A clever technical trick

[unixronin]

Per a gizmag article, Audi is experimenting with a new generation of super-high-end car audio systems.  In brief, Audi's new experimental system uses 62 speakers, a trunk full of amplifiers, three controlling PCs, and an advanced technique called wave field synthesis to create a spatial soundfield that not only has consistent stereo visualization regardless of where you're sitting in the vehicle, but can even make sound sources appear to be either inside or outside the vehicle or computationally simulate "any desired spatial impression" — which is to say, EAX for car audio, on steroids.

The system works best with specially created audio media that uses up to 32 tracks, each with spatial information encoded into it, but can reportedly generate dramatically better stereo imaging even from conventional sources.

So when every album you left in your 2018 Audi S12 has evolved into Queen's Greatest Hits, well, at least it'll sound good...

Comments

[mrakg.livejournal.com]

The idea is certainly appealing...particularly for those who all-but-live in their cars.

Your final comment, however, assumes that the albums mutate into a properly-encoded copy of Queen's Greatest Hits. By the Law of Perversity, they will all mutate into monaural copies. :)

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Argh! You're probably right!

We'd probably have to ask Neil Gaiman on that one. :)

[rain-manpnw.livejournal.com]

... a trunk full of amplifiers ...

Great, but where do you put your golf clubs?

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

One assumes that an eventual production version would have rather more compact electronics integrated into the structure somewhere. Prototypes are almost always a hack. :)

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

Leave it to Audi to invent something so ridiculously complicated.