CUPRA x Sennheiser: A unique sound experience

The CUPRA Tavascan is a unique car that combines design and performance to boost the emotion of driving. In this spirit, the CUPRA sound team set itself the challenge of creating an audio experience as unique and special as the model, developing an immersive sound system that breaks with conventions. To achieve this, the brand decided to join forces with premium audio partner Sennheiser.

José Luis Álvarez, responsible for Sound Systems Projects at CUPRA, and Sofia Checa, Immersive Audio Engineer at Sennheiser, climb aboard the CUPRA Tavascan to give us first-hand insights into a collaboration that’s as immersive as its in-car audio experience.

“CUPRA and Sennheiser are a perfect match,” says José Luis. “Sennheiser is known for its high-quality audio, innovation and excellence in sound engineering, and we’re proud to have collaborated with them to develop this new audio system,” he adds.

In fact, CUPRA is one of the first major car brands with which the company has partnered. Sofia Checa sees it as “a partnership that makes sense, because both CUPRA and Sennheiser are disruptors in our fields – we’re not afraid of doing things differently.”

The result of the collaboration is an audio system that envelops the driver and passengers in an immersive and customisable experience. 

“Its operation is based on the real-time analysis of different musical components, such as instruments, voices or even room information,” explains Sofia. She goes on to say, “from there, it redistributes them throughout the car, while still remaining true to the original artistic intentions, but enhancing its emotion.” 

In this sense, the user chooses how they want their sound experience to be, on a scale of different levels of immersion (from 0 to 3). 

“At CUPRA, we always put the driver at the centre of everything we do, but without forgetting the rest of the passengers,” says José Luis. For this reason, “the sound can be adjusted manually or automatically, focusing on the different occupants and with the possibility of selecting different modes between Music, Speech or Club,” he points out.

To come up with the ideal formula, CUPRA and Sennheiser collaborated from the outset, integrating 12 hi-fi speakers and developing a proprietary algorithm. It’s a sound experience that’s been designed for the CUPRA Tavascan and other revamped CUPRA models, which was an even greater challenge: “Each car has a different shape and a different cabin layout, with varying acoustics, and we applied a solution tailored for each one,” says Sofia. An aspect that the CUPRA sound team has been working on for some time to offer the best audio possible in all its cars. 

“The sound we hear inside the CUPRA Tavascan, was specifically designed for this model,” she adds. “We’ve certainly achieved a unique audio experience unlike anything ever heard before; it’s a major step forward in every way,” says José Luis.