Naim Audio for Bentley Bentayga Review

Meet the massive Bentley Bentayga SUV, a high roller’s car for the wealthy. At £228,000, the Atelier Edition reviewed here is apparently the best value in the range, because the long wheelbase version costs around sixty grand more. What kind of audio system do you get in a car that bristles with every electronic high-end feature that you’ve ever heard of – and plenty that you haven’t? Why, Naim For Bentley of course…

Unlike the old days, where you found strict OEM adherence to standard-sized speakers with recognised locations – that you could upgrade if you wished – today it’s designed with the entire car in mind. This means you can use speakers based on the acoustics you want to achieve, rather than just adding power and DSP to a limited-location roster. All of which makes for a large number of smaller speakers to add up to an acoustic assault on the senses.

Surround sound was never successful in the car audio aftermarket. Systems offering 5.1 output simply didn’t sell well, as centre speakers were needed and most cars didn’t have the space to fit them. There were centre speakers made to fit into the second DIN slot under a normal radio, and Panasonic even sold radios with a little folding centre speaker they called ‘Katana’. This wee thing was not loud enough to keep up, and made a tiny ‘schwing’ sound as it unfolded – it lasted a very short time in car audio history. Yet factory systems have been keen on surround for ages, with Harman’s Logic 7 being in many cars. Both the KEF system for Lotus and the Meridian system for Range Rover boast full Dolby Atmos capability, with the height speakers in the headlining. There’s also Atmos ability in this Bentayga – and you just need the correct streaming account to experience it.

This car’s speaker count is large, with twenty drivers dotted all around the car. These are from the hugely prolific French speaker manufacturer Focal, which happens to be closely conjoined to Naim. This company has been responsible for inexpensive five-box-plus-woofer entry-level home cinema speakers, right up to the huge Grand Utopia behemoth that’s taller than a horse. As for in-car, it sold beryllium tweeters that cost £700 each and came in a little wooden box with individual frequency response plots included with each one!

Today, Focal specialises in drop-in replacement car speaker kits for cars such as Porsche. The French company does a lot of models which are designed to fit into the exact moulded locations, with specially tooled housings and the correct wiring connectors to simply plug-and-play in your car. The top one for Porkers comes in a fancy leather case and costs £3,550, so it is not cheap.

Up Close

So, how much is the Naim for Bentley system? As part of the key options on the press car, the audio is tagged at £7,350 and boasts no less than twenty speakers running on 1,720 watts of power. Absurdly enough, to get anywhere near the performance of this car audio in the old days, a fine quality installer would sell you high-end equipment and have to install it. And at a couple of kilowatts of muscle, this may even have necessitated an upgrade to your alternator. Along with the skilled labour, this makes the price of this audio system actually represent good value. It’s all relative, you understand!

The system comprises four 25mm supertweeters and 80mm ‘Advanced’ midranges, plus twin 168mm bass drivers. Counting the four corners and one in the centre of the dashboard, there are also five 80mm ‘Advanced BMR’ (or bass/midrange) drivers. Then, in a big injection moulded polymer enclosure under the boot floor, there is a 210mm subwoofer. Last but not least is the inclusion of someone else’s technology for the emulation of high sound-pressure level bass…

There are two kinaesthetic bass shakers built into the front seats. Originally patented back in the nineteen forties, Aura Sound sold this technology into car audio in 1994. The coil is not on a moving cone, but fixed. The magnet itself is mounted on a polymer spring, and as the coil is attracted and repelled, the whole magnet shakes. It was used for two-seater convertibles to feel like they had two fifteens mounted on a kilowatt each, and has been made and sold by others for fitting under your sofa ever since. As a matter of fact, Metallica’s drummer has a cluster of these, fastened under his drum stool on stage. Each strike of a stick on a skin is ‘communicated for monitoring’ to his backside, so to speak.

Yet, as you would expect from this awesome vehicle, it has been applied with refinement. If you tickle the gas pedal, it moves away in a stately fashion, but floor it and you’re at 60mph (100km/h) in around four and a half seconds. And so it is with the audio, because the system has been built into the car in a very subtle way. You can really feel the bass when you should, yet it never detracts from the rest of the frequency spectrum.

