0:15

Pushkin. This

0:20

podcast began with me remembering

0:23

when I had Alexis ten years

0:25

or so ago. I liked it, but

0:27

also thought naively that it was like

0:29

a German car, only from Japan. And

0:31

then I went to Japan and realized, oh

0:34

no, these cars are Japanese.

0:37

And once you realize that, you can sit

0:39

in one and be driven in one, even

0:42

blindfolded, and know just

0:44

where you are, even

0:47

down to the sound system. You

0:49

know, if I put you, if I blindfolded you, and

0:52

I put you in an

0:55

AA seven series, an

0:57

S S class and an LS and

1:00

I said, tell me turn

1:02

on music. I said, can

1:05

you? Can you tell me when you're in the LS?

1:07

Could you? I met Mark levin Sin's

1:09

operations outside of Los Angeles. This

1:12

is the place where Alexis sound System

1:14

was created. Brett Home is

1:16

one of the systems designers. And just

1:19

as I thought, he could ide the car

1:22

blindfolded, the LA

1:24

specifically, guess what would be the cube?

1:27

In other words, what song would he use

1:29

to be absolutely sure he

1:31

was sitting in Alexis. So

1:33

I have worked with the car for years. Yeah,

1:36

so when I'm checking, like I've listened to probably

1:38

twenty different cars, I know

1:41

where on certain songs I play things

1:43

should be I know that. Would

1:45

you priss? You could take one song

1:48

into reach you do all four cars?

1:50

What's the song going to set this up? Now?

1:53

I'm right? I

1:56

want I want the diagnostic song. So

1:59

I want what's the sign that helps you distinguish

2:02

between those four systems? The best answer

2:07

actually, yeah, cool, Just

2:11

the one that will help you identify

2:13

the elis with one hundred percent certainty from

2:17

Alexis and Pushkin Industries. This

2:19

is go and see our podcast

2:21

about what makes Alexis Alexis.

2:24

This is our final episode, number

2:27

six out of six. We

2:40

have explored why the windows on

2:43

the LS slow as they reach

2:45

their apex, why the LC sports

2:47

car accelerates in perfect intervals,

2:50

what it takes to make an engine sound amazing,

2:53

and countless other things, all

2:55

in service of something I have to admit

2:58

I did not fully appreciate until I

3:00

went to Japan, which is that behind

3:02

even the simplest details lies

3:04

a mountain of thought and research

3:07

and experimentation, expertise

3:10

in service not just of the machine

3:12

itself, in service of the

3:14

driver. So, in the Sonic

3:17

Temple of Mark Levinson, I

3:19

asked Brad for his signature song,

3:21

because by this point, at the end of my

3:23

Lexus immersion, I know he

3:25

has one. Okay, so the song that I would use just

3:27

hit me. It's a recording of Sanctus. I

3:30

forget the composer. I'm sorry. It's classical. There's

3:33

two choirs. There's a female and a male choir on

3:35

the stage, and there's a pipe organ that plays down

3:37

to twenty eight ish hurts. So

3:39

what's going to exercise low frequency extension

3:41

that has to be even throughout the choirs

3:44

are separated. You still need the reverb. But

3:46

when you go into three D, the roof of

3:48

that car seems to almost kind of disappear a little

3:50

bit. And that experience

3:52

was phenomenal for me. And so when I go to these different

3:55

manufacturers, ours isn't overdone

3:58

to be like, look at our technology. It's the

4:00

next level of polish to deliver reference.

4:02

Yeah, so you play that song

4:04

Sanctus in an LS it is

4:06

qualitatively different from the way it would sounded

4:09

the other automobiles and you would be able to pick it out.

4:11

Yes, trust me, we

4:14

will play some Sanctus. When

4:21

we were in Japan just a few weeks earlier,

4:23

my producers Jacob Smith and Carlie

4:26

Migliori went to one of the crown

4:28

jewels of the Lexus operation, the

4:30

driving simulator, And I

4:32

want to talk about the simulator just for a

4:34

moment, to make a point about perfectionism,

4:37

about what perfectionism looks

4:40

like. The

4:44

Higashi facility is high security.

