Crafted in a Mercedes: Dolby, Universal Music Group and Merc Make Unlikely Audio Partnership

Using Mercedes vehicles, Universal’s talent and Dolby’s tech, the three companies hope to drive the listener experience forward. Dolby is no stranger to car audio, helping to add Atmos to the location where most people listen to most of their music. Universal is, well, universal, covering legendary labels like Interscope, Capitol, Def Jam, Abbey Road Studios and many others. Mercedes, you also may have heard of: It’s been building cars for almost 140 years.

The pitch from this high-profile triumvirate was to make a vehicle audio system so close to that of a studio that creatives could use it to finalize mixes, notably Atmos Music mixes. To that end, some journalists, including myself, were invited down to Interscope’s studios in Santa Monica, California. Once there, we listened to an Atmos-mixed music track in a big space with big speakers, then a smaller studio with an elaborate (and great-sounding) PMC speaker system, and finally the same track inside a Mercedes-Maybach sedan.

Now, it’s not like we could A-B compare them instantly back-to-back, nor were they volume matched, nor did I know the song, and forget about blind testing, but in fairness, there were a lot of similarities between the studio sound and the Maybach. The car sounded amazing, as you’d hope for something that costs more than I paid for my house. Is this all just a marketing gimmick? Well, not exactly.

Mixes for cars?

Checking a mix in a car is not new. Even back when I was studying audio production, we were advised to check any mixes on a variety of audio systems. After all, just because something sounds great in a pristine studio doesn’t mean it will sound right on a boombox, through headphones or in a car. 

The “Crafted in a Mercedes” setup is infinitely beyond the days when I’d dump a mix to a cassette and try it in my Volkswagen. At the announcement event in Santa Monica, I sat in the back of the Mercedes-Maybach with Aron Forbes, mixer and producer for artists such as Billie Eilish, Halsey and many others. Using his personal laptop running Pro Tools connected to the Maybach, he played a track by Finneas. With this setup, there was no need to go back into the studio to adjust anything. Instead, he could make any tweaks necessary to the mix from the vehicle because the Maybach has Atmos, including a height speaker in between the two glass roofs. 

Screens on the backs of the front seats showed the Dolby Atmos mixing interface, displaying where the virtual speakers were. If the artist were with him instead of yours truly, this would certainly make things easier than constantly leaning across the sizable middle armrest to point at things on the laptop’s screen. 

More Atmos in cars?

Car audio is big business. Far bigger business than home audio. I’ve been told by several traditional speaker manufacturers that the sales of their entire home speaker line are barely a rounding error compared to their car audio business.

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

At least for now, all are doing a decent job of making car audio sound as good as possible. Car audio is difficult in a lot of ways, and if you don’t remember what radios sounded like in older cars, consider yourself lucky.

So there are really two versions of the same question here: Will we get more Dolby Atmos in cars, and will that lead to more Dolby Atmos music, or will we get more Atmos music, and that will lead to more Atmos car audio systems? My guess is the former. If there’s demand, or if it makes it more likely consumers will upgrade to the higher-end 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 already multiple speakers arranged in a layout roughly conducive to surround sound. Where can you get the content, though? Given how long it took Spotify to add lossless audio, I wouldn’t hold my breath that it’ll add Atmos any time soon. So that leaves Apple Music, Amazon and Tidal for Atmos mixes. 

As far as Crafted in a Mercedes goes, Mercedes has said aspects of this setup, like specific control of the speakers, are being considered for production. So, for now, you can’t have a rolling Atmos studio of your own unless you’re really enthusiastic about DIYing a van with speakers and acoustic treatments. Hopefully, we’ll see Atmos in some less opulent vehicles.

B-side

While the point of the visit was the car and the collab, I love recording studios. There’s a certain aesthetic that’s common among all the ones I’ve visited. I’ll call it “creative cozy.” Here are some additional pics in case you’re curious.

In addition to covering cameras and display tech, Geoff does photo essays about cool museums and other stuff, including nuclear submarines, aircraft carriers, 10,000-mile road trips.

Also, check out Budget Travel for Dummies, his travel book and his bestselling sci-fi novel about city-size submarines. You can follow him on Instagram and YouTube.