How Volvo, Bowers & Wilkins, and Abbey Road are widening the lanes of in-car audio
What is driving? It’s an action, sure—at its most basic, it’s using a motor vehicle to take yourself from Point A to Point B. But it’s not just a task; driving is also a feeling. It’s an adjective as much as an act. Put on some driving music and it’s pure momentum—peak RPMs that tell you when to shift to a higher gear. Driving music doesn’t just fill the space; it shapes it. Turns, acceleration, deceleration, and all the notes and nuance in between.
Driving and music are transportive. Driving and music have transported me. I’m in London, at Abbey Road Studios for a day, and I’m learning what has driven Volvo Cars and Bowers & Wilkins to develop an exclusive Studio Mode that puts the ambience and enhancements of these hallowed halls into the EX90 fully electric SUV.
It’s a project that’s taken years based on relationships that go back decades. Bowers & Wilkins 801 speakers were first installed as monitors in Abbey Road in the ’80s, around the time Steven Spielberg and John Williams were working on the audio mix for 1981’s Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark. And 801 D4s now make up the LCR channels in the legendary Studio One and Two control rooms (with additional B&W speakers as surrounds).
Peeking (or is that peaking) just over the mixing consoles, the 801’s teardrop-shaped head—with its organic midrange enclosure and tapered tube tweeter—casts glistening transients across an expansive soundstage. Bracing the effortless imaging are bass cabinets that deliver all the energy and immediacy demanded, never losing footing even in the busiest mix. In total, each speaker is over 200 pounds—non-resonant, yet they resonate and remain resolute about resolution. These iconic towers are dramatic but no divas. It’s a setup “as clear and truthful as possible,” according to Marta Di Nozzi, an Abbey Road assistant engineer who explains the efforts and importance of preserving transparency.
An equal (or greater) number of B&W speakers may now be found in the flagship Volvo EV. The optional Dolby Atmos-compatible system includes 1900 watts of power pushing a 25-speaker array, featuring trickle-down technology and Tweeter-on-Top inspiration from the 800 Series Diamond loudspeakers. (We love the dynamic perspective of Bowers’ Continuum midrange cones, positioning shades of sound in Abbey Road, Volvos, and our 607 S3 bookshelf speakers.)
How a sound system, even a surround sound-capable sound system, ends up in a vehicle is relatively standard. How the sounds of a fabled recording studio got in a seven-seat close-to-six-figures SUV, however, involves far more than hereditary hardware. And unflinching accuracy might be a bit much for the average commute. So let’s explore how the DNA of past and present, of engineering and expression, of a car cabin’s blank canvas and the studio that the Beatles most famously called home, managed to … come together.
The words “Abbey Road” hold a magical aura. Opened in 1931 as the world’s first purpose-built recording studio, these unassuming rowhouses in the St. John’s Wood suburb of London played an outsized role in the musical record (and musical records) even before the neighboring zebra crossing became a pilgrimage following the Beatles’ 1969 LP. And the rooms in the legendary West London facility emanate an even more uncanny atmosphere than just what the Fab Four committed to tape on 190 of their 211 songs. So, how do you capture an aura IRL? Well, it’s actually easier than you might think to make the ethereal something palpable thanks to convolution reverbs.
Reverb is the naturally occurring echo of sounds bouncing off surfaces in an environment—it’s the character of a specific space. Many studios—Abbey Road included—would have dedicated chambers into which engineers would feed sound that they would then (re)record to add the tiny reflections that can add magical dimensionality. And convolution reverb lets you borrow the unique interactions and immersive of a real room, make it into a container compatible with DSP and DAWs, and virtually apply that depth to music, no matter where it’s recorded in the world. This is done with something called an impulse response, or IR.
Creating an IR involves playing a loud, sharp sound into a room, then recording how a space reacts as that bounces and blooms (a process somewhat familiar if you’ve used the self-tuning routines some surround sound systems execute). It’s the kind of thing requiring a quiet, empty room to be available—typically a challenge in a world-famous studio but a much easier ask in 2020, when unexpected events provided the time to transform a building into building blocks.
