June 2026

A Curated Listening Experience
For many, car audio is now the most ideal environment to enjoy the music.
Editorial By J. Martins

  When I visit trade shows, particularly those that are not predominantly focused on audio technology as such, I always find interesting examples of successful businesses that have managed to find a market niche, or a product segment where audio technology truly makes a difference. But to understand the reasons why, it's important to look carefully at the opportunity that generated that success, as well as the context, or the environment that surrounds those companies' products.

Frequently, product designers are looking at "reversed solutions" that try to find a problem originally created by their own technology or concept. And it is always easy to find marketers amplifying that message as though all their potential customers would approach product acquisition from their own view of the "problem." Understanding the whole layered complexity of the audio supply chain offers a fresh perspective.

Automotive speakers are one of the biggest volume categories in the loudspeaker industry, and are the last thing on the mind of a consumer when buying a car. But the automotive industry understood that loudspeakers—and the whole audio system in cars—play an increasing role in helping sell successfully as a category.

And with the incredibly successful strategy that carmakers are embracing to create a superior experience in the new generation of electric vehicles, that industry is taking audio to a whole new level. Audio design teams are currently carefully curating the whole sound system much in the same way that industry always did with every other component of a car—as a fully integrated, wholly interdependent system.

In fact, the cars that I have had the opportunity to experience and that I talk about in this issue's Market Update, are carefully curated experiences. Starting with eliminating the "problems" that we know exist in every application environment at home or in the studio.

A key part of that success story is Dolby Laboratories and the way that company helped transform entertainment and digital experiences through Dolby Atmos (just to talk about sound). The majority of the population is not even aware of Dolby Atmos, even those that have experienced it in cinemas. But Dolby Atmos has created a whole ecosystem that has kept audio engineers and studios creative and busy producing better entertainment, and reinforcing the streaming industry use case by delivering something superior to what consumers previously experienced. Now, Dolby Atmos is the standard format used to mix music, and produce and distribute media content, but that hardly any consumers could actually enjoy as intended because it requires a large number of speaker channels, not easily compatible with modern homes.

Automakers are changing that. They are now able to provide a large number of speaker channels carefully adapted to every specific car cabin and treating every occupant on every seat with a first-class experience.

While the size of the car cabin is a challenging acoustic space, automotive audio design teams are making the most out of it, leveraging materials and using speaker location and digital audio processing to make the sound controlled and predictable. More importantly, audio processing is now able to create "active acoustics" and totally transform the "size of the room" depending on the content and user preferences.

Every demo of these new-generation cars I have experienced has been a superior and engaging immersive experience that transcends the ones I had until now: the rare room in a hi-fi show or the flagship studio control rooms I visited. It's not even comparable, starting with the seating (which is now part of the sound system) and the ability to control sources and sound modes instantly.

It's completely different to be in a car, but I believe this is now for most consumers the most ideal environment to enjoy music. Where everything, every part of the system, is curated, fully optimized for the listening experience from the driver's seat to the back row. And there's no problem to solve.

J. Martins
Editor-in-Chief

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