Autoblog

Bose in-car audio systems were originally introduced in 1983 on the Cadillac Seville and in the ensuing 25 years have made their way into all manner of expensive road-going machinery. Most recently, the purveyors of high-end in-car audio systems have outfitted the Bose Media System in the Ferrari 612 Scaglietti. That system, which features a 30-gig hard drive and a simplistic button layout including proximity sensors on the knobs to detect a user's interactions, will soon be available to the rest of us hacks. Bose is currently and actively pursuing partnerships with other automakers to offer the system in more plebian forms of personal transport. One of those automakers could be General Motors, which has had a long history with the company. The new system will also feature all the other features of expensive head units that we've come to expect, including navigation, satellite radio, voice commands and hands-free mobile phone integration.

[Source: Detroit Free Press]

Bose is most commonly known for its stereo systems and other home entertainment gear. The truth is that the company holds tons of patents, which it licenses to shrewdly fund research and development in a wide variety of areas, seemingly following the whims of Dr. Bose himself. The company has been working on electromechanical suspension systems for years now - I was even passed by one of their tricked out Lexuses while on my way up the hill to their Framingham, MA headquarters once. The video we've embedded after the jump shows the system in action, and compares it with a conventionally suspended LS400 with nifty split-screen footage. The results are dramatic, but we're curious if the cars were being driven at the same speed through the course. Be sure to watch to the end, where engineers let loose and jump the thing.

Thanks for the tip, fooman!

If you're going to introduce one of the world's most advanced automotive media systems, you might as well showcase it in one of the world's best vehicles. Bose has chosen the Ferrari 612 Scaglietti as its debut model. The new Bose Media System features customized 5.1-channel surround sound, an AM/FM/XM satellite radio tuner that can be accessed by genre, a 200 hours hard-drive, navigation system, Bluetooth, iPod connectivity with access through the system's display and a USB 2.0 input.

Oh, and it has an industry-first multi-format disc player. It can read and play virtually any type of disc you feed into it: CDs, DVD audio discs, DVD video discs, Super Audio CDs, MP3s, AAC and practically every other format available on recordable CDs and DVDs. It even has the Bose uMusic intelligent playback system that uses tags to identify listener "moods" and calls up similar songs from the hard drive. Of course the speakers have been optimized for the 612, as well. The system looks fairly easy to control with two large knobs and an upper and lower bank of preset function buttons. Follow the read link for more details on the system.

[Source: Bose]

The upcoming 2007 Infiniti G35 looks like it will arrive equipped with an internal CD player packing ripping...er...downloading audio capability. Other details (such as audio format) remain scant, though the unit comes with a CompactFlash slot as well as the hard-drive to augment the high-end Bose system.

More information on the rest of the glorified G sports sedan can be found here.

(Tipster nod: Alex)

[Sources: Gizmodo, Edmunds via TGDaily via Anything But iPod via Engadget]