Contents Show
For a long time, the car is not only a mere means of transportation. Nowhere can music be heard more undisturbed than there. An average car driver spends one hour per day in his vehicle. Enough time to finally hear the symphony with a bang or a current heavy metal album in full volume. Meanwhile, almost all car manufacturers offer specially developed and appropriately tuned music systems from audio companies. The goal: Music should sound as voluminous as original. The speaker manufacturer JBL transforms every ride with a Kia Ceed model into a very personal concert experience. But how does an equally powerful and perfectly matched sound emerge in the car? When and how does the sound get into the car? On the other hand, it is the technical hardware that assembles acoustic signals up to their sensory perception. On the other hand, it is the technical challenge of every single person behind it and the logistics in the production facilities. On the drive from the Harman plant south of Budapest to the 300 km distant Kia factory in Slovakia, autohub looked behind the scenes of a sonorous cooperation.
Like the sound from the tailpipes of a sports sedan, the sound system for the interior usually plays an important role. In the competition for decibels compete in the Kia Ceed GT and Proceed GT the power of 150 kw (204 PS) from a 1,6-liter turbo gasoline engine with the 320 Watt from an 8 channel system of the premium sound system of JBL. In sports mode it snorts after a strong kick on the gas pedal from the two tailpipes of the Ceed GT ever quite neat. An exhaust system with flap system and the sound generator in the interior trim the five-door compact sedan on sportiness, without letting it look like crazy. There's music in there!
Eight loudspeakers produce an 320 degree sound stage in the Ceed with the 360 Watt amplifier
At the start in Budapest, the “Hungarian Dance No. 5” by Johannes Brahms suitably and stylishly filled the interior of the Ceed GT. The sound system consists of eight high-performance speakers: a mid-range speaker and two tweeters in the dashboard, a woofer in each of the four doors and a 4-liter subwoofer with passive radiator in the right-hand side of the trunk. Together with the amplifier under the passenger seat, they create a 360 degree sound stage. The number and size of the loudspeakers are identical in the Ceed models, but in the Ceed and Ceed Sportswagon the lighter sounds predominate over the entire interior. With the ProCeed, the focus is on stronger and warmer basses geared towards the driver.
JBL audio engineers need months to find the ideal sound settings
"Please leave the sound settings as they are", interrupts Andreas Fritsch, Acoustics System Engineer at Harman in Garching near Munich, the attempts of manipulation in the audio menu of Ceed. "So do not turn the bass to maximum and edit the equalizer!" Finally, the team has worked around the trained audio engineer for many months to find the ideal sound settings. Already two years before the actual start of production of a new model, the cooperation between the car manufacturer and Harman begins in search of the ideal positioning and dimensioning of the loudspeakers. And because the development of the vehicle continues with thousands of detail changes, the sound system has to be constantly adapted and retuned.
Harman also remains independent as a subsidiary of Samsung
All JBL high-performance loudspeakers for the Ceed models are produced by Harman in his Hungarian car audio work. 630 employees build eleven million speakers a year here - not just for Kia. The 2015 based factory 60 kilometers southwest of Budapest is one of seven global plants of the US consumer electronics manufacturer, which employs 30 000 developers worldwide. Added to this is the potential of the 75 000 developers from Samsung, since 2017 and the takeover of the parent company of Harman, but their daughter leaves her autonomy.
Clari-Fi reconstructs lost audio details in real time
Like the Kia Stinger, the Ceed models also benefit from Harman's proprietary Clari-Fi technology, which reconstructs audio lost from MP3 files in real time. "However, the system can be switched off neither in the five-door sports sedan nor in the new Shooting Brake," emphasizes Andreas Fritsch. In this way, the listeners are now able to achieve flawless tones of the concert recording from the year 2008, without any comparison being possible with an unreconstructed music track.
The Kia factory in Slovakia is one of the most modern in Europe
300 kilometers are now on the highway north towards Slovakia. Acoustically impressive accompanied by "Highway to Hell" by AC / DC with fully turned-up basses. But it's not hell, but the Kia plant in Zilina, where 3800 employees produce up to 350 000 cars annually. In addition to the Ceed family, the Sportage is off the production line, all on the same production line. With the new crossover X Ceed, the family will be expanded in September. Of the almost 500 000 Kia new cars sold to 2018 in Europe, one in two came from the Slovak factory, which also includes two engine plants. From the pressing of the body over the assembly to the painting, everything is done on site. Work is done in three shifts. All departments check the quality standard in regular meetings and there is an obligation to constantly check and continuously improve the parts used in each production step.
After the marriage of powertrain and body, the sound comes into the car
The tour of the factory is striking. There is a high-tech laboratory atmosphere. No oil stains, nothing is lying around. This is part of the understanding of quality of Koreans. Robots, operated as if by magic, spin sparkling complex parts through the air that people could never lift. Assembly, welding and transporting of the body parts takes over the machine for humans. On the production line at this moment takes place the union of engine and body, which car makers call "wedding". The drive unit meets the point exactly on the associated body and is bolted. A short time and a few rows of production later the sound comes in the body. The cockpit is integrated and so is the sound in the car. The JBL Premium sound system with subwoofer and central speaker in the dashboard is standard equipment only in the equipment line Platinum, from the fourth trim level it is available in the navigation package for the price of 890 Euro. The Ceed GT costs then from 29.480 Euro.
Text: Solveig Grewe
Photos: Solveig Grewe, Florian Quandt
