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Whatever your taste in music, the upgraded audio in the Focus ST brings it to life in a way you rarely get to enjoy at home. Its creator tells us how.
It was only during my fourth trip to Tesco in as many days that the penny dropped. This sudden desire to make semi-spurious journeys wasn’t about enjoying the Focus ST’s fine handling; after all, the A1(M) isn’t exactly a driver’s road. No, what I was actually doing was taking the opportunity to play music really loudly.
Among the many things the pandemic has robbed us of we need to include loud, live music. Still, I’ve discovered some great music in recent months, and it turns out the Focus ST on a good stretch of motorway is currently the best place for me to listen to it.
The excellent in-car audio – the Bang & Olufsen Premium system – has involved years of developmental work, all designed to make listening to music in the Focus ST as close to a domestic B&O hi-fi system as physically possible, as I discovered when
I spoke to Stefan Varga, senior acoustic engineer for Harman (which has owned B&O’s in-car audio operations since 2015).
He explained that work on the audio system began in the early stages of Ford’s development of the ST: ‘I decide what components do I need, where do I want to put the tweeters and the centre speaker and everything else to get a nice sound, a nice staging.’
With all that decided, the components are physically fitted to a prototype and then tuned; first in a lab and then with the car moving – that way the other elements of driving such as road noise and engine noise can be dialled out. Then work moves to a test track. ‘We drive the car in different speeds, and we perform measurements. And then we use our tools that we have for tuning to compensate these kinds of things on the fly.’
Two further aspects set the Focus ST apart, and the first you can find in the boot: subwoofers are a big bonus for lower frequencies, and they’re also omnidirectional – so you can place them almost anywhere in the car with minimal impact on performance. ‘We managed to make it round and fitted into the spare tyre,’ Varga tells me.
The second is the centre speaker. Sat just above the dash, angled to bounce sound off the windscreen, it helps stitch the left and right audio channels together, increasing the ST’s audio sweet spot – the area where all the frequencies and responses from each speaker interlock perfectly. The Focus ST is somewhere I can listen to things louder than would be socially acceptable at home – and with the bonus of an ever-changing vista, too.