A comprehensive study was conducted to improve the listening quality of automotive audio. There is increased proliferation nowadays of multichannel audiovisual systems used in cars. However, the interior of a car is known as a notorious listening environment due to background noise like engine, vibration and air conditioning. It is then desirable to develop audio systems that are capable of extending the bandwidth and improving the audio quality in harsh car environments. This study brings three approaches to generate the audio effect in a car. First and second section is virtual bass (VB) and voice clarity (VC), describes the bandwidth expansion toward the low-frequency and emphasizes the middle-frequency. Third section is updownmix, describes how to render spatial sound field to cope with the reflections in the confined space. This study also proposes a new system that makes use of a Noise Level Estimator (NLE) combines Dynamic Range Control (DRC) to adaptively adjust the gain of an automotive audio system. NLE and DRC are used in the system for noise estimation and automatic gain control, respectively. The system needs one microphone to receive the noisy signal. Background noise level is estimated by a system that uses Least-Mean-Squares (LMS) algorithm and then calculated a priori signal to noise ratio (SNR). According to the static curve designed in advance, the gain of the audio input can be adjusted dynamically based on the SNR determined. These processing algorithms have been practically implemented on a car. Simulations and experiments were conducted for validating the proposed adaptive audio gain control systems.