Inside Track: Behind the Scenes at the Huawei Sound Lab

Huawei has invested heavily in audio research since 2012, and its priority is clear. It’s all about bringing together its hardware engineering with bespoke software, and tune the end result to provide class-leading in-car entertainment. Whether it’s sound quality, connectivity, functionality, or day-to-day usability, Huawei wants to dominate this market space.

INSIDE THE HUAWEI SHANGHAI R&D COMPLEX

Its Shanghai R&D complex strings together the whole development chain. The anechoic chamber (a somewhat imposing cube of silence, lined on all six surfaces) provides the right environment for precision measurement. The neighbouring semi-anechoic room adds a reflective floor to simulate real-world boundary behaviour at low frequencies. Between these sits the listening room, a space for training tuners and voicing the end product. Unfortunately, due to the sensitive nature of the proprietary technology being used, we can’t show images of these rooms, but we are allowed to describe them…

Huawei’s anechoic chamber measures 4.8x4x4 metres, and is optimised for high precision acoustic tests where reflections would otherwise obscure low-level detail. Across the hall, the semi-anechoic chamber scales up significantly to 14x12x5 metres, its reflective floor helping simulate a more conventional listening space whilst still eliminating wall interference. This is a crucial setting for evaluating automotive noise, vibration and harshness (NVH) and electroacoustic component selection. The listening room spans 10x7.5x3.5 metres and – in its current configuration – runs a 9.1.6 layout to support native multichannel content and up-mixing. A 2-channel reference will also be established as the programme matures.

Far from being just showpieces, these rooms are a key part of Huawei’s day-to-day decision-making process. Measurements establish the boundaries: linearity, time/phase behaviour, distortion, and the complex interactions of loudspeakers with the car cabin. From there, tweaks to the voicing of the systems are repeatedly made, using psychoacoustics to bridge the gap between laboratory perfection and musical persuasion.

THE MAEXTRO S800 FLAGSHIP SHOWCASE

The hero platform for our visit was the handsome technological tour de force that is the Maextro S800 luxury electric sedan. This was chosen to debut the company’s most ambitious in-car system to date, the Huawei Sound Ultimate series. In its current guise, it sports 43 drivers distributed throughout the cabin, and a total of 2,920 watts delivered by dual amplifiers. This can be configured to create an ultra-surround acoustic field that can be steered, shaped, and personalised per seat. Rear 4D exciters sync to music and video, adding tactile information to the auditory field for those who want the full multi-sensory treatment.

Several hardware touches speak to Huawei’s willingness to rethink fundamentals. The Tangential Force Woofer rotates the conventional door-woofer geometry by 90 degrees, with a special construction that reduces panel resonance while pushing bass extension deeper. A patented dual-diaphragm subwoofer leverages the surrounding cabin volume rather than being constrained by a conventional box, yielding greater impact and layering in the lowest octave. Up top, the Crystal Star-Ring Diffuser rises as occupants enter and integrates with rhythm-aware ambient lighting. Yes, this is a bit of theatre, but it works on a practical level too, as it improves central image precision and gives better sound-field uniformity than the previous generation.

ZONES AND SILENCE

Perhaps the most attention-grabbing demonstration was Huawei’s independent sound-zone technology. With four headrests, each integrating four drivers (two tweeters and two midrange units), the system can create personal sound bubbles for every occupant. Combined with the company’s sound-field control algorithms, the main speaker array can act as a silencer when required, targeting spill from front to rear and vice versa. Huawei claims up to 30dB isolation between rows and 99 per cent energy separation. These are figures that, if repeatable across programmes, could redefine how families and colleagues share an automotive cabin without sharing content.

Road-noise cancellation is essential in Huawei’s quest for calm. Sensor data streams into what the company describes as an omnidimensional model – multi-channel amplification with low latency, which then applies ear-adaptive cancellation to neutralise intrusions. The hardware side is equally diligent, with multi-layer acoustic glass and a generous spread of absorptive materials to keep the baseline noise floor ‘library-level’. The through-line is consistent – if the cabin is the most complex listening room that most of us will ever inhabit, control the room first, and then let the music breathe.

