Hanging Out With The Big Nobs
There are three main competition formats that exist within mobile electronics in the UK. They are the International Auto Sound Challenge Association or IASCA, (run by a legend named John Robinson), EMMA which stands European Mobile Media Association (run by the very nearly as legendary but no relation Kenny Robinson) and the lunacy of dB Drag Racing (run by Darren Millard, known as Loudboy on our forum) which I just find invigoratingly daft and utterly addictive.
As the place where all the most serious and enthusiastic of all mobile electronics aficionados gather, it is of course vital that we support what they do and cover their activities as much as possible as well as link to their own sites. If you click over their logos, you’ll find an article beneath with details on how each contest format works.
It transpires that the chaps at Auto Audio, one of the biggest, sexiest automotive interior designers and mobile electronics specialists in the business (you should see all the hides they have in stock and they do ‘Home Office Jobs’ too..) was hosting the first round of the UK 2008 EMMA competitions at their premises in north London. They are scant three minutes away from the famous Ace Café on the North Circular in fact if you head off south over the Grand Union canal from the Ace, you’ll get to their location just near Asda’s and the Central Middlesex hospital.
To say I was impressed by the cars I saw would be an understatement of the scale of stating that I was just a bit fat. The cars I saw were just fabulous and some were so no-holds-barred posh I actually had a bad attack of ‘I-have-nothing’ depression at just how utterly gorgeous were the toys and how beautifully, perfectly installed they had been. Four distribution were there hardly surprising as they use the same marketing resource as JVC who also sponsor the EMMA scene and had some truly awesome cars there, which is where I’ll start.
A young man from Wales was present with his dad and the most incredible hifi sounding car I may have ever heard. It had two of the fabby ribbon tweeters and two very posh dome silkies mounted in the A pillars and in a mass of superb Alcantara work, the dash of the new shape Bug had a ten inch woofer nestled in an enclosure right between both channels. The true front bass sound completed a sonic impression like a set of Dali Ikons very detailed, very fast and absolutely gorgeous. The whole back has been dedicated to the install but so as to show off four of one of the world’s poshest and most expensive amplifiers the Thesis from Audison. A cool six grand each. And he has four, the first car in the world to use that many. Think that’s a lot? How about the two thousand pounds spent on Chord high end speaker cables. Up to then, the most I had ever heard of being spent in this department was a set of solid silver eight gauge cables and WBT connectors used in a Peugeot! The Chord people are true high end bods and have just sent me some terminated cables to re-wire my home theatre system for my Home Cinema Choice reference system, so I had done a little homework on them and their stuff. I had also been to thank Nigel Finn of Chord at the Bristol HiFi show recently and he told me how the guys from Four had taken him through a car and how he was impressed almost incredulous. I realised in seconds that this had to be the very car. A Pioneer ODR RSD7R2 headunit and a true domestic hifi experience. I gather the chap, Lee Thomas, also has a seriously sophisticated home stereo system that uses valve amplification and has a high end vinyl platter-slapper, too.
There was a Vauxhall Merit van that apparently had three discrete (as in separate, as against discreet meaning hidden) systems inside. One for pure Sound Quality competition, one for general use and a balls-out one for shows.
I met total diamond geezer Alexander Henry, who was one of the most immediately engaging blokes I ever met, who uses an Alpine TDA 7587R through a Genesis four channel amplifier, driving some Morel components and running Bazooka tube bass. He uses two sizes of them, an eight and a six, as they sit in different spaces within his cabin and yet they voice sufficiently well with the exalted Morels that he won a third place. And it was his first time out in competition he was made up, mate!
