Why is the car audio industry so far behind?

[Sal1950]

I'll have to stop by a local H-D dealer and talk to a tech there soon.
It's been over 20 years since I hung up my tools but even then, a bunch of the ignition tech and more had been integrated into the radio on the big baggers and OBD II type connections were being done there.
A lot of good things have come out of modern vehicles digital systems control but some not so hot from an old mechanics perspectives. LOL

 

[CapMan]

Very happy with the B&W system in my Volvo - only car I've had where the stock subwoofers don't sound dreadful!

 

[raindance]

Low frequency noise should be possible to cancel out. There are some manufacturers that are experimenting with it ..

Noise cancellation for cars | Solutions | Audio & Voice DSPs | Products | Asahi Kasei Microdevices (AKM)

Road Noise Cancellation technology reduces the noise that is generated by road-induced vibrations. This is performed by composing a secondary sound field using acceleration signals as inputs and processing these signals in real-time with low-latency computational efforts.

www.akm.com

Honda / Acura have been doing it for years to compensate for the lack of sound damping in their cars. The issue is that the system shares the same speakers as the sound system and the noisier the road surface gets the worse the music system sounds - I suspect it is an intermodulation issue.

If they used separate speakers and a separate subwoofer, it might actually be useful.

 

[Sal1950]

Honda / Acura have been doing it for years to compensate for the lack of sound damping in their cars. The issue is that the system shares the same speakers as the sound system and the noisier the road surface gets the worse the music system sounds - I suspect it is an intermodulation issue.

If they used separate speakers and a separate subwoofer, it might actually be useful.

Why not just use some good sound damping material instead of raising the base price of the car to buyers another $1k with more failure prone electronic complexity.

 

[Mr. Widget]

Why not just use some good sound damping material instead of raising the base price of the car to buyers another $1k with more failure prone electronic complexity.

Weight.
It is a balancing act between cost and performance.

 

[middlemarch]

I suspect the aftermarket car audio business is pretty much dying since it's been virtually impossible to modify built in car systems for the better part of 20 years now. Having said that, my experience at least is that many of the factory car systems are pretty darned good these days. I've had a 2016 Audi with a Bose system that was pretty poor. But my wife has a same year VW Golf with a Fender system that is great, and now have an Audi Allroad with the standard B&O (harman) that is fantastic. Better than the majority of home systems, I'd bet. I certainly wish my home stuff was as seamlessly integrated from the get go. And you can spend $6K for the upgraded version if you want. Never heard that one, probably prefer not to, ignorance may be bliss.

 

[Vacceo]

I was trying to explain to a car guy why better than Red Book (high rez) couldn't possibly matter in a noisy car and he wasn't getting it.

That is true on a practical way, however, there is something car manufacturers could easily do to simplify their head units.

In this time and age, upgrading amps should be as simple as an optical cable straight to a pre out that manages the DSP. Instead, you have to go through extremely complex wire harnesses that increase cost and reduce compatibility or force the user to replace a lot of wiring.

That said, with cost being really low, head units should have the hardware to manage high res signals, as the cost increase should be minimal.

The hard part, as you mention, is the insulation of the car itself, which is very labor intensive and requires taking everything out, sticking butile and aluminum plus a mat, and then re-attach everything.

 

[Mordor]

Golf IV here. Sound wise it sucks. Soon i finish the tuning, gonna install Focal speakers and a new radio....Alpine maybe.

 

[raindance]

In my Acura (MDX, base model) I would happily pay for access to the DSP tuning - it is not made available to us humble users. I just want to be able to dial the front tweeters down by about 10dB, turn down the center speaker by about the same, and dial in a proper crossover slope and EQ for the subwoofer to get rid of all the boom and get some actual low bass instead. All this without touching the settings for the noise cancellation. The tone controls in this vehicle only provide 2 or 3dB of adjustment - I drive with the treble turned all the way down and it is still far too "bright and crispy" sounding.

The intermodulation shows up as broken up cymbal and sibilant sounds, or what audiophiles might refer to as excessive "grain" which makes the sound very harsh indeed. Some say that the treble improves with higher volume, but then there is too much bass boom in the 150-250Hz range. When you are parked the sound is clear but far too bright and the upper bass is boomy - there is very little low bass. When you are moving, the treble becomes broken up or grainy and the bass is lost amongst the road noise, possibly because the subwoofer is spending all its excursion on the road noise aspect and there is none left for music.

 

[GXAlan]

Why not just use some good sound damping material instead of raising the base price of the car to buyers another $1k with more failure prone electronic complexity.

As Mr Widget says, weight or more precisely miles per gallon. Harman’s ”GreenEdge”

https://sustainability.harman.com/2014/products/greenedge.html

Goes further by trying to lightweight the speaker drivers too. So smaller magnets, lighter cones/spider/baskets/etc.

So there is some truth that car audio is bad because the average buyer doesn’t nitpick audio the way we do, but if you can get 1 extra MPG, you get a ton of sales.

It’s also not just mpg. If you can get 0.1 s faster 0-60 or 1/4 mile, it can also translate into tangible sales.

I once spoke to a BMW ergonomic engineer. They used advanced computer simulations to design the contour seats and 20+ years ago, they were using computer modeling to figure out where to put buttons, and how to design cars for ingress and egress. This required super computers of the era but he explained that different BMW divisions had to fight for time on the supercomputer the way scientists fight for time on Hubble Space Telescope. All this ergonomic stuff couldn’t directly translate into sales but the engine and performance guys had much more plentiful time on the supercomputer because the bean counters at BMW knew exactly how much more you could get people to upgrade from one engine to the next in terms of performance and balance it out by what people would be willing to pay and what it cost the company in cost of good sold. The ergonomic stuff was a lot less predictable.

