Bentley is giving you one more reason to look forward to its electric vehicles – as if we really needed one to own a Bentley: music that matches your driving.
Anyone who drives frequently will most likely admit that there are times when you desperately need a song that will literally cheer you on through the ‘Fast and Furious’ moves you’re doing on the road, giving you that added boost that will make your daring twists and turns all the more exhilarating.
And when you are sitting still in traffic, looking at the goings-on around you and wondering if two hours would be enough for that meeting you are running late for, it can be annoying when a noisy, brash radio tune loudly interrupts your thoughts.
Bentley totally gets this need, and, in partnership with adaptive music experts, LifeScore, is working on creating complex algorithms that allow vehicle inputs such as engine RPM and acceleration to influence the composition in real-time, constantly adapting depending on driving conditions and the driver’s style.
This true driver-vehicle-music synchronisation that has only existed in the world of movies is an industry first that will definitely catch on as other automakers get to see the advantage of automatically providing matching music to enhance the total driving experience.
LifeScore’s music library contains compositions from world-class musicians, contemporary and classical instruments, and innovative technology put together at the world-famous Abbey Road Studios. All of the audio elements are recorded in fully ambisonic (full-sphere surround sound) audio using more than 50 microphones to provide for all possible future formats. In the cabin of the future, sound can be designed to come from any direction at the highest possible resolution.
What makes this feature even more impressive is the fact that using AI to minimise repetitions and maximise coherence, the vehicle can select, combine, layer and sequence together different building blocks (cells) of raw musical material from composers and musicians to produce the final result in real-time that can be more than 100 billion unique music tracks in an hour’s drive!
The adaptive music feature is only available for now in a demonstration vehicle, but Bentley and LifeScore are working to finetune this technology in time for the release of the former’s first full battery electric vehicle.