“During the [COVID-19] pandemic, we came into the studios and control rooms … with a variety of microphones, positioning them and filling the room with acoustic energy [with B&W speakers],’ says Dominic Bowers, an acoustic development engineer with Bowers & Wilkins (no relation). “Deep-coded into that signal is a sonic map of each of the spaces, and we use that to really tailor the sound [in the Volvos].”
Studio acoustics are an exercise in engineering and artistic expression, live and controlled sound, and those dozens of measurements provide sonic fingerprints poised for painting. But there’s more to the Studio Mode than merely capturing space; there’s also bottling time. Abbey Road has accumulated nearly 100 years of customized equipment found nowhere else, and the team spent the last two years implementing those hues into the sonic palette, as well.
“What I found really fascinating tuning sound for a car is that it’s almost like the perfect blank canvas,” says Mirek Stiles, head of audio products at Abbey Road and lead on developing software and hardware releases based on the studio’s historic intellectual property. “So we thought, could we take these tools to influence not the sound of the music as such, but the acoustics environment you’re listening to the music in? It’s not a simulation of Abbey Road, but an interpretation of the sound values of Abbey Road.”
Key to translating intention into auditory alchemy are three revered, repurposed pieces of gear (shown above): The Compander—a noise reduction system for classical music that, when used “wrong,” could add high-end harmonics; the Spreader—a stereo image manipulator; and the EMI EQ—a very “musical” curve for retuning bass. In real life, these nondescript metal boxes offer a signal chain for tone-bending as much as authentic analog tonality. While virtually, their essence goes well beyond merely emulating circuitry to add warmth or temper harsh transients.
As Stiles points out, a car’s cabin is much more claustrophobic than a concert hall or even studio control room. Digital signal processing compensates for this by manipulating the timing and volume of certain sounds to simulate direction and distance. It also takes into consideration that whatever is played will bounce off glass, metal, and plastic surfaces, which can introduce distortion when it’s not being absorbed by leather, fabric, etc. And all of this impacts tonal balance. Even the temperature and humidity in a car can alter air density and sound quality.
One plus of a car, however, is that the dimensions and where people sit are known properties, so the distance from speaker to ears is relatively uniform. These tolerances make it easier to mitigate sync issues and uneven sound distribution alongside frequency disparities. The end result of all of this is a spacious, adaptable sound mode within a closed-in environment.
So, how does all that sound in the hear and now? We head outside to a trio of EX90s, to where the rubber meets Abbey Road, and trade talking about music for sitting inside it. In a traditional car stereo system, how you hear is prescribed to you. With Studio Mode on a Volvo touchscreen, you’re presented with four presets, sure—Intimate, Open, Energised and Expansive—but also the interactive Producer mode. And it’s in this intuitive interface that the creative crucible lives.
A meter allows you to swing between ‘Vintage’ and ‘Modern,’ titling the made-to-measure response toward a more shimmering, saturated signal path or reproduction with more assertive staging. Manipulating the cursor between ‘Live Room’ and ‘Control Room’ changes how inert playback is. In addition, a slider narrows or widens the soundstage. You can tailor a relative listening position and dial in the bespoke algorithm till sound transcends a quiet London street and aspires for something more far-reaching.
My takeaway at the end of the evening is that Abbey Road Studios isn’t just a bunch of gear you tune; it’s insight into deconstructing music you become attuned to. While Studio Mode isn’t something you just hear; it’s something you drive. And, like the tight corners and exhilarating straightaways of truly transcendent songs—the ever-shifting medley making up Abbey Road’s second half, perhaps—sometimes the journey itself is the destination.
Studio Mode will roll out to Volvo EX90 owners with a Bowers & Wilkins package via an over-the-air update in 2025. It’s a compelling in-car experience that goes beyond bringing channel strips to rumble strips. As for whether future stops on the road trip could include dedicated modes in Bowers & Wilkins’ flagship Px8 Bluetooth headphones or the refreshed Zeppelin Pro wireless smart speaker, no one will say. Still, if it strikes a chord, you never know where the harmonic cycle might progress.
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