The all-new Volvo EX90 EV, in partnership with Bowers & Wilkins, is introducing an unparalleled audio update next year: Abbey Road Studios mode. Smarter than the average EQ, this feature transforms your vehicle into a mobile concert hall, delivering music with the

precision and clarity of a professional recording studio. And I was able to get a listen at the source of the inspiration: Abbey Road Studios in London. Here's how that went. Now, for most folks, home and home theater audio aren't a high priority for a variety of reasons: cost, space, etc.

So, choosing a premium audio system for your car is often the closest that most of us will ever get to experiencing big, bold, high-quality sound outside of a movie theater or a live concert. The Volvo EX90's optional Bowers & Wilkins audiophile system is among the

most impressive, with 25 speakers, including Nautilus double-dome tweeters, Continuum mid-ranges, and the brand's signature tweeter-on-top design borrowed from its home and studio speakers, which is replicated here with a center channel tweeter that protrudes

proudly from the top center of the dash. There are 1,610 watts of total amplification and Dolby Atmos processing for spatial audio with services like Tidal and Apple Music that support it. The new Abbey Road Studios mode builds on that hardware with bespoke processing

that puts passengers in all three rows into the audio space of the hallowed Abbey Road Studios, where hundreds of artists, from most famously The Beatles to acts like Foo Fighters, Adele, and Lady Gaga, as well as the scores for films like Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Lord of the

Rings trilogy and the Star Wars films were recorded, and helping to shape that sound along the way is Bowers & Wilkins, which has worked closely with Abbey Road for decades. Providing speakers and audio expertise, during the pandemic we came into the studios and the

control rooms, and basically what we captured was impulse responses. So the process is, you're using B&W speakers and a variety of microphones, positioning them around the studios, and you're filling the room with acoustic energy. The microphones will capture

that signal, and deep coded into that signal is a sonic signature of each of the spaces. And we use that sonic signature to really tailor the sound, so you can be in a control room, so quite a dead sounding room, into a live room, and you're going to experience that in

the demo here today, but also in the car. That was Dominic Bowers of Bowers & Wilkins (no relation, I think) explaining how that process ensures that every note, every instrument, and every vocal resonates with the same authenticity as it would within the walls of Abbey Road

Studios. Now, the way that you interact with Abbey Road mode in the EX90 is actually pretty intuitive. On the touchscreen, you've got a couple of modes at the top, but the main event is this large virtual studio that you can interact with at the bottom of the screen. Now,

swiping to the left on this display will actually make the sound more vintage, more like the sound that was in the studios when the Beatles were recording, for example. Swiping to the right gives you a more modern, clean, and clinical sound. Now, if you swipe up, you get a

sound that is more like being in the studio with the musicians around you, more of that sort of live music experience. And swiping down towards the bottom of the screen brings you into the recording booth for, again, a more clean and punchy sound. Along the bottom,

there's also a slider that allows you to move the virtual speakers inward and away from you for a more intimate or more broad and open sound. And it's not just the music. Volvo and the gang are using that same processing horsepower and audio know-how to change the spatial

feel of the entire cabin, including your voice. Here's Abby Road's Mira Calix-Styles explaining the thinking behind that. "It's also, um, quite, can be like a claustrophobic experience. You're in a small environment, um, with speakers quite close to you, and the, and the workings, um,

sound system is absolutely brilliant, um, beautifully tuned. But we just thought if we started to add some of these tools on top, could we use these tools to sort of take the sound a little bit out of the cabin, you know, change the environment of the cabin a little bit. So when you

activate Abbey Road mode in the EX90, there are microphones around the cabin that are capturing sounds in the vehicle, from the voices of passengers to maybe dings and beeps coming from the dashboard, to maybe even the sound of you adjusting in your seat. And it applies

that same spatial processing, feeding back through the speakers. The result is that the whole cabin, not just the music or the podcast you're listening to, feels wider and much more room-like. There's less of that echoing off the glass and more of a big space that you hear. It's a

a bit odd, especially if you're not listening to any content, but it gels nicely with the playback to create a cohesive listening experience. Overall, I was extremely pleased with my listening session, both with the ease and novelty of being able to tweak the listening

space, but especially with the overall sound of the BMW system, which I was also able to test on the road earlier this year. If driving a music studio isn't your cup of tea, you can always disable the feature with a single tap. Plus, the teams at Volvo, Bowers & Wilkins, and

Abbey Road aren't finished yet. They've got plans for more applications and more modes in the future. This is just the start. Um, this is almost the minimum version of what we could work together to distill, because there's so much we could do. But, of course, we can't tackle

everything day one. So this is, this is, this is version one. There's more spaces, there's more spatial control we can do. There's so much more equipment we might choose to harness. Uh, there are more presets we can, we can choose to develop. Um, we will include the, um, custom presets

as well at some point. So, so this platform is very much been developed so that we can iteratively update in, in, in, in the Volvo, and the, the, the, the Volvo platform very much allows us to do that with the over-the-air updates. Uh, and

that's, that's a part of the journey we're on with Volvo, too. Abbey Road Studio mode will hit the road in the 2025 Volvo EX90 early next year. Again, that's 2025. The mode will come via an over-the-air

software update. So if you're already an EX90 owner, or you've picked yours up before the live date, you'll be automatically updated. And presumably, those extra modes, spaces, and features that Dan mentioned will also come via updates thereafter. You can head over to cnet.com where we've got a full first

look at the 2025 Volvo EX90 EV and a deep dive into the rest of its technologies and features. Drive safe, and I'll see you there.

I Tried Out Volvo's Abbey Road Mode: What It Sounds Like to Drive a Music Studio

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I Tried Out Volvo's Abbey Road Mode: What It Sounds Like to Drive a Music Studio

I Tried Out Volvo's Abbey Road Mode: What It Sounds Like to Drive a Music Studio

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