Week Thirty-Two In Which It’s Lovely To Be A Team GB Fan!
Ultimate Street Car at Santa Pod was a bloody hoot, despite heavy rain on day one in showers and some beastly hailstorms that kept the track too wet for much Run What Ya Brung Action on the Sunday. The atmosphere was lovely, as we kept getting waves of news around by word of mouth as folks following things told of Olympic medal glory. Yours truly attended Sunday and took stills and video on the sexy new Talk Audio Sony Handycam. The sound off attracted a nice slice of Sound Quality and boomer SPL competitors and somehow, the old days of IASCA, when the SQ was seen as sanity and the boom seen as a necessary evil, are so long gone, it’s almost funny. I once got into terrible trouble at a show for running the UK’s first ever boom install at a show at Wembley. The whole EMMA community lives at peace, though.
Way back when, just after I had moved from pro audio to car audio, I briefly regretted it as I got bollocked publicly by some effing nonentity on the microphone at the end of the Wembley show. He said I had spoiled the show by being noisy yet didn’t realise that he was going to be proved so utterly wrong. That such an attitude even existed is bloody laughable these days and yet bassheadedness has not dimmed the ardour of the top end audiophiles one bloody jot. And with guys like Christian Martin coming up through the SQ ranks so fast, it’s clear that there shall be a happy marriage of high quality and lunacy for years yet. I don’t know what caused the old snide feeling, whether it was the then crop of judges just being superior and snotty (may well have been) or whether it was the ultimately litigious USA format? It certainly wasn’t the management as IASCA’s UK owner was a total superstar and the only man to have FLOWN a sound off car to the USA. {The answer to the next questions are £15,000 back when that was a lot of money to put a Ford Scorpio estate in a Jumbo jet.} I do know that Pa Bear and the whole Ackerley family make the current management a super team under Andrew’s guidance. They are definitely the best thing to happen to sound off in years.
I have had an era change in my car and fitted a Parrot Asteroid. Oh my is it different to a regular headunit in road use! And the sheer power and cunning over a thing that played CDs and took FM Radio is staggering. Like our leader on TA who started all this, Guru, says, ‘You have to get with their logic, which is not always convenient.’ And he should know, as he has been running one for a year in his ride. MeJulie pulled a face when I brought her CD caddy indoors from the car’s sun visor but she gets the mirror back, so what’s the issue? But with us BOTH running one when we can choose anything, I leave Guru’s as the last comment: ‘I’ve not seen anything else that makes me want to rip it out of the dash.’
Mister Parrot is visiting on Friday and I am going to try their Zimku Bluetooth speakers as well, which should be fun. On Wednesday I am going to Sony to do a clip about MirrorLink, plus I still have a heap of ice reviews and admin to do, so I’d better stop blithering…
Oh and I have no idea who the poor lady I papped was, or what she was doing at USC. I am not sure she did either by that point, as I have to tell you, she was under multiple 150dB+ p.a. bullet sound system assault from three directions! Lastly and leastly, keen TA followers who spot this in the moments after it is published tweeted and Facebooked, I am on BBC Radio 2 at 1:30 pm (two hours from typing!) talking about parking strategy in a crowded town!
Adam Rayner On Line Editor