4:47

You check in in an unassuming office

4:49

building, hand over your phones and computers,

4:52

then take a van up a long and winding road

4:54

past the manufactured strip of ice Toyota

4:57

uses for bad weather testing. You come

4:59

to a second building in gray glass,

5:02

up a flight of stairs, and then oh

5:05

wow, this is it. I

5:08

mean it looks like something for like spaceflight testing.

5:11

Personally very comfortable concept. Yes, imagine

5:14

a white dome fifteen to twenty

5:16

feet high. The floor is a massive

5:18

turntable and in the middle, on a set

5:20

of tracks is a car alexis

5:23

LS. Of course, when

5:27

you quote unquote drive in

5:29

this simulator, it's meant to feel

5:32

incredibly real, like you're actually

5:34

driving down the roads projected on the dome.

5:37

The car can tilt, actually tilt, turn

5:39

speed up. The projector creates

5:41

a virtual reality version of the road and passing

5:44

scenery. There's road noise. I don't

5:46

even want to know what a gadget like this costs.

5:49

Basically, take the kid who drives those

5:51

risk car video games at the mall, give

5:53

him a couple hundred million dollars when he grows

5:55

up, and this is what you get. First,

5:58

we're are all going to go into the unit.

6:03

So we're going fifty six kilometers an

6:05

hour driving straight towards

6:08

Mountain Fuji. We

6:12

just learned write through a van.

6:17

The point of the simulator is that it records

6:20

everything the driver does in there, every

6:22

move, every decision, and

6:24

your vital signs too, how

6:26

fast your heart is racing. Everything

6:29

is all recorded in real time and

6:31

relayed to the control room where teams

6:34

of engineers sit behind computer

6:36

screens and try to make sense of it.

6:39

Like your eyes, what exactly

6:42

are you looking at? Yeah,

6:45

so this white circle is tracking my eyeline.

6:52

What are those multi colors?

6:54

So that's

6:57

your eye side? Yeah, that's the end. The oval

7:00

is my face. Yes. I have two

7:02

thoughts about the simulator. First,

7:05

can you build a car without a multimillion

7:07

dollars simulator? Course you can, people

7:10

did for years. The simulator isn't

7:12

really about the car, It's about

7:14

the driver, or to put it more precisely.

7:17

It's not really about making better cars,

7:20

it's about making better drivers. This

7:23

came up again and again at our time with

7:25

Lexus, whether we were discussing engines

7:27

or windows or suspension systems. We

7:30

think of the engineer as someone obsessed

7:32

with the object, with its design

7:34

and operation and manufacture, and not

7:36

the user of the object. But

7:39

in so many cases with Lexus

7:41

it was the other way round. I

7:43

mean, what was the point of putting

7:45

Jacob in that multimillion dollar contraption

7:48

to learn about Jacob? To figure

7:50

out how can we study him under

7:52

controlled circumstances so the

7:55

car can help make him into a better

7:57

driver. All

7:59

right, we got a pedestrian. I'm the word. Everyone

8:02

straight, Let's see beautiful lady.

8:05

Yes for me?

8:07

Oh, the beautiful lady is a distraction.

8:10

You looked at her. Got

8:12

to be aware of what's around you. You cannot

8:15

look. Oh,

8:17

oh my goodness. Oh

8:20

a little kid just fell should

8:23

I I don't trust this person? Yeah?

8:28

Thank you? Defensive

8:30

driving, right, So I didn't

8:32

kill anyone, No, almost

8:34

that little kids that I

8:38

saw that kid coming from.

8:41

How did you do? Was he good?

8:43

Good driver?

8:45

Very? Thank you? Ye? Maybe

8:48

some some people, um,

8:51

HiT's a with the studio. Yeah,

8:53

well, HiT's a bike. Lexus

8:56

has run thousands of people through that simulator,

8:59

recorded and analyzed oceans of

9:01

data, created an unimaginably

9:03

finely grained portrait of what drivers

9:06

do and how they behave. Can you

9:08

make a car without that data? Sure?

