​News | Harman selects GRAS ¼" microphone 46BL-1 for R&D testing of car audio systems

Improve in-vehicle audio quality standards by reducing the noise floor of test equipment .

Shanghai, October 24 , 2023 HARMAN International’s Automotive Acoustics Systems Engineering department continues to pursue unrivaled in-vehicle audio quality and they have selected GRA S Acoustics’ 4 6 B L - 1 microphones as their new measurement array for calibrating high-end Car audio system.

A Harman car audio system has 10-30 speakers. Each speaker needs to be individually tuned after repeated listening and measurement to ensure the best effect of car audio, so that the respective brands can achieve a win-win result. In the future, Harman will use  the GRAS 46BL-1 ¼" microphone to cover the sound field at different positions of the driver's head in the form of a six-microphone array.

Any production line can benefit from the GRAS EQ 40PM-1 production line test microphone's superior specifications, EQset functionality and unparalleled environmental stability, especially for cost-effective advanced audio test setups.

Harman chose the GRAS 46BL-1 because they found it was the only microphone on the market that met their low-noise requirements.

“It was important to us to use microphones that met our stringent requirements. After all, this is the device that will form the basis of our work,” explains Greg Sikora, head of HARMAN’s Automotive Acoustic Systems Engineering Group and senior director of acoustic systems. .

"The only limitation should be the ambient noise floor, not the noise floor of the microphone. The GRAS ¼" microphone is essentially plug-and-play, which allows us to maintain backward compatibility with existing systems while reducing the noise floor. . It was a perfect choice," Sikora concluded.

GR AS 4 6 B L - 1 ¼ " C CP pressure standard microphone set, high sensitivity, assembled from microphone and preamplifier, calibrated as a unit. 46BL-1 small size, high sensitivity, low noise floor, Ideal for in-vehicle testing and measurement, the 46BL-1 can be mounted on the GRAS RA0399 bracket, which is designed to hold ¼-inch measurement microphones in 6 predetermined locations. Position of a person's head in the vehicle. The RA0399 array and GRAS 46BL-1 high-sensitivity microphone kit meet all test requirements in the 2023 AES Automotive Acoustic Measurements White Paper.