Monocoque The Final Frontier

For many years I wrote a mad cartoon series called BoomZilla in the now long-defunct Car Stereo & Security magazine. We have started it up again right here on Talk Audio, sponsored by Morel & Fusion, although it has all taken far longer than we thought, as Son Of BoomZilla.
It started in Las Vegas at the CES show one January well over ten years ago when I was caught by a man named ‘Dr.’ Dave Thompson of US company MMats (now one of my oldest USA chums in the biz) who had a thing they called the Room Of Doom. You looked into this funny little roofed bunker on the show floor next to the bloke in the scientists’ white lab coat and just as you stood right in the danger zone of the doorway, he would trigger a tone generator. This was hooked into a tiny MMats amplifier that was driving six fifteens in two columnar boxes of three drivers. There was a sound pressure level meter and its display read 150dB while he barbecued you in what was effectively the bandpass enclosure’s port area – the bloody doorway itself!
I was momentarily enraged, then as rapidly got the joke and the scared-looking bloke admitted he thought I was going to go green and burst out of my clothes! (well, more so, anyway…) It was brilliant and got me thinking….which led to BoomZilla.

In the event the strip was derivative but great fun, thieving heavily from every superhero story ever written. I have the original artwork here from some 21 hand painted cartoon strips from back then and we are going to digitally remaster the strip with all super new generation scans and float the titles back in that were done originally on scraps of paper.
Thing is, as well as a speaker monster, we needed an alter-ego. I chose Ian ‘Iceman’ Pinder as inspiration for the ‘Zilla character (since he always wore a bandana) and a bloke called Bob Hobson as the Jim Gentry alter-ego. He was supposed to be a mild-mannered speaker technician and researcher. It was all about ‘Boomers’ versus ‘Tweaks’ and each end of the spectrum has always gripped me. Extremes of anything always do for me. For while Ian Pinder has remained as the most extreme Lord of the Lows, Bob has been replaced as the most out-there cartoon-character-worthy-of-parody SQ hound.
There are those in UK in car electronics with more illustrious paths already trodden and those with awesome, second-generation skills and huge strings of sound off competition successes behind them. (Like Carlo G and Mark T) But for me, the most out-there audiophile in the whole UK is a young man called Lee Thomas, who runs Sonic Frontiers, a Welsh outfit that sells its wares in an utterly unique way, solely by the result desired.
When Lee talks about sound quality of reproduction of music it is always about the music first and the technology that enables it as a distant second. In fact, so pure is his approach to sound that he doesn’t even like to discuss brands with his clients but rather how far they would like to go in the terms of excellence of result.
His ‘entry’ level high-end full system is called Sonic Punch and his words, “This system will dramatically upgrade and outperform factory option systems including the Bose, Boston and Infinity without breaking a sweat.” The next up is Sonic Reveal and Lee says it’ll make “audiophiles and music lovers alike feel at home.” The middle zone for Lee is the Sonic Bliss level and is described thus: “This magical system will transform your music collection into high definition.” Getting very bloody serious and called Sonic Vapour, Lee says, “Experience a Visceral Musical Performance with exceptional control, from whisper quiet to concert level volume.” But the most out there of all is the Sonic Revelation level of ordnance and install, of which Lee explains, “A magical and musical soundstage when the boundaries of the vehicle disappear into a transparent pinpoint accuracy with breath taking realism to vocals and instruments so good it leaves you convinced the musicians are in and around the vehicle playing to you.”
This may sound a bit poetic to some but it absolutely is NOT marketing, it comes from Lee’s very soul and he can back this stuff right up. For Lee has done a bonkers thing to an Astra van, just like Ian Pinder’s Astra van.
Yes an Astra van. An £80,000 Astra….VAN!
It has effectively been used as the cost-no-object research vessel. Like an audiophillic Starship Enterprise, it has gone where no one has ever gone before and in so doing has truly destroyed the vehicle’s monocoque shell as the limit of where the music sounds like it is coming from.
For the insanely three-dimensional, near holosonic sound stage in the front of Lee’s SQ Sonic Frontiers Astra van is literally, actually epiphanic. I have heard cars nearly as good and Mark Turner’s BMW is up there with that Finnish bloke’s Audi A4 I heard in ‘Vegas once that had won all of Europe – twice – with DLS kit but this is just bonkers. The sound stage is so close and fulsome that close-miked girly vox like say Adele, sound like they are right in your face. I could close my eyes, stick out my tongue and imagine I was snogging the cuddly songstress, she was so close. (Oh be still my beating heart…om nom nom!)
And Lee has done something to his ride that the most extreme bassheads have been doing for years and which most audiophiles cannot approach doing, none before ever have. Which is to utterly sacrifice every other single function of the vehicle in the cause of the RESULT. For Lee’s Astra has a no-limits level of gorgeous cabling and ordnance and is trimmed such that you can carry nothing at all, nada, in its capacious load area for fear of hurting the Alcantara trim, which is perfection and ready to show to premiership footy players and millionaires.
The ‘normal’ sound-off approach to high SQ also involves a lot of installation marks for the car’s integrity with the factory trim. Lee has no truck at ALL with that and has utterly customised the interior of the vans’ cabin with altogether more attention to sound control of the environment than any silly concept like, say, looking out of the front windscreen! For one of the (slightly classified) constructional Sonic Frontiers differences is that the headliner is extended down the front top edge of the windscreen like a frowning brow on a Frontosa fish. This reduces screen sonic reflections and as Lee isn’t a six-footer, it makes no odds to him and does genuinely help the sound.
I got in the vehicle to listen to it the first time and couldn’t work out right away what was different. Then it sank in. The interior of this van is womb-like. It so heavily acoustically damped and controlled in there, it reminded me of something and that was a recording studio’s control room. An area dedicated to good sound as what is heard in the studio affects the whole recording process. So it has to be right and artists will argue the toss about different studios they like based on the control room’s ‘sound’. It’s also why they never redecorated Abbey Road Studio 1!
So, how do you spend £80k on one stereo installation? I could go on for even longer than I have and give you reams of stuff about the methods but I won’t. I will let you know what equipment Lee has in the Astra van but in truth, all you need to know is the result is what he lives for. The fact that he was on the Talk Audio stand at the Auto Sound and Style expo recently was wonderful and means we went from the nuttiest Astra van in the UK of the Boomer world to the nuttiest Astra van in the UK of the Tweak world in one move, which delights me professionally.
There are plenty who might think Lee quite mad, but there is method in the mad effort made here. For, like the flappy paddle gearbox that was once an F1 thing and the £55,000 a pair B&W Nautilus speakers that inform the tweeters in their cheapest products as well, Lee has done some ‘filtering down’ of his methods and applications and reckons he has a much less costly system to show off at shows as well, that has an astonishing sound quality but costs just a fragment of the Sonic Vapour Plus system in the Astra.
For while Lee openly admits his systems go from the price of a set of quality alloy wheels right up to the price of a Ferrari, he manages to convey that the stuff he puts together and how he does it will be worth it to the discerning and deep of pocket and I for one salute him his business Cojones and for being as mad keen as he is. After all, if he didn’t exist, I’d have to invent him for Son Of BoomZilla and you wouldn’t bloody believe me!
The System
Heading up the dash is a sexy Pioneer headunit. The Pioneer ODR RS-D7RII. This feeds the Pioneer RS-D90 Digital Signal Processor and Digital To Analogue Converter unit, which in turn send signals of great purity to the mad-end amplification.