MAKING MUSIC, IN-CAR

Since 2022, Huawei’s automotive sound efforts have been shaped by Chief Automotive Sound & Acoustics Advisor Lars Goller – a name that some may recognise from Gamut Audio, Bang & Olufsen, and Harman International. His remit includes formalising Huawei’s master-tuning methodology, establishing reference rooms and developing seat-specific voicing for complex multi-driver installations.

Cars are by their very nature difficult listening spaces, as stereo assumes left–right symmetry and low room influence, whereas a cabin is asymmetrical, reflective at close range, and heavily loaded in the bass. That’s the context for Goller’s aim as he told StereoNET:

Our goal is optimum reproduction of the recording – to bring us closer to the experience the artist intended. By marrying the science of psychoacoustics with exquisite tuning and bespoke high-performance hardware, Huawei Sound aims to deliver the ‘phantom’ effect of sitting where the music was created.

Objective measurements are used to establish responses, phase and timing, and distortion, and then the voicing is refined through extended listening, using psychoacoustic cues to compensate for asymmetry, early reflections, and low-frequency loading. The hardware has to hold up its end – low-noise, linear, and dynamically clean – so that filtering and time alignment can reassemble what was recorded as faithfully as the cabin allows.

We use objective acoustic measurements to set the foundation, including responses, phase, time behaviour, and all relevant distortions. However, the final balance is achieved through a lengthy subjective process. If every hardware element behaves perfectly, our subjective tuning can compensate for interior challenges and still honour the original recording.

While the loudspeaker count grabs headlines, the control stack is where the system coheres. A dense web of DSP runs Huawei’s spatial audio track model, plus ten overhead channels, and adaptive sound-field control, while HarmonySound keeps content, control, and ambience stitched together. The ‘sound-to-light’ layer is not just spectacle, as it has been executed well in the S800. It helps delineate zones and makes the car feel responsive to what you’re hearing – a useful cue when each seat can be listening to something different.

SOUND INVESTMENT

It is noteworthy how openly Huawei talks about investment. The company says it spends more than ten per cent of revenue on R&D annually – in 2024 that figure reached CNY 179.7 billion (approximately £20 billion / €23.4 billion) – around 20.8 percent of total revenue – with more than 113,000 employees working in R&D and about CNY 60 billion (approximately £6.6 billion / €7.8 billion) directed to fundamental science.

Today, Huawei’s automotive footprint spans over twenty carmakers, with solutions spanning driver assistance, cockpit systems, acoustics, and control. For our visit, the focus was squarely on the Maextro partnership and the S800 implementation, but the message was broader – namely that Huawei Sound is a component strategy designed to travel, with collaborations underway and each automaker ultimately determining market availability. As for Europe and the UK, Huawei frames its role as an enabler – it can build the components and tune the systems; its partners decide where and when those models launch.

THE VERDICT

After a day inside the lab, what lingers isn’t just the spec sheet – although forty-three speakers and 2,920 watts in a coordinated multi-zone array is hard to forget. Rather, it’s the sense that Huawei’s programme is maturing into a methodology. The rooms, the measurements, the psychoacoustic guardrails, and the willingness to solve cabin problems at the mechanical level – from door resonance to sub-bass loading – all reinforce this point. The company wants the car to behave like a listening room, and is building the tools to make that plausible.

If the promise of independent sound zones holds up in broader production, and Huawei continues to refine the subjective tuning playbook under Goller’s stewardship, then car audio could stop being a compromise and start feeling like a credible extension of a well set-up home hi-fi system – just with better road-noise control.

As the old Chinese proverb has it, “a craftsman must first make his tools sharp to do his work well.” (工欲善其事, 必先利其器, Gōng yù shàn qí shì, bì xiān lì qí qì.) On this showing, Huawei looks razor-sharp already.

Explore the photo gallery of StereoNET's visit to the Huawei Sound Lab in Shanghai, China.