The days when Dolby Atmos sound was only for premium commercial and home cinema set ups are long behind us. Since 2021 Lucid and Mercedes-Benz have both been integrating Dolby’s most immersive audio platform into cars, too, thanks to a range of premium models equipped with all the power and speaker count required to unlock the format’s potential on the road.
MercedesBenz is now taking its in-car Dolby Atmos support to another level, though, as some of its models become the first non-Apple devices to offer ‘Spatial Audio with Dolby Atmos’ from Apple Music.
What’s more, MercedesBenz is backing this up by establishing a relationship with Apple Music and Universal Music Group (UMG) whereby recording artists can base their song approval process on how the final mix sounds in a Mercedes car, with the final signed-off tracks earning an ‘Approved in a MercedesBenz’ seal of approval. This means that Apple Music customers in compatible Mercedes cars can be sure they’re hearing Approved in a MercedesBenz tracks sounding exactly as they did when their creators mixed them.
Unlocking access to Apple’s Spatial Audio track collection greatly increases the amount of Dolby Atmos content MercedesBenz customers can listen to, making it much easier to get full value from both the object-based Atmos format (which fills a 3D sound space with details and effects rather than simply steering sounds to different speaker channels) and the Burmester 3D and 4D speaker installations available for Mercedes Maybach S Class, Mercedes Benz S-Class and EQE, EQE SUB, EQS and EQD SUV models.
The premium Burmester 4D sound system builds no less than 31 speakers into the car, including six overhead 3D speakers, four near speakers in the front, eight sound transducers (two per seat), and a monster 18.5 litre subwoofer. All pushed hard by two amplifiers delivering a mammoth 1750 watts of power.
“Sound quality is incredibly important to Apple Music.” says Apple VP of Apple Music and Beats Oliver Schusser, “which is why we are so excited to be working with Mercedes to make Spatial Audio on Apple Music available natively in the car for the first time. Spatial Audio is revolutionizing the way artists create and fans listen to music and it’s an experience that is impossible to explain in words; you have to hear it for yourself to appreciate it. Together with Mercedes, we now have even more opportunities to bring wholly immersive music to our subscribers all over the world.”
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UMG Chairman and CEO Sir Lucian Grainge adds that “This important step in the history of recorded music is the culmination of years of working together with our partners at Dolby to develop the Dolby Atmos Music format so we can provide our artists with an even wider palette for their creative expression.
“With Mercedes, a company that shares our passion for quality and innovation, fans can now enjoy our artists’ music in Mercedes cars in a way that virtually transports them to the recording studio or live stage.”
UMG has also announced that on the back of its new deal with MercedesBenz it plans to set up a new Dolby Atmos-capable studio in Sindelfingen, Germany, that will be based on its renowned Capitol Studios’ Studio C installation.
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