After a disappointing CES 2022, there was a new feeling of excitement for CES 2023, to see the Automotive-themed West Hall full again and the hallways among all the halls filled with people shoulder to shoulder, and the long lines at the coffee shops. What could be my show highlights: a talking car, seeing a standard of 45 cameras and sensors on a car or truck, the color-changing body panels of the BMW iVision Dee, experiencing so many highly advanced computers on wheels, or the real promise of a better class of entertainment than we've experienced before... and the practical applications of artificial intelligence and machine learning to provide comfort, quality, and safety in our mobile world? It was pure joy.

The Wall Street Journal reported that we bought fewer cars last year than in any year since 2011. But we bought more fully electric vehicles (EVs) than ever before. Global EV sales were $8 million globally, which was 10% of all vehicles in 2022. In the US, total new vehicle sales fell 8% in 2022. But EV sales grew by a surprising 65%, according to Kelley Blue Book’s parent company Cox Automotive. Fully 6% of the new cars Americans bought were electric, up from 3.2% in 2021. Total EV sales topped $800,000 for the first time, and should easily pass $1 million in 2023. Consumers are making the shift.

To whatever degree we believe that our new electrified cars are smartphones on wheels, in-car entertainment is no longer just a local source file of a video or audio program, or a game. Live streaming of A/V content for sporting events and on-demand movies and gaming are part of the common experience. There was plenty of evidence in Las Vegas, NV, that video games were gaining important traction in vehicles today. Automakers from Sony/Honda to Hyundai introduced ways to reshape the in-car entertainment experience.

Automakers are positioning themselves to take advantage of the time people spend in their cars as a source of potentially lucrative, recurring revenue. Xperi’s DTS AutoStage uses just that model for streaming. AutoStage can switch between over-the-air signals to an Internet provider stream when out of range. In October 2022, BMW announced a partnership with AirConsole to bring casual gaming into its vehicles. Stellantis last year announced plans to add Amazon's Fire TV for Auto to its new Wagoneer and Grand Wagoneer SUVs. In Las Vegas, South Korean carmaker Hyundai Motor Co. said it would use technology developed by Nvidia Corp., a company whose chips power PC gaming, to stream games in cars.

Nvidia's cloud-based game service, known as GeForce Now, would provide access to more than 1,000 titles from PC game stores such as Steam, as well as free-to-play games such as Fortnite. China's BYD and the Swedish electric vehicle brand Polestar also are working with Nvidia, according to Reuters. Japan's Sony, the maker of the market-leading PlayStation video game console, said its new electric vehicle, Afeela, would be powered by the same Unreal Engine 3D technology used in video games. Sony promised best-in-class movies, games, and music, though it offered few details on the vehicle it is developing jointly with Honda Motor Co., other than it would be 2025 before we might be able to buy one.

In the arena of system-on-chips (SoC) where a wide range of audio features can be integrated into a cohesive package with the all-important rapid deployment that consumers have come to expect, Qualcomm showcased its Snapdragon Digital Chassis. This was a chance to see the entire chassis come together in one of the best concepts at CES 2023. Qualcomm's momentum with the Snapdragon Ride platform, and especially its Snapdragon Ride Flex family of SoC devices is building with most of the global automakers. At CES, Qualcomm highlighted how automotive companies are rapidly developing safe and updatable advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and automated driving (AD) solutions on Qualcomm's Snapdragon Ride platform. Qualcomm highlighted three strengths of the platform that enable accelerated adoption and rapid development for Tier 1 suppliers. Next up for Qualcomm will be ANC and Personal Audio Zones.

Whether it is audio, watching a streaming video service, or online gaming, the audio system, the sound quality of the interior, and enhanced safety monitoring are key. Some common and some new players as well as providers are evolving with the enhanced audio driving experience.

Like many, Xperi’s DTS AutoSense platform is using machine learning and a single camera for safety and in-cabin sensing. Harman/Samsung is also focusing on driver fatigue and safety, but it is first focusing on sound. Samsung and Harman demoed Ready Tune, a new car audio technology that can intelligently adjust sound settings to offer an immersive and premium audio experience. It is a software solution for enhancing any stock base-level speaker system to premium target curve. Harman said that consumers are expecting their vehicles to “become an extension of their digital lives” and deliver the same connected experiences they enjoy at home, at work, and everywhere in between.

Harman was also demonstrating Ready Care, which uses neuroscience, artificial intelligence, and machine learning to measure a driver’s eye activity, cognitive load, and vital signs to determine the level of focus and attention on the road ahead and initiate a personalized in-cabin response to help mitigate dangerous driving situations such as stress, anxiety, distraction, and drowsiness.

Ready on Demand is a software platform for delivering branded audio value, feature enhancement, upgrades, and monetization opportunities in an app. It is meant to provide expanded experiences and future upgrades that can be unlocked by the consumer at any time via in-app purchases throughout the life of the vehicle. It provides a means to extend feature availability beyond the original point of sale and introduce new features as they become available. This is the new subscriber model for audio features and enhancement that is being tested throughout all types of automotive systems, not just Harman.

For another big player in automotive audio, according to Peter Kosak (Senior VP & Head of Automotive at Bose), Bose is "Getting back to its roots, re-emphasizing music," introducing a new concept Bose 3DX. Three-dimensional audio in three forms. The first is stereo up-mixing, which is more traditional. The second uses 3D native content from Dolby. Bose was showing this concept at CES in two forms: high-end performance with overhead speakers and another without overhead speakers. "In the end," said Kosak, "the performance is born of two things: the acoustic structure in the vehicle, the placement of the speakers and the definition of those speakers, and then very complex sound rendering algorithms."

Also in the GM Hummer EV, Bose is adding sound to enhance the driving experience with engine sound synthesis, which builds up to a "launch," what GM calls "watts to freedom," which is meant to provide an emotional connection for the consumers. And, when climbing or rock crawling, it gives the driver feedback that they would normally get from an engine about the strain and a sense of when the tires will make it over an obstacle.

"I think in EVs there is inherently a general feeling of technology, and sound can augment the feeling of technology, and it can be emotive for people. It can definitely enhance the experience over all if it’s done properly." And now with EVs, taking sound out has become even more important. "When you take the conventional ICE power train noise out of a vehicle, you lower the noise floor, and un-mask other sounds. Lowering the new un-masked noise is important to create a quiet sound stage for reproducing premium audio, and engine sound enhancement," Peter Kosak added.

Active noise cancelling can also reduce mass and cost, because the OEM can then remove passive noise damping materials and acoustic glass, and more. It also enables greater packaging efficiency. The benefits compound with added noise reduction.

In the area of active noise reduction and sound enhancement, the global leader in this technology, especially for Active Road Noise Cancellation and a Personal Sound Bubble for personalized ANC and sound experience, is Silentium. The company went into production with Jaguar Land Rover in most of its models last year and will be launching in other OEMs very soon. Silentium is a chip-integrated solution, and it also provides the application expertise and tools for ANC. Silentium will be launching Sound Design tools as well.

The Audio Foundry, a collaboration between Tymphany and DSP Concepts, demonstrated Tymphany’s Automotive Audio Development Environment (AADE). Powered by DSP Concept’s Audio Weaver. The AADE is a unique SUV-sized audio development tool used for creating new acoustic solutions, layouts, and proof of concepts. It has 24+ locations for speaker placement and replaceable panels and system installation. They demonstrated implementation examples, detailing voice recognition from multiple sources, telephony, sound zones, microphone performance, array studies, and object-based audio (OBA).

DSP Concept’s Audio Weaver is a development platform tool with application solutions for the complex audio environment in a car. It has an extensive Automotive Tuning Suite, which can measure the acoustical fingerprint of a vehicle, provide computer-aided filter design and optimization, and provide real-time sound tuning with a listening test tool. This is put all together in the AWE Tune product for system tuning of the entire audio flow including presets. DSP Concepts has also taken its expertise in voice communications and control and applied it to the automotive environment.

An application of in-car voice recognition that remained in the front-of-mind long after the show ended was from a company, Kardome, in the Israeli Pavilion. Kardome’s voice recognition is unique and doesn't depend on beamforming. The source separation algorithm uses the reverberant field of an individual's voice to find that individual in any given space, to ID their voice and location, to enhance their experience, and tailor it to where they are located. Kardome's claim is that it improves Automatic Speech Recognition performance up to 248% better than standard in-car speech recognition technologies. The demo - just sitting at a small table in the noisy hall of the Venetian - simply worked better than a beam-forming approach. The Kardome solution provides echo cancellation, noise reduction, and speech localization performance, giving precise voice control results and high-quality hands-free calling. The company can also provide robust voice user interface performance with or without internet or cloud service connectivity.

At CES 2023, a better class of audio, including immersive audio, and better controls for the user were on display and impressed everyone who experienced them. Dolby Atmos was not only in the company's demonstration vehicle at its location near the Dolby theater in Las Vegas, it was also in many of the cars, including Dirac’s Volvo XC60 using Dirac’s Virtuo Professional. Clearly present was the awareness of blending this quality audio with a new noise floor in automotive, created by precisely controlled active noise control not only in the traditional internal combustion engine, but more prominently in our next choice of an electrified vehicle.

Roger Shively is a co-founder and principal of JJR Acoustics (Seattle, WA - www.jjracoustics.com). He has more than 34 years of experience in engineering research and development, with significant experience in product realization and in launching new products at OEM manufacturers around the world. He is a member of the Audio Engineering Society (AES), Acoustical Society of America (ASA), and the Society of Automotive Engineering (SAE). He is Co-Chair of the AES Automotive Audio Technical Committee and has published numerous research papers and articles in the areas of transducers, automotive audio, psychoacoustics, and computer modeling. Roger also holds US and International patents related to the design of advanced acoustic systems and applications, particularly in the field of automotive audio.

For this article, audioXpress asked Geoff Hill, the inventor of the Tetrahedral Test Chamber (TTC), a member of the international Electrotechnical Commission’s standards 60268-21-2018 and 60268-22-2020, and part of the IEC Working Group TC 100/TA 20/PT 60268-22 on electrical and mechanical measurements on transducers, to comment about the evolution and work in progress happening on loudspeaker measurement standards. In the first of two articles, he summarizes the progress taking place in a perspective that appeals directly to all loudspeaker designers and manufacturers. This article was originally published in audioXpress, September 2022. Read the Full Article Now Available Here

For this Test Bench, Vance Dickason focused his full attention on another innovative driver from Purifi Audio, this time the PTT5.25X04-NFA-01 5.25” Midbass Woofer. At the core, this Purifi midbass woofer is pretty much identical to the PTT6.5X and PTT4.0X, and includes the same constant Sd surround and low magnetic hysteresis motor design. The Test Bench explores all the design aspects and measures all the relevant and unique features of this very original design. This article was originally published in Voice Coil, October 2022.  Read the Full Article Now Available Here