9:11

But not, Alexis. This

9:13

is what perfectionism is, isn't

9:15

it? The ability to focus

9:17

on more than the object in question

9:20

and the commitment to something beyond what

9:22

is merely sufficient. Which

9:24

brings us back to Mark Levinson and Brad

9:27

Hom's signature song. What was

9:29

Brad's motivation? I'm pretty

9:31

sure that at the core he didn't

9:34

have some elaborate technical agenda.

9:36

Wait, I want to go back to something. Actually, when

9:39

you're talking about that song Sanctis,

9:41

you were saying, if the sensation of

9:44

the roof being lifted off, what did you mean

9:46

by that? So, if your eyes are closed,

9:48

yeah, and you're in the

9:51

church that it was recorded in and you're

9:54

just sitting there, you hear the reverb, you can tell

9:56

that this is a huge sense of space in a

9:58

car. You don't get that often because the top of the car

10:00

is sound absorbing. So for us to

10:03

reproduce that it's kind of this concept

10:05

with your eyes closed of no, there's

10:07

a roof to the car. It's right here. I can sense that. And

10:10

then all of a sudden their sound

10:12

from about me and it's echoing, and I've got the sense

10:14

of space above me. And so that's

10:16

kind of like the tearing the roof off, where in

10:19

a non George Clinton p Fund kind of way,

10:21

what you're doing is feeling that you're getting

10:23

this extra space

10:26

in a vehicle that's not actually there. Lay

10:28

see. So what the LS manages to

10:30

do, the reason you picked that song is because

10:33

what the LS has managed to do is to give

10:35

you the sensation of listening to it in

10:37

a church. It gives you where

10:40

you were originally recorded, where that song

10:42

was. But it also tests the four attributes

10:44

that Jonathan was talking about, spectral e going

10:47

from twenty eight hurts on an organ note which

10:49

is very deep, all the way up to

10:51

the twenty k that we're listening to, from

10:53

spatial having the understanding of where everything

10:56

is dynamics. It starts off very

10:58

quiet, just choir, but then it moves

11:00

to the full orchestra and that gets

11:02

builds and builds, and the passion that

11:04

comes out of that. For me, I love

11:06

getting to this. It's a minute and a half clip that I use

11:08

and by the end of it, everybody's in and I'm just like,

11:11

you know, it's an amazing experience when it

11:13

happens correctly. Like I said, we're

11:16

going to place him Sanctus. At

11:19

the end of our day at Mark Levinson, Jacob,

11:21

Brad and I went into the parking lot. Lexus

11:24

had loaned us an LS for a few days, which

11:26

we had parked outside, and we wanted Brad

11:28

to explain how he solved the problem

11:31

of its sound system. So right off

11:33

the bat we have you could see this stoor

11:35

speaker here that's going to be our main wolfer and that

11:37

plays a lot of upper

11:39

base and lower mid range for us. We then

11:41

pair that with a mid range. As I explained

11:43

in the room, you can hear low frequency and

11:46

you can put that almost anywhere in the car physically to help

11:48

out. So in this case we're using low frequency

11:50

in the corners because then we get loading

11:52

in the car, so we can actually maximize the output

11:55

low frequencies. Bass notes can

11:57

come from virtually anywhere. Boom boom.

12:00

You have a lot of freedom and where you put that in a car,

12:03

but not high frequency sounds. Those

12:05

are directional. If you want to properly

12:08

hear someone's trends, senden soprano,

12:10

it has to be aimed directly at your

12:12

ear. That's what's so hard about setting

12:14

up a car stereo. You need to tweeter up

12:16

high. But up high in a car

12:19

is all roof pillars in glass. Then

12:21

we put our mid range in trouble together up

12:23

across the instrument panel, so that we have

12:25

left, center and right in a nice array like

12:27

you'd see in a room. Speakers across

12:29

the front of the dashboard. Then another

12:32

set in the passenger door. So I'll

12:34

open the rear door and

12:37

what you'll see is the farthest forward upper

12:40

corner of this door panel. Brad talked us

12:42

through every speaker in the car.

12:44

Where's the subwoffer? So the subwoffer

12:47

is actually right in the center of the

12:50

package tray here on the rear shelf. Yeah,

12:53

it's packaged underneath this grow. Yeah.

