Attention to Detail

Attention to detail was my favorite judging criteria when I was a young installation judge for IASCA (International Auto Sound Challenge Association).  This was the beginning of the Car Audio boom (sorry for the pun....no I'm not!) back in the late 80's.  Myself, I had a "Hooptie", basically a car where the stereo was worth more than the car!  But I wasn't a "boomer", I liked my car audio full, rich, tight and it had to have a detailed soundstage across my dashboard.  A concert in my car really. 

That was only one part of the concept though.  The other was the installation. 

How you hid speakers, how you installed the amplifiers, how you integrated the whole concept into the design of the vehicle.  I'm proud to say, I was in on the future designs you see today in modern cars.  I remember while in Tempe, AZ in 1989 competing with my Datsun B210 Hatchback, representatives from Toyota were mulling around taking pictures and getting ideas from all the cars there.  You might notice some of these innovations in your car today.  Speakers in the middle of the dash pointing up at the windshield?  Tweeters in the front pillar on the sides?  Yep we did that!  Some other tricks weren't so obvious.  Some of mine were the small flat tweeters that Infinity made molded into the back of my rear view mirror wired 180 degrees out of phase with the front channels to raise the soundstage higher up the field.  Another "secret" not to be seen was to put the tweeters in the defroster vent to pull the image "forward" for a more 3 dimensional effect!  Let's just say, I've experimented a lot and I've seen a lot more than most guys in this field.

Because of this experience I was acquiring, I was sought after to become a judge of these events, first locally, then regionally and finally an installation judge at the International Grand Finals in Dallas, TX two years in a row.  That's where it got fun!  These guys were creative and IMMACULATE!  We judged on things from safety (Electrical work), to innovations, to how well things integrated, to theory, to....well....Attention to Detail!

Which brings me to the reason for explaining some things on our speakers.  You might think it's easy enough to make a set of speakers and that's what a lot of these executives for these brand name companies think themselves, but there's more than meets the eyes (or ears).

What kinds of things are important?  Sound quality?  Volume?  Sure!  But other things that you want are products that last, products that don't start to rattle in two years, products that won't cause you headaches down the road.  Long life, great sound, right?

1. First thing is that a product has to get to you intact.  We use UPS for most of our shipping.  UPS is a great company.  They do a lot of things right to get you a product across the country in less than 5 days for pretty cheap.  But to do that, they use automation.  Part of that automation is that there WILL be drops of up to  3 feet for any box that goes through their sort facility.  This is what we learned: