It looks as though acoustics aren’t the top priority whenever automotive designers create car interiors, but then again that’s to be expected. Imagine if your car had the best acoustics in the world, but a poor safety rating - would you even walk into the showroom? I guess it is up to third party manufacturers to make sure that the sound you hear while traveling on the road is up to par, and this is where Alpine Electronics’ new IMPRINT technology comes in handy. This system lays claim that even the materials used in a vehicle that obstruct and degrade audio quality are non-issues as it is more than capable of solving these problems while optimizing sound reproduction to fit the specific vehicle.

IMPRINT is a hybrid of hardware and software, powered by MultEQ technology. It will first analyze the vehicle cabin acoustic characteristics, followed by creating a set of equalization filters that will correct any anomalies involved with each speaker (frequency response and time domain problems for example). The system will remove any sound distortion found in your car’s specific acoustical problems after applying special FIR equalization by utilizing over half a thousand points along the frequency spectrum. This is a far cry from using a small number of equalizer bands that we are all so used to.

IMPRINT was under development for the better part of the last half decade, being a collaboration with founders of Audyssey Labs. Extensive and intensive research as well as testing have been applied in order to come up with the IMPRINT system, and this has allowed engineers to understand better the fundamental causes of room acoustical distortion. It holds the distinction of being the only system that is capable of measuring the entire listening area, capturing time domain information from each listening location and applying a proprietary method for processing it to represent all seat locations. The ultimate goal of IMPRINT is to provide the ultimate listening experience to folks sitting in the car. You can pick up the Tuning Kit with the IMPRINT Sound Manager software for £399.99.

Source: Gizmag