https://www.continental-automotive.c.../Ac2ated-Sound

never hear of this.... anyone got any real world thoughts?

 

The Honda Ridgeline has that in the bed for tailgating on some models. Stop by a dealership and have a listen. It's not bad sounding but not great either.

 

This was a fairly common fad a few years ago. People would use similar tech to make walls into speakers or semi ordinary objects. It's neat, but I wouldn't say it's the future. They typically don't sound super high quality, so use for a tailgate speaker or something like that is ideal.

 

I think I'll stick with speakers.

 

So it's not a "new" tech by any means. And previously, exciters have been used for "active road noise cancellation." Essentially, the exciter uses vibration (or frequency resonation) of a panel to emit sound. It's like making a piece of wood on a wall a speaker. Exciters are neat because you can literally turn anything into a speaker. It can and does work...sometimes very well, in an acoustically sound environment. But in a car, that is a dynamic and complex environment with very few rigid panels to choose from (car specific obviously) to mount exciters to. I toyed with using them in my Z for road noise cancellation in hopes to make my audio sound better. But the way the frequency spectrum works, you would be creating nulls in your audio output that would have to be augmented very heavily with DSP tuning. And that would need to be done while driving which is near impossible to do in a Corvette. So while yes, it's very plausible to run them like the article mentions, I would bet my money on a typical speaker based system sounding better.

BUT!!! As I mention a lot, sound quality is subjective to the listener always. So this setup would probably sound good to the average ear...but not likely to an audiophile type. Additionally, they don't give accurate representations of weight savings. For example, they say their exciters weigh less than a speaker. While this is typically true, the panel they attach the exciter to, would need to be made of a more rigid material than plastic or fiberglass. That by itself would incur a weight penalty. That goes double for the larger exciters that replace a typical subwoofer. You would need quite a large surface (of a carefully chosen and crafted material) to get accurate low frequency resonance. Put another way, you won't have much bass at all.

NOTE: I can't lie, I would LOVE to hear a demo of one and see if they succeeded where others have failed. I love being proven wrong with things like this.