Cadillac 2026 EV lineup touts 'recording studio' experience with Dolby Atmos surround sound

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If you want to hear your music the way Billie Eilish, Pearl Jam, Finneas and 93% of the artists in the Billboard Top 100 want it to sound, Cadillac thinks one of its new EVs should be your next vehicle.

Starting with the 2025 Optiq compact SUV that’s already on sale, moving on to the 2026 Vistiq arriving this summer and into the rest of the lineup from there, Cadillac EVs will offer the Dolby Atmos system that’s already used in more than 1,200 recording studios and 8,000 theaters around the world.

A playlist of songs mastered in Atmos was a revelation when I recently drove an Optiq from near Dolby HQ in from noisy downtown San Francisco over busy highways and winding country roads to the serene Marin Coast.

Placing sounds around the listener

Atmos allows instruments and voices to move through an almost infinite range of positions around the listener, creating a sound that goes far beyond stereo or surround. Instruments and voices appear to move, drawing near and receding, revealing new details of everything from arrangements to the singer taking a breath.

“How the sounds and locations are designed is all about intention,” Universal Music director of audio engineering and Grammy-nominated music engineer Nick Reves told me. “The artist and the producer determine the intention.”

Songs old and new have been mastered to provide full Atmos capability, but the 19-speaker AKG system standard in the Optiq also adapts to provide the best sound for recordings that don’t have the extra layers of data.

Atmos enabled music is currently available in Optiqs via the Amazon Music and Tidal streaming services and from USB storage devices. Music services deliver Atmos directly through apps found within the vehicle’s infotainment system. The technology also works with Apple CarPlay.

Dolby Atmos at a glance

• 93% of Billboard’s 2024 Top 100 artists use Atmos.
• All three major record labels and thousands of independent artists.
• More than 20 automakers offer Atmos audio in at least some of their vehicles.
• 20 streaming services globally deliver music in Atmos.
• “Spatial Audio” denotes Atmos tracks in services like Apple Music or Amazon Music.

Source: Dolby

'Nuanced creative decisions'

The painstaking Atmos mixing process relies on input from the artists who create music in addition to Dolby’s technical capability.

“These are nuanced creative decisions,” Dolby head of music industry relations Christine Thomas told me. “Each creative has a sonic fingerprint.”

Cadillac will make Atmos audio available across its 2026 electric vehicle lineup. Some 2025 Cadillac EVs will get the feature in an over-the-air update.

Other brands with some vehicles equipped with Atmos, include Genesis, Li Auto, Lotus, Lucid, Mercedes, Polestar, Rivian, Volvo and Xiaomi. Cadillac is the latest brand to announce widespread use with its promise to give all upcoming EVs Atmos. Pioneer recently unveiled a system that allows it to offer Atmos sound in four-speaker aftermarket audio systems.

The mixing process is a combination of art and science ― a term Cadillac once used to describe its brand values.

With an almost infinite universe of possible combinations of sound and space, it’d be easy to be paralyzed by the range of choices. That’s where experience and familiarity with the artists comes in, Reves said. Like any storyteller, he develops a sense of where to start, and proceeds from there.

2026 Cadillac EVs to feature Atmos

• Optiq
• Vistiq
• Escalade IQ
• Escalade IQL
• Lyriq-V

A studio on wheels

Optiq's chief engineer visited recording studios to learn Atmos’s potential. Then he brought one of the cars to a music industry conference.

After a Dolby presentation, he escorted one producer after another to demos in the Optiq ― and occasionally had to pry them out so the next guest in line could experience it.

“You’ve built a recording studio in a car,” chief engineer John Cockburn quoted one music producer as saying.

I can’t wait to take a long road trip listening to my music library with the full Atmos effect surrounding me.

“We are taking audio to new heights by ensuring the music experience stays true to the artist’s original vision,” Cockburn said.

Contact Mark Phelan: 313-222-6731 or mmphelan@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @mark_phelan. Read more on autos and sign up for our autos newsletter. Become a subscriber.