 

[Sal1950]

So there is some truth that car audio is bad because the average buyer doesn’t nitpick audio the way we do, but if you can get 1 extra MPG, you get a ton of sales.

How very sad, but then I don't go for the car audio thing much, I don't spend near enough time in my truck to make it important to me. Besides horsepower and acceleration are much more important to me than a few mpg.. But that's me and we all have our priorities own. LOL.

 

[GXAlan]

How very sad, but then I don't go for the car audio thing much, I don't spend near enough time in my truck to make it important to me. Besides horsepower and acceleration are much more important to me than a few mpg.. But that's me and we all have our priorities own. LOL.

I used mpg as an example but horsepower and 0-60 times are also areas where manufacturers focus on improving (compared to sound, other that needing a base and premium option).

Less so now, but there was a time where most of my listening was done in the car, which is why I upgraded my car sound system. It put about 12k miles/year but a lot of that is traffic, so wind/road noise aren’t as big of an issue for sound quality

 

[Sal1950]

Less so now, but there was a time where most of my listening was done in the car, which is why I upgraded my car sound system. It put about 12k miles/year but a lot of that is traffic, so wind/road noise aren’t as big of an issue for sound quality

Same here, I'm good for about 1,200 miles a year now.

 

[gabrielb]

What about noise cancellation, aren't there any car manufacturers who have explored the idea of canceling out the wind and road noises, or is it a hard thing to achieve?

A friend was working on active noise cancellation in Bose car decision about 20 years ago.
IIRC it was sold standard in the high end line of BMW.

 

[gabrielb]

I suspect the aftermarket car audio business is pretty much dying since it's been virtually impossible to modify built in car systems for the better part of 20 years now. Having said that, my experience at least is that many of the factory car systems are pretty darned good these days. I've had a 2016 Audi with a Bose system that was pretty poor. But my wife has a same year VW Golf with a Fender system that is great, and now have an Audi Allroad with the standard B&O (harman) that is fantastic. Better than the majority of home systems, I'd bet. I certainly wish my home stuff was as seamlessly integrated from the get go. And you can spend $6K for the upgraded version if you want. Never heard that one, probably prefer not to, ignorance may be bliss.

10 years ago it was still possible to replace the HUD adding bigger screens, navigation, BT, etc.
Along the way you would get a new DAC and AMP.
Nowadays, the HUD is highly integrated with the car so it is virtually impossible to replace.
Speakers are easy to replace, but without an upgrade to the AMP there will be no improvement.
The vast majority of upgrades today will need to use speaker-level-input or line output convertor which means we amplify the distorted signal produced by the OEM DAC/AMP.
It will allow using higher quality speakers drawing more power, but I wonder if the new AMP S/N matter very much in this scenario.

 

[sigbergaudio]

Some "sporty" cars (BMW, Mustangs, others) are now TOO quiet inside, so they play fake engine noise through the speakers...

https://www.kbb.com/car-advice/fake-engine-noise/

Not really, its the engines that are quiet due to noise regulations, not the cabins. The problem is mostly wind/road/tire noise these days.

 

[Sangthip]

Got a new Toyota Yaris Ativ, that just came with 2 bad front speakers that sounded terrible. I didn't wanna rip out and change the headunit, so i just got Jbl speakers installed in backdoors ,3-ways, and 2 way speakers in front. For me that was an great sound upgrade and very cheap.

 

[LevityProject]

I had wanted to upgrade my car audio for a long time. I have an older vehicle (2007 Equinox). It's got a pioneer audio system that has the potential to sound really good, but it has too much 4k, lacks a bit of top end and lacks lower sub-bass.

Adding the Wavelet EQ app to my Android phone changed all of this for me. I know my car audio very well, and I was able to dial in a profile that sounds wonderful and balanced for streaming Spotify and Apple Music.

 

[gabrielb]

Got a new Toyota Yaris Ativ, that just came with 2 bad front speakers that sounded terrible. I didn't wanna rip out and change the headunit, so i just got Jbl speakers installed in backdoors ,3-ways, and 2 way speakers in front. For me that was an great sound upgrade and very cheap.View attachment 385258View attachment 385259View attachment 385260

10 years ago I tried replacing 4 OEM speakers with infinity kappa, and there was no improvement because the OEM amplifier was not strong enough to push them.
Once I replaced the HUD (including DAC and AMP) the improvement was night and day.

I wonder if the move to class D amplifiers means the OEM amplifier are now strong enough to push a decent aftermarket speakers...

 

[StigErik]

The “Meridian” in the KIA will be different than the Meridian used in Land Rover.

Not really. Both KIA and Land Rover / Range Rover are using the same type of Meridian audio systems in their cars. From what I can find out, even the loudspeakers are the same. The implementation within the car's infotainment system will of course look different, but the basics are the same.

Meridian has three different "levels" of audio systems:
- Meridian Sound
- Meridian Surround
- Meridian 3D Surround

KIA use Meridian Surround, while Land Rover/Range Rover use all three depending on type of car and equipment level.

Meridian | Kia

The Meridian sound system features strategically placed speakers throughout the cabin. In addition, a number of innovative proprietary technologies have been exclusively tailored for the K8 and EV6.

www.meridian-audio.com

Meridian | Land Rover

As a leader of Pioneering British Audio and innovation, Meridian shares Land Rover’s drive for quality, performance and dedication in order to recreate the most authentic and immersive audio possible.

www.meridian-audio.com