With the Burmester® high end 3D surround soundsystem, the new Mercedes S-Class offers three-dimensional surround sound for the first time.
It’s all about the music.
Between loudspeakers, carefully positioned instruments and piles of CDs sits Dieter Burmester, Germany’s most innovative music system designer. Immersed in his world of sounds, he plays the guitar. Burmester lives for the perfect sound: his motivation and professed aim for his work is to penetrate the substance of sound. “The music should reach the listener’s ear as unaltered as possible. It is not our place to change the interpretations of the music. After all, no one would ever hang a coloured pane in front of a painting.”
Burmester has been making this kind of listening experience possible for other musical art lovers since 1977 using the highest technical standards. The perfectionist has now developed a high-end audio system for the new S-Class: the Burmester® high end 3D surround Soundsystem.
Sound in 3D.
The Burmester® high end 3D surround soundsystem impresses with 24 high-performance speakers, 24 separate amplifier channels and the combination of analogue and digital amplifier technologies. The new, three-dimensional listening experience – 3D surround sound – produced by the Burmester loudspeakers integrated into the vehicle roof is unique. In addition to the two loudspeakers in the roof panel, there is another loudspeaker in the overhead control panel. In order to produce the unique listening impression with these roof speakers, a 3D algorithm was developed especially for the S-Class to provide three-dimensional feel-good sound.
Sound à la carte.
Burmester knows that listening to music depends on your mood and situation, particularly when travelling by car: “That’s why we offer S-Class drivers three different basic settings: ‘Pure’ is the ideal, purest listening variant. With ‘Easy Listening’, the music takes a step back. The sound is like slightly wrapped in cotton wool and does not distract you from what is happening on the road. And with ‘Live’ you get the maximum sound version. It should actually be called ‘bigger than life’.” Furthermore, using what is called the VIP setting, the sound can be optimised separately and individually for each of the four seats.
This function has been precisely tuned for each of the sound settings mentioned above. During final approval of the tuning, Burmester decided not to use the surround effect for news programs, thus allowing the spoken word to sound more natural, making it easier to understand.
It sounds as good as the S-Class drives.
Visually, the system also lives up to the design demands of the brand. As a design highlight, the tweeters are put in the limelight in the mirror triangle on the driver’s door. When the head unit is switched on, they rotate through 360 degrees and move ten millimetres towards the passenger by means of a screw movement. This positions the tweeters for the optimum sound experience. If ambient lighting is activated, the two tweeters are illuminated in the desired one of the seven possible colours. The same applies to the roof panel, which is also elegantly accentuated by the ambient lighting and accommodates two of the three roof speakers. “We were able to invest a lot in development work,” summarised Dieter Burmester. “You glide along weightlessly, because everything is just perfect,” he is pleased to say. “Velvet and silk: our system sounds as good as the S-Class drives.”
