B&O and Ford

B&O (Bang Olufsen) and Ford have conspired to give us a new sound system in Ford vehicles.  Yes, B&O is probably not considered by most to be an "audiophile" brand, it's still worth noting that automakers are trying to appeal to the consumer "high end".   This started with Not-At-All-Related-To-The-Man-Mark-Levinson audio systems in Lexus vehicles.  Volkswagen has Fender and Dynaudio.  

B&O PLAY is the consumer headphone division of B&O, which makes me wonder why this would fall under the B&O PLAY umbrella.  Perhaps the intent is to render vehicle audio more like headphone audio?  That wouldn't be a bad thing.

Bias alert!  I'm of the mind that audio systems in cars are, and always will be, sub-par.  The name on the faceplate almost doesn't matter.   It may be able to give an interesting surround experience in the right circumstances, but who cares?   The seating arrangement of a vehicle makes it impossible to achieve any sort of imaging at all.  You may get some interesting left-right effects from music, but you won't get decent imaging, and road noise will always destroy any possibility of real detail.

Having said that, Americans spend on average 101 minutes per day driving.  Over a lifetime, they spend about 37,000 hours.   This very likely means that even for most audiophiles the time spent listening in a vehicle will greatly outweigh the time spent listening in front of your super-duper-mega-audiophile system.  This doesn't bother me all that much, as I consider them very different types of listening.  

Let me know in the comments your thoughts on car audio and the trend of adding costs to a vehicle in order to provide big names on a faceplate in a car.   

Ford to offer B&O PLAY in vehicles in 2017