Ford - nearly there but why are we still listening to 'Hotel California'?

You will read elsewhere on the site that Ford have developed the stereo system to be supplied with their new car using the finest engineering and technical knowledge to make the experience of listening to music in the B-Max as good as listening in your own living room.

“The all-new Ford B-MAX will be available with an exclusive premium quality Sony audio system. It features eight high performance speakers and a 4 x 25 Watt Sony amplifier. Drivers can select music from the built-in CD/radio unit, including Digital Audio Broadcast, or from their own portable music players connected via USB or Bluetooth.”

Their lead enginer on the project, Matthias Terstegge, was quoted saying “Each car interior has completely different acoustics, and detailed tuning can make a dramatic difference to what the driver hears,” he says. “The human ear can detect subtle differences in the sound and you can’t beat simply listening to the system for that final tuning. The tracks we use really help identify what needs tuning. But after thousands of plays, I feel like I never want to hear them again.”

This is admirable. Finally, a car system that is designed to reproduce music properly and not to just be heard above the wind and road noise. Congratulations Ford.
But stop for a moment and look at the selection of music that they used to design the system and why they were picked:

Artist Track Tuning potential
Yello Oh Yeah Kick bass / Low voice
Fugees Nappy Heads Low bass / Mid bass / Door buzz
Talking Heads Flowers Kick bass / Door buzz / Woofer distortion
Radiohead Packt Like Sardines Kick bass / Door buzz / Woofer distortion
Peter Gabriel Growing Up Low bass / Kick bass / Door buzz
Joan Baez
Black-Eyed Peas Diamonds And Rust
Just Can’t Get Enough Ambience / Treble / Tonal balance
Low Bass/ Kick Bass/ Door Buzz
Mariah Carey Butterfly Ambience / Treble / Tonal balance
Susanne Vega Tom's Diner Center imaging
Jennifer Warnes Somewhere, Somebody Center imaging / Mid bass /Tonal balance
Steve Strauss Mr. Bones Center imaging / Mid bass /Tonal balance
John Coltrane My Lazy Bird / My Favorite Things Treble / Tweeter distortion
Carl Orff Carmina Burana Treble / Tweeter distortion / Dynamics
Vivaldi Four Seasons: The Summer Treble / Tweeter distortion / Stage width
Eagles Hotel California Live Low bass / Mid bass / Ambience / Stage width
/ Tonal balance

Where is any Heavy Metal, Folk, Punk, Rock & Roll, Reggae, Indie? No Opera, no R&B, no Funk and no Klezmer. What about Boogie Woogie, Rap, Aceeed?
I might be in a privileged position, able to listen to almost any form of music around and happy to do so but my friends ears are drawn to many, many different styles of music and in the main, this list wouldn’t include anything that they listen to.
I listen to music for the impact on my ass and my head, I want it to involve me, to take my emotions places and make me feel what the musician was trying to say to me. I don't want to hear a speaker buzzing under heavy pressure and I also don't want a tweeter that can't handle the extreme of a piece of music but music is about so much more than the technology. If you want to create the best sounding car system you can go so far with great technology but the final part of the puzzle will be how the system lets a great performance tell its own story.
If Ford are serious about this – and they are far more serious than most of their opposition apparently, this is just a first step. The next step will be to start listening to the music that their customers listen to and try and make listening in the car a realistically enjoyable experience.