Made in a Mercedes: Dolby, Universal Music Group and Merck strike an unlikely audio partnership

Using Mercedes cars, Universal’s talent and Dolby’s technology, the three companies hope to push the listener experience forward. Dolby is No stranger to car soundwhich helps add Atmos to the location where most people listen to most of their music. Universal is, well, global, covering legendary labels like Interscope, Capitol, Def Jam, Abbey Road Studios And many more. Mercedes, you may have also heard of: Cars were built for Nearly 140 years old.

The goal of this high-profile trio was to create a vehicle audio system that was so close to a studio system that creators could use it to finish mixes, particularly Atmos music mixes. To that end, some journalists, including myself, were invited to Interscope Studios in Santa Monica, California. Once there, we listened to an Atmos mixed track in a large space with large speakers, then a smaller studio with an elaborate (and powerful-sounding) PMC speaker system, and finally the same track inside a Mercedes Maybach Sedan.

Now, it’s not like we could immediately compare it to the AB, nor did the volume match, and I didn’t know the song, and I forgot about the blind test, but in fairness, there were a lot of similarities between the studio sound and the Maybach sound. The car looked amazing, as you’d hope for something that costs more than what I paid for my house. Is this all just a marketing gimmick? Well, not exactly.

Car mixtures?

Checking the mixture in the car is nothing new. Even when I was studying audio production, we were advised to check any mixes on a variety of sound systems. After all, just because something sounds great in the original studio, doesn’t mean it will sound right on your Boombox, through headphones, or in the car.

The making of “Crafted in a Mercedes” infinitely goes beyond the days when I would throw a mix onto a cassette tape and try it out in my Volkswagen. At the announcement party in Santa Monica, I sat with her in the back of a Mercedes Maybach Aaron ForbesAnd mixer and producer for artists like Billie Eilish, Halsey and many more. With his personal laptop turned on Tools for professionals Connected to the Maybach, he played a piece of music by Finneas. With this setup, there was no need to go back to the studio to edit anything. Alternatively, he can make any necessary adjustments to the mix from the car because the Maybach has Atmos, including a loudspeaker between the two glass roofs.

Screens on the backs of the front seats showed the Dolby Atmos mixing interface, showing where the virtual speakers were located. If he had the artist with him instead of yours truly, this would certainly make things easier than constantly leaning across the large center armrest to point at things on the laptop screen.

More Atmos in cars?

Car audio is big business. Much bigger business than home audio. Many traditional speaker manufacturers have told me that sales of their entire home speaker line are only a rounding error compared to their car audio business.

In the past few years, Samsung has made widespread inroads into the car audio market. With the purchase of Harman International, it already owned the majority of the market, and since then, it has been eating up audio brands like candy. At this point, unless it’s Bose (and its subsidiaries), or Focal-JMLab (ditto), it’s probably Samsung/Harman regardless of the brand. With very few exceptions, most notably in this story, Maybach’s Burmester system, there are three main companies for all “high-end” car audio systems.

At least for now, everyone is doing a good job of making car audio sound as good as possible. Car audio is tricky in many ways, and if you don’t remember what radios used to sound like in old cars, consider yourself lucky.

So there are really two versions of the same question here: Will we get more Dolby Atmos music in cars, and will that lead to more Dolby Atmos music, or will we get more Atmos music, and will that lead to more Atmos car audio systems? My guess is the former. If there’s demand, or if it makes it more likely that consumers will upgrade to the advanced system in their next car, you can bet you’ll start seeing more of it.

Spatial audio makes a lot of sense in the car. Unlike most homes, there are actually multiple speakers arranged in a layout almost conducive to surround sound. Where can you get the content, though? Considering how long it took Spotify to add lossless audioI’m not holding my breath that it will add Atmos anytime soon. So he leaves Apple Music, Amazon, and Tidal For Atmos mixes.

As far as the manufacturing of the Mercedes car is concerned, Mercedes said that aspects of this setup, such as specific control of the speakers, are taken into account in production. So, right now, you can only get your own Atmos studio if you’re really passionate about it DIY truck With speakers and sound treatments. Hopefully we’ll see Atmos in some less luxurious vehicles.

B side

While the purpose of the visit was the car and collaboration, I love recording studios. There is a certain aesthetic shared by all the people I visited. I’ll call it “creative comfort.” Here are some more pictures in case you’re curious.

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In addition to covering cameras and display technology, Jeff does photo essays About wonderful museums and other things, incl Nuclear submarines, Aircraft carriers, A 10,000 mile road trip.

Also, check out Budget travel for dummiesAnd his travel book and his book Best-selling science fiction novel About submarines the size of a city. You can follow it Instagram and YouTube.