Stereo wars: New battleground for car makers
Car brands are no longer trying to draw in buyers with just safety equipment or a beefy engine. The new battleground is hidden where most will never think to look.
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When Bose fitted four modest speakers to the 1983 Cadillac Seville, the innovative American audio company could not have anticipated the impact it would have on how we bop along in the car.
Only a decade earlier, an FM radio with a pair of speakers was a relatively luxurious addition to a car.
Suddenly there was a respected home audio company plumping up an automotive interior with speakers and amplified sound.
It was a hit, kickstarting a revolution in car audio — spawning boom boxes on wheels with a proliferation of speakers, amplifiers and subwoofers.
At the top end there’s serious punch. The coming Bentley Continental Flying Spur has an optional 21-speaker set-up with two bass transducers (effectively shakers beneath the seat to ensure you feel the bass). The Lexus LS has 23 speakers.
But it’s not just luxury cars. Toyota, Mazda, Nissan, Subaru, Hyundai, Kia, Holden, Ford, Mitsubishi and Volkswagen fit top brand audio on their more expensive models.
Mazda Australia marketing director Alastair Doak says connectivity and infotainment are crucial in luring buyers.
“The quality of the sound system has a significant part to play and the expectation of consumers these days is much higher,” he says.
That’s why the MX-5 roadster includes speakers in the driver’s headrest.
It’s also why the latest Mazda3 gets a revamped audio. This will flow through to coming models, including the CX-30 due next month.
Mazda worked to separate the bass and mid-to-high range sounds to better position speakers in relation to human ears.
“In a listening room,” says Yoshihiro Teshima, from Mazda’s electrical and electronics performance development department, “the speakers are aimed directly at you and you can listen while seated in the middle.”
In cars, however, most occupants sit closer to one set of speakers.
Teshima explains: “If mid to high-range speakers are mounted on the top of the dashboard … you are basically listening to music reflected off the windscreen.
“These reflections … affect audio quality and clarity, making it difficult for listeners to get the sense of where an instrument or singer is on the sound stage.”
Some Mazda3s get a 12-speaker Bose set-up. Even for its basic eight-speaker layout, Mazda chose to fit the higher frequency speakers in the tops of the doors.
It employs a “priority mode” for the driver so that, Teshima says, “the sounds from the left and right speakers arrive at the driver’s ears at the same time and the same sound pressure level”.
Bass speakers, now moved from the doors to the dash, produce “powerful and tight bass with no buzzing”.
Doak says: “It’s indicative of the expectation of consumers that we went to great lengths to improve our standard system on our new-gen product.”
No surprise that premium audio is a priority for BMW and, says 7 and 8-Series product planner Howard Lam, this led to the maker fitting the latest Bowers & Wilkins “Diamond Surround Sound System”, notable for its diamond and kevlar speakers.
Locating the best spots for speakers in cars creates challenges for engineers but there are also advantages compared with home audio. Rooms and furniture can affect the quality of sound — but for each car model, the interior is identical, so planning the audio layout is easier.
Car audio was once an afterthought, added with the tick on the options list, but now it is integral to the design of the car.
Audio engineers, often from external suppliers, will request certain positions and structural changes to ensure a richer, cleaner sound.
Boutique brands are beginning to appear in premium brands — Naim for Bentley, for example, and Burmester for Mercedes-Benz and Porsche — but the market is dominated by two players, Bose and Harman.
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Bose spreads its wares from Nissan and Mazda to Audi and Porsche. The quality of the gear fits the manufacturer’s budget, though Bose also sets minimum standards.
Harman, now owned by Korean electronics giant Samsung, is responsible for myriad brands, including Harman Kardon, Mark Levinson, JBL, Infinity, Bang & Olufsen and Lexicon.
Car makers can buy their own-brand audio, with prices to match performance.
Bang & Olufsen is typically the top-shelf audio for brands such as Audi.
There are some curious pairings — Ferrari and Toyota use JBL equipment, for example.
Lexus, on the other hand, has an exclusive arrangement with the brilliant Mark Levinson sound, teaming a top-end home audio brand with some models.
All of this suggests the trend to branded big-noise audio will continue for many years.
Listen here
Arguments over what’s pumping out of the speakers could soon be silenced. Kia is developing what it calls the Separated Sound Zone, which uses noise cancelling and speaker placement to allow different occupants to listen to different things — or even take a phone call — without hearing what the other is listening to. The tech is due to debut globally this year but will take longer to reach Australia.
Go it alone
If you buy a Rolls-Royce, you get R-R hi-fi — no other brand will do. The top-end maker works with a “family-run small business” in Germany to produce its 18-speaker Bespoke Audio (no relation to the UK’s Bespoke Audio Co) option for the coming Phantom.
Tesla brought the audio design in-house for its Model 3 to avoid royalties charged by big brands. The Californian company hired ex Bang & Olufsen engineers to develop the 15-speaker set-up that’s among the best in the mid-level luxury category.
Tune out
It’s been available in cars for almost 100 years but there are signs AM radio could be on the way out. Some new cars are ditching AM tuners altogether, including electric cars — Tesla doesn’t fit insulation to stop interference from electrical circuits. Some Porsches, including the 911, do without an AM tuner, the brand instead directing owners to streaming services.
CD sound
A CD player or stacker was once mandatory but most new cars today go without, leaving owners to load their own libraries via smartphones, streaming services or onboard hard drives. Exceptions are some BMWs and many Lexuses. CD players live on in older cars such as the Nissan GT-R.
Get smarter
Most new cars come with Apple CarPlay/Android Auto, allowing easy connection to a smartphone that can provide the gruntwork for podcasts, music streaming and online radio.
Such tech has led to the demise of cassette decks and CD players, with a single phone now holding entire music libraries and more.
Even if your old car doesn’t have such connectivity you can still enjoy the benefits.
Aftermarket audio suppliers such as Sony, Alpine and Pioneer have retrofit options, typically involves replacing the original audio head unit with a standardised 8-inch by 4-inch unit.
Prices vary from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand, the more expensive kit including digital radio tuning, higher resolution screens, embedded satnav and more powerful amplifiers
Speaker-free
Future car audio could do without speakers altogether, if a concept developed by automotive supplier Continental and sound equipment specialist Sennheiser comes to fruition.
The concept works in the same way as an acoustic guitar or violin, where the hollow wooden body acts as a resonance chamber to amplify the sound of strings being strummed.
In the automotive application, sound actuators excite various surfaces in the car, creating a uniquely immersive surround sound. By doing away with conventional speakers, the designers say they can reduce the weight of a car’s audio system — some can weigh up to 40kg — by up to 90 per cent.
The absence of speakers also frees up interior space.
Originally published as Stereo wars: New battleground for car makers