it be slightly dishonest? Absolutely.
Do I think it was slightly dishonest? Not really, but maybe just a little to make things look a bit more 'dramatic' but hopefully nothing major.
Let me touch on that:
There are several things which could have happened to make it "dishonest". Let me again say I don't think it truly is 100% dishonest or fake, but I would like to mention a few things which can make a delta appear much larger.
1. Above I mentioned component protection. One way of making less power would be to run the car over and over and over. Typically if there is not enough air flow over the vehicle, such as on the dyno, our calibration will do everything it's capable of doing to run richer, pull timing, and even pull load/boost to make less power and run safely. I don't believe they beat the crap out of the APR tune to get it to read very very low in order to sway the results. Could they have chosen the worse run for the APR data? Yes, that's always possible, but the power figures they are reporting seem to be very good to me and more or less what we advertise. I don't think they went out of their way to make the APR data look bad, but they may not have chosen the 'best' run.
2. Did they choose the best Revo run vs the worst APR run? Could have but I have no way to prove this.
3. Could this be a custom 1 off file from Revo just for this test? Yes, it could be, but I have no data to prove it.
So as you could see, it could or could not be the best run vs the worst run just to make the delta larger, but we have no data to support that claim, nor do I think it really is. I don't doubt they have the ability to make a lot of power no the OEM turbo. I know we have the ability to produce much more power on the OEM turbo compared to what we feel is safe to sell to our customers. I don't doubt at this point REVO has the same ability to produce high levels of power from the OEM turbo as well. As far as the OEM turbo goes, pulling out higher power levels is the easy part.
ConclusionI've said it before, any tuner can run the turbo harder than anyone else out there and extract more power and we have the same ability to do this as well. This is the easy part! We have sold our software to thousands upon thousands of customers around the world and our customers are happy. We offer what we feel our customers want and are not exaggerating power gains. We offer a product line of hardware and software to support power gains from mild to wild while keeping a thick powerband of steerable and trackable power and our customers seem to love it. We calibrate the components to a level we feel is SAFE, not to the max, and not to beat other tuners.
Through motorsport racing we have stretched these engines to the limits with OEM components and put them through abuse people will not see on the road with our stage 1 or 2 software. In racing the MK6 we are limited on the boost we can run and as such have to dig else where to extract more power safely. The midrange will sacrifice but towards redline, we are pushing it to the max. We've destroyed turbos with racing. A full weekend of wide open hour long sessions of running it at the max will do that! We replace turbos after races because they can't continue to see the levels abuse we put them through over and over. This data has trickled down into our sellable performance software and since 2008 when it was first released, has proven over and over it's safe for the road and track.
We know the limits, we don't cross them for our street customers. We provide smooth and drivable power gains we feel are safe for both you, and your engine.
Thank you!
-Arin
