www.cnet.com
My editor has insisted that I can't call Atmos in a car "Catmos." So anyway, Catmos is the latest implementation of Dolby's object-based surround technology. We've talked before about how well it can add height to movie sound in theaters, how most mid- and high-end soundbars have some Atmos functionality and how even some headphones have it built in. But in a car? Well, yes actually. These days the car is where most people listen to the most music. In some ways it's also a great place to convincingly create surround audio, since the listening positions are fixed, and a system is designed to incorporate and compensate for exactly where the speakers are located. Neither of those things are possible at home, and even in a theater it's not as focused. One of the biggest issues with most car audio fidelity is ambient noise. One way to drastically reduce that issue is by removing the engine completely. A high-end electric vehicle makes for a best-case scenario in a mobile surround sound system, and to that end I was invited by Rivian and Dolby to hear their nearly 1,000-watt, 18-driver Atmos-enabled system in the R1S SUV at an event in Venice, California, conveniently 15 miles from where I live. It's LA, so just shy of 2 hours later, I was all ears. Atmos-to-Go With Atmos (on the right), sound designers can pinpoint exactly where in a theater, any Atmos theater, they want a sound to "appear." This includes overhead, or really, just about any place in the entire space of the cinema. DolbyLet's back up a second and talk about Atmos. It's a fascinating technology, and its "object-based" approach provides a different way to mix movies and music. The traditional way of audio mixing, which has been around for decades, was to assign a sound or instrument to one of five surround channels or the subwoofer -- also known as 5.1. Three up front, two in the back or sides. Some movies had even more channels, with seven channels becoming fairly common, allowing for side and rear channels. Atmos changes all that up with the ability to treat a sound or instrument as an "object." In the mixing process, the sound designer can move that object anywhere, and the Atmos encoder would understand where in physical space the sound designer intended. An Atmos decoder, in a theater, say, creates a virtual map of the system's speakers and can translate "door creak in back left corner" so the audience hears it come from that position. This accuracy was difficult, if not impossible, before Atmos. A designer could want to place a sound in a specific location, but there'd be no way to adjust what that meant in a theater with five seats, 50 or 500. The Rivian R1S SUV. Geoffrey Morrison/CNETThanks to this more precise way of moving sounds around, height speakers were far easier to use. Now sounds could more convincingly go from behind the screen, up over your head, and "land" somewhere behind you. Done right, it's extremely immersive. If a theater didn't have height speakers on the ceiling, the Atmos would still work, with the decoder shunting the sounds off to the sides. So it would still whoosh past you, just not as convincingly as it would have in a more elaborate system. The Atmos decoding process is "smart," essentially understanding what the speakers and space were, and adjusting so it could do the best it could with what it had. Built on the same platform and sharing a majority of parts, the R1T is basically the same as the R1S minus a roof over the rear. It loses 2 speakers in the audio system too. Geoffrey Morrison/CNETThe double-edged sword in this case is that Atmos can work, at some level anyway, with far less elaborate systems. That's why there are single-unit soundbars and even TVs with "Atmos." They have upward-firing speakers at best -- and, more often, extensive processing to simulate that height sound with varying levels of success.Which brings us back to Atmos in the car. The listeners are all in known places, there can be height speakers, and it's easy to have rear speakers since all modern cars -- especially SUVs -- are auditorium-sized anyway. Rivian Premium Audio with Dolby Atmos The driver locations in the Rivian R1S. The woofers are located in the doors, the tweeters on the pillars and above. The subwoofer is in the trunk, above and behind the right rear wheel. RivianThe 2025 R1S Gen 2 I saw boasted a Dolby Atmos system with 18 drivers, which were powered by 960 watts of amplification. Placement for most of these speakers was fairly typical, with some in the dash, including a center channel in the middle, woofers in the doors and a subwoofer in the trunk. What's less common is the tweeters at the roofline, above the doors but below the glass roof. The R1S is a huge vehicle, so they could be considered height speakers for pretty much everyone, and if you're tall enough that these are ear level, you wouldn't be able to see out the windshield. Like most electric vehicles, the