Pairing my phone to the car wasn’t quite idiot-proof, but when I got going, it allowed Android Auto to work wirelessly. Accessing audio settings meant pressing the cog icon that shows only when you adjust the volume, which was also a bit less than intuitive. Yet within moments, I could see the tune upon the gorgeous screen displays, and we were on the road, so to speak.

The sound is, of course, highly configurable, and you can spend hours fiddling. It’s not quite as controllable as some systems, which offer full EQ, but most folks don’t know how to apply that, anyway. Press the cog wheel that shows when you adjust volume, and you get level controls for Active Bass, Subwoofer, Bass and Treble, meaning the shakers get their own control. For DSP, you get Front, Driver, All and Rear. Unsurprisingly, the finest setting for me was, of course, Driver, as it had the most immediacy, potency and clarity.

The Listening

The Bentley’s Naim sound system is as special as the rest of the car. The crispness is obvious from the first bar of Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here, streamed from Qobuz. The various layers in the legendary introduction showed off the production quality; the edges of the strings, in particular, were superbly defined. That analogue gramophone crackle was deliciously accurate. The door speakers work really well, with the supertweeters making the soundstage fully immersive. Stereo images are pulled up close so they feel right in front of you. With Pink Floyd’s Money, the tinkling of the coins really woke things up. On turning the volume right up, I found the upper midband and treble hardened up just a touch, but you really have to be going some to want these sorts of sound pressure levels in your car.

The audio is also accessible to rear seat passengers via a small, removable tablet. In the LWB car that I popped into the local dealers to see (H.R. Owen, a British institution of high-end car sales), there are also large rear screens and all sorts of zone options with headphones, too. The hands in the images are of Simon, a chap at Owen’s who kindly assisted.

As well as the amazing sonic intricacy and definition, the other key facet of this Naim for Bentley system is its sheer physical scale. Playing a classic party banger like Daft Punk’s Get Lucky, and the soundstage was massive – and more dramatic too, with the seat shakers’ contribution. Vocals were as defined as I’ve ever heard them, and they sat fully in front of me. The sensation was akin to being in a high-end audio competition car, even if the bass wasn’t quite up to installs with custom-paired twelve-inch woofers. To be fair, though, that’s just my opinion, because any sane person who hasn’t experienced crazy cars would ever say this.

Dynamics are striking, as I heard with the bite of the percussion in The Eagles’ classic Hotel California. With Sarah McLachlan’s Better Broken, I was taken by the cleanness of the sound. It’s a superb recording, which is a pleasure even at low levels, and this system told me all about the recording as her vocal line soared right in front of me. The system’s great resolving power was further underlined by Norah Jones’ beautiful Don’t Know Why. This has one of the toughest, most revealing recorded percussive sounds I’ve heard – namely that of a brush on a snare drum. It is, of course, the essence of polite jazz, and was done so well here. The treble extension of the sound system made it sound so authentic that I felt I could see the drummer’s hands.

That’s this system in a nutshell. It has a ‘being there’ quality which takes you right into the recording. It’s not just its near-endless reserves of power, it’s the neutrality and insight that make the sound so authentic. With Fleetwood Mac’s Dreams, I could practically feel singer Stevie Nicks in the car with me. Likewise with the early eighties disco thumper that is Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean. I admit I cranked it up, but it totally held together. The lead vocal line was so tactile that I got goosebumps. Another tune felt as well as heard, in the bountiful Bentley Bentayga.

The Verdict

It’s hardly a surprise to discover that the high-end audio in Bentley’s latest masterpiece is of such high quality. But what I didn’t expect was quite how much you get with this premium Naim for Bentley option. Yes, it is costly, but to approach this level of excellence from the aftermarket would surely cost more, as well as almost certainly void the warranty on a very high-ticket car. For this reason, I’d say it’s a great option to specify if you’re fortunate enough to be buying this model of car. It’s gorgeous. Damn, back to reality now!

[Thanks to Bentley Motors’ Mike Sayer and Jon Smedley and PR Randev Jayasinha of Simon + Simon Comms, as well as H.R. Owen’s Andrew Slatter, for their help.]

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