You drive from Stuttgart to a driving presentation in Hamburg in a fast gasoline car. Six cylinders and three liters of displacement, supported by a turbocharger, literally flatten the Kassel mountains. With its almost 400 hp, the sporty coupé could accelerate from zero to 100 in just over 4 seconds. You enjoy the thrust and the low driving noise, against which the Harman Kardon surround system has an easy game. If a compact SUV is waiting for you in Hamburg in this situation, it would be obvious to dismiss the upcoming test drive as a boring routine.
But we live in the electric age. In the top-of-the-range version with all-wheel drive, the dinky 4.23-meter short BEV called the Volvo EX30 burns the standard sprint into the asphalt in 3.6(!) seconds via two electric motors with a system output of 315 kW/428 hp. In view of range anxiety and the reassuring effect of virtually silent electric drives, it is as likely as a cargo bike rider doing a wheelie that this will ever happen. But in the solitude of the long-distance driver, I review my collected car memories on the journey, because this escalation in performance leaves me no peace.
Let’s take the Jaguar E Type V12 from the 1960s that I used to play with in the sandpit as a little boy from Corgy Toys. With its 276 hp, it took a whole 5.5 seconds from 0 to one hundred – quite a feat at the time. Or the Lamborghini Miura from the quartet of cars: at 6.7 seconds for the same exercise, it was hard to land a trick against the Italian flounder. With the 5.3 seconds of the Ferrari Testa Rossa, you were later the king in the 80s.
Silent running with over 400 hp
And then there’s this pretty, raised Swedish city van that looks as if it would be the ideal transporter for ladies with taste to pick up their children from kindergarten or go shopping at the organic food store. And it could easily leave the old heroes standing at traffic lights or on the highway until the electronic limiter reaches 180 km/h. After all, the Volvo C40 Recharge inspired me to make a comparison with the oil painting“The Fighting Temeraire” by William Turner after an encounter with a Maserati Quattroporte on a Belgian country road. In the famous picture, a sailing battleship is being towed for scrapping by a puny tugboat with an internal combustion engine.
The next morning is the day. We take to the road with the Volvo EX30. The colleague I’m sharing the test car with wants to leave early. For a morning grouch like me, this, combined with an electric shock in the Tesla Model 3 Performance (3.3 seconds for the standard sprint), which has not yet been fully processed, naturally ensures that I don’t want to savor the 543 Newton meters too intensively early in the morning. Besides, for a self-confessed petrolhead, it would be a clear case of masochism to indulge in the electric boost in all its glory. However, the tester colleague is a convert, he has just got his own Volvo EX30. And he has fun showing the octane junkie what his little friend is capable of after the driver change. After that, I’m wide awake at an “early hour”.
Place at the bar
What impresses me even more behind the wheel of the Volvo EX30 than the sheer acceleration, given the short wheelbase, which in combination with the smooth, direct steering results in very agile steering and the 1.55 meter high body, is the superior ease with which the electric SUV puts the brutal power on the ground. This is where mechanical grip and traction control tuning come in handy. Despite the impressive power delivery, the safety-conscious Swedes have not put a diva on the wheels like the old car quartet with its combustion engine line-up. Compared to the Volvo XC40 Recharge, which has been retrofitted to be electric, the EX30’s rolling comfort is also impressive, especially on manhole covers and small bumps.
I was no less surprised by what the extremely minimalist surround sound system from Harman Kardon can do. Although there are no loudspeakers or grilles to be seen in the entire front area, which enhances the simple, futuristic look of the cockpit, which is largely made of recycled plastics, the sound proves to be a worthy accompaniment to the hot ride. No wonder: the nine loudspeakers have a total of 1,040 watts at their disposal. That’s not just impressive. The surround system in the South German combustion engine I arrived in, which was also customized by Harman Kardon, is at least as impressive as the performance of the two electric motors under its hood. Respect, an impressive performance for a compact SUV.
Harman Kardon’s Stealth Surround Sound System
A lot has already been written about the electric Volvo itself. For example here or here. That’s why I don’t want to spend too long on dimensions, payload and the like here, but rather go straight into the audio system in depth. On request, Harman provided me with some interesting information that goes far beyond the Volvo brochure information about watts and so on. The basic concept is a 5.1 surround sound system in which the front mid-range speakers and tweeters have been combined to form a soundbar solution on the dashboard.
Harman Kardon is part of the Harman Group, which also represents brands such as Bang & Olufsen when it comes to automotive sound. And it was the Danes with whom Harman recently presented a very successful soundbar on four wheels. And also in an electric car, the Ford Mustang Mach-E GT, which has already been reviewed by STEREO GUIDE. The solution was not only convincing in terms of balance, but also in terms of the stage image. And the design anyway.
So I was curious to see how Volvo, already one of the usual suspects for particularly successful ex-works sound solutions with a good price-performance ratio, would fare with the whizzing soundbar? What can I say? Just as quickly as the EX30 accelerates from zero to 100, the audio package with the full name Harman Kardon Premium Surround Sound System makes it clear: the absence of loudspeaker grilles saves space in the doors, but doesn’t mean sacrificing sound enjoyment.
The voice reproduction in particular is just right
Voices like those of the indestructible Rolling Stones, who have just released a new album, sounded as natural as you would expect from the Harman Kardon hi-fi systems of Volvo, VW or BMW. There is absolutely nothing to complain about – especially not in relation to the price. The Volvo surround sound system in stealth look is standard equipment. The well-dosed and well-resolved highs were also typical Harman. They come through two 1.9 mm soft dome tweeters, which radiate upwards against the windshield on the left and right outside of the dashboard, which is covered with acoustically transparent fabric. Two 10 cm mid-range drivers sit right next to it and an 8 cm mid-tweeter as a center speaker in the middle keeps the sound stable.
