They also customized the subwoofers, placed in the rear of the car. “A big woofer enclosure with a larger diaphragm is good for bass, but we had to work within the size limitations that naturally arise in a car interior,” he explains. “Until that point, no cars on the market had speakers mounted in the trunk like that.” INNOVATION AT EVERY STEPįast forward to the present day, and Hinokidani recalls the innovations made in designing the sound system for the Mazda3. “It uses the principle of the pipe organ, but in the RX‑7 the long pipe-like parts were redesigned to bend multiple times to fit into the trunk of the car,” says Hinokidani.

This kind of pioneering spirit can be traced back 30 years, when Mazda and Bose first teamed up, and Bose adapted its Acoustic Waveguide technology for the 1992 RX‑7. “Moving the woofers from the front doors to the sides of the front cowl had never been done before.”ĭesigning a sound system for people sitting in a relatively small space, each positioned close to a single speaker, offers a unique challenge. As Hinokidani says, “We ended up with a real win-win collaboration.” This reduced the amount of sound leaking outside the vehicle, while improving the door pocket design and making it easier to get in and out of the car.

Only the smaller midrange speakers, designed by Bose specifically for Mazda, were placed in the front doors. In the end, the new layout worked well across the board. “But for many years there had been a strong perception that they should be placed in the doors.” As it turned out, the cowl side was “prime real estate,” as Hinokidani puts it, so they had to work with different departments to secure the space they needed. “At Bose, we’d always wanted to place the woofers in the corner of the cabin to improve the acoustics,” he says. This was the proudest achievement for the Bose team and Hinokidani. This positioning near the corners delivers a “powerful, tight bass,” Hinokidani says, and also dramatically reduces the buzzing, rattling sounds that often come with woofers set in door panels. This commitment resulted in a world first: moving the woofers from their traditional position in the front doors to the sides of the front cowl. A WORLD FIRSTįrom the start, Mazda made it clear to Bose that the new sound system would be a key feature in the car design. Atsushi Hinokidani, acoustic engineer at Bose, Tokyo, says the current Mazda3’s Bose sound system offers a significant improvement over the previous model.

Mazda 3 bose door speaker bracket