.jpg "Building the system in my 1991 Red Sentra was my labor of love.") |
Nebraska winters demanded
removal of all wheel hubcaps
to protect them from salt |
What would you do after failing to build your small business ? I stood up and got to work.
In my business blog I often discuss the benefits of allowing businesses the development of apprenticeship programs by removing the burden of a minimum wage. I argue that for workers without alternatives, working for a low wage is often the only way to get back on track. Of course that I speak from personal experience.
.jpg "Those in the audio circuit used to make fun of the fact that my car could not do any SPL despite having an Epicenter. The truth is that after building the system, I found it best without it. Later, I never found the time to take it out.") |
Competitors used to make fun of
having an Audio Control Epicenter
while lacking any level of SPL |
After failing with my small car audio shop in 1991, Inphase hired me for what could be called exploitative wages by those in government. But even to this day, I am still thankful that they did. They granted me the stage to build a come back.
.jpg "Car Audio Magazine's Doug Newcomb liked the fact that the car looked very factory despite all the modifications.") |
Cavalier Z-24 fabric used instead of
the cheesy Nissan factory plastic |
While employed at Inphase, they allowed me shop time at night to work on my own car. After having experienced great initial success in competition the year before, I was ready to go all the way. This was especially true considering that at the 1991 IASCA finals in Oklahoma City, we did not receive a couple of our well deserved trophies due to mathematical score miscalculations. By the time the trophies made their way to us, several months had passed and the trophies were in terrible shape. We were denied the right to enjoy the winning circle in front of our peers.
.jpg "My Denon CD player was sweet sounding while also looking factory.") |
Even the Denon CD player looked
like it had been installed by Nissan. |
I worked hard to build my Sentra for the 1992 Masters in Georgia but ended up finishing the install very late. While the fabrications were by far the best I had created up to that time, we faced driving none stop from Nebraska to Georgia. I did not sleep for six days trying to finish the car and to make it there. On the way there, I lost control of the pulling vehicle and trailer while driving down hill in Tennessee. After spinning, the trailer's axle broke and the car was damaged under the passenger door. Despite the bad luck, we abandoned the trailer and drove both vehicles the rest of the way.
.jpg "Mounting proprietary passive crossover networks inside of a car seat was no easy task.") |
Front seat mounted crossover
networks basfled more than one. |
After arriving, everyone was very impressed with the install. For the first time, a car displayed extensive passive crossover networks inside the front seats. Also noteworthy was the fact that the thin Nissan doors hosted 9" woofers while still allowing the windows to roll up and down. Finally, this was also the first time that someone was using the massive 9 Lbs Cabasse tweeters in a car.
.jpg "From the diminutive kick panels to the very thin door panels, the car maintained the feeling of being factory built.") |
For midbass, a ceramic 9" woofer.
For mids, a unique 4" driver with phase
plug and inverted surround. For highs,
a massive Cabasse tweeter. |
But bad luck was to continue. While going through the RTA, the vehicle's curve would not go up to the reference level and the RTA judge refused to reduce the equipment's level; despite the fact that the rules clearly allowed for it. At Masters, the judges were so stressed out that they simply pushed everybody through. My RTA was very good, just not loud enough. Had they moved the window down three dB's the whole curve would had displayed complete while also scoring as good as the best. But with half of the curve outside of the window, the point deductions were simply too big.
.jpg "During a time when people were creating monstrous door build outs, mine felt fresh and a bit zen in comparison.") |
While nicer that the cheap plastic
factory door panels, these still
looked Nissan approved. |
My scores for sound and install were exceptional. But not enough to compensate for the low RTA. I placed well in my class but just missed going to Sunday for the big money show.
Nonetheless, it was all a dream to me. Those days were the funnest of my Audio career. I loved working very hard even when outcomes were not as good as they could be.
.jpg "Where speakers would otherwise be installed, I placed part of the crossover network inside the rear deck.") |
Passives, passives and more passives.
Even the rear deck had to showcase
a few of the network components |
After coming back from Masters, I took a few pictures of my car (see all the pictures in this post) and sent them to Car Audio Magazine, at the time it was the best periodical in the world. To my surprise, the magazine accepted to feature the car in the prestigious Installations section; a fact that made me feel like walking on air.
