![]() Cars got quieter, pre-recorded portable music (8-tracks and cassettes) became readily available, and old-style single-speaker radios were suddenly antiquated. While the 1960s was the decade when home audio systems saw fantastic sales growth, for car audio, it was the 1970s. Unbeknownst to anyone at the time, the same theory held the promise to better car audio sound as well, but that was years in the future. Among the 901’s benefits was that the speaker created a more “spacious” sound – making the listening room seem larger and the sound more realistic. Bose’s speakers mimicked that pattern of sound propagation – and did so to critical acclaim. Bose grasped that in actual concert halls, most of the sound that reaches the audience is reflected off walls and other surfaces. The holy grail of home hi-fi systems was to replicate the sound of a concert hall. In fact, each 901 speaker contained nine drivers – eight of which were aimed at walls. Most notably, it was a “direct/reflecting” speaker – meaning that much of the sound output was intended to be reflected off of walls, rather than aimed directly at the listener’s ears. His breakthrough came just four years later with the Bose 901 loudspeaker, different from other speakers of its time in every significant way. Philadelphia-born MIT professor Amar Bose grew frustrated with the poor sound quality of home audio speakers, so in 1964, at age 35, he founded his own company. For example, by the 1980s Delco Electronics was the world’s third-largest manufacturer of integrated circuits (a crucial ingredient of modern sound systems), behind only IBM and Western Electric.īose Corporation had much different beginnings. Delco’s size and diversity of products provided unsurpassed economies of scale and expertise in electronics. Delco was synonymous with radios in GM cars, which were often quality examples of auto sound in any given decade. Delco became familiar to customers as a brand of everything from batteries to shock absorbers, but it’s radios that are relevant to today’s story. Delco (originally Dayton Engineering Laboratories Company) had been manufacturing automotive componentry since 1909, and was acquired by GM in 1918. General Motors started developing radios in the 1930s, and had a captive company to do the work. ![]() People accepted sound distortion as a fact of life. But actual high fidelity was elusive, since cars – small, oddly-shaped enclosures surrounded by glass, metal, plastics and fabric – hardly lent themselves to acoustical perfection. Automobile radio became widely available in the 1930s, and the indulgence of listening-while-driving gradually trickled through the car market over the next several decades. Music and driving have always been complementary. Motorola was an early leader in car radios – the name itself is a contraction of “Motor” and “Victrola” Prior to Delco/Bose, customers needed to install aftermarket systems in their cars to get first-rate sound within just a few years, other manufacturers were chasing GM’s lead. ![]() However odd the alliance may seem, this first mass-market collaboration between a carmaker and the audio industry changed the field of auto sound almost overnight. Behemoth General Motors, struggling in the fast-paced 1980s not to sink under its own weight and inertia… and 18-year old Bose Corporation, a small company that became a celebrated name in high fidelity by swimming against conventional wisdom. The partnership that led to this innovation was an unlikely one. Introduced for the 1983 model year, the Delco/Bose sound system was the right product at the right time, as it capitalized on a crescendo of interest in auto sound that had been building for decades. And this was all made possible by a seemingly unlikely corporate alliance that endures to this day. Innovative and trend-setting, the Delco-GM/Bose Sound System was the kind of product that most companies can only dream about developing. Successes were rare for GM during this period, and its US market share plummeted from 44% to 35%… but among the company’s achievements was a product that almost immediately changed how carmakers approached sound systems. The terms “General Motors” and “Innovation” aren’t often used together when referring to the 1980s.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |