What is driving? It is certainly an act; in its most basic sense, it is the use of a motor vehicle to get yourself from point A to point B. But it’s not just a task; Driving a car is also a feeling. It is as much an adjective as an action. Put on some driving music and it’s pure momentum: peak RPMs telling you when to shift into a higher gear. Driving music not only fills the space; it shapes it. Curves, acceleration, deceleration and all the tones and nuances in between.
Driving and music are transportive. Driving and music have transported me. I’m in London for a day at Abbey Road Studios, learning what prompted Volvo and Bowers & Wilkins to develop an exclusive studio mode that recreates the atmosphere and enhancements of these hallowed halls. the fully electric SUV EX90.
It is a project that has taken years, based on relationships that go back decades. Bowers & Wilkins 801 speakers were first installed as monitors at Abbey Road in the 1980s, around the time Steven Spielberg and John Williams were working on the audio mix for 81 Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark. And 801 D4s now form the LCR channels in the legendary control rooms of Studio One and Two (with additional black and white speakers as surrounds).
Just peeking (or is that a peak) over the mixing consoles, the 801’s teardrop head, with its organic midrange enclosure and tapered tube tweeter, casts shimmering transients across an expansive soundstage. To support the effortless imaging, there are bass cabinets that deliver all the required energy and immediacy, never losing sight even in the busiest mix. In total, each speaker weighs more than 200 pounds – non-resonant, yet they resonate and remain resolute in resolution. These iconic towers are dramatic, but not divas. It is a setup “as clear and truthful as possible,” said Marta Di Nozzi, assistant engineer at Abbey Road, explaining the efforts and the importance of maintaining transparency.
An equal (or greater) number of black and white speakers can now be found in the flagship Volvo EV. The optional Dolby Atmos compatible system contains a power of 1900 watts and drives an array with 25 speakers, equipped with trickle-down technology and Tweeter-on-Top inspiration from the 800 series Diamond speakers. (We love the dynamic perspective of Bowers’ Continuum midrange cones, which position sonic shades in Abbey Road, Volvos and our 607 S3 bookshelf speakers.)
How a sound system, even a surround sound sound system, ends up in a car is relatively standard. However, how the sounds of a legendary recording studio ended up in a seven-seat, nearly six-figure SUV involves much more than just inherited hardware. And unwavering accuracy might be a bit much for the average commuter. So let’s explore how the DNA of past and present, of technique and expression, of the blank canvas of a car cabin and the studio the Beatles called home, managed… to come together.
The words ‘Abbey Road’ have a magical aura. Opened in 1931 as the world’s first purpose-built recording studio, these modest terraced houses in the London suburb of St. John’s Wood played a major role in music history (and music records) even before the adjacent zebra crossing became a place of pilgrimage in the wake of the Beatles. ‘LP from 1969. And the rooms in the legendary West London facility exude an even eerier atmosphere than what the Fab Four captured on 190 of their 211 songs. So, how do you capture an aura IRL? Well, it’s actually easier than you might think to turn the ethereal into something tangible thanks to convolution reverbs.
Reverb is the naturally occurring echo of sounds bouncing off surfaces in an environment; it is the character of a specific space. Many studios – including Abbey Road – would have special rooms into which engineers would input sound which they would then (re)record to add the little reflections that can add magical dimensionality. And with convolution reverb, you can borrow the unique and immersive interactions of a real room, turn it into a container compatible with DSP and DAWs, and apply that depth virtually to music wherever in the world it was recorded. This is done with something called an impulse response or IR.
Creating an IR involves playing a loud, sharp sound into a room and then recording how a space reacts as it bounces and blooms (a process that’s somewhat familiar if you’ve used the self-tuning routines that some surround sound systems perform ). It’s something that requires having a quiet, empty space available – typically a challenge in a world-renowned 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 entered the studios and control rooms… with a variety of microphones, positioned them and filled the room with acoustic energy [with B&W speakers]” says Dominic Bowers, an acoustic development engineer at Bowers & Wilkins (no relation). “Deeply encoded in 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 is an exercise in technique and artistic expression, live and controlled sound, and those dozens of measurements yield sonic fingerprints ready for painting. But Studio mode involves more than just capturing space; there is also bottling time. Abbey Road has amassed nearly 100 years of custom equipment found nowhere else, and the team has spent the past two years implementing these tones into the sonic palette as well.
“What I found really fascinating about tuning sound for a car is that it is almost the perfect blank canvas,” says Mirek Stiles, head of audio products at Abbey Road and leading development software and hardware versions based on the studio’s historic intellectual property. “So we thought: can we use these tools to influence not the sound of the music as such, but the acoustic environment in which you listen to the music? It is not a simulation of Abbey Road, but an interpretation of the sound values of Abbey Road.”
The key to translating intention into aural alchemy are three revered, repurposed components (pictured above): The Compander – a noise reduction system for classical music that, when used ‘wrong’, can add high harmonics; the Spreader – a stereo image manipulator; and the EMI EQ – a very ‘musical’ curve for retuning the bass. In real life, these unobtrusive metal boxes provide both a tone bending signal chain and authentic analog tonality. Although virtually they go far beyond just emulating circuits to add heat or dampen harsh transients.
As Stiles notes, the cabin of a car is much more claustrophobic than a concert hall or even a studio control room. Digital signal processing compensates for this by manipulating the timing and volume of certain sounds to simulate direction and distance. It is also taken into account that whatever is played will reflect off glass, metal and plastic surfaces, which can cause distortion if not absorbed by leather, fabric, etc. And all this affects the tonal balance. Even the temperature and humidity in a car can affect air tightness and sound quality.
An advantage of a car, however, is that its dimensions and seating position are known properties, making the distance from speaker to ears relatively uniform. These tolerances make it easier to reduce synchronization problems and uneven sound distribution in addition to frequency differences. The end result of all this is a customizable sound mode that is spacious in a closed environment.
So, how does that all sound to the audience and now? We head outside to a trio of EX90s, where rubber meets Abbey Road, and trade talking about music for sitting in it. In a traditional car audio system, you are dictated how you hear. With the Studio mode on a Volvo touchscreen you will certainly see four presets: Intimate, Open, Energized and Expansive, but also the interactive Producer mode. And it is in this intuitive interface that the creative crucible lives.
A meter lets you switch between ‘Vintage’ and ‘Modern’, transforming the tailored response into a more shimmering, saturated signal path or reproduction with more assertive staging. Manipulating the cursor between ‘Live Room’ and ‘Control Room’ changes how inert the playback is. In addition, a slider narrows or widens the sound image. You can tailor a relative listening position and set the tailor-made algorithm until the sound transcends the quiet London street and aspires to something beyond.
My conclusion at the end of the evening is that Abbey Road Studios is not just a bunch of stuff that you tune; it is an insight into deconstructing music that you become attuned to. While Studio mode isn’t something you just hear; it’s something you drive. And just like the tight turns and thrilling straights of truly transcendent songs, the ever-changing medley is from Abbey Road‘s second halfmaybe – sometimes the journey itself is the destination.
Studio Mode will be rolled out via an over-the-air update to Volvo EX90 owners with a Bowers & Wilkins package in 2025. It’s an immersive in-car experience that goes beyond taking channel strips to rumble strips. As for whether future road trip stops could include special modes in Bowers & Wilkins’ flagship Px8 Bluetooth headphones or the updated Zeppelin Pro wireless smart speakerno one will say. But when it strikes a chord, you never know where the harmonic cycle might develop.
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