Hot Voice Coils at Brands Hatch in the Sunshine – EMMA Round 4
It was the fourth round of the European Mobile Multimedia Association’s UK sound off series at the Modified Live show at Brands Hatch on June 25th and 26th and I was there on day two to check out the action and to give out the prizes. These also included three sets of sixty quid’s worth of Dodo Juice goodies direct from Dodo Juice themselves. Three names out of the free raffle for competitors only resulted in some happy boys with even shinier-cars to be!
As well as the Sound Quality classes, they ran the ESPL bass contest format and as they had the time and the ability, also allowed some off-contest daft-testing in ‘˜outlaw’ style which was really the lads being allowed to play silly buggers with the official test equipment, placing the sensors in the port mouths of some big bass installs.
Interestingly enough, the maddest actually-in-reflex-port SPL recorded was about what Ian ‘˜Iceman’ Pinder’s Astra van was able to muster at the screen. They were getting numbers into the one-sixties! But Project Big Black did manage to make a clear 150dB of music with the EMMA disc’s SPL track of 2011, which is always different each year and is a simple tune without daft bass tone lines. This makes it more of a challenge to raise truly huge SPL and interestingly enough, in a bizarrely hooliganistic fashion, you can stay sat inside the vehicle while on a run. None of that pompous ‘you-must-be-outside’ ruling from IASCA guys here. (In my opinion, the USA fear of litigation spoiled a lot of their rules’ approach and feel. Stuff like ‘˜teardowns’ in particular were horrible and all about accusing others of cheating and taking their systems apart!) And furthermore, while install is also a factor and there are points to be won and lost for the excellence of your work, there is also an ‘˜average’ score method at work with a doors-open reading also being taken into account.
The slight ‘˜ruse’ is to have friends preferably Men Of Girth to crowd around your open doors and thus help still keep some more pressure in the cabin as the doors-open reading is usually less than the doors-shut one.
The boss man Andrew Ackerley was, as ever, in cool control of the whole scene. With a team of help, all of whom had to camp on slightly sloping Tarmacadam to be there all weekend, so hats off to their resourceful and intrepid nature! Now Andrew is not at all self-promoting and is not one to appear suddenly waving in the background of a video (called ‘˜Lurking’ – check out the Earthquake R32 video for Ed Elson giving five star ‘˜lurk’) but is rather self-effacing. But I still managed to get him on video in an account of the exciting stuff happening with Pioneer and Subaru. Check the video below, he’s right at the end and despite knowing he will die of embarrassment when he sees himself, he’s great on camera and comes up with an idea that is damn good.
It was a lovely sunny day and the Modified Live organisers had placed us in a prime spot, a tiny distance from a gate, on top of the loos/posh eatery block and with a nice area of hardtop. Most of the show was spread along the grand stand area, with a lot of the entrants going walkabout to enjoy the rest of the show after they had been judged. All part of the cool atmo at an EMMA event.
It was lovely to meet up again with a lass called Laura-Jane, as I had seen her at far-flung Oulton Park the previous round and she was all a bit flabbergasted at how suddenly big the coverage of her poor bass-wobbled breast implants had been. She was with a fellow BritishMods promo babe named Frank-Grace (oooh I doo love hyphenated girls names, soo sexy-posh!) and they were inveigled by myself into going for another hair trick. It was the Bass Zone van as tickled her last time but this time the PBB might was mightier and when asked ‘˜How was it for you?’ afterwards, she said ‘Seriously Good!’ with a throaty chuckle and got a spontaneous laugh from the assembled bods all snapping over my videoing shoulder!
As well as going off to interview the top bloke of Scooby UK’s relevant department and get at the lesser-spotted Pioneer OEM-side top-cog Phil Barker in the video we got Ackerley-san involved with, I had to try the localised 3G WiFi spot they had set up in the Pro-R promo trailer. I took my 4th Gen iPod Touch and connected to the car’s iPod dock and wirelessly to Pro-R’s hotspot. Then I called up Talk Audio, obviously. I opened the last show event report on the Modified Nationals (findable under the Features drop down, under Shows & Events) and scrolled to the Babewash video embedded within it. Then, I touched the ‘˜play’ triangle on the iPod and the connected head unit, in App Mode, played the video with perfect clarity. Check it out below. Of course, we were subject to 3G issues briefly on streaming but it rocked!
The Subaru folks had a brace of leggy promo girls and also another tribe of promo girls from the brake company they are also involved with present. It was like being at a Formula One event. Here’s the whole lot of them.
There was much jollity and sunburn in the sunshine, with one particularly sensitive Ginger Type either brain-raddled by his own bass or else struck by the sun, for he went for a stroll on the roof of his jeep
And in another first-ever-filmed rare Snow Leopard style, I also managed to persuade sound off legend Dave Legg to be in a video inside his deliciously lovely Pioneer ODR super-SQ Mercedes. He is really even less keen than Ackerley-San to do video, so I allowed the dark-profile type appearance to be used. His SQ install is just awesome. And I mean that in a thoroughly British, rather than American style. As in actually inspiring true awe.
It was a relaxed and fun day out, with deadly purpose for the competitors who really are stepping up. The standard is rising steadily as folks make their corrections and minor ‘˜Kaizens’ to their systems.
The next round is any second now! At our very own ICE-T19 event in Oxfordshire. Even if you are not a sound off type, if you like car audio, it is a must-attend free to enter event for Talk Audio people. So if you are reading this, then hey, sign up to the forum and check the thread out under meets and events and come along!
Looking forward to seeing y’all there.
And lastly, a gallery of all the above, plus a few more shots is to be found here: link
And of course, if you want to see the roll-call of glory, I won’t thieve the entire content this time (!) but instead urge you to go check out the EMMA UK website right here link