Last Sunday on the 3rd of June ABTEC had yet another dB Drag Sound-off Event at its Lower Hutt Workshop. Due to the weather and the long weekend it wasn’t the biggest turn out we have had, but in saying that it was a good bunch of people, we all got to talk on more personal level and i finally got to put a few faces to some names.
The morning started off pretty good with one of the competitors turning up two hours early to help Ashley and myself set-up the dB Drag Trailer and Workshop. This to myself shows that this man is a very keen competitor and I must say thank you for helping out Vaughan!
Soon after all the ABTEC Team turned up and started toying around with their cars, followed shortly by the competitors and a small crowd of spectators.
Now it was time to start bringing in the cars and SPL (Sound Pressure Level) testing them! There was some impressive results and a few hiccups but nothing that can not be fixed in due time. I myself kept on running out of juice when doing ‘Burps’ but was fine when playing music, everyone else though was doing pretty well and Darryl Burrell managed a new Personal Best of 152.8dB with four Entry level JBL 12″ Sub-woofers with a truck load of power behind them!
After all the SPL ‘Burp’ test’s it was time to try out the NEW dB Drag Class ‘SOUNDS ALIVE’ . This is a class that personally I am very excited about, as a music lover and musician I have never really seen the point of doing a ‘Burp’ as such and to myself it isn’t that impressive. What does impressive me is being able to get the results while playing music!
This is where the NEW ‘SOUNDS ALIVE’ Class comes in! The SOUNDS ALIVE Class is about everyone testing the same music track (The track will be supplied on the day of the event) while sitting inside there car to a level they feel comfortable with. Think of it as you would when you demo your sound system to your friends, only this time you are demoing it to a SPL mic!
For the ‘SOUND ALIVE’ Rules and Conditions CLICK HERE!
I also must say I really enjoyed Demoing ABTEC1 to the numerous people that want to hear it and must also say the head-ache was well worth it!
Here below is a well known competitor (Who also has the 5th LOUDEST Car in NZ) enjoying the DD-Z18!
The car that really impressed me on the day was Johnny’s Subaru Legacy GT which the box was built over a couple of weeks by himself and one of his close friends housing four JBL 15″ Sub-woofers. Johnny did a impressive 145dB in the ‘SOUNDS ALIVE’ class and still managed a 138dB with the drivers door open! I am convinced that this set-up with more power driving it will surely hit the 150dB mark on music!
I will finish this off by thanking Everybody that turned up to compete, watch or even to say Hi! Tom for driving down from NPC (New Plymouth City), Johnny for supplying the Ma Moe for the BBQ, Darryl for manning the BBQ most the day, the rest of ABTEC Team for doing there thing and last but not least Ashley for allowing this event to happen!
For the Events Results CLICK HERE
For Photos of the Winners CLICK HERE
For the Gallery of the Event CLICK HERE
For the Top Ten Top Guns CLICK HERE
Also if you are wondering how the ‘SOUNDS ALIVE’ Class came about I’ll try to explain it as well as I can.
Our MD Ashley has been in the car audio game for 30 plus years and the reason he got into car audio is because he LOVES music, even back when he was living in Australia he had a very LOUD SQ (Sound Quality) car. His theory on car audio is it should not only be loud but also sound nice at the same time and I totally agree on this point!
He also isn’t a big fan of ‘Burp’ boxes and all the boxes he has had built are not only designed for high SPL numbers but for SQ too. I’m not sure on how many people reading this have sat in a car with a ‘Burp Box’ but from my experience is they don’t sound very nice to play music on. Ashley’s and ABTEC’s goal here is have boxes that sound nice and it made perfect sense to have a dB Drag Class that reflected that because in the end of the day we all don’t drive around listening to freq burps!