By James Chevrette
As we reported, more than 20 car makers are adopting Dolby Atmos, dramatically pushing the technology that has been popular in home and theater markets, into the car.
For the aftermarket, we have seen demonstrations of the technology by Pioneer and Orca, so the question arises, how do these systems sound?
First, Pioneer is investing heavily in this technology for OEM and possibly the aftermarket, it said. It has developed its own version of the Dolby Atmos system to achieve it in a four speaker/four-channel system versus other systems, which can have 16, even 20 or more speakers.
I heard the Pioneer demo in February in a Toyota Camry with a new DMH-WT6000NEX head unit and two pairs of speakers– a four-channel system with no amplifier. My verdict? The same as retailer Ata Ehdaivand of Absolute Electronics, MD, who also received a demo–the system was more “fun.” The music was more dynamic and seemed to be moving vertically and horizontally around the dashboard.
“It is the most fun, I have had listening to music in years.” said Ehdaivand. “I will be demonstrating Dolby Atmos to every customer that comes through the door.”
Dolby Atmos goes beyond typical channels and offers “objects” embedded by the recording engineer. We’ll explain in a bit but you can listen to the concept for yourself using headphones. Visit Dolby Labs’ website, where a visualizer gives you an A-B comparison of stereo vs. Dolby Atmos along with a visualizer, showing where the “objects” are located. Scroll down to the third or fourth demo track (named “Hot” or “Untie”) to really hear the difference.
Orca’s new Atmos car has been demonstrated for over a year now, and it won a “Best Sounding Vehicle” award at the recent MasterTech Expo.
Dean Beyett of Five Star Car Audio, FL and the popular Dean and Fernando YouTube said the difference in sound is dramatic. “It was pretty spectacular. A lot of music now is being recorded in Atmos…It’s a whole listening experience. It’s like in your house when you first got surround and hearing cars drive all over your living room… in Rocket Man it actually sounds like a rocket going over your head.”
Orca’s system was shown in a 2003 BMW owned by German Schulmeister of Sound Innovations. It uses 24 speakers, 21-channels of Mosconi power and an outboard prototype processor.
With Dolby Atmos, music can be encoded into objects–picture them as chess pieces. Once the objects are created, they can be placed or moved anywhere on the sound stage. The Dolby Atmos codex or software adapts these objects to the output device. The software determines how many channels are available and where to place them within the software.
Robert Mony of Pioneer said, “With the Atmos experience, we must think differently. The Atmos processes sounds into objects at the processor level…”
Pioneer’s system is an outlier in that it uses only 4 channels. Tony Verni of Pioneer VP of Sales North America said, it’s a propriety system, developed specifically for the car (rather than borrowing technology from the Home Division.
Whether one enjoys Atmos or not, it is poised to play a big role in new vehicles in the near future. Atmos support by car makers has reportedly doubled in the past year from 10 to more than 21 manufacturers including Cadillac, Rivian, Mercedes-Benz, Polestar, Volvo, Li Auto, and Sony Honda Mobility.
Dolby Atmos is also gaining prevalence in movies and TV shows and can be found on Apple TV+, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, and Max, as well as Netflix, Paramount+ and VUDU.
source: https://www.ceoutlook.com/2025/03/31/so-how-does-in-car-dolby-atmos-really-sound/
