Denon and Dirac team up for new 22-speaker car audio concept with Dolby Atmos

Computer animated image of the immersion possible from Dirac Denon car audio concept

(Image credit: Dirac/Denon)

Denon and Dirac's relationship isn't a new one. Dirac’s Virtuo spatial audio technology can be found in the Denon PerL Pro wireless earbuds, while Dirac Live room correction software can be found in a number of Denon AVRs to help with set-up.

So it’s probably a natural move to take this relationship into cars, given Dirac’s audio solutions can already be found in vehicles from Volvo, Polestar, Genesis, NIO and BYD to name a few. At CES 2025 the two brands have unveiled a new car audio concept to showcase the kind of immersion that could be possible.

The brands have kitted out a Tesla Model Y with a 22-speaker system, which according to the press release “sets new standards in immersive, spatialized sound in the vehicle environment”.

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The system also includes headrest speakers and exciters for an extra level of immersion.

If there isn’t proper synergy between in-car speakers they can interfere with each other and leave audio sounding distorted and lacking clarity. Other elements of the vehicle such as the shape of the cabin and the materials used in the interior can also have negative effects on the sound produced.

Dirac claims its audio solutions can enable “all the speakers in a car to work intelligently together and co-correct each other’s impulse response”, minimising cabin effects and optimising audio, particularly bass frequencies. You can also alter the level of immersion and save presets for different users.

Dirac also uses its own upmixing technology in the system to turn two-channel stereo sources into spatial audio.

Speaking of spatial audio, not only is the system Dirac optimised but it’s also Dolby Atmos enabled, a format which is gaining more and more traction in the world of automotive, especially given the number of music streaming systems now using the immersive audio format, such as Apple Music, Tidal and Amazon Music Unlimited.

There's no word on whether this concept is already being earmarked for a certain vehicle, but in-car audio looks set to be a big focus for quite a few brands in 2025.

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Andy is Deputy Editor of What Hi-Fi? and a consumer electronics journalist with nearly 20 years of experience writing news, reviews and features. Over the years he's also contributed to a number of other outlets, including The Sunday Times, the BBC, Stuff, and BA High Life Magazine. Premium wireless earbuds are his passion but he's also keen on car tech and in-car audio systems and can often be found cruising the countryside testing the latest set-ups. In his spare time Andy is a keen golfer and gamer.