This Week in Immersive Audio: 10 March 2025
This Week In Immersive Audio is my weekly roundup of news from the spatial audio world and new Atmos releases from the previous week. If no engineer is listed on a release, I was unable to find the credit. Please get in touch if it was you or if you know who it was!
News
Cadillac’s Sonic Evolution: Dolby Atmos Takes the Wheel
Imagine gliding down the open road, bathed in sound so immersive it feels like the music is breathing with you. This isn’t the future—it’s Cadillac’s 2026 electric lineup, where Dolby Atmos transforms the driving experience into a rolling concert hall.
Cadillac and Dolby Laboratories have announced that their next wave of EVs—including the ESCALADE IQL and ESCALADE IQ—will feature a fully integrated Atmos audio system. Every note, whisper, and deep, resonant bassline will move through space with three-dimensional precision, wrapping around passengers like a living, breathing sonic sculpture.
For artists crafting in Dolby Atmos, their music will be heard in its fullest, most untamed form. For listeners, it’s not just about playing a song—it’s about stepping inside it.
As the boundaries between sound and space continue to dissolve, Cadillac is making a statement: in the future of immersive audio, the journey is just as important as the destination.
Empowering Creatives Through Dolby Atmos at SXSW 2025
On March 9, 2025, at the South by Southwest (SXSW) festival, a session titled "Empowering Creatives Through Dolby Atmos" featured acclaimed musician and producer Jim Eno, the indie band Autumnal, and Austin-based session player Sara Houser. They discussed how Dolby Atmos technology revolutionises music creation by enabling artists to craft profoundly immersive and emotionally resonant soundscapes. The session also highlighted the work of Project Traction, a nonprofit dedicated to empowering women and gender-expansive individuals in music production and engineering.
My favourite takeaway from the talk was this Atmos monologue from Jim Eno:
“Stereo can be can be difficult because there's only two speakers. So you have to fit every single sound inside this very sort of narrow spectrum. So when you mix, you always get someone like, you know, drummer wants more high hat or something like that, or you know more tambourine or something, so you have to like find places for these things — carve a lot of frequencies out — so within two speakers you can hear everything. With with Atmos — I have a 9.1.4 system — now all of a sudden I have 13 speakers at my disposal and, to me, it's very fun and very creative because there's so much space. So when you listen to an Atmos mix on a speaker system, you will definitely hear things that you never heard in the stereo mix because they're not cramped together. Also, with stereo mixing, you have to take priorities. So I like the analogy - I didn't come up with this one - but if you're ever coming into New York City, imagine if every building was the same height, same size, and every building looks the same. It wouldn't be as exciting to drive into New York and see that. The thing that's exciting about seeing something like that is the Empire State Building with the little Bodega down there with the lights. All this stuff adds up to a really cool thing when you see the city. I look at mixing the same way. So you have to have priorities, you know. Okay: lead vocal, that's the Empire State Building. Sorry, drummer, but your high hat is going to be the Bodega down at the bottom; sorry about that. Obviously we talk with the band and these are creative decisions, but you have to make priorities with that. With Atmos you can actually take more freedom and liberties and be able to hear hear more things.”