Los Angeles, CA (January 30, 2026)—The week of The NAMM Show in late January is always a busy time, but the day before the convention opened, a number of producers, engineers, artists, influencers and more could be found 60 miles north of Anaheim, having gathered at Larrabee Studios in North Hollywood for The Road to NAMM, an invite-only event curated by AKG, Harman Automotive and Cadillac with Dolby.
The activation served multiple purposes, acting as a casual networking event; an introduction to Larrabee Studios and its offerings; a real-world demonstration of AKG’s new C Series microphones; and an opportunity to hear Cadillac’s Dolby Atmos audio systems (based around Harman Automotive technology, including AKG speakers) put to use.
Following a tour of the facility’s many studios and a brief chat with its owner, 18-time Grammy-winning mixer Manny Marroquin, visitors assembled in the live room of Studio 6 for a wide-ranging panel.
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John Cockburn, General Motors chief engineer; Chris Hansen, director of product development, HARMAN Professional; Christine Thomas, head of strategic partnerships and industry relations, Dolby Laboratories; Ryan Ulyate, Grammy-nominated producer and mixing engineer; Paul Falcone, Grammy award-winning and multi-platinum recording and mixing engineer; and Moritz Braun, music producer and mixing engineer discussed a variety of topics like remixing Tom Petty’s Wildflowers for immersive audio; how and why spatial audio has been adopted for high-end automotive audio systems; methods that immersive audio is being applied to concert mixing; and more.
To illustrate many of the points that came up during the discussion, visitors headed to the control room of Studio 6 to watch a live recording session. Inside the Studio 6 live room, vocalist Malavika, musical director Biako and a host of studio musicians played multiple tracks, captured all the while via AKG C Series mics. Producer Moritz Braun and an engineer then mixed the session on the spot inside Larrabee Studios’ nearby immersive room, where it was also played back to visitors.
To provide a sense of comparison as to how immersive mixes translate an engineer’s work to a car-audio environment, visitors then heard the tracks again while seated inside numerous Dolby Atmos-equipped Cadillac models parked outside; the mixes and spatial audio garnered favorable murmurs from the attendees.
