The Daddies of 12V

Both Kevin O’Byrne and Martyn Williams join Talk Audio. Adam Rayner is honoured by the presence of the Elder Statesmen of 12V journalism…
By the God of Total Harmonic Distortion I ruddy well hate the term, ‘Back in the day’. Don’t they mean back in the days? I mean wasn’t it possible that all these things in the past didn’t all happen on one day? I’m just old (and fat) and don’t get that video games are way funner than they used to be. (I mean more fun.) Anyway, back in the day, there used to be two car electronics magazines. I devoured every word. From discovering Car Stereo & Security (Fast Forward was its quaintly analogue sub-moniker) in its second or third issue, I even wrote a letter to the editor. It was published and I’ve stood by the strong feelings I expressed in that letter ever since.

I revered the guys who made the magazines. Car HiFi was always a tad more jocular. Where CS&S could run hugely sage ‘proper hi-fi magazine’ style solo reviews, Car HiFi was more laid back. I would munch CHF whole and CS&S got the cover-to-cover treatment too. I especially loved it when Basshead O’Byrne or the Ed Unit would get to fling off somewhere overseas and come back with travellers’ tales of the monsters they had seen (and heard and felt) and the mighty deeds of judgement they had performed.
One bit Kevin wrote about a queue shuffling up and tightening like it meant it when the Assassinator Hearse install powered up and shook the ground inside the show’s perimeter fence just grasped me. The excitement of mad American installs and the passion of the true lifer was all in there. The new term ‘Ground Pounder’ was in there too and it was clear that SPL (or sheer loudness) wasn’t regarded as evil in the USA as it was in Blighty and that it was ALLOWED. It was just glorious. Don’t get me wrong, a decent set of mad end speakers on big ticket kit can actually make my nipples hurt I get so worked up, but this was revelatory stuff. Cars, systems, write ups from musicians and DJs and features on stuff I just loved.
Of course, one day I sent an article off to Kevin O’Byrne and so started my own embryonic journalism career. Later, I found myself working for Martyn on Car HiFi and in fact made at least as many issues with him as I had done with Kevin.
Kevin is the sweetest and most lovable editor any journalist could ever wish for. He is also fiendishly clever on the technical front and simply happening to be truly fluent in Italian is merely a part reason why the Alto Mobile people had him so heavily involved. Kev is a Patriarch of the UK 12 Volt scene both by activism and in journalism, both printed and virtual.

Martyn Williams is a State of the Art Chap with a dry wit and a warm heart (complete with a gentle wickedly humoured streak) and an irrepressible humour. He is capable of serious executive besuited boardroom level discussion with publishing company senior management as well as relating to yoof types (who realise he is utterly arrested in certain directions and has all the mad enthusiasms they do) and in fact partying like a Baboon when the need arises. He is also likeliest to ask some impossibly gnarly technical or deeply cutting political question at a press do. All innocent and pleasant like Columbo but just as deadly. He too was a total geezer to have as editor and never shy in telling a lad when he done good. If Martyn’s on a press trip, I gotta buddy.
Now years later, I served my four years on Max Power and seven years on Fast Car as their respective ICE editors and have been lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time to become Talk Audio’s first journalist.
 
What has happened now is just awesome.
Kevin O’Byrne and Martyn Williams are going to be contributing to Talk Audio.
We are still in our first year so things is snug and you simply don’t insult Talent with peanuts (although I am perilously close with what is in our pot!) so there won’t be reams and reams of their output for a few months but we will be getting some stuff from them.
In the meanwhile and just so the less ancient and more youthful readers can be filled in on the illustrious time lines of both these totally top bloke experts, we have a profile of The Dudes’ career exploits.
 
Kevin O’Byrne

Kevin O’Byrne is probably best known for his time as the original editor of Car Stereo & Security magazine in the early nineties, just as the whole Sound Off scene hit the UK, but his involvement in ICE began well before that.
A keen amateur musician and recording hobbyist since his early teens, Kevin left a job in accountancy to pursue his love of hi-fi. He joined an independent hi-fi retailer in West London as a salesman and later, in 1979, took a job with Pioneer’s Car Audio division. This was at the dawn of true in-car hi-fi, and he spent six years with Pioneer in promotions and sales.
His career as a freelance writer began in 1986 after leaving Pioneer to help set up a business with friend and ex-Pioneer engineer, Jim Forrest. Jim was handling product review testing for ‘Which CD?’ and ‘In-Car’ magazines. Kevin’s name was suggested as a possible contributor and he became a regular writer for both magazines. That led to a number of other audio, car and lifestyle magazines employing his services.
In 1989, Kevin joined a new publishing company set up by Trevor Preece and Clive Benton, the driving force behind Which CD?. He took on the editorship of a new in-car magazine, originally named Fast Forward and later renamed Car Stereo & Security.
Kevin’s unusual mix of knowledge – home hi-fi, audio engineering, in-car from his time at Pioneer – and his love of writing, made him almost unique. Not only able to grasp the latest in-car technologies, such as parametric equalisation and time alignment, he was able to put the subject across in a way that was interesting without being too technical, and so remained easy to understand.
In early 1989, Kevin travelled to the U.S. with Richard Lusted, of Western Car Radio in Bristol, to meet with Isaac Goren. Isaac, a seasoned IASCA event organiser, enthused the two Brits so much that they returned home determined to make it happen in the UK.
The first UK Sound Off competition in Bristol some months later coincided with the launch of Fast Forward. Many people have said how they opened that first issue to see a full page image of the inside rear of a Porsche 911, dominated by a huge subwoofer cabinet. For many, seeing that picture, by the magazine’s ace photographer Andy Wood, was the start of a passionate affair with the world of ICE.
Kevin went on to assist as an IASCA judge at many events in the UK and Ireland. When the magazine joined a pan-European press group known as ECAP, Kevin headed efforts to organise the first European Autosound Finals.