Then I met this laid back Panch bloke. He drives a Schoolboy Gangsta Masturbatory-Fantasy Rudeboy Mercedes. Panch himself wants an AMG CLS65 so bad he can taste it but his CL55-badged CL500 is actually tweaked to go faster than an actual CL55 and so it still is able to frighten the living **** outta him when he squeezes the loud pedal. His car’s electronics system is a paragon of awesome skill and creates a delicious totally distract-you-from-the-world quality of audio. Panch has won enough trophies for four mantelpieces. Unbeaten in Europe, as well as his 20-plus UK trophies, Panch has won the IASCA European finals, the EMMA European finals, he won at Sinsheim and has forgotten about others. His boot is a mass of high end equipment and it is nearly all motorised. Then I spotted that in EACH flank of his car’s boot nestles an amplifier with light bulbs in it. ‘Valves?’ I said intelligently. ‘Yes’, quoth he, ‘they are Genesis P15s.’ That’s £30,000 worth of amplifiers. Not unnaturally, Panch prefers not to be too known by face.
But his car was incredible. Velodyne subs, SEAS mids, horribly posh tweeters and lots of motorisation. He reckoned the total value of the kit alone was £50,000!
I then lusted after Sahnoor Hossain’s Honda Legend. Apparently, it took a year to mount a secondary, motorised-raising screen in the all-new refabricated leather-stitched trimmed dashboard and with the extra bits all painted and GRP fabricated to replace all the rest of the dashboard, it looks just incredible inside. He has an Apple Mac installed and has some lovely work in his boot. It was next to an Aston Martin DB9, who’s owner was so laid back that they let it be entered by someone else. Just check out the lovely Aston Martin engraving in the clear panel over his posh Genesis amplifiers.
The last competitor I met in the all too brief time I was able to spend there, was Bob Flynn, who drives a Mercedes Sprinter. The 318, that has fully 180bhp, being ten more than my 2.3 petrol turbo Volvo estate no wonder you can’t push the out of the way on the motorway at a ton. Not that Bob would do any such rate of progress. His van is immaculate and when you think about it who is more likely to want to do it right than someone who is in the vehicle all day nearly every day? There were three or more working wagons in the lanes but this was the most impressive. Immaculately clean in every last nook and cranny the cabin put my family rubbish tip in sharp perspective. Bob is a seriously cool, well sorted individual, who chooses to get the best kit, not because he is a tackle tart, or even that he is any sort of equipment ‘enthusiast’. It’s just that like having the utter best tool on the road for his job, any kit he is going to bolt to it shall have to be ‘right’ and for Bob that means Morel three ways, another rail of Genesis amps , hidden behind his seating and snapped with great cunning by the TA camera (pretty much on its own it was an accidental snap, really!) and capped with a posh Pioneer P88RS. He’s currently enjoying the well written and lyrically clever album from Scouting for Girls. He said, ‘The other day, I was off somewhere, the sun was coming up and Elvis Ain’t Dead came on the radio. I thought, ‘And I’m getting paid for this!”
What more can I say?
The aristocracy of car audio can be found entering EMMA (and other) competitions if you want to get involved yourself or be at shows where you might be able to ask for a listen to a system at this level of car audio excellence, then ping the link here and go see for yourself.
A major vote of thanks to judges Carlo Corbin, Gordon Taylor, Jaswinder Suman, Lee Frost and Kenny Robinson. Thanks for a real injection of joy, boys and girls.
And here’s where to click to see a funky cool slideshow in the newly imported gallery system. We LOVE this!
link
JUST A WEE POST-SCRIPT
Those of you in the know who listened to my amazed rant in the video above about the posh valve amps in Panch’s car will know that I have got the price value of them utterly and spectacularly wrong! This was due to a deadpan humour moment from the designer who told me first hand that that was what they were charging. His sense of humour is such that as well as trying you out on ever yet grosser gags to find the point when you gag, this amuses him. He does it just for his own intellectual entertainment and has never bothered correcting me. I never checked, not thinking I needed to. So that’s why: a) I am in fact a gullible pillock and Gordon Taylor of Genesis is an electronics design god but with an evil streak in humour. He’s a git but I love him!