Meridian Horizon For Dolby Atmos

Case Studies

Meridian Horizon For Dolby Atmos

Delivering Seamless Immersive Audio to the Road

Meridian Audio and Dolby share a long tradition of shaping how the world experiences sound. Both companies believe technology should serve emotion, deepening the connection between listener and performance.

A Shared Legacy of Innovation

Meridian’s early work in digital audio and lossless compression led to Meridian Lossless Packing (MLP) technology, later adopted by Dolby as Dolby TrueHD^TM, setting the benchmark for high-definition multichannel sound reproduction. Now that spirit of collaboration extends to the automotive world, where immersive formats such as Dolby Atmos®, a leading component for the in-car entertainment experience, perform best when they’re deployed with precision, stability and integration.

Work with Meridian

Introducing Meridian Horizon

At the core of this collaboration is Meridian Horizon, a proprietary audio technology designed to deliver a consistent and intuitive sound experience across different content formats.

Originally developed within Meridian’s luxury home audio programme to generate multichannel audio from traditional two-channel stereo, Horizon has evolved into a flexible framework that intelligently adapts playback behaviour based on the input format. It analyses the incoming signal and manages how the system responds, ensuring that volume, balance and tonal behaviour remain predictable and natural whether the source is stereo, multichannel or Dolby Atmos.

For listeners, this means a sound field that feels cohesive and balanced, with user controls that behave consistently across every format. For OEMs and Tier 1 partners, Horizon offers a dependable integration platform that simplifies development and calibration while ensuring consistent tuning behaviour and predictable performance, whether within Meridian branded systems or partner delivered solutions.

Today, Horizon sits at the heart of Meridian’s pioneering 'Future of Sound' innovation roadmap, an adaptable technology platform designed to support new listening experiences wherever great sound is experienced.

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In Cabin Meridian Horizon For Dolby Atmos

Why Dolby Atmos is Complex in Automotive

In home theatre and cinema, most Dolby Atmos systems are installed using Dolby-defined speaker layouts that support optimal spatial performance

In vehicles, Dolby Atmos must adapt to highly variable acoustic environments, every cabin has unique geometry, materials, and speaker positions shaped by design, safety and comfort requirements. This means automotive Dolby Atmos requires specialised tuning and spatial processing to ensure vocals remain centred, instruments remain precisely placed, and the immersive experience is consistent for every listener.

Meridian Horizon is built to do exactly that.

It enhances the localisation and stability of audio objects across a wide range of seating positions and hardware configurations, helping ensure the full Dolby Atmos music experience is delivered at its best.

Integrating Dolby Atmos Support

Meridian has worked closely with Dolby engineers to ensure that Dolby Atmos performs seamlessly and predictably inside the vehicle. Horizon manages the playback of Dolby Atmos content alongside other formats within a coordinated processing framework, helping to maintain a consistent listening experience and common user behaviour.

This collaboration ensures that the Horizon user controls work consistently across all content types, giving listeners a seamless transition between stereo, multichannel and immersive formats, with the power to personalise their listening experience.

Meridian Horizon integrates Dolby Atmos support within Meridian’s advanced audio architecture, creating a consistent post-processing approach and spatial environment across formats. While certain format-specific parameters remain such as input gain and EQ prior to Horizon, everything that follows (channel EQ, gain, delays and spatial alignment) is unified. This delivers a coherent, predictable tuning platform that simplifies calibration and maintains the artistic intent of every mix.

In some traditional automotive implementations, Dolby Atmos requires a separate signal flow from other content sources. Horizon reduces that fragmentation, allowing engineers to apply a common downstream tuning process, improving efficiency and delivering greater consistency in staging, focus and immersion.

For OEMs and Tier 1 partners, the result is a simplified and reliable integration path that reduces complexity, shortens calibration time and ensures consistent performance across platforms.

In short, Horizon with integrated Dolby Atmos support makes immersive audio easier to deploy, refine and scale.

Discover Dolby Atmos

Proven in Market

Meridian’s collaboration with Dolby has been validated through multiple real-world programmes and development platforms. The partnership first informed work with Rivian, one of the earliest immersive in-car audio implementations, providing critical learning for large-scale Dolby Atmos integration. Building on those learnings, Meridian reference vehicles in the UK, Korea and the United States now serve as active development and demonstration platforms, confirming stability and acoustic consistency across varied cabin geometries and loudspeaker architectures.

The technology has been adopted for new vehicle programmes due to launch in 2026/27, demonstrating production readiness and scalability. In parallel, Meridian is collaborating with global automotive Tier 1 supplier ASK Industries to create a Dolby Atmos-certified studio and cinema at their Ningbo headquarters in China, providing a controlled reference environment for evaluation and partner development.

Collaboration In Action

Meridian and Dolby continue to work side-by-side, combining Dolby’s content expertise with Meridian’s strengths in signal processing and tuning to deliver a reliable, intuitive experience.

The integrated framework allows OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers to implement Dolby Atmos with confidence, ensuring consistent user experience, common control behaviour and dependable spatial performance across vehicle platforms.

Meridian’s collaborative approach allows seamless integration with any Tier 1 partner, offering flexibility across different system architectures and ensuring a consistent standard of performance. It’s a proven and adaptable model that supports long-term scalability and future innovation.

Work with Meridian

"Dolby Atmos brings object-based precision and creative intent into the vehicle but delivering that experience consistently across complex automotive environments requires deep system expertise. Meridian’s Horizon framework provides a robust and scalable integration path that preserves the integrity of the Dolby Atmos mix while ensuring predictable performance across vehicle platforms. Together, we’re enabling OEMs to bring immersive music into the car with confidence."

Dolby spokesperson

The Listening Experience

From the driver’s seat to the back row, sound remains stable, balanced and enveloping. Voices and instruments stay precisely located; transitions between stereo, multichannel and Dolby Atmos are seamless, creating an elevated and immersive sound experience. For passengers, it’s an experience that feels genuine and effortless. For OEMs, it delivers measurable consistency and engineering simplicity.

Part of Meridian’s 'Future of Sound' Vision

This collaboration is another step in Meridian’s wider mission to make advanced technologies feel human, intuitive and emotionally engaging. By combining Meridian Horizon’s intelligent processing and user personalisation controls with Dolby’s immersive expertise, Meridian is setting a new benchmark for how great sound is delivered in the car and driving the direction of its 'Future of Sound' roadmap across every listening environment. This is a collaboration that unites precision with creativity, technology with emotion, and engineering discipline with imagination.

"Integrating Dolby Atmos with Meridian Horizon represents a major step forward in in-car audio. The result is a consistent, scalable framework that enables OEMs to deliver immersive sound with precision, reliability and ease of integration, true to Meridian’s design philosophy. This technology is already moving into live vehicle programmes for 2026."

Simon Bowman - Engineering Director at Meridian Audio