For simple mono bass duties, Lee uses Audison Thesis HV Venti amps, some £7,500 each and bridged from 2×200 watts to a single 800w feed to a Morel Ultimo Ten subwoofer apiece. There are two sets of this exotic amp and sub combo and the result in the car is a bass of utter taut control that can drop as deep as is required by the program material. This is the most musical subwoofer in existence (not the loudest, nor the best all-rounder – that’s a JL W7 for me…) and altogether means it’s well over a grand’s worth just for the two woofer drivers.
There are four other amps in the van’s bed just to run the front stereo three-way speakers. And these amps are as rarefied and posh as exists anywhere in the world and I’m proud that they are built in the UK by a truly off-the-hook nutter amplifier designer. They are from a hand-built brand called Audio Wave. Lee said of these, “I’ve tried a load of top amps and the Audiowaves, all hand assembled and hand built, are excellent. I like the way they sound in my systems. They are built with dedication and love!”
A matched pair of Audio Wave £6,250 CR-200X amplifiers are being used to drive nothing more than 165mm Morel Supremo midbasses in neat kick well builds. Another matched pair of Audio Wave £5,250.00 CR-200s are used to send power to the custom-built passive crossovers used in the system. These are in fact the same power output amplifier as the ‘X’ jobs but the X version is equipped with greater internal capacitor banks for bigger headroom on stuff like lower-end midbass duties. These are playing a mid and tweeter each on that amazing front stage installation and are from the Morel Elate top end range.
Batteries are Optima Yellowtops and the subwoofer enclosures are not common volume but separate sealed units and the kick well builds are not GRP but solidly made from Baltic Birch ply and “stronger than most people’s subwoofer enclosures” said Lee.
I quizzed him further about the intent of this system and was told, “I created the interior to be as if I am in a studio control room, looking through a transparent window at the artists. Some people say it’s like a cinema as it’s so wide but it’s more like a studio…”
The top end approach extends to the cables and connectors, too. Only HiFi-posh WBT brand RCAs have been used on custom-built cables using stock that costs upwards of £1,200 to £1,400 a metre. The three signal cables have cost of the order of £4,000. There are something like £2,500 worth of speaker cables in the system too. Explaining why, Lee said, “You can effortlessly hear the pluck and release of each string and the natural weight and size of the double bass. Good cable also reveals the micro dynamics – like each tap of a cymbal or snare being different in level and tone, but most importantly sheer musicality and an emotional response to the music.”
Even the seating is adjusted solely for Lee’s listening pleasure. The two Recaros are on custom made sub frames in order to make them a little lower and a little closer together as well as leaning them back just a tad.
It’s all about the result and while I can go on for longer about the build techniques, the essence is in Lee’s approach. “I’m not about brands but effectiveness, I’m selling guaranteed performance for any vehicle and if the equipment and the taste of the owner don’t match, I’ll re-organise it to suit…”
So a passionate installer and an amazing vehicle that has served its purpose as test bed for Sonic Frontiers as well as astonishing folks wherever it has gone. You see people getting out of it, looking amazed with an “I finally get his audiophile thing!” look on their faces. I find it nearly as entertaining as seeing poor innocent lasses being destroyed by bass in a hair trick in the other Astra van of legend.
http://www.sonicfrontiers.co.uk
01639 841 883