As of this writing (this shows how far we work in advance) we have not gone to the Nopi, dB Drags, IASCA or USAC events....YET! But we are gearing up to go real soon. I hope I get to meet a lot of you, but I know that the competitors make but a very small portion of our readership. Nevertheless, this is the cutting edge crowd within car audio. If you are reading this and have never heard of car audio competition - yes, we have sanctioned competitions! Not that our magazine revolves solely around sound-offs, but quite a few cars from such events make the pages of the magazine and help set the standards which a lot of shops will base work on.
Speaking of standards... Lately I've been considering the question that I know others in the industry also have on their minds. It developed out of a few other people asking me, "What happened to sound quality?" But implied in that is the question: what happened to everyone's frame of reference? Right from the very first issue of CA&E in 1988 it was about sound quality. But things change. If there's a growing indifference as regards the former issue, then some of that can be attributed to a lack of attention paid to the latter. In general, it's not a surprise that SQ is not as important as it used to be, while at the same time, woofers and SPL have gained primacy among enthusiasts. Look at the number of competitors in USAC, IASCA and dB Drag. In last year's finals there were more competitors for dB than the others. In a certain sense bass is easy to get into - you take one thing to the extreme, see how low it goes, how much sound pressure you can build... It's easy to get a definite result. On the other hand, developing a SQ system can sometimes seem like an endless and fruitless pursuit.
You want someone to blame for this trend? Maybe you can look to the baby-boomer generation of parents who were happy just to have recorded music in stereo. Maybe the industry is to blame, too! Maybe the Japanese for making electronic goods so damned small (which probably has to do with their shortage of living space). Blame it on the Internet! The home stereo market has gone smaller but not really better. We have different generations of people who grew up with cabinet speakers, shelf speakers or computer speakers. Not exactly progress. These products have had a direct effect on our "standards," on what we expect from our car audio systems. Those of us with the larger cabinet speakers in the home probably tried to establish that same sound in the car. Kids today who listen to a lot of music through their computer speakers are probably more concerned with the number of songs they can download for free than the quality of the sound they're getting. Let's face it MP3 files are a step back in audio fidelity. Of course we have had headphones for quite some time. That's been a great way to get musical detail. Unfortunately most people use them while on the go, for jogging, for instance, and less in the home where they can concentrate on the music.