Who is Gonna Buy A New Jeep Grand Wagoneer For the MacIntosh Stereo?

80 pounds of Dynamat will do wonders for the noise floor in most vehicles and exponentially increase your enjoyment of the audio system. While an extra 36 kilos of extra weight might be like chalk on a blackboard to sports car enthusiasts, the extra mass may increase your survivability if you happen to collide with a more bulky foe -- like a Jeep Wagoneer.

I’m coming from a different direction here. I thnk the folks at Jeep know that that brand of awareness of McIntosh among their target customers doesn’t move the needle. Nor does Mark Levinson, Meridan, etc. with other luxury brands. It allows the manufacturer to attach an level of mystic to the product, thus allowing their marketing departments to define "luxury" in their own terms -- with beautiful marketing materials attached. All of the high end audio brands have an impressive "high end/luxury" back story (some even a current story) that car manufacturers are thrilled to attach to their (luxury) brands to elevate the customer’s perception of the brand. There’s no slight of hand here. Just smart, solid marketing from people who have also made other good decisions on what to include/exclude from their vehicles.

The Meridan system in my Rivian R1T gets a "pass". It does appear that the final sound tuning was performed by Meridan engineers, and not the vehicle manufactuer’s marketing team.

I find it interesting how brand attachment is still a "thing" among obsolete brands and folks are "attaching" all kinds of stuff to brands that were never involved in that discipline during their heydays. Dual (broad customer electronics), Jensen (pretty much the same) and, yes, Bell & Howell. I can’t wait for the Bose line of electric riding mowers to appear at Home Depot.

I love my big blue meters at home. Not sure I need them on the road, unless they’re integrated with the NAV system and indictating which direction I should be turning next.

@erik_squires

"music you can listen to for hours isn’t high on the list of qualities they pay attention to."

Agreed. This is not unique to mobile audio, but products targeting the "mass market" (which includes luxury car market) in general. They think they have to emphasis what they can do TO the music, rather than the listening environment they can deliver WITH the music.

@chattaudio

"I was in IASCA finals in Greenville, SC in mid 90s"

We won our class at the IASCA finals with a Fender guitar-based vehicle. We would have won our class at the very first Car Audio Nationals -- if our customer had not totalled his car between the regionals (in Chicago) and finals (in Dallas). We had to move the entire system from one vehicle to another (slightly different) vehicle in just 5 days. I was, literally, putting wire loom on speaker and power cables sitting in the back seat enroute to the event.

@chattaudio

Yeah, those judges could get a little persnickety  

A little Car Audio Nationals story from the late 1980s.

We were pretty proud of one of feature cars. It was inventive, tastefully done, and I was a serious home audio guy. So, I thought our use of "good stuff" and my ability to tune it properly would give us a distinct advantage in the sound quality category.

At any rate, our featured car was being judged at the regionals in Chicago and, of course, I was a nervous wreck. Suddenly, everything stopped, and judges and officials from every lane were rapidly converging on our vehicle. I, literally, thought the vehicle had caught fire, or something and was in a total panic mode. I finally worked my way over to the judging lanes where all the officials were standing around, and asked: "Is everything okay?" The judge said: "Yeah, everything’s fine. This is our new sound quality reference vehicle and I wanted the rest of the judges to hear it." I felt a little better after that. And, won our class by 40 points.