A sound investment
I was an audiophile in college. Incorrigible, really. I shouldn’t have been allowed within 100 yards of an audio.
My stereo system comprised a 400-watt McIntosh amp and preamp, four Klipsch speakers, an anvil-heavy Thorens turntable and a Tascam reel-to-reel four-track recording deck. I remember standing outside my burning apartment in worse-for-wear BVDs and hearing -- as if they were Clarice’s bleating sheep -- these components shriek and sizzle and puddle together with some 500 albums and tapes.
So much for that hobby.
After the fire, I bought some consumer-quality stereo equipment and settled down to a life of aural mediocrity, never again to savor fully the depth and nuance of my Black Oak Arkansas records.
But in the last decade or so I have monitored, with what I like to think is a fairly accomplished ear, the changes in car audio, not all of which have been positive. The self-deafening fetish of kilowatt amplifiers and seismic subwoofers loud enough to cause cattle to spontaneously abort ... well, that’s not so great. When enough kids lose their hearing or develop tinnitus, the aftermarket manufacturers of these systems are going to get slapped with the mother of all class-action lawsuits.
Other technologies are just gimmicks. Programmable DSP (Digital Sound Processing) essentially increases reverb levels to mimic the spatial acoustics of different rooms, for instance, “club,” “concert hall” or “stadium.” That’s just what I want: Mozart at the Meadowlands.
In the Acura RL, however, I think I’ve found the perfect car audio system. It’s transportation for the soul.
Like its sibling the TL, the RL is equipped with a Bose DVD-Audio sound system. DVD-Audio is a recording format that contains some 500 times the amount of information of a standard audio CD. These DVD-A CDs -- remastered from original recordings -- create a superb spatial illusion by putting individual instruments and voices across eight surround-sound channels, so convincingly that you will find yourself checking the back seat to see if Milli and Vanilli have their seat belts on.
Even with ordinary CDs the system’s processors helpfully divvy up the two stereo channels into a fairly convincing surround-sound experience, using what Bose calls its Centerpoint processing. The lowest frequencies are parsed from the other channels and pumped through the woofers.
So it’s super hi-fi surround sound with exceptional audio imaging -- Lionel Hampton sounds like he’s playing vibes on your ribs, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan warbles at the edge of the afterlife. Amazing.
A car, however, is not a living room. It’s a cramped space full of hard, reflective surfaces and soft, absorbent materials, so each car’s cabin has its unique acoustic features. Meanwhile, cars are noisy. Mechanical sounds from the powertrain, road noise and wind noise all compete with an audio system.
Most of the automakers that use Bose systems, including Acura, make use of the company’s Audiopilot noise compensation system, which monitors cabin noise -- say, the whistle of a partially opened moon roof or the churring white noise from rough pavement -- and boosts amplitude in certain frequencies to compensate. Audiopilot can be found in everything from Corvettes to Maseratis to Maybachs.
Unique to Acura is its Active Noise Cancellation (ANC) system. In principle, it works just like Bose’s noise-canceling headsets (which makes me wonder why Bose doesn’t market a system like it). ANC monitors low-frequency cabin noise (around 100 hertz or lower) and then reproduces the signal 180 degrees out of phase, which has the effect of muting the booming low-frequency sound in the cabin. Call it the sounds of silence.
ANC operates whether or not the audio system is turned on. As soon as you turn the ignition switch, the cabin fills with a cottony, comfortably numb quiet above which the richer and more pleasant sounds of the car and stereo can be heard.
The rundown of the RL’s audio system goes like this: a 10-speaker, 260-watt surround-sound audio system, with six-disc in-dash changer, compatible with DVD-Audio/CD/MP3/WMA formats (Don’t know what they are? Ask your kids), as well as XM satellite radio with a free one-year subscription.
The RL is a veritable landslide of in-car technology -- including a surprisingly lucid voice-recognition system parlaying with the audio, climate, Bluetooth phone and navigation systems (560 voice commands, such as “Find nearest Vietnamese restaurant” ... and later, if you fall ill: “Find nearest hospital”). It even recognizes spoken addresses, so you can say the address -- “Two-Oh-Two West First Street” -- and the system will find it for you without your spinning and punching in letters as if you were working a Dymo tape machine. The nav system also includes a Zagat restaurant guide -- it will dial selected restaurants for you -- and split-screen 3-D route guidance.
Brace yourself, Angelenos: The RL offers real-time traffic information. Using data culled from Caltrans and other sources and put up on the XM satellite, the RL’s nav system displays traffic slowdowns, road construction and SigAlerts. The system will even route you around these arterial blockages if you ask it.
Of course, if it means another 30 minutes in the virtual presence of Alison Krauss or Elliott Smith, maybe you are not in that big a hurry.
At some point this car gets to be so accommodating it’s funny. The keyless access system, for example, uses a transmitter key that you keep in your pocket. When you approach, the car recognizes the key and will unlock itself. When you leave, you need only wave your hand over the outside handle to lock it.
Retractable rear headrests? Check. Power rear sunscreen? Check. Retractable rear window sunscreens? Road-following headlamps? All right, already.
Oh, yes, it goes like a bat out of heck, too (no FCC fines for me). Powered by a purling 3.5- liter V6 putting out a thoroughly overachieving 300 horsepower (and getting 18/26 EPA mileage to boot), the five-speed RL also features Honda/Acura’s new “Super Handling” all-wheel drive system (feel free to laugh at the name). What’s so super? Simply put, the electronically controlled rear transaxle accelerates the outside wheel in a corner -- according to traction, load and yaw rate compared with steering angle -- thereby helping the car turn.
You have to drive this car pretty hard to notice the effect; most of the time it simply drives with effortless and unremarkable elan, like a 300-horsepower Acura with a hall pass from Professor Isaac Newton. The steering is perfectly weighted and lively. The car feels utterly at ease on its double-wishbone front and multilink rear suspension. Even though it lacks the baroque suspension engineering of some of its rivals -- the Lexus and Audi air suspensions, the Cadillac’s Magnetic Ride Control -- the ride is well damped and locked down, an impression amplified, as it were, by the car’s electronically derived quiet. Fresh snowfall, anyone?
Beautifully styled inside and out and built with a precision that Rockwell might envy, the Acura RL is now on top of my car-of-the-year list. It’s a real-world list that excludes my drugs of choice like the Maserati Quattroporte and Mercedes-Benz E500 wagon. The RL comes in one trim only -- loaded like a drunken Shriner -- and costs $49,470, which may constitute the best dollar-to-feature ratio in the luxury sedan segment.
For a lot of car shoppers, the price will be music to their ears.
Automotive critic Dan Neil can be reached at dan.neil@latimes.com.
*(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)
2005 Acura RL
Price, as tested: $49,470
Powertrain: 3.5-liter, SOHC, 24-valve V-6, variable-valve timing and lift, electronic throttle control; five-speed automatic transmission with sequential sport-shift and manual paddle-shift mode; all-wheel drive
EPA mileage: 18 miles per gallon city, 26 highway
Horsepower: 300 at 6,200 rpm
Torque: 260 pound-feet at 5,000 rpm
0-60 mph: 6 seconds
Wheelbase: 110.2 inches
Overall length: 193.6 inches
Competitors: Audi A6, Mercedes-Benz E320 4Matic
Final thoughts: So complete, only failure is not an option