.jpg "The system architecture was simple. I have always preferred the minimalistic approach.") |
Trunk lid mounted volt meter
and system diagram |
Later I would go on to much greater things. I built one of the most successful competition teams in the US.
We got to the point that we were getting so many trophies that we had no place where to put them all. In fact, Inphase and Stereo West still have all of mine. While doing car audio, I also went back to school; something that has taken me to great places around the world.
.jpg "Yes, I did lots of crossovers. The networks were so complex that it was hard to fully comprehend even with a complete network diagram.") |
I love passive crossovers. At the
time, I tuned all of them by ear. This
is the diagram showing the
many components used |
But no future success ever compared to how great it was to be naively in love with Audio. I was happy to be given a chance. I am thus perpetually indebted to Dave Eary at Inphase for his trust.
Thanks to the many great moments the sport gave me, I feel to be a lucky man.
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why did you run the peerless 8 inch basses in the rear side panels?
ReplyDeleteIn hind sight, it was a bad idea. But I need to remind myself that there was a time when much of the art was a mystery and the science was well beyond my understanding.
DeleteI remember reading about the Holdaway cars; the Grand National that was bought by Richard Clark , and the Acura Legend owned by Harry Kimura. Speaker Works were ahead of their time. They launched waveguides, aperiodics and kick panels into the car audio scene; all which went on to become technology icons over time. Well, both of these cars used midbass placed in enclosures on the rear quarter panels. They were also winning everything in their respective class.
The idea seemed to make sense at the time. I had already discovered that midbass in the doors would always cancel based on vehicle dimensions. Trucks, cars or vans were all destined to have a dip centered at about 400Hz. This explains why car audio systems lack 'body' when compared to the simplest of home systems even today. No amount of equalization or amplification would solve this issue. I had to find a solution. In my case, I knew I could keep the door speakers as woofers. But the midbass frequencies needed to be solved.
Placing one speaker near my outside ear and the other further away from my inside ear would move the cancellation out of the midbass band. You double the difference between the distance of the two drivers to your ears and that will be the cancelling wavelength. In paper, it was worth testing. Today, we would just use a computer to model it. Then, I did everything by ear, even my crossovers' part selection.
A potentially good aspect of using the quarter panels that other places in the cabin would not easily allow was the deployment of a solid enclosure. I always admired how much body small monitor speakers projected because of their use of a real enclosure. While many installers would claim to use enclosures for mids or midbass, most of them were leaky at best. Over the years, many of the best cars in the US found their way to my shop for the purpose of solving acoustic or noise problems. So I am qualified to say that their so called enclosures were shameful attempts, but no more.
Part Two:
DeleteNow that placing the midbass at the quarter panels proved to have three main problems. First, there is a big headphone effect. When listening to headphones, it is impossible to project a stage in front of the listener. So while the kick panels were trying to create the stage, the midbass kept pulling it back in a weird way.
Second, the experiment proved once again the importance of path length equalization. The two lengths were quite different. This meant that there was a very strong near-side bias quality to it. While I was trying to make center images stronger, the soloists body kept moving towards the outside of the car. I later tested them as woofers and still found the discrepancy in path length to deteriorate bass quality. In a nutshell, you just can't have speakers where one side is so close to your ears. From that point on, I only tried mega long path lengths.
Finally, Most woofers have some cone created color. Something about moving large masses at very high speeds means that if you have such a speaker close to your ears, you will inevitably hear the color as a distortion; albeit a faint one. After that, I went on to search midbass drivers of exceptional speed and stayed away from slow speakers like Boston Acoustics and ADS.
In the end, I became disappointed. The Peerless sat inside the car for a few years but never again played any music. I only took them out before selling the car after I moved to England. I still have the woofers. They are pretty good bass drivers. Because of their size, they could not be used for the deepest of bass. But they could do very well in a nice project.
On the other hand, the idea of placing midbass at the rear quarter panels died soon after birth. Even the Holdaway cars and their systems faded into history. Thankfully, the experience made me place midbass in the floor of my car. There, path lengths were symmetrical and cancellation moved way higher in frequency. My car would move on to having much more imaging and a very sweet, robust sound. By my standards of today, the car would be a very good car at best. But for back then, it was the beginning of a long relationship with stupendous sound; car or home.
Here is the link to the Holdaways page
Deletehttp://www.usdaudio.com/about/
i know the legendary speakerworks cars well. as you di, i studied them voraciously
ReplyDelete