How Many Has Yours Got?
I am afraid I am quite often sneeringly cynical about the efforts gone to by car manufacturers to make a silk purse from a sow’s ear.
I understand that from an economic viewpoint, it makes no sense for a manufacturer producing millions of cars, to put a £30 pair of speakers in it when they can get a pair for less than £1 without too many complaints. In 2017, BMW produced some 372,000 Mini’s. Putting better speakers in at an arbitrary £30 per pair would cost over £11M so the incentive to spend only £372K as an example, means they can easily afford to spend £1M on trying to make them sound better even though their attempts are doomed to fail!
Along the way, I have to say that some very clever stuff goes into these attempts. I have a friend who spent some time and earned a lot of money creating sound modelling software for a big UK car manufacturer for exactly this purpose. We see the fruits of such labour in the executive saloon market in particular. One such development is called ”upmixing”. I did not know what this meant until our friend Todd Ramsey from America explained it to me.
To quote from Todd’s description directly; “An upmixer is a processing scheme wherein two-channel source material (stereo left and right) is processed into multiple channels that serve to make the listening space “seem” as if it’s wider, taller and/or deeper in front of the listener, even more spacious behind them.”
Pretty clear? So in other words, “upmixing” is a form of processing that attempts to compensate for the poor dispersion characteristic of factory fitted speakers due to the cheapness of the speakers themselves and the generally unsuitable mounting positions provided. Processing alone would not enable a convincing sound stage to be created with these limitations and so manufacturers add more speakers to spread the sound around the car.
This is seemingly big business with a large list of high-end home hi-fi manufacturers getting involved. These include many household and esoteric brands such as B&W, Krell, Mark Levinson, Meridian and Bang & Olufsen amongst others.
This is all well and good and these companies all have good reputations when it comes to audio developments however, there is a lot of misunderstanding amongst owners of vehicles equipped with “upmixers”. At shows we speak to a good number of these and just about all of them are under the incorrect impression that the entire audio system in their vehicle is supplied by one of these manufacturers.
The many cheap and nasty speakers versus a pair of really good component speaker comparison, is an interesting one. I have heard many good aftermarket upgraded systems in cars over the years and a good few OEM systems with the “upmixing” strategy employed and for me, the aftermarket does it much better! With way fewer speakers that are built for purpose, a decent amplifier and an Audison bit processor, a FOUR MASTER is able to set the image in just about any position in the vehicle and store that as a preset for instant recall when passengers join the driver.
Unfortunately, in many vehicles the standard audio is so bad that car purchasers are easily tempted to tick the box requesting an upgrade to a famous brand of hi-fi but I am not entirely sure that they understand just what they are buying into. I am even less certain that the cost of such upgrades always represents value for money.
In the meantime, FOUR MASTERS are busy bypassing “upmixers” and providing disappointed drivers with a vastly improved sound for less money.
I am most grateful to Todd for explaining the term “upmixing” to me as my simplistic research had led me to much misinformation on the subject and a confused look on my face.
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