The event, judged according to IASCA rules, was staged in Bochum, Germany, in 1993. With CS&S now leading in terms of coverage of events and tips on how to improve in IASCA competitions, UK competitors came away with no less than eleven trophies from that European Finals. It included a memorable Pro Class victory by a certain Bob Hobson, (Now boss of AVHQ Diamond & DLS importers) and a third place trophy in the same class for the Toyota MR2 of the gifted and now sadly missed Pete Prince of ABC in Newbury. There was also a trophy for a dedicated amateur competitor by the name of Phil Leach. (Now owner of the legendary SQ+ in Manchester.)
Kevin, who was amongst those on stage handing out the prizes, still recalls it as his proudest moment; ‘It was like being the manager of the England team in 1966, but without the haircut!’
Going on to help organise the second European Finals in Rome the following year, as well as head judging national competitions in Italy, Spain and Russia’s first autosound event in 1998, Kevin remained a huge supporter of the Sound Off scene. In later years, while working for manufacturer Alto Mobile, Kevin was pleased to be able to help support Alex Klett and Peter Fuhrmann’s fledgling EMMA association as a sponsor.
After more than a decade as a magazine writer, Kevin’s focus switched to taking on contracts with a number of car audio electronics companies, supporting the development and marketing of new products, including the re-launch of Phase Linear.
He set up his own web design and hosting company, Kobweb-UK, in 1997 and has continued to run this alongside other activities ever since. He built JVC’s first UK mobile entertainment web site.
When Kevin discovered the joy of publishing on the internet, it led him to build and maintain CarSound.net, an early online car audio magazine. While he was unable to keep that project going, he is delighted to see that Talk Audio has developed into the vision he had for CarSound.net.
Kevin is currently General Secretary of the Mobile Media Specialist Association. (MMSA) He oversees the ‘InCar Expert Installer Network’ initiative that helps promote the independent in-car specialists to consumers. 
 
Martyn Williams

Martyn started his journalistic life testing cars and in his spare time tuning his own (he believes that, 14 years ago, he was the first to fit a 2.5 V6 into a Corsa). But after many years thrashing everything from Fiestas to Ferraris, a love of music impinged on his consciousness and brought his attention to testing the audio as well. In the early days when car audio was finally swinging towards car hi-fi, testers actually used to evaluate and comment on things like FM ‘inter-station rejection’ and multi tests of sat navs to see which ones could actually find their way from A to B (there was a time when some of them struggled to find destinations). All this is now about as relevant as a car’s choke control (what’s that?).
In the past, his quest for meaningful comparison tests has involved painstaking listening room sessions checking everything from interconnects, power cables, speakers, head units and amplifiers. One epic test session involved two analogue amps connected in series yielding a current consumption at full power of over 300 Amps! Other frightening tests involved connecting a pair of paralleled Cerwin Vega 18 inch Stroker subs to the AC mains and recording a reasonable 147dB (50Hz was too low a frequency for max SPL).
Martyn has written thousands of words on DIY projects from basic wiring to a magazine article on building a Fiat 126 with a 25 inch sub in the back and a central driving position for perfect stereo staging (at least five years before Alpine’s Steve Brown did it). Since then, he’s built a couple of multi-subbed demo cars for JVC. The most recent creation (a demo car, not an SPL vehicle) was miked up by EMMA at a tad over 170dB.
Currently he’s busy honing the 5.1 system in a nitrous-burning Corsa 1.4 (a bit of a surprise at the lights) which has an equipment line up including a Dynaudio/Genesis DM110 front end. Other cars being stabled and maintained include JVC’s 14,000 watt Colt CZT Turbo which was built in the shed at the end of the garden.

His publishing credits include editorship of a number of motoring magazines and most crucially for TA, editorship of InCars and Car HiFi for many years, including remaining at the helm as the title was sold to another publishing company. He is currently working more in multi-room home theatre journalism in Custom Installer magazine.
He was Editor of the trade title Car Audio Retailer. He was the man called to add gravitas by the publishers of the last dedicated car electronics title to be published In Car Nation – and has been flown all over the world on more press trips than he can recall.
Despite the history of press trip swanning around, Martyn’s main interests are helping enthusiasts with install decision-making and keeping up with live music. 
 
Martyn’s Random Entertainment Opinions
Current listen-again track: Daniel Merriweather Stop me
Most fun CDs this year: Live Lounge 2. Mark Ronson Version
Most amusing DJ: Scotch Egg
Best horizontal jogging sources: St Germain. Buddha-Bar. Gotan Project
Best rock n roll voices: Axel Rose. JD Bradfield. Gruff Rhys
Best Boogie-Woogie: Camille Howard
Best live sound engineering ever!: Basement Jaxx
Most sound from the least resource: Gabriela y Rodriguez. Jake Shimabukuro
Shame they’re not massive: The Delays. Kubb. Mr Hudson and the Library
My favourite track ever: Moby Go
Only two groups left in the world to listen to? Rolling Stones & Prodigy
Best restaurants: Tokyo
Best adult entertainment outside Asia: Eastside Berlin
Best small live gig area: Greenwich Village & Manhattan generally