Convertibles aren't conducive to great sound — at least not when you're speeding along in one with the top down. But with its unique, three-piece retractable hardtop, the 2006 Volvo C70 (sticker price $47,307 as tested) isn't a typical convertible — and the Dynaudio Premium Sound package that's available as a $1,550 option isn't a typical OEM system, either.

The system boasts an impressive 910 watts powering 14 speakers, including two 8-inch subwoofers behind the rear seat that receive 130 watts of juice each. But that's almost too much of a good thing. I found that the bass often overpowered the rest of the system, and I was constantly dialing it down — using the separate controls for bass, front and rear equalization, and subwoofer level — to find an appropriate and consistent level relative to the rest of the frequency spectrum. There was also the option of completely switching off the subwoofers, but that defeats the purpose of having them in the first place (and, frankly, it seems wimpy).

Complementing the subwoofers are 8-inch(!) drivers that Volvo managed to squeeze into each door along with a 4-inch midrange and 1-inch tweeter. The system also features a 4-inch mid and 1-inch tweeter in the center of the dash and a 6.5-inch midrange and 1-inch tweeters in the rear side panels. While the 8s up front ease the transition to the subs and help prevent low bass from skewing the soundstage rearward, as happens in most vehicles with rear-mounted subwoofers, it also contributed to the overbearing bass at times. On delicate acoustic tracks from Red House Painters' Ocean Beach and Luka Bloom's Turf, for example, the 8-inch drivers started to distort at moderately loud volume.

But nitpicking aside, the C70 Dynaudio Premium Sound system sets a new low-bass benchmark among stock systems, and given the choice of not enough bass or too much, I'll always opt for the latter. Along with bass, the C70 Dynaudio Premium Sound system has plenty of power on tap. When I listened to the remastered version of Neil Young's "Down by the River" from his 2004 compilation Greatest Hits, the system played as loud and clean as my ears could stand and revealed new details in a song I've heard hundreds of times.

Other system details: The DIN-size display above the system's in-dash six-disc CD changer was easy to read, even in bright sunlight with the top down. In addition to a Dolby Pro Logic II surround mode, there's also a unique three-channel mode that engages the center channel. Getting to the surround modes, however, required stepping through three different menus on the somewhat cumbersome controls in the center console.

Still, this is the first system — stock or aftermarket — that I've heard in a convertible that sounds nearly identical with the top up or down at moderate to high speeds, thanks to sophisticated digital signal processing. Blasting "The Blues Walk," the jazzy instrumental opener of Lyle Lovett and His Large Band, while cruising at about 45 mph on a winding Southern California canyon road with the top dropped, I detected very little difference in sound quality compared to driving the same stretch with the top closed. Even more impressive, the deep bass of "World Looking In," from Morcheeba's Fragments of Freedom, was just as tight and powerful with the roof open as it was with it closed. Then it occurred to me as I crawled along Pacific Coast Highway on a crowded sunny summer day with Morcheeba cranked: Isn't this the essence of owning a convertible anyway? World looking in indeed ...

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