Audio Simulation of an In-Car Entertainment System

Until recently, the positioning of loudspeakers in a car was based on a combination of experience and empirical studies carried out relatively late in the vehicle development cycle when the choice of speaker package space, and hence audio system performance, may have already been severely compromised.

This paper describes how a Boundary Element Analysis (BEA) model can be used to establish the best location for low frequency ‘woofer’ loudspeakers at the early stages of an automotive audio system design and for ‘trade off’ studies prior to physical prototypes. The model generates virtual sounds, which can be used in listening studies to assess the quality of the model and to optimize the whole audio system. This paper presents the Computational, Experimental and Auralisation work involved in this project.