The Iconic Abbey Road Audio Experience Is Coming to Cars—and Maybe Your Next Headphones

Perhaps the most striking thing about Abbey Road Studios’ rare and obsessive sound is that it relies, in part, on a variety of homemade, one-of-a-kind gear that, to the untrained eye, looks It feels more like home in a quiet corner Doctor Who.

“When Bowers & Wilkins asked us about Studio Mode, the first thing I asked myself was, how do we make it real?” Mirek Stiles, director of audio products at Abbey Road Studios, told Wired. “Abbey Road and its parent company EMI made their own compressors, suppressors, etc., especially in the 1950s and 1960s, so how do we capture those sounds?”

This meant that Bowers & Wilkins and Abbey Road Studios not only found themselves trying to capture the “sound fingerprint” of a physical room and import it into the digital realm, but they also found themselves trying to replicate a unique, singular effect. Robinson-esque studio equipment. This piece of equipment from Abbey Road Studios is something of a legend in the world of professional recording, so much so that when one of these artifacts turns up, there’s a lot of interest, and Bidding is wild.

Despite the obvious and considerable challenges of bringing the Abbey Road Studio model to market, Mirek seems very pleased with the results. “The cab of a car is a small and hopeless environment. But I already had a few tools that I thought might be useful, and what was important for authentic sound was the recording equipment in the studio and the techniques used by the recording engineer. Once the studio sounds are mapped into physical meaning, extensive experimentation results in a reliable formula.

I’ve heard of the Abbey Road Studio model in action, and frankly, its effectiveness is indisputable. The colorful and immersive user interface is almost reminiscent of the garage bandallowing Volvo EX90 owners to adjust 180 degrees horizontally between “retro” and “modern” studio sound, as well as vertically between the studio and control room. Users can select a position on either of these two axes for the sound they are most satisfied with and enjoy a visual display that feels ahead of any other automotive in-car audio experience available.