R1S has few knobs or dials. Just about everything is controlled via a touchscreen. Geoffrey Morrison/CNETYou need Atmos-encoded content to get a real Atmos experience. To that end, the in-car entertainment system has integrated Apple Music, Tidal, Amazon Music and Audible. During my demo, we listened to several tracks, including Ariana Grande's 7 Rings and As It Was by Harry Styles. The track that took full advantage of Atmos was Pink Floyd's Money: The iconic cash register opening distinctly started somewhere behind the rear passenger-side door, then progressed to above the dashboard, then working its way around the interior. The actual instruments then filled the space in a way that traditional stereo would have struggled with (this Atmos mix was painstakingly approved by the band). I can't fully judge the sound quality based on a demo of pre-chosen music, but overall the treble was clean and the bass punchy, especially with the Styles track. One of the height speakers, note its location near the grab handle. The "sky" in this image is literally the sky, as seen through the panoramic roof. Geoffrey Morrison/CNETWhile there are aspects of a car that are good for surround sound, and others that aren't. I mentioned above about road noise. Given that the R1S is electric, I assume road noise is less than, say, my Miata. The other is both a positive and a negative. On one hand, engineers know exactly where the potential listeners are and, roughly, how many. The fact that they're spread apart, close to the "walls," and not to mention widely different distances to the speakers, all add a not insignificant challenge. The mix in the R1S is biased toward the driver and front passenger, which isn't too surprising since you'll always have at least one of those. Rear listeners will still get the effect, there are height speakers back there too, but to a lesser extent. The cheap seats, if you will. Drivers in the A-pillar and dash. Geoffrey Morrison/CNETBased on my three-song demo, I can't say where the Rivian's system stacks among the high-end car audio systems I've heard (which is quite a few). However, I can say the surround aspect was pronounced and more natural-sounding than anything I've heard before. So, perhaps unexpectedly for some, it was one of the better demos of Atmos I've heard outside a theater. The settings screen. I didn't have a chance to mess with the sound during my demo. Geoffrey Morrison/CNETThey hear me rollin', they curious Rivian isn't the only company including in-car entertainment with Dolby. There are also Atmos systems installed in, or planned for, models by Cadillac, Lotus, Lucid and Chinese automaker Li. One obvious trend among all of those is that Dolby Atmos doesn't come cheap. Rivian's R1S vehicle is in the "premium SUV" class and can easily cost over $100,000 (which is, in fairness, what most of these big electric trucks cost). The Premium Audio system is combined with the glass roof as part of the $2,500 Sound + Vision package. You need a subscription to one of the aforementioned streaming services and Rivian Connect Plus, which costs $15 a month or $150 a year. This also includes a data connection and can turn your R1S into a hotspot, as well as some other features. For such an advanced vehicle, it's disappointing that there's no Apple CarPlay or Android Auto. Back seat (or, technically, middle row), listeners can have some control over what the pilot and co-pilot are listening to. Geoffrey Morrison/CNETSo is it worth it? I only had a brief demo, in a stationary car. I'm also too cheap, not to mention being a broke writer (buy my book!), to spend around $100K on a vehicle, but $2,500 for some great sounding audio, not to mention a glass roof I can't imagine not having in a truck like this, seems like a reasonable add-on for ~2.5% of the total price. So, probably? Will we see Atmos in lower-end vehicles? Perhaps. Car companies have been partnering with audio companies for a long time, and while these days it's usually Bose or some flavor of Harman, automakers know there's a profit opportunity in better sound. Will they pay for the extra engineering and tuning to get Atmos working correctly? Or even just working? The higher-end brands might, but it's highly unlikely we'll see an Atmos system with height speakers in something like a Nissan Versa. Then again, if there's a demand, who knows. I'm sure there's some exec out there who loves Atmos and wants to put it in a more budget-friendly car. Sort of a modern Pontiac GTO -- except instead of a huge V8, it has Catmos. [You're fired. --Ty]As well as covering audio and display tech,Geoff does photo toursof cool museums and locations around the world, includingnuclear submarines,aircraft carriers,medieval castles, epic10,000-mile road tripsand more. Also, check outBudget Travel for Dummies, his travel book, and hisbestselling sci-fi novelabout city-size submarines. You can follow him onInstagramandYouTube.