12:56

And then there's surround speakers that are on either side.

12:58

Oh, so this whole back part

13:00

here is all speaker here, there's

13:03

five speakers, three

13:06

locations in the back. Yesd yeah, he popped

13:08

open the trunk or speakers. So

13:10

this car has how many speakers in total? Twenty

13:12

three? Twenty three? Twenty three?

13:15

Do you really need twenty three? Well,

13:17

if you want the roof to come off while Sanctus

13:19

is playing, Yes, you do, and you need

13:22

them all in exactly the right place,

13:24

tuned exactly the right way. And

13:26

in order to do that, you have to design

13:28

the sound system at the same time as

13:30

you design the car itself. You can't tack

13:33

it on afterwards. When did

13:35

Brad and his colleagues start working on

13:37

the LS stereo five

13:39

years before the car came out? Great,

13:42

hul we listeners to music? Yeah, if you want to jump

13:44

in the driver's seat. Brad sat in the passenger

13:47

seat and configured the settings on

13:49

the sound system for three D. If

13:51

it's too loud for you, I apologize, okay,

13:54

So I'll start the track over and

13:57

now we're going to go three

13:59

D. Before you go into that, what

14:02

does three D mean? So it means three

14:04

dimensional surround sound. So these speakers

14:06

that are above your face in the

14:08

location, these are going to turn on and

14:11

give you the reverb that

14:13

that room should have. And this is where I was talking about the room

14:15

coming or the roof being peeled off. Yeah,

14:17

this is the technology that allows that. So

14:21

we got a little more that allows you to know

14:23

with your if your eyes would close, it's your nanlos.

14:26

So let's switch over to an so

15:15

you could tell him that dynamics part as it goes from

15:17

the quiet and the builds, say

15:21

I'm going to car. The roof

15:23

came off, just like

15:26

Brad said it would. Brad had

15:28

another meaning to go to, but we just wanted

15:30

to stall him. He had a thumb drive

15:32

in his hand, loaded up with a number of songs.

15:34

It couldn't all be classical, couldn't What

15:37

else could he play for us? We were

15:39

thinking of the long drive back. He wouldn't

15:41

do to drive down Sunset Boulevard blasting

15:43

a sixteenth century him. I do have

15:46

a polar opposite, I throw on. I kind of anticipated

15:48

such a question, so

15:53

let's see, I forget. I just had a

15:55

couple of seconds to put on here, so instead

15:58

of hip hop, just

16:00

something Yeah, so I've got heavy metal, Okay,

16:02

oh yay metal day metal. Absolutely,

16:05

So we talked about dynamics. This

16:07

piece starts off with kind of a

16:09

electrified flamenco style and

16:12

then the whole band comes in and rips her round off, and

16:14

if you don't jump in your seat, I'll

16:16

be impressed. Six

16:41

episodes, A long trip to

16:43

Japan, a simulator, a day

16:45

at the track, deep dives with some of

16:47

the world's best automobile engineers.

16:49

And there we were at the end listening

16:51

to Lamb of God at very high volume

16:54

in a parking lot in the valley, in

16:56

order to discover that Lexis makes perfect

16:58

things for everyone, even

17:01

metal heads. Go and See.

17:04

We went and we saw. Let

17:06

me point this out, even though it's a metal you'll

17:10

it's far pand but then center vocal

17:12

I'll shut so you can hear world. Go

17:36

and See is produced by Jacob Smith with

17:38

Emily Rosteck and Carl Migliori,

17:41

edited by Julia Barton. Evan Viola

17:43

composed our theme music and mixed and

17:45

mastered our episodes. Special

17:48

thanks to Jacob Weisberg, Heather

17:50

Fame, Paul Williamson, the Mark

17:52

Levinson engineers, and all the Lexus

17:54

executives, chief engineers and designers

17:57

who participated in our recordings. Also

18:00

thank you too, Jess Merrill, Mary

18:02

Jane Kroll, Amanda Abrams, Joel

18:05

Dons, Tyler, dupay, Craig

18:07

Crawford, and Riley Go

18:10

and See is a production of Lexis and Pushkin

18:12

Industries him Mountain Glaco