
We don’t normally cover in-car audio and despite the Munich High-End show being surrounded by automotive excellence (there’s a car museum just opposite and it sits amid some of BMW’s design offices and transport hub), you rarely get to hear car audio. So, in a way, the breaks between in-car listening sessions gives you an opportunity to see just what’s changed.
Here’s another thing you don’t hear too often around audio shows; discussions about “the delta of technological development”. This is because domestic audio is an extremely mature branch of consumer electronics and much of its fast-paced development cycles are long in the past. Sure, there’s been significant change in materials science, improvements in precision and accuracy across the board and developments into streaming, DSP and Dolby Atmos are big technological changes, but contrast that with our continued love-affair with valves, open-reel and LP replay.
All about the Delta
When it comes to in-car, however, it’s all about that delta; the rate of change and improvement in car audio has been remarkable and continues to develop at a blinding pace. There are several good reasons for this; the increasing move toward electric cars has reduced the noise floor inside the cabin of many cars, DSP is becoming increasingly powerful, the control surfaces of a modern car are completely different to a vehicle made even four or five years ago, and the recognition of the importance and significance of good audio in car has increased in the wider public. And it’s in this world, we see the Porsche Taycan Turbo Cross Turismo, fully equipped with the latest Burmester in-car system.
This fits well because one of the last major in-car projects we covered was also a Burmester in a Porsche Panamera and how the intervening years have changed the experience is profound.
By Alan Sircom
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