BIG AUDIO DYNAMITE

BETTER BLUES, MELLOW NOISE, EZ-FUNK, ALTERNATIVE ROCK

Digital compact cassette should hit it big with motorists because the decks also
play today's standard cassettes: People can keep their existing libraries of
mobile music.

When the newest version of the Mazda RX-7 sports car arrives this month, it
brings an acoustically customized music system. Factoring in everything that
affects sound-the distance between listeners and loudspeakers, the absorptive or
reflective characteristics of fabrics and surfaces inside the car, the size and
shape of the interior-engineers tailored a system of amplifiers and speakers to
create the best possible audio for the RX-7. The result is concert-hall clarity
that can make a car one of the best places for enjoying recorded music and
provide escape from the tedium of travel and commuting. "You can hear a triangle
in there," says Bose Corporation marketing executive Jack Wilson as he listens
to a symphonic score in an Audi 100. Like the RX-7, it has a speaker system
designed by Bose. "We're trying to reproduce music in its natural state, as you
would hear it in a concert hall," Wilson says.

Balderdash, cries Al Brotsky, who began installing car stereos 38 years ago when
he founded Al and Ed's Autosound, now with 24 shops around Los Angeles. To
Brotsky, factory-designed audio systems are dictatorial and undemocratic.
"Don't tell me how I have to listen to music," he rails. Brotsky is part of the
aftermarket, the term for equipment people add after they buy a car.
Aftermarket stereo systems are installed and tuned for individual drivers. But
the acoustically tailored approach seeks to optimize the audio system to each
particular car line, meaning that the Bose music system for a Corvette is
different from the Bose system for an Acura NSX.

Currently, Bose systems are available mostly on higher-priced luxury and sports
cars. The concept arose ten years ago when Bose teamed up with GM's Delco
Electronics to tailor systems for Cadillacs. Today, the speaker company JBL
engineers systems for Ford, Infinity for Chrysler. Bose systems are built into
numerous U.S., European, and Japanese cars.

The speaker question grows more critical as digital music infiltrates
automobiles. Compactdisc players are already common. When digital radio
arrives in the mid 1990s, it will replace today's interference-prone broadcasts
with radio waves that carry music as strings of computer data. Deciphering the
signal much as a CD player reconstructs encoded music, digital car radios will
sound as clear as the voices of fellow passengers. Meanwhile, CD inventor
Philips touts its digital compact cassette, a tape system that records in
digital mode.

Next comes the digital signal processor (DSP) system, designed by Panasonic for
the Acura Vigor. DSP lets listeners select six sound modes, mimicking the tonal
quality of concert hall, church, jazz club, blues bar. The arena setting
presents sports broadcasts with spacious echoes. But digital-music machines
scream for something more: "The most critical element in a system is the
loudspeaker, because that's what reproduces the sound," Wilson says.

Traditionally, the best speaker systems, coupled with better radios and tape
decks, come from the aftermarket. "There are only a few original-equipment
systems that, to my ears, sound very good," says Bill Wolfe, editor of Car
Stereo Review. On average, $1,500 buys a high-quality, fully installed
aftermarket audio setup, though $600 to $700 gets "a very good system," he says.

But original-equipment makers are eagerly catching up, spurred on as new luxury
cars woo buyers with music. The Infiniti Q45 from Nissan comes with a
rich-sounding Bose system. Wolfe says the Nakamichi-designed system in Lexus
cars from Toyota, available for about $2,000, is about as good as any. The
bigger challenge may be to make engineered sound affordable for more drivers.
That's hard, because acoustically customized design, which can begin when a car
is early on the drawing boards, is long and intensive. For the Mercedes-Benz
S-series cars, Bose undertook a six-year engineering effort that included the
development of a two-inch "centerfill" speaker and a seven-channel electronics
package.

Noting that "good music makes sense for everybody," Michael Rosen, director of
new products for Bose's original-equipment division, aims to reduce the cost of
acoustically customized music systems. "We hope to get more clever so we can
bring the enjoyment of music to as many car buyers as we can," he says. Car
makers are increasingly interested in music systems as they become more eager to
outdo competitors. "I see a lust for customer satisfaction that is
astonishing," says Rosen.