Car Audio Security SPL Day

SPL or loudness competing has found a competition format with a purse worth fighting for…
Down by the M4 and near Heathrow airport is an industrial area nestling in the semi detached suburbia of Hayes. One of the bigger nestlers is Nestlé and the whole area can be aromatised so strongly by the freeze-drying of coffee to make Nescafé, that at times, I am sure the residents of Hayes get hopped up on evaporated caffeine. The whole area is imbued with fresh coffee aroma.
One of the other residents is Car Audio Security, with a fairly small shop area and a decently large workshop. Big enough to house the Boss’s best investment right now (versus stocks and shares) a bright red shiny Ferrari. They do have a fair few cars through to do ‘normal’ work but one of the house specialities is bass products.
Not just stocks of all sorts of things in enough quantities to do cool deals but an amazing selection of bass drivers, ready made bass boxes, subwoofer amplifiers and active assembled bass packages. At CAS, they actually stock the legendary RE XXX subwoofer and they hold the Earthquake HoLeeS-15 subwoofer in the gallery with me looking a bit amazed at SEMA with Pioneer!) They have the Vibe Black Death subwoofer enclosure and they have huge great double-woofers in stonking great enclosures all over the place in the shop.
Again by dint of good stocks held, they can also offer you a solid and well made box for just about any woofer they have, with simple black carpeting, to take away right away, fitted. It means that you can walk in the door and choose between a pair of six by nines with back boxes to slap in a van to a two by twelve or a single fifteen in any size of magnet you feel you can afford.
This has lead to CAS becoming a bassheads’ heaven with folks driving from literally all over the country to check out the nuttiest lick-it-bite-it-feel-it actual as against virtual choice of bass items. Of course if you know what you want, they do a have a big website operation, too.
Thing is, the average hardcore bass nutter wants to know just how loud his system goes in decibels and he wants to beat the other guy, so what the boss at CAS has done is bloody inspired. Since so many manufacturers do so well out of his custom, the guv’nor has been able to swag a serious prize from manufacturers as the single tournament trophy for a Bass Competition held right there in his car park.
What a bloody brilliant location it is that can do that sort of thing without neighbours to upset! Imagine your average high street with a Boom Contest! Anyway, the plot is simple.
The contest is open to any and all and you must have a ‘real’ i.e. non-wall system, with it all in the boot area and nothing slung in the back seats for competition use. It must be an actual installation.

The winner gets the PRIZE. Which for ages was a now legendary in its own lunchtime Orion HCCA15 inch subwoofer driver. On the day I went along to shove an oar in, it was a magnificent Vibe Black Death weapons-grade monster instead. You could tell that it was a serious contest and one guy (who had a car outside) who had come just to spectate as it was so awesome, didn’t want to pay his tenner to enter as he knew his car scored 139dB last time and he would be whupped.
A handgun going off is 130dB. 139dB is four times louder. Yet he was still small potatoes versus the big boys.
If you have won once, you cannot come back and thieve another trophy (As Ian ‘Iceman’ Pinder used to do all the time in the early days of bass contests back twenty years ago and made himself a pariah!) without a material change to the system, like a different box. So although it is of course intended to promote his business, you do not have to go buy stuff with CAS and you can enter over and over as long as you are investing in new woodwork each time.
In practice, this spreads the largesse and this competition was won with 148.8dB from a BMW estate with a big deep breathing beast of  a box in the boot.
I was given a radio microphone which had its output thrust up CAS’ demo show Golf which became my PA system. Doors open, it was loud and clear, although they had to turn the bass down as the microphone ‘pops’ were huuuge! I did of course talk the battery flat during the day!
An easy-up tent was set up and each car was pulled up to the Audio Control SA-3055 with High SPL Conversion and high level pressure sensor and each was given thirty seconds to do their thing. It was very relaxed but Jason and Pav, who were in charge of marshalling the cars and running the meter, were cool and professional and we always knew what was going on. (Well, mostly)
Coming along for the ride and because he just loves it, was Ian ‘Iceman’ Pinder (did I mention him?) with his spars Drew B and Mark Smith. So extreme are their bass installs that they were not allowed to enter but definitely acted as an attraction for this crowd. They all have Orion HCCA subs in common with six in the Astra and four in the Golf and one in Drew B’s Smart Car. They wear a ‘Team ICE’ sun strip sticker in their screens so you know they are brothers in bass.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8563782629905462719# 

One character who was there is a lad who called himself Bass King Ricky on Talk Audio’s forums. He’s like those contestants on X Factor who are convinced that having the largest attitude will transcend talent. He seemed to think that talking big was the same as dropping 20Hz at 180dB. Sadly, it ain’t and even though he did redeem himself by admitting, after hearing the van that ‘I’m not the King, that’s the King, right there!’ About Iceman’s mad low bass Astra, he did alienate quite a slice of TA-ers in the days beforehand!
His install would have been awesome a few years back and what he did on his own is remarkable. (A lot like Ian’s own distant youth if he recalls.) However, it is four big HCCA woofers in ready-made boxes and despite my eulogising about instant gratification, the only way to get maximum output is to maximise cubic and a lot is wasted in the back of his people carrier around the edges of his slung-in ready-mades. Plus, he installed a box of lots of six by nines immediately behind the occupants’ heads. This is pure HF hearing damage and of course gets in the way of bass airflow.
He made much bass while waiting for his go, too, which made for fun spectating but used up any electrical reserves. He lost two dB and wasn’t happy. But he’s a lad and has time to learn stuff. I just sincerely hope that all the keystrokes about how much backing he now has with expertise and funds, turns out to be true, as if he hires the right people and he does have the wherewithal to go with the Dubai-Hotel grade verbal bling, well it’ll be interesting.
If nothing happens next season, we can dismiss him. Thing is, no matter how big a hole he digs for himself, all that will affect is his popularity and that doesn’t seem to be an issue! The shop was heaving all the time I was there (pretty much all day) and one guy, who wasn’t entered was there to have a box the size (and weight) of a shed put into his car with one of those HoLeeS-15 Earthquakes!
Great Fun and like the Pure Carma guys’ £500 prize for one night’s Drift Tournament at Arena Essex, it is a single-day real-prize right now thing with a desirable outcome for the winner. A huge woofer for the victor!
It brings the maddest bassheads out of the woodwork in London and that has to be a good thing.The next one will be 28th February 2009 and then every last Saturday of the month all season. You’ll find out about it right here on Talk Audio.
Congrats on a Wicked idea, well executed.  0208 561 9485 and link
And to see some pictures – one’s reeeally cute, then click here….
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