Audio engineers report that cars are among the worst places to achieve quality sound reproduction. So naturally, we had musician John Flansburgh test the most elaborate factory audio systems to see what they can do.
When it comes to listening to music in moving vehicles, I know of what I speak. As a young adult in the mid-Eighties, I made the lateral move from Walkman-addicted subway commuter to full-time long-distance hauler touring with They Might Be Giants. My musical partner John Linnell and I played as a duo in New York for a few years, but things got hectic when a few of our no-budget videos sneaked into heavy rotation alongside peak Whitney Houston and the inevitable Rick Astley on MTV.
So let’s get down to the testing. For our consideration, we have three luxury vehicles: a Mercedes-Maybach, a Range Rover, and a Rolls-Royce. All have extraordinary appointments and the smoothest of rides with the quietest of engines. It’s in this rarefied segment of the vehicle market that the battle for audio supremacy is fiercest, with manufacturers stuffing their cars with dozens of speakers, bewildering digital-manipulation programming, and the most elite audio brand names available.
Once the system was on, the music was immediately pumping, but it also had an exaggerated, out-of-phase quality reminiscent of an Eighties boombox. I knew something was not neutral about this setup and poked around to find a series of “Personal Sound Profile” presets. The system was set to 3D-Sound, but there was also an option for Pure, which, as the name implies, sounded far more natural.
Allow me a brief rant here. For many years, a fundamental flaw with car stereos has been that they aren’t stereo at all but a diminished mono-fide blend of the two channels. As a teenager, my best guess was this was so die-hard Beatlemaniacs wouldn’t drive off the road straining to hear the vocal-only channel coming from the speaker mounted to the passenger’s-side door, but I have come to understand it is just a compromise to ensure everyone in the cabin experiences the same thing.
The Meridian system in the Range Rover is notably more understated than the others but still sounds great. The Rover’s interface is simpler than the Maybach’s. The Bluetooth pairing? Instantaneous. The sound was balanced but also vivid. The piano on Miles Davis’s “It Never Entered My Mind” was finally full, with warm upper-mids. And the gentle spank of James Taylor’s “Your Smiling Face” was so perfectly L.A. Seventies rock I thought somebody turned on the air conditioner. The Bespoke system was a standout and the clear winner.
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