What's the one thing you do most often when we're driving our beloved car on the highway? For me, of course, it's the car stereo listening to the song! According to research, up to 82% of people listen to music when traveling by car, so the quality of the car audio has become an important indicator in my car review column, "Spring Rolls And Driving Again". However, after test driving dozens of new cars, I found that the original car stereos of these vehicles all had a common problem!
Normally, I would use Bluetooth to connect my phone and test drive to listen to songs, but I found that almost all the original car Bluetooth does not seem to support HD audio encoding! For example, my home's ideal ONE with Bluetooth connection can be up to the aac code, which is already the performance of the industry's "excellent students", and the original car machine of the vast majority of vehicles basically only supports the most basic SBC code connection, even aac does not support, let alone what aptX, LDAC and other high-definition encoding formats - this actually determines from the source that the car Bluetooth is difficult to have excellent sound performance, and it is difficult to give full play to the true strength of the vehicle audio system. There are many reasons for this situation, but the main reason is that automakers are "conservative" in introducing new coding in order to be safe, and audio technology owners seem to lack the enthusiasm to promote HIGH-definition coding in the automotive field.
However, that could soon change: Savitech Corp., the developer of LHDC's Bluetooth HD audio technology protocol, has announced that it has joined the MIH Open Electric Vehicle Alliance. They are cooperating with electric vehicle manufacturers in Europe, the United States and China to add LHDC coding technology to the electric vehicles of these manufacturers! Although it is not clear which car manufacturers have reached cooperation with Shengwei (the press release only mentions that it is the electric vehicle factory in Beijing), it means that in the near future I will be able to use LHDC-enabled mobile phones (such as Xiaomi, OPPO and Huawei products) to hear the Hi-Res specification-compliant Bluetooth HD sound quality in these cars! Although compared with the entire automotive industry, this initiative of Siegwell Advanced is only the first step in the popularization of Bluetooth HD audio in the original car machine, but since there is such a good start, the future development is also promising!
It is worth noting that I noticed that Siegwell Advanced also mentioned that their cooperation with the car manufacturer is not limited to adding LHDC code in the car machine, but also they will work with partners to optimize and adapt the indoor space parameters of different models, and optimize the soundstage, spatial sense, positioning sense, etc. of the car audio to maximize the optimization to bring an immersive experience. In fact, I have previously introduced the automotive space audio technology of BOSE and Nordic Dirac in the United States. The key to this type of technology is to design an audio algorithm created specifically for the small and complex interior space rather than the traditional indoor listening environment, which will involve many difficult problems such as transients, reflections, and delays of sound, which is quite complex. At the same time, it also needs to be able to customize the internal space of different models. Even, it has to take into account the difference in listening to each passenger in different riding positions...
In short, this technology is extremely difficult, and the manufacturers who can master the audio technology of automotive space are all the top or even leaders in the industry. Siegwell Advanced is ambitiously entering this field, and I sincerely hope that they will eventually achieve fruitful results!