Rolls-Royce Motor Cars PressClub · Article.
PHANTOM BESPOKE AUDIO SYSTEM
20.09.2019 Press Release
The marque had a clear brief when it began designing Bespoke Audio for Phantom: to integrate studio quality audio into a motor car. Indeed, the men and women who created Bespoke Audio for the brand’s flagship benchmarked the system against a recording studio’s playback room rather than systems created for automotive applications.
Press Contact.
Malika Abdullaeva
Rolls-Royce Motor Cars
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Author.
Andrew Ball
Rolls-Royce Motor Cars
Studio-quality design
The marque had a clear
brief when it began designing Bespoke Audio for Phantom: to integrate
studio quality audio into a motor car. Indeed, the men and women who
created Bespoke Audio for the brand’s flagship benchmarked the system
against a recording studio’s playback room rather than systems created
for automotive applications.
However, configuring an audio system for a motor car is
significantly more challenging than creating an audio system for a
static, purpose-built facility because external disruptions such as
road surfaces, wind buffeting and ambient noise corrupt audio quality
dramatically. Rolls-Royce Motor Cars’ response was to build the
environment the audio system was destined for in tandem with the audio
system itself.
The Architecture of Luxury
Only the Architecture
of Luxury, the marque’s proprietary spaceframe, could allow the brand
to meet its brief. Aluminum was selected as it has a higher acoustic
impedance than steel, reducing external noise entering the cabin.
Further optimising the material’s acoustic properties is the
construction technique; engineers eschewed traditional methods,
instead introducing extrusions and complex internal structures to both
improve the rigidity of the motor car and minimise flat, resonant
surfaces. The largest ever cast aluminum joints in a body-in-white and
double-skinned bulkhead and floor sections better insulate sound;
measures that both isolate external noise and optimise the performance
of sound inside the cabin.
Designers also gave the acoustic performance of the bass speaker
special consideration at the architectural stage. Exceptional low
frequency performance is engineered into the very fabric of Phantom as
it incorporates a resonance chamber into the body’s sill section; the
frequency response of the Bespoke Audio speaker component defined the
chamber’s size and shape. In essence, the motor car itself is a subwoofer.
The world’s most silent automotive soundstage
In
addition, Phantom is equipped with 6mm thick acoustically dampened
glass, which combines double-glazing with infrared and UV protection
and high-strength laminated safety glass. 130kg of dense,
high-absorption sound insulation is installed throughout the motor
car. Its extensive application in the headliner, doors and boot cavity
drastically reduce reverberation.
Rolls-Royce also worked closely with its tyre partner to invent
‘Silent-Seal' tires, which feature a specific foam layer placed inside
the rubber carcass that reduces overall tyre noise by 9db compared
with a standard alternative. When Rolls-Royce’s acoustic test engineer
first reviewed results road and vibration tests, the sound levels were
so low they paused to check their instruments were calibrated
correctly. Once readings were taken it was noted that the Rolls-Royce
Phantom is the most silent car in the world.
Unrivalled control
A powerful amplifier controls
18 channels (one for each speaker), providing a 1300-watt output.
State-of-the-art optimisation technology and high precision
magnesium-ceramic compound speaker cones enable near-infinitesimal
changes in sound with an outstanding frequency response.
Two active microphones in the cabin also enable an adaptive
function, detecting the absence or over emphasis of frequencies before
triggering the amplifier to adjust the loudness of certain frequency
ranges to counteract it. The Bespoke Audio system makes the most of
the highest quality, uncompressed dynamic rate music providing an
exceptional listening experience.
Perfected by ear
To finely tune the Bespoke
Audio system, Rolls-Royce Motor Cars depends on the most sensitive of
instruments – the human ear. This helps to judge the more intangible,
subjective elements of audio, such as timbre, pace and responsiveness.
Thousands of miles are driven to ensure Rolls-Royce Motor Cars’
systems are the very best, listening to a wide range of music – from
house to heavy metal, and trap to techno. Only when the engineers can
truly ‘visualise’ musicians playing around them do they sign off the
sonic delivery.
These factors contribute to a uniquely Rolls-Royce standard of
sound for patrons of the marque, many of whom are themselves musicians
and will settle for nothing less than perfection.
A mobile recording studio
Rolls-Royce Motor Cars
has contributed to the mythology of contemporary music culture since
the dawn of Rock & Roll. More than half a century later, this love
affair endures and many of the world’s most prestigious recording
artists continue to connect with the marque as a symbolic expression
of success.
In 2018, Rolls-Royce Motor Cars announced a remarkable
collaboration with Mercury Music Prize and MOBO award-winning musician
Joseph Junior Adenuga, better known by his stage name Skepta, who
conceived and recorded a track in its entirety from inside a
Rolls-Royce Phantom.
Mr Adenuga was inspired by the phenomenal serenity afforded to
those who are conveyed in Phantom, recording ‘Skepta RR’ while being
chauffeured along the banks of Lake Lucerne and through the mountains
of Switzerland.
Testing
Rolls-Royce’s audio experts drew on
their own eclectic music tastes in establishing the parameters for the
Bespoke Audio system. Played in a high-quality, ‘lossless’ format, the
following tracks form a unique playlist for Rolls-Royce, specially
curated by the company’s audio engineers to test the range and
resolution of the Bespoke Audio system:
- Wish You Were Here – Pink Floyd, Wish You Were Here [1975]
- From Here to Eternity – Giorgio Moroder, From Here to Eternity [1977]
- Across the Lines – Tracy Chapman, self-titled [1988]
- Sad But True – Metallica, self-titled [1991]
- Bembe / Abakwa – Terry Bozzio, Solo Drum Music II [1992]
- Klangfarben Melodie – Terry Bozzio, Solo Drum Music II [1992]
- Know Your Enemy – Rage Against the Machine, self-titled [1992]
- Fistful of Steel – Rage Against the Machine, self-titled [1992]
- Passion - Gat Décor (Naked Edit) [1992]
- Where Did You Sleep Last Night? – Nirvana, MTV Unplugged in New York (Live) [1993]
- Stimela (The Coal Train) – Hugh Masekela, Hope (Live) [1994]
- Hotel California – The Eagles, Hell Freezes Over (Live) [1994]
- Paranoid Android – Radiohead, OK Computer [1997]
- Lyric Lickin – Del The Funky Homosapien, Future Development [1997]
- Insomnia – Faithless, Insomnia [1995]
- Raining in Baltimore – Counting Crows, Across a Wire: Live in New York City (Live) [1998]
- Safe in New York City – AC/DC, Stiff Upper Lip [Deluxe Edition] [2000]
- Scrappy – Wookie, Wookie (Deluxe Edition) [2000]
- Marionette – Mathew Jonson [2004]
- Intro – Nemesea, Pure: Live @ P3 (Remixed & Remastered) [2012]
- Bass Solo – Nemesea, Pure: Live @ P3 (Remixed & Remastered) [2012]
- Drum Solo – Nemesea, Pure: Live @ P3 (Remixed & Remastered) [2012]