"When I was 11 or 12, my neighbor would come home and I could hear his stereo like a block away," Derrick Harker says. "I decided my car would sound like that when I could drive." It took him a while to get through some so-so builds before he decided to bear down and create his childhood dream. "After years of mediocre systems, I decided to build a show vehicle, so I went and saw the guys at Sound Decision." The Sound Decision team in Montgomery, IL, got busy with his '06 Chrysler 300C SRT8.
Harker wanted a vehicle that sounded very nice but that could also play loud (remember his pre-pubescent yearnings) without any distortion. "I went high-end with everything," he explains, starting with all the Stinger Expert series wiring products. The power cable is a hefty ought-gauge running from the distribution blocks with 4-gauge running to the amps. In addition to the stock battery, a Stinger SP1000 along with a pair of 1-farad capacitors lodged into the sides of the trunk provide the juice solely for the sound system.
Big bottom end comes by way of the two Alpine SWX-1243D Type X subs. A pair of Alpine PDX-1.1000 amps boosts the signal for the dual-voice coil 12-inchers. "I know Alpine; I've already had Alpine," Harker says, "so I wanted to stay with them." Trusting the brand's quality and performance, he also opted for other Alpine goods including the PDX-4.150 and PDX-2.150 amps, the IVA-W205 head unit and the PMD-B100T Blackbird with its PMD-DOK1 docking station. A PXA-H701 media manager and 5.1 processor works in tandem with the head unit along with an iPod connection cable.
Sound Decision crafted a slot port enclosure for the subs using 3/4" MDF and an acrylic rear panel. LEDs, which are just some of the lighting used in the 300, set the interior aglow. To cut down vibration, they coated the trunk lid with Dynamat Extreme, which was also used in the front doors along with Dynaxorb behind the midbasses.
Using a double-DIN kit, the Sound Decision team swapped out the factory nav unit for the new Alpine piece in the dash. All the add-ons and peripheral devices hide away out of sight upfront or beneath the amprack.