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April 2007
April Fools Joke!
Exotic Automobile Manufacturer
Offers 'The Audiophile Car'
Audiophiles no longer need to hibernate at home!
Review By Steven R. Rochlin
Click here to e-mail reviewer
For decades audiophiles have been stuck to
the confines of their homes to reach musical bliss. In these, usually, darkened
rooms they would toil away tweaking and tuning looking for the next nirvana. it
brings me great joy to announce the very first auto manufacturer to satisfy the needs
of audiophiles worldwide. This next generation vehicle will satisfy both those
looking for style and substance.
It is no secret that home audio is doomed from the beginning with lackluster alternating current. This problem is attacked with the use of dedicated power lines, power filters, regenerators, and balancers. The Audiophile Car, or TAC for short, removes this entire exercise by being 100% battery powered! Fulfilling both the music lover and environmentalist, this project got off the ground with using 100 percent battery power. Audiophiles have long complained about how the car environment is very noisy, and so the advantages of drawing on pure clean power with the ultra-quiet operation of electrical motors was one of the many keys.
Another
key factor was seating position. Any audiophile worth their salt will only buy
concert tickets that place them centered within the venue. As such The Audiophile
Car has a single seat mounted in the center of the cabin. Seen here is the
listening chair, with the option of two others being added to provide your
friends a hint to the grand achievement you have so rightly earned. Also note
the curved interior, which is dampened with special material to greatly outside
sounds plus takes advantage of sound absorbing material to virtually eliminate
unwanted time smearing sound reflections from reaching your ears. Ease of use is
also factored in as directly to the right are controls for every device, which
is specially stored in a temperature controlled environment behind the passenger
compartment.
Audiophile Meets Computer Geekdom
While the company would not allow us to photograph their proprietary storage area, they claim to have separate enclosures for amplification and digital source electronics. These structures are made from non-magnetic material and act as a Faraday cage to eliminate RFI/EMI. The amplification section is kept at a perfect 110F while the digital source components are kept at a chip-friendly 145F. This ensures optimum performance while also reducing adverse component interaction.
Also
of note is that the use of fourteen, two per channel, 64-bit/512kHz dual
chipset. This equips every channel of The Audiophile Car with digital processing
of both the positive and negative signal from each of the seven channels.
Controlling firmware upgraded via easy to access USB port as technology marches
forward. The digital disc transport mechanism uses a 100% custom made triple
laser assembly, where each laser has a special variably tunable frequency range.
As of this writing they would not tell me the exact span of frequencies, yet
they inferred it is ready for everything from the decades old CD to four times
the highest range offered by mass-produced laser assemblies of today!
There is also a few terabytes of RAID hard drives that spin at 14,400 rpm and have 10GB of onboard memory. For the techno-savvy, average read speed is 404 MBps with an average write speed of 404 MBps. Data can be stored via disc copy, b/g/n Wi-Fi, wireless Internet (both G and Edge cellular) plus has security supports for standards including WEP, WPA-PSK and WPA2-PSK. Naturally more storage and the supporting hardware can be added or substituted as new standard and faster drives become available.
Driver Of The Future
Gone are legacy technology such as Alnico, Neodymium, or other types of ferrite magnets! Specifically constructed coils that work in a computer-controlled electromagnet field. The advantages are many, including the ability to precisely control the cone driver's movement. While the manufacturer refused to tell me what material(s) they used for the cones, they did say it is 100-times stronger than silk, 50-times lighter than aerogel, and 200 times stiffer than titanium! Just trying to absorb all the technical brilliance made my head spin with amazement! But who cares about techno-wizardry if it cant, ya know, play that funky music.
The Music
Usually such a tour de force of technology has growing pains and hiccups. It brings me joy to say that the system worked flawlessly during the, albeit brief, review period of three weeks. Instead of giving a blow by blow of soundstage, frequency response and harmonic structure, suffice to say that the system was perfect. If i wanted tube warmth, a simple turn of the control dial provided the 'tube warmth' effect, which had a listing of PX25, WE300B, 45, 50, GE VT4C, Gold Lion KT88, Mullard El34, UX280, 216A, etc. Sub categories of those included manual (adjustable) bias, type of rectification (solid-state or tube and which type of tube), etc. i did play around with the system to hear what a manually biased circa 1950 WE300B would sound like using a Mullard CV1377 for rectification. Nice!
i am hesitant to say the system has a sound at all, as a few turns of the dial and choices bring about sometime subtle, sometimes drastic changes. Ease of tuning can be made by varying the bias or tube variant. Oh, before i forget the system also has the sound of, say, various generations of tubes where applicable (i.e. WE300B from the 1950's, 1960's, and the newly manufactured version).
Conclusion
Am hard pressed to attempt to describe the 'sound' of this system. It is hard to find fault when you have such an extremely high-resolution, easy to use, comfortable system. As for driving, everything was light and fluid, as the electric engine is tuned for high torque as the car can travel 200 miles on a single charge. My only regret is that, sadly, i not afford such a system. With a price tag of $1.35 million it can only be one of those audiophiles dreams. The good news is that this statement piece's technology is planned to trickle own to lower cost vehicles beginning in 2010 or thereabouts. Perhaps then audiophiles will begin to realize that high-end audio in their automobiles is not only obtainable, but may perhaps perform at a higher level than their home system! In the end what really matters is that we all....
Enjoy the Music,
Steven R. Rochlin
Company Information
Future Ultimate Company Kar, Mobile Electronics
6Z34R Molata, Shumwata
Imminent Islands 98H 5TG
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