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?
The back of this Maybach has USB and HDMI connections to get a laptop fully connected while running a digital audio workstation like Pro Tools with video and spatial audio for what it's calling a "fully equipped Dolby Atmos sound studio." Dolby
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.
Geoffrey Morrison/CNET
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.
Aron Forbes checking playback. Playing in the back, PMC speakers. Geoffrey Morrison/CNET
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.
... continue reading