Canton Township and San Francisco — Motown has long been a source of great cars and entertainment. So it’s only fitting that Metro Detroit-based Cadillac and Emagine theaters are on the cutting edge of sound.

Premium brands in their respective industries, Warren-based Cadillac and Troy’s Emagine Entertainment have deployed Dolby Atmos, the hot thing from the San Francisco-based audio wizards. General Motors Co.’s luxury brand is introducing the object-based audio system — joining competitors Mercedes-Benz AG and Lucid Motors — into its new electric vehicle lineup, beginning with the entry-level 2025 Optiq.

The curated cabin experience will be familiar to Emagine moviegoers. The ninth-biggest movie chain in the United States, Emagine was one of the first to introduce Atmos over a decade ago.

Experience Disney’s latest release, “Snow White,” in Emagine’s biggest-in-Michigan, 95-foot screen, 74-speaker, Super EMAX Canton theater and birds chirp overhead while Snow sings in the forest. Or view Warner Brothers’ new movie “Mickey 17” in another Emagine Atmos theater where characters appear to speak from theater seats, putting ticket-holders in the center of the action.

Drive an Atmos-equipped, 19-speaker Cadillac Optiq, select Queen’s rock ‘n’ roll classic “Bohemian Rhapsody,” and you’ll hear it like never before. Lead singer Freddie Mercury belts out vocals from the dashboard:

Easy come, easy go, will you let me go?

A piano plays from the rear seat, then the chorus hovers in the middle of the cabin:

No, we will not let you go!

Sopranos in back:

Let him goooooooo!

Freddie up front:

Mama Mia! Mama Mia!

It’s a fresh, immersive, 21st-century digital remix of a 1975 song inside a 2025 EV.

“A couple years ago, Dolby introduced us to Dolby Atmos music,” Optiq Chief Engineer John Cockburn said. “There were Grammy Award-winning mixing engineers there, and it became very clear to us that the whole music industry was transitioning into this recording format.”

Atmos is best understood as three-dimensional sound, where audio engineers use Dolby digital tools to separate sounds — vocals, drums, guitars, airplanes, race cars, and so on — into three-dimensional objects that can be moved individually through space. Simply put, sound is no longer limited to a specific speaker.

“I could do a cinema analogy,” said Cockburn, sitting inside an Optiq outside Dolby’s San Francisco headquarters. “It would be like a helicopter flying over your head, and you can hear that helicopter moving through space. The musicians are doing the same thing.”

Emagine has been flying helicopters over moviegoers’ heads since it installed its first Atmos system in one of its Royal Oak theaters in 2013. Like Cadillac, it was introduced to Atmos at an industry trade show.

“I thought it was really cool, and that we had to get on board with this,” said Emagine CEO Paul Glantz, standing in the middle of Canton’s 300-seat Super IMAX theater. “We were a very early adopter and one of the first 100 installations in the world.”

Atmos is the latest in a decades-long evolution of theater technology, beginning with the introduction of stereo in the late 1940s, said Emagine Chief Entertainment Technologist Tom Ruhling. Surround Sound — which equipped theaters with front, side and rear speakers (or “channels,” to use industry jargon) — followed, debuting in 1979 with Francis Ford Coppola’s Vietnam epic, “Apocalypse Now.

“We saw society trends, and we boldly went there,” said Cadillac’s Cockburn. “We are creating a luxury experience.”

So, too, is Emagine, which has grown since its 1997 founding to become one of the biggest theater chains in the country, with 28 Midwest locations across Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota. In 2005, it was the first theater chain to adopt all-digital projection.

Curating an Atmos environment requires creating a 360-degree sound field by coordinating Dolby’s processors and software with an array of speakers. Upgrading from last-generation Surround Sound, Atmos speakers pepper the auditorium on front/side/rear walls — and, inherent to Atmos — hanging like bats from the ceiling.

“An Atmos system brings the addition of height with ceiling speakers,” Ruhling said. “Audio objects can then be moved anywhere in the theater, adding effect and realism.”

Movie studios use Dolby’s digital tools to mix movie soundtracks that maximize the new hardware arrays.

In the case of the automobile, Cadillac not only worked with Dolby on speaker placement (a so-called 7.1.4 system made up of seven surround channels, subwoofer and four high channels) but coordinated with music services that support the Atmos format.

“(Dolby engineers) connected us to top recording engineers and mixers so we could learn exactly what the creative side is thinking,” Cockburn said. “From there, we knew … we needed to create an actual studio environment in the car. We know where people are sitting.”

Amazon Music, Apple Music and TIDAL are the first streaming services to offer Atmos music as studios mix not just new tracks but older music, too. Cadillac has embedded the Amazon app in Optiq SUVs so customers can take advantage of the fast-growing library of Atmos songs. Meanwhile, Dolby is working with other streaming services so they, too, can deliver Atmos songs.

Inside Dolby Laboratory’s 63,000-square-foot San Francisco headquarters, Grammy Award-nominated recording engineer and Universal Music Group’s Director of Audio Engineering Nick Rives demonstrated how engineers mix a song in a 7.1.4 channel Atmos studio. Dolby sells its Atmos tools to record labels, movie studios, auto companies and other professionals to perfect Atmos for different environments.

Ultimately, Dolby’s biggest audience is home theater systems from which customers can enjoy the Atmos 7.1.4 experience from their couch. In addition to music streaming services, video streaming services Netflix, Disney Plus and Apple TV Plus are compatible with Atmos.

“It’s a brilliant move by Dolby to move into cars as well as theaters,” said Glantz, “because ultimately, the real value is to sell consumers in the home.”

Auto and movie theater environments scale the 7.1.4 format for their own multi-speaker environments.

“We recently took an Optiq to the National Association of Music Merchants (trade show), which is a who’s who of the recording industry,” said Cadillac’s Cockburn. “Surprise! Why is there a car here? Because most people hear music in the car. We’re getting a resounding response (from the recording industry) about what we had created.”

After the now-on-sale Optiq, Cadillac plans to expand Atmos into the rest of its EV lineup, which also comes standard with hands-free Super Cruise driver-assist tech.

“When you have Dolby Atmos playing and Super Cruise is going down the road, the traffic doesn’t matter anymore,” grinned Cockburn. “It is such a luxury experience.”

Henry Payne is auto critic for The Detroit News. Find him at hpayne@detroitnews.com or @HenryEPayne.