Mcintosh Group and Alps Alpine Join Forces in Automotive Luxury Audio Strategy

McIntosh Group Inc. and Alps Alpine have teamed up to deliver transcendent, luxury audio systems to the automotive industry. This announcement also signals that the McIntosh Group is returning to the automotive industry – bringing solutions from McIntosh Labs and Sonus Faber to vehicles. The partnership means that those automotive solutions are delivered by Alps Alpine in select vehicles.

Swedish audio DSP pioneer Dirac and Chinese car company BYD Motors, one of the leading automotive companies in the hybrid and fully-electric vehicle space, announced that BYD’s new Han series of vehicles will feature Dirac digital audio technology for a best-in-class in-car listening experience. Dirac will infuse all Han Series Electric Vehicle (EV) and Dual Mode (DM) models with its cutting-edge digital audio technology, to elevate in-car acoustics. A new level of automotive luxury in electric and hybrid cars, including Dirac-branded speaker grills.

Birgit Bartel-Kurz (Senior Engineer at Fraunhofer IIS) details the ongoing research at the Fraunhofer IIS institute on more immersive audio solutions for automotive applications. The article explores how to apply new audio processing algorithms in actual playback systems for cars, and how the Sonamic Panorama signal processing technology from Fraunhofer creates an immersive in-car sound experience from a simple stereo source. This article was originally published in audioXpress, June 2020.

Bose announced its most powerful and highest performing automotive sound system ever for a sports car with the debut of the Bose Performance Series system in the eighth-generation Chevrolet Corvette. The all-new 14-speaker Bose Performance system in the 2020 Corvette Stingray sets a new standard for sports car sound with highly advanced signal processing and tuning that delivers the loudest — yet clearest — Bose audio experience ever in a two-seat coupe cabin.

PCB Piezotronics introduced a new 1/2” low noise microphone and preamplifier system, model 378A04, which enables test engineers to measure extremely low sound pressure levels in a cost effective, prepolarized (0V) package. Applications include measurements for fan tests, appliance noise, electric car sound quality, environmental noise, cabin noise & anechoic chamber qualification.