The two woofers are located on the right-hand side of the Volvo EX30 and are spread across the front and rear of the car. The front woofer is a 17 cm single voice coil woofer that works according to the ECS principle (External Coupled Speaker). This type of solution is also known as a fresh air subwoofer because its bass reflex system does not lead into the car but is coupled to the outside air.
Another ECS subwoofer is used in the trunk, which even has a larger 20 cm woofer. For the rear, two 12.5 cm full-range loudspeakers have to cover the entire frequency range above the low bass.
Big stage for a small car
However, anyone who fears a loss of sound quality due to the minimalist rear equipment is fortunately wrong. Similar to Ford, Volvo also places the acoustic focus on the first row of seats, especially as far as the imaginary stage is concerned. If you make yourself comfortable in the back of the Volvo EX30, you have the feeling that the voices and instruments are coming from the very front of the passenger cabin, which is really reminiscent of a very small club where you are not standing directly in front of the stage.
In the first row of seats, on the other hand, you feel like you’re right in front of the stage or at a mixing desk with monitor speakers. The performers appear to be standing above the dashboard and look amazingly vivid. This is especially true if you select the “driver’s seat” setting behind the wheel. The QLS technology creates a personalized sound stage for each passenger by extracting audio signals from the recording and passing them on to the speakers after spatial processing in the DSP to envelop everyone in rich, detailed sound.
Dirac conducts all nine loudspeakers
In addition, Volvo once again uses Dirac Unison to harmonize the speaker tuning to deliver a coherent, room-filling sound experience for all seating positions.
Dirac Unison technology can really come into its own in the car, where you want to control a large number of speakers distributed throughout the cabin with the audio signal in such a way that individual drivers are not perceived as phantom sound sources. After all, you sit quite close to individual loudspeaker chassis in the car. The Dirac Unison software solves the problem by synchronizing multiple speakers to eliminate variations in sound quality at different seating positions and ensure impeccable bass performance and impulse fidelity. This clever approach treats the speakers and the listening environment as a single, cohesive unit, avoiding the common pitfall of individual components compromising the overall sound quality.
A Qantum live feeling
Volvo also relies on Harman solutions such as Vehicle Noise Compensation (VNC), Quantum Logic Surround (QLS) and Dirac Unison in the EX30. VNC adjusts the volume in real time to compensate for fluctuations in driving noise and maintain optimum sound quality at different speeds. This reduces the need for manual volume controls and provides a more comfortable listening experience at any speed.
Quantum Logic Surround (QLS) sound technology creates a 5.1-channel surround sound signal from any mono, stereo or multi-channel audio source. I first came across the process developed by Harman in the Ferrari FF (JBL) and in the Maserati Quattroporte (Bowers & Wilkins), where the semantic audio algorithm enabled various spatial sound modes to be remixed by recognizing the individual instruments and the spatial component – for example, to give a studio recording a touch of a live concert.
War on the buttons
In the Volvo EX30, you can adjust the intensity of the surround effects to suit your taste on the central 12.3-inch touchscreen in portrait format. As always, the motto for serious music enjoyment is: less is more if you don’t want the image to be too diffuse. However, the settings are best made when the vehicle is stationary because, as is usual with pure touchscreen controls, the virtual buttons cannot be hit so precisely due to the body movements while driving.
However, this applies to many more functions in the EX30, because the Swedes have removed pretty much all mechanical controls from the extremely smooth cockpit, apart from the steering column lever for indicators and gear selection and a few buttons on the steering wheel. Even the rear-view mirror setting is partially hidden in the depths of the touchscreen menus. This can then be done in conjunction with the steering wheel buttons.
Greg Sikora, Senior Director, Global Acoustic Systems Engineering at Harman, raves about the new Volvo EX30 with its surround sound bar: “Harman Kardon’s premium surround sound system in the new Volvo EX30 reflects Harman and Volvo Cars’ shared passion for high quality of life and aesthetic elegance. The car has been designed from the ground up to make the user’s life more comfortable, relaxed and enjoyable.”
Conclusion: Volvo EX30 with Harman Kardon 5.1 soundbar
The sound is convincing, both in terms of imaging and spatiality, as well as the tonal balance in the mids and highs. The instruments, including the bass drums, seem to stand in front of you, and the subwoofer in the trunk doesn’t stand out on the back seat either. Only the very slightly thickened upper bass proved to be a small tribute to the space-saving sound solution from Harman Kardon. Their small midrange speakers apparently forced the developers to run the subwoofers far upwards for a better connection.
And of course, you shouldn’t expect the same level of differentiation in the lower octaves in this vehicle class as in the luxury class. But for a vehicle in the compact segment, the premium surround system is just as impressive as the remarkable driving performance. In the new Volvo EX30, the Swedes electrify not only the drivetrain, but also the audience.
Volvo EX 30: Technical specifications
- Volvo EX30 price: from 37,990 euros (single engine)
- Price Harman/Kardon 5.1 Soundbar: Series
- More info: volvocars.com
STEREO GUIDE verdict
The Volvo EX30 with Harman Kardon 5.1 Surround Soundbar is an affordable, compact electric SUV for connoisseurs. Driving performance and sound quality make many sports cars look pale.
Advantages
- Natural voice reproduction
- Good staging
- Soundbar is part of the standard equipment
Disadvantages
- Somewhat soft upper bass
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Sound quality7.7
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Presi/performance sound system10
