How Pioneer’s SPHERA Receiver Brings Dolby Atmos Sound To Your Vehicle

If it seems like you’ve been spending more time behind the wheel lately, chances are your intuition is correct. Recent studies suggest drivers in North America find themselves in a car for the better part of eight days a year, a figure which doesn’t fully account for gearheads who tend to enjoy driving on their favorite road just to clear their head after a long day.

Audio Upgrades

In other words, making the cabin of a car an enjoyable place in which to spend time is worth the effort, particularly investing in upgrades to the audio system. That Elton John collection or the score of HMS Pinafore aren’t going to sing themselves.

Pioneer has been a big player on the car audio scene for decades, helping push the industry into new spaces with new technologies. Dolby Atmos, a type of jaw-dropping spatial sound recently reserved for movie theatres and expensive home entertainment systems, has just begun showing up as factory equipment in high-dollar vehicles. But given the amount of time we all spend in our cars, some audiophile gearheads have begun asking if that technology can be retroactively installed in existing vehicles. Thanks to the introduction of an audio system from Pioneer called SPHERA, such a thing is now possible.

What is Dolby Atmos?

Spatial audio is the technical term for music which seems to come from all around the listener. Most people are familiar with conventional stereo playback of music which uses two channels with discrete and separate signals produced by left and right channels. It’s been around for the better part of five decades and was a very big deal when it first appeared.

Dolby Atmos takes that concept and layers on more dimensions - literally. Dolby Atmos supports up to 128 simultaneous audio objects in a mix, allowing sound engineers to precisely place sounds in a 3D space rather than just routing them to fixed speaker channels. The result is a spatial sound which envelops the listener, as if the sound is coming from all directions - drums from astern, bass guitar off to the side, and a lead singer standing on the dashboard. That’s spatial sound, an invention which for years was the domain of specialized environments like big theatres where moviegoers would hear explosions from behind their seat while Jason Bourne seemed to yell at bad guys from the front row.

Pioneer SPHERA

This aftermarket head unit takes the Dolby Atmos technology and brings it to the cabin of just about any vehicle. It is of single-DIN dimension in terms of what gets installed inside the car’s dashboard, with a large 10.1-inch floating touchscreen deployed as the user interface. Capable of being installed into the dashboards of many different vehicles with a standard single- or double-DIN dash opening, it promises to deliver an immersive sound experience by leveraging the speakers and their locations already in the vehicle. Yes, SPHERA is designed to crank out spatial audio depth and clarity using a car's factory speakers, making it available to a wide base of audiophiles.

It does this by integrating Pioneer’s proprietary Auto Tuning in-vehicle calibration system with Dolby’s powerful Atmos 4-channel virtualization technology to create the sort of listening experience once reserved for expensive factory systems. After connecting to an iPhone via wired or wireless Apple CarPlay, the unit can decode and play back Dolby Atmos content through front and rear speakers via a supported audio streaming app.

If your chosen tunes are simply in stereo rather than Atmos or being played from an unsupported source, the SPHERA can upscale music with Pioneer’s Stereo Spatial Sound feature to create a better and more immersive sound. While it won’t be a true Dolby Atmos listening experience, it will still be leagues of improvement over a basic stereo source playback. Stereo music from sources like satellite radio or an AUX input will be played back in a normal manner. As the world’s first aftermarket car receiver with Dolby Atmos, the SPHERA supplements its responsive touchscreen with top-mounted buttons and the ability for users to deploy their connected phone as a remote control or secondary display via Pioneer’s PXLink app.

Tuning Dolby Atmos to an existing vehicle

Given the appeal of spatial audio, it’s only natural that adding this tech to one’s own car is high on the bucket list of many musicheads and average drivers alike. Some automotive brands which currently offer Dolby Atmos as an option might say doing so is impossible given the near infinite amount of interior shapes and the materials from which they are hewn. Atmos or not, every interior reflects sound differently.

Pioneer tackles this topic head on, asserting its product is certified by Dolby and can provide the same type of spatial audio experience one might get from a luxury vehicle so equipped. It’s all down to the SPHERA’s initial setup during the system’s installation which uses a function baked into the head unit and an included microphone. Acoustic characteristics of the vehicle cabin are automatically measured by the system via that mic and a custom sound output profile is adjusted based on gathered data.

Parking the car in a quiet area and placing that microphone on the driver’s seat headrest is all the physical work required to start calibrations. Following prompts on the SPHERA’s screen, it takes less than ten minutes for the system to determine distances from each speaker to the listening position, correct audio arrival times, and create a sound image customized for your car. On-screen functions allow for fine tuning to one’s own musical tastes; EDM fans can crank the bass while classical lovers can adjust the highs to perfectly hear that string quartet.

Great sound for everyone

It isn’t hyperbole to suggest that with SPHERA, Pioneer has democratized immersive Dolby Atmos sound to provide a great listening experience in any vehicle. Being able to add spatial audio to an existing car by performing an aftermarket Pioneer SPHERA installation means incredible in-car sound is no longer restricted to the moneyed set shelling out big bucks for an expensive luxury car.

Best of all, the SPHERA does the heavy lifting of unlocking Dolby Atmos music using the speakers already installed in your vehicle, meaning you won’t need to tear apart your headliner or cut into headrests to experience true spatial audio. However, if you want to push your system to the absolute limit, you can easily pair the receiver with upgraded aftermarket speakers and dedicated amplifiers to enhance your listening experience even further.

Demonstrating its breadth of application, the pros at Crutchfield installed SPHERA gear in a five-year-old Camry with stock speakers while we’ll be using an older Nissan Frontier pickup truck with upgraded Pioneer mids as our muse. Be sure to stick around for that story.

Most new music being released these days is already recorded in Atmos and many older albums are being remastered with the technology. This means with the Pioneer SPHERA in your vehicle, a favorite playlist can now sound exactly how the artist intended, representing a major evolution beyond traditional car audio.

Perhaps spending eight days a year in the car might not be such a bad thing after all.

NOTE: This is sponsored content produced in partnership with Pioneer