Over the weekend I was down in Austin, TX for the Custom Sounds Texas Heat Wave. The show was much larger than I anticipated, a good thing of course, and I did my best to shoot every single car, truck, motorcycle, and whatever else looked cool. Many car audio and car and truck performance manufacturers were on hand to show off their products and demo vehicles, but none impressed me more than MTX’s assault on the show.

They brought an arsenal of custom trucks for their booth, each displaying jaw-dropping style and eardrum splitting sound systems. The cartoon-like matte black Escalade that debuted during CES was on hand, along with a red and black Escalade equipped with the legendary 22" Jackhammers. And a bagged and dumped Chevy S10 extended cab had an awesome industrial-styled install with crazy doors, a blow-through box, and a bed full of amps and video screens. But even with all of those amazing demo cars, nothing impressed me more than the Lamborghini-blue completely custom