The automotive industry has taken a massive swing toward autonomy, redefining what infotainment means for vehicles as we look to the future. Technology that once seemed like a pipe dream is now a virtual reality. A car, at its core, is and will still be a transportation vessel, but experts are exploring ways to transcend this avenue of transportation, elevating the sensory experience for the driver and passenger alike.

As new technologies emerge, they have historically and primarily been available to the wealthy. With the release of its iDrive technology in 2002, BMW changed the infotainment game with a touchscreen and dial control, making this a standout feature for luxury vehicles. Fast forward several years and you can find touchscreen displays in nearly every new vehicle on the market – regardless of price point.

But the momentum behind this innovation is only just beginning. Tesla, Panasonic, Toyota, Ferrari, and Faurecia – they are all working with various audio capabilities, all determined to make their products stand out among the rest. The problem is – they’re only focusing on one side of the coin, and with this narrow vision, the future of autonomous vehicles and infotainment will remain one-dimensional and fail to reach its full potential.

The question remains, how can hearing and feeling be combined and equalized so that these senses morph into one holistic experience? Panasonic’s new EV speaker design delivers clean sound directly to passengers’ ears in order to reduce audio fatigue while ensuring an equitable audio experience; Ferrari is attempting to recreate engine noises in its future electric vehicles; and Faurecia is reinventing their seating concept in an effort to drive modulation and sustainability – the result being a slight tactile sensation, but these leave something to be desired for a more expansive and accessible vision for immersive infotainment.

The market is hyper-focused on the stimulus of hearing, augmenting with basic haptics, as opposed to optimizing the experience in a way that stimulates multiple senses on a deeper level. In doing so, this technology only augments an existing feature. Speakers are already succeeding in providing a high-quality, multi-dimensional sound experience, the only additive here being they are invisible.

What if experts were able to combine full-range tactility with the audio experience, ensuring that the cleanliness and fidelity is present and transcends into what you hear? It’s time to think on a larger scale of possibility. If the operator doesn’t have full control over the experience that any person can have in the vehicle, then there’s no unique advantage for any car.

Audio is already a stand out differentiator for auto companies – it’s a huge selling point and thus they want to continue to leverage it this way. A brand’s signature audio experience is part of its identity, yet it still places limitations on what they can do, so the line that separates any one brand from another is very, very thin. This is partially because speaker technology has plateaued. The products themselves are getting smaller, more compact, and occasionally offering better integration and mobility, but the audio quality is not noticeably improving.

So, what could it look like if the industry takes the next step toward automotive innovation? There needs to be acknowledgement that advanced technology as it pertains to infotainment and autonomous vehicles is no longer just a pipe dream. This is very much a generation seeking immersive experiences that can benefit large audiences. Beyond looking at cars simply as vehicles that transport an individual or group from point A to point B, there are unlimited possibilities as to what can be done within that space – gaming, resting, meditating, or even entertaining.

Infotainment should provide unique individual experiences for every single passenger, allowing everyone to manipulate their own preferences and intensities without interfering with the others. If a car is self-driving, technology has the capacity to transport the operator and any passengers outside of their existing world into any sort of mixed reality or metaverse – whether that be an adventure-filled experience or a guided meditation.

Imagine a world in which long road trips are made productive or manageable by converting the inside of a car to a sleep-inducing environment, leveraging audio features to do so in conjunction with vibrations and light. These possibilities are shifting the industry to allow the individual to be able to become one with the car and its environment, integrating multiple senses to immerse themselves with the space.

Auto engineers and industry experts are facing a lack of industry standards and various boundaries of red tape in these efforts. But despite working against certain limitations, the lens still must widen to encapsulate a greater breadth of possibilities when it comes to the future of infotainment and autonomous vehicles. These technologies will be seen as gimmicky until there’s a practical application, or ways in which they can benefit a broad audience. Once that happens – this will open the door for every auto company to identify their branded touch points and expertise, creating a whole new world of possibilities for the consumer.

Edge Sound Research is a company pioneering "embodied audio," a new form of sound reproduction that combines both auditory and physical sensations of sound in an optimized and singular embodiment - bringing realism to sound. The technology is based on co-founder Ethan Castro’s experiences and research as a hard-of-hearing audio engineer and Ph.D. candidate in digital composition. The team's ResonX technology is currently being deployed through partnerships and collaborations with professional sports stadiums and concert venues. They are also pursuing partnerships with autonomous auto companies to explore how the future of infotainment could include embedded tech to create an immersive sound experience.

Valtteri Salomaki is the co-founder and CEO of Edge Sound Research, a pioneer in embodied audio and the future of sound. He started the venture in 2019 along with his co-founder, Ethan Castro, while both were attending the University of California, Riverside. Valtteri earned his MBA from UC, Riverside in 2020.

For an enjoyable suggestion, after you finish reading audioXpress, Scott Dorsey reviewed an interesting book written by David Hewitt, one of the many well-known engineers who made history doing live recordings of rock concerts during the 1970s and 1980s - and continued to pioneer this approach to make great recordings of live events. On the Road: Recording the Stars in a Golden Era of Live Music, is an interesting first-person testimony of some of the greatest moments in music recording history. This article was originally published in audioXpress, April 2023. Read the Full Article Now Available Here

This patent, awarded to inventor Matthias Larrieu on behalf of French company NEXO (owned by Yamaha Corp.), was the topic of a detailed review by James Croft. The abstract from that patent describes a speaker cabinet that includes at least one loudspeaker and at least one port, the port having an outlet formed in a wall of the cabinet, an inlet inside the cabinet, and a casing connecting the inlet and the outlet together, the inlet of the port further having at least one recess in the casing. This might be difficult to visualize when we want to understand what exactly differentiates the patented design from a standard bass reflex system. Basically, Larrieu created two V-shaped slices at the opening either centered or with one at each side of the port, helping to reduce amplitude and phase anomalies in the midrange due to port resonances, while improving mid-band directivity. James Croft puts it all into context. This article was originally published in Voice Coil, August 2017.  Read the Full Article Now Available Here