When it comes to luxury, Bentley is amongst a small handful that sits right at the top of the tree. Our client is accustomed to things as such, he also knows what sounds good and what doesn't, hence this car coming straight to us. As much as the hardy installer won't want to admit it, it's always difficult taking on a new platform. Although we're late to the party with publishing this post this particular Bentayga was the first to have its system upgraded. Untrodden ground indeed.
As you can see, this machine is massive, it makes the entrance to our modest workshop look small in comparison. The presence they have on the road is incredible. This particular one having all chrome deleted in preference for black trim and gloss black OEM wheels.
Inside is where it really starts with the Bentayga in our opinion. There's a lot of muttering goes on about the Bentayga and the Q7, all of which stops as soon as you take a seat inside, it's more akin to a Superyacht interior. I was looking to reference a private jet but genuinely couldn't find an interior as high standard. It extends beyond the touch/smell physical side of things, sitting in the interior of this car makes you feel untouchable, a subconscious feeling you can't put a price on.
The System
The factory system in the Bentayga, in whichever of the specifications you choose, isn't actually a bad system. They sound OK. At this level is OK really good enough? Is it to be expected that whilst sitting in one of the finest handmade interiors the automotive world has to offer that we accept OK? Our long-standing client knows what we, Studio Incar, can do in any number of platforms to make his systems sound great so we set about specifying the system.
Kit List
- Hertz Mille Legend 6.5" midbass
- Hertz Mille Legend tweeters
- Audison Bit One Processor
- Audison Voce AV 5.1K
- Audison Voce AV Quattro
- 2X Hertz Mille Legend 10" Subwoofers
A tried and tested formula for us. Knowing how these pieces of equipment work together allow's us confidence in selling and installing the products we do. The 5.1K, for example, is a solid fixture here, its an excellent, powerful and diverse amplifier that we use mostly in an active format, running tweeters/midrange and subwoofers from this one amplifier. Midbass duty is on the bridged AV Quattro.
Baffles were made to our usual standard in the door for the strong Mille Legend 6.5" midbass speaker.
The only modification made to the car throughout the whole process was to use the A-pillar location for the Hertz Mille Legend tweeters. We actually used a Bentley Grill from an older model and sculpted the pillar around it as to hide the Hertz Mille Legend tweeter but not hinder its performance.
The Integration
We believe we're the best when it comes to Audison products, with many other stores/installers calling us for tech support on particular issues. We believe to fit something and have confidence in what we do we need to understand it completely. It can be quite difficult at times, Audison is a fast moving innovative company that is at the forefront of car audio signal transfer and we try and stay at the forefront of car audio integration and sound development, constantly trying to keep things fresh so there are times you'll come across the odd stumbling block. Anyway, where I'm going with this is I had to call upon some help myself, for what now seems like a daft reason.
The Bit One processor is now 11 years old, it has its lovers and its haters but there is no denying it revolutionised the car audio DSP market. The burning question I had was whether it summed its inputs via high level. In a nutshell, this means can I feed it high pass - low pass - bandpass filtered inputs from an active output factory amplifier and will it add them together to give me a clean linear output signal... This may sound daft but my assumption was that it may be too old to be this sophisticated, considering products available right now (2018) are shouting about how they can sum input signals and de-equalise them.
The answer was yes, it does and has done since the day it was made. Now the reason for me going into this detail is regardless of what system you spec with a Bentayga (most Bentleys in fact), it will have an amplifier with active filtered outputs and you will need to sum these outputs on the input side of whatever integration device you're going to use, after of course, you have measured what these feeds are doing! So we switched back to the old faithful, the Audison Bit One after a brief soiree with another product badged to specialise in this subject alone failed us. We mounted the DRC (Digital Remote Control) in the glovebox, this will likely only ever be used for subwoofer output control in this configuration.
A framework was made for the amplifiers that mounted them under the factory boot floor when reinstalled. The subwoofer enclosures where custom made also to mount in the same space. When the floor is back in place there is no visible sign of the system, no space is lost to it. The factory floor offers up an 8" by 40" open section that faces the back of the rear folding seats, we deemed this more than capable of transferring bass energy into the cabin and it did, in spades. The bass in this car was fantastic. Impressive as always the Mille Legend 2500 10" subwoofers delivered way down in the frequency spectrum, producing some real low note/high energy movement in the cabinet. True sub bass to reinforce all of the work done in other frequency bands.
Once finished the car went through our usual measurements and sound tuning processes until it was ready to leave.
So that's our take on Bentley's incredible Bentayga. It's every bit as impressive as they say with unquestionable levels of build quality. Bettered only by adding a dash of our expertise where it matters.
All questions and sales enquiries to:
- info@studioincar.co.uk
- 01489 578951
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Carl Shakespeare - Studio Incar