HAT: The International CES, Las Vegas 2014

My BIG thing is magnets. I never outgrew the fascination. As I learned a bit more about magnets and how an electromagnet could be so mighty, I was smitten. But essentially, the absurdity of trying to make really good impersonations of sounds reproduced, by use of magnets and coils of wire, is gently bonkers and I love it. Thus, the hardcore materials scientists that is scientists who mess about with plastics, composites and weird fibres as well as playing alchemical shizzle for ever yet more potent magnet substrates or structural alloys for aircraft use are amongst my favourite people. The sweetly fabulous DuPont company, oddities like 3M, all have delights for me, in some odd ways. (But a 3M Scotch Lok is NOT a truly permanent solution in my personal experience, even when using the right thicknesses of wire.)
But my favourite empirical nutters are speaker designers.
VERY like musicians, they need the same things in their lives to be complete and whole. Without it, they may be caught singing badly to themselves and making crappy beat boxing noises with their mouths. And often they are lonely souls. For very few people get what the living heck they are on about most of the time. I can do a really good show of understanding it all, even if I am down to grasping only every third word in reality. I ask a ‘˜corollary question’, thus proving I got something basic and they are delighted and happily tell me all about how they did what they achieved.
And one of the single most bizarre places to put speakers is in a car, for we are not given the joy of placing speakers where they make acoustic sense, but rather those locations the car makers leave us. Only Lexus to my knowledge could care about this and even new Aston Martins with Alpine electronics and Linn speakers had to use the stock locations, no matter HOW sexed-up the audio story was. That was years back and I do not think they shape the monocoque for speakers yet.
The USA has a serious amount of loudspeaker manufacturing companies, from the literal living legends of JBL and Altec Lansing, to the bass heavy lunacy of sixty-year veterans Cerwin-Vega and modern high end outfits like Wilson Audio. And the USA has a delicious community of car audio sound quality fanatics. Some while back, I became aware of this small speaker company who’s speakers were quietly causing a storm in the world of sound off competing.
They kept ON winning. It was like JL Audio subwoofers. All the best SQ competitors used them. Hybrid Audio Technologies were their name.
And as I plodded around the front of the legendary North Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Centre, I would check my new Galaxy S4, on its super limitless data SIM (that never properly worked for me on texts, the whole trip, nor let me get calls from home, no matter what version of the number I forwarded it to. And whose customer services ran out of compassion on my ass. I shall name and shame only if they fail in my total promised refund!) and I would look at Facebook.
I had been issued an INSTRUCTION. This was not optional.. for the Hybrid Audio Technologies folks were in town, on a stand in the North Hall and had a legendary car that no-one was ever allowed to sit in, except judges really, on his stand. I was to go and see them or else suffer the wrath of my readers
So, I found the man, read the amazing framed citation letter.. extract below

And steamed in. Scott was a total gentleman and knew all about Talk Audio and what I did and right away invited me to sit inside and listen to his car. This is a privilege up there with the time I got to sit in the Galpin Scythe for the level of honour and exclusivity, as this is simply NOT a car that lots of folks have leapt in and out of.
I took a few pictures that do not begin to do the car justice, yet it is for sale and is the correct hand drive for the UK, as you will see if you watch the video below. I’ll pop a few more pictures up after the video.
http://youtu.be/DPBJQ9OSG4g






But this gallery of pictures has the whole lot that were half way useful. It was about then that I was really missing a damn professional cover-shot grade snapper, the £500+ a day kind..
Gallery
And yes, as the screams and shouts and a HAT fanboy may have actually vocalised out loud at this point, demanding to know what it sounded like ring in my ears, it was horribly hampered by the hall’s gentle hubbub. As you will see in both the Dalek and the monstrous Orion truck videos, the CEA won’t put up with absurd SPLs in the show halls. But it was loud around 70 to 80dB of throb.
But I played it and at a few different volumes to hear the automatic re-equalisation for different levels of playback such that the lack of linearity inherent in all audio kit that remains at the mercy of the Logarithm, is conquered.
It was smooth and yet also able to be cranked to the point that a bit of the old chimp-snogger himself, Michael Jackson, was as punchy and brilliantly crisp as his obsessive genius insisted it was. I kid you not, all he had was thriller as he had made some discs but not checked if the fussy Denon transport would deign to notice them. It did not.
But the seating position and the speaker locations are a big slice of the story. That and a whole refabrication of an entire dash area, as it is one big speaker grille. There is more science and development in the car than many thousands of words would do justice to but I would love it if some wealthy stiff who could afford to trailer this queenly ride around or else have a crew to maintain its exotic self and drive it under the Toy Story 2 Directive, I would love to see it here in the UK.
For sale, never raced or rallied..