Dirac and Polestar collaborate to create a new generation of automotive audio in the Polestar 3

Digital audio pioneer Dirac and electric automobile innovator Polestar, two of Sweden’s most esteemed technology companies, have expanded their collaboration to elevate the audio performance of the new Polestar 3 with Dirac Opteo Professional, the company’s signature automotive sound optimization solution.

The Polestar 3 features a high-spec, 1610-watt Bowers & Wilkins Surround Sound audio system that, when combined with Dirac Opteo Professional, renders a clear, balanced, and immersive sound experience that’s consistent across every seat of the vehicle.

“With Polestar 3, we wanted to deliver a high-end audio experience that allows passengers to feel the depth and breadth of the soundstage, experiencing every subtlety, no matter where they’re sitting in the car,” said Roger Hjelm, Head of Connected Car at Polestar. “To accomplish our goal, we collaborated with Bowers & Wilkins to provide class-leading in-car audio, then relied on Dirac to ensure the speakers sound their best. Our collaboration with Dirac, a fellow Swedish innovator, helped us ensure that our customers experience the market’s best automotive sound system.” 

Achieving peak sound performance in cars takes ingenuity and expertise. The car cabin is regarded as one of the most challenging acoustic environments in the world – as in-car speakers traditionally cannot perform as well as high-end home or theatre audio systems, regardless of their price-point and design.

Within any vehicle cabin, speakers can’t necessarily be positioned as optimally as they would, for example, in a home theater. As a result, speakers can interfere with each other, causing distortion and reducing audio clarity. The interference increases when more speakers are fitted. In addition, the car cabin itself adds unwanted sound coloration, resulting in muddy, booming sound that can make it difficult to discern where sound is coming from.

Featuring patented multiple-input/multiple-output (MIMO) mixed phase impulse response correction technology, the Dirac Opteo Professional solution, combined with the Bowers & Wilkins Surround Sound speaker system, addresses these challenges by enabling all the speakers in a car to work intelligently together and co-correct each other’s impulse response.

The Dirac solution “erases” the car cabin – removing the unwanted effects of the cabin in ways previously regarded as possible only in theory. It also creates ideal loudspeaker responses for maximum fidelity and achieves unparalleled bass performance. Sound is richer, more balanced, more dynamic, in every seat. Occupants hear deep, clean, and tight bass free of resonances, rarely heard in a car. With immersive content enabled, the Polestar 3 brings a concert-like sound experience – where transparent, genuine sound embraces occupants as if they were listening live in a concert hall.

“Dirac is leading the world in automobile audio optimization, pioneering technologies that push the boundaries of automotive sound,” commented Lars Carlsson, Dirac General Manager of Automotive Audio. “As modern vehicles become increasingly complex, automakers like Polestar continue to rely on Dirac to help achieve their signature sound. Our Dirac Opteo Professional solution digitally optimizes speaker performance and ensures the perfect listening experience in any vehicle.” 

Dirac Opteo Professional solution is built upon Dirac’s industry-first Intelligent Audio Platform (IAP). It is a data-driven measurement system, semi-automatic tuning tools, integrated sound optimization algorithms, and middleware to any hardware platform. This enables manufacturers to achieve perfected sound faster, more easily, and consistently across vehicle models.

Bowers & Wilkins Surround Sound audio system has been specifically designed for the Polestar 3. It comprises 25 high performance speakers and the brand’s proprietary technologies – Tweeter-on-Top and Continuum® Cone – to ensure an unrivaled audio experience. Bowers & Wilkins aims to replicate the most authentic reproduction of the original recording, as the artist intended, a philosophy known as True Sound.

Carlsson concluded, “With the Dirac-enabled Bowers & Wilkins Surround Sound system, the Polestar 3 doesn’t just produce a premium sound experience for a car – it produces a premium sound experience in general, on par with a high-quality home theater system. Dirac is proud to partner with another Swedish tech leader that’s pushing the boundaries of product performance through innovation and design.”