Ok so spent the afternoon at shark today to try and get to the bottom of this, did a few live logging runs with vcds. It was a little beyond me on the technical side but they explained it well to me and basically its normal turbo lag. They showed me where the car was requesting boost and what it was actually getting. Ive tried explaining it to the mrs so here I go again, apologies if i make no sense.
So the main reason we notice it is simply because our turbos spool very quickly, seems strange at first i know but basically if we had slower turbos we wouldnt notice it half as much.
These are not the real figures, i cant remember them exactly but it explains it pretty well.
So, say were changing gear, at the moment we have our clutch down, we are request 0 from the car. When we then put our footdown, we are requesting say 2. In older turbos we would request 2 and get (over half second intervals for example) 0-0-1-1.5-2. Requested boost and actual boost are met say 2 second later.
In our turbos, starting at 0 again, put our foot down and go 0-0-2. Bang basically, straight to 2 much faster, but because of this we notice it so much more, there is no gradual increase in boost like on previous models. Thats also why I seem to me more effected than a stock S3 with a bigger turbo, so the more tuned, the more boost you request, the more youre going to notice it.
The reason I think DSG is unaffected, is that when youre giving it the beans your revs stay high, if i stay in gear till 5.5k then i dont notice it either because the exhaust gasses assist the turbo in spooling (or something like that). Us 6mt will give it the beans and change earlier sometimes and thats when I notice it more (revs dropping back to below 3k).
I also think I know why it feels less for me in eco mode or using 95ron, all to do with requested boost against actual still, in that we are requesting less boost from the car at the same revs, either by position of the throttle (only thing really that changes in sport/race/cupra whatever is throttle positioning) or by running a lower ron so the ecu is adjusting the timing and automatically reducing boost requested.
Shark say they can look into it further for me and try and make it better but that unfortunately or fortunately depending on your outlook, its pretty normal.