New Shmee Emira video

[Lotustoronto]

Equally FE buyers get a £2-3k discount on the total cost of the options. So although you don't get a choice, you could regard the KEF system as being included for free. On that basis, it's decent value for money and on the Base Edition you will be able to include it or not, depending on whether you think it's worth a £2.5k premium.

I am truly worried how poor the base system is going to be? When I listed to the KEF, it was not great / not worth 2.5K. Unless that base unit is terrible.... which we won't know.

 

[TomE]

Based on previous experience, I expect a large batch of early Base Edition buyers are going to have to lock in their specs before they can see/sit in the Base seats, see the Base interior trim or hear the Base audio system. Everything else will have been seen on the FEs or prototypes.

 

[VL3X]

I am truly worried how poor the base system is going to be? When I listed to the KEF, it was not great / not worth 2.5K. Unless that base unit is terrible.... which we won't know.

At least it's likely to have actual tweeters behind the A pillar grills.

 

[FederGigant]

I think we should all calm down a bit and test it for ourselves. With proper material either wired or via CarPlay/Android Auto, not via radio playback.
People suggest that the setups problem is the „lack of tweeters“ or the „lack of power at only 560 Watts“, yet the car has tweeters (tree of them actually) and 560 Watts is more than enough to power a whole home theatre.

 

[dgrace]

I think we should all calm down a bit and test it for ourselves. With proper material either wired or via CarPlay/Android Auto, not via radio playback.
People suggest that the setups problem is the „lack of tweeters“ or the „lack of power at only 560 Watts“, yet the car has tweeters (tree of them actually) and 560 Watts is more than enough to power a whole home theatre.

I had 5 minutes to play with it while parked, connected via wireless CarPlay. Listened to a couple of different songs at various volumes. It was underwhelming. My impression is that bass falls off quickly below about 70Hz but I’d need instrumentation and more time to confirm. Hopping back into my Audi was night/day.

 

[Lotustoronto]

I think we should all calm down a bit and test it for ourselves. With proper material either wired or via CarPlay/Android Auto, not via radio playback.
People suggest that the setups problem is the „lack of tweeters“ or the „lack of power at only 560 Watts“, yet the car has tweeters (tree of them actually) and 560 Watts is more than enough to power a whole home theatre.

I think the overwhelming consensus from owners, reviewers and test drive guys - is that the KEF at 2.5k represents horrible value compared to other upgraded audio in other OEM’s. My experience with it included.

 

[lynchy73]

I can’t see the Kef speakers being the issue. I suspect the amps and processing are not up to much, with insufficient power, and more specifically insufficient power available for the low frequencies.

Power figures on these multi channel amps are often stated in quite misleading ways. Each channel of a multi channel amp might be optimistically rated at say 100W, but there’s no way the amp would drive all the channels to that power level simultaneously. This is an active system (amps driving the drivers directly with a filtered input signal to the amp, not passive filters/cross-over separating a full range amplified signal). Active systems are in many ways better, but the amp power needs to match the driver requirements, else it might end up being worse than a passive system with less channels, but each with higher power.

Low frequencies need A LOT more power to keep up with the higher frequencies, and that is only gonna be made worse if the low frequency cabinets/drivers are not so sensitive. It seems Kef low frequency section is more about accuracy and quality, not quantity with cabinet loading to make them loud (maybe not so highly efficient).

The overall sound level is likely going to be limited by insufficient power to the low frequency section, whilst the high frequency section might have more amplification available than it needs (20W on a tweeter and 50W on a mid, might need 150 or 200W on the bass, to provide a balanced sound at high level for example). If you had a multi channel (10 channel in the case of the Emira, as I understand it), then it would be normal to use such low power amplification for the mid-bass and higher frequencies only, but have a dedicated higher power bass/sub-woofer amplification, and that would work well.

560W could easily be a real world 150W total, but that 150W might be split into sections where more power than is needed is available to the tweeters for example (when they don’t need that much) but only says 60W available to the low frequencies, when that just isn’t sufficient to get to a high enough sound pressure level to match a typical high end car system.

 

[Leonard]

You have to remember that sounds need space, and this is a small 2dr sports car (not an RDX size)! I think the KEF system is on par with other 2dr sports car I have, and those were really expensive options from the manufactures (Ferrari JBL/McLaren BW etc.) so need to be both realistic and keep things in perspective. My only comment on the system is that it gets better with volume, it's only at low volume it struggles a little to fill the spectrum.

Not close to the Alpine A110 s Focal system which is arguably smaller

 

[lion shf]

Based on previous experience, I expect a large batch of early Base Edition buyers are going to have to lock in their specs before they can see/sit in the Base seats, see the Base interior trim or hear the Base audio system. Everything else will have been seen on the FEs or prototypes.

I’m 100% keeping my buy in as low as possible to keep my wife calm. I’m specing black base interior so if the seats suck I can easily swap in a black sparco or same without messing up the look too much. With the rear cabin storage I’ll LOVE manual seat slides. (daily driver)

 

[rs200evo]

Not close to the Alpine A110 s Focal system which is arguably smaller

From the Alpine forums - "Focal upgrade (no subwoofer): is good, but a long way off being as good as the Bose in our Boxster & Cayman."

Audio is highly subjective and personal. Just did a 100 mile blast in my Emira, audio on in the towns and no complaints from me on the quality, audio off on the backroads, and the drive was sublime. I would never let an audio system rob me of the pleasure of a drive like the Emira delivers. It's a tiny factor when choosing a sports car.

 

[Leonard]

From the Alpine forums - "Focal upgrade (no subwoofer): is good, but a long way off being as good as the Bose in our Boxster & Cayman."

Audio is highly subjective and personal. Just did a 100 mile blast in my Emira, audio on in the towns and no complaints from me on the quality, audio off on the backroads, and the drive was sublime. I would never let an audio system rob me of the pleasure of a drive like the Emira delivers. It's a tiny factor when choosing a sports car.

Cant argue with that! It's a tiny tiny piece of the overall package.
Think it's purely the fact you have to have it in the FE (at an associated cost), so it's a shame it doesnt feel like a really positive upgrade.
Sure someone will isolate what the 'issue' is at some point and it will be addressed with an upgrade of some type. Either foc by Lotus or chargeable from a 3rd party.
From your user name do you have a RS200... If you do, have you just purchased a Seneca Blue car from a forum member here.. and if so when are you doing a YouTube video on it?

 

[lion shf]

Bad audio in a 85k car is inexcusable

 

[Wizardwings]

I am truly worried how poor the base system is going to be? When I listed to the KEF, it was not great / not worth 2.5K. Unless that base unit is terrible.... which we won't know.

I wouldn't be surprised if the base system outperforms the KEF unit.

 

[VL3X]

I wouldn't be surprised if the base system outperforms the KEF unit.

Knowing Lotus, it'll be the same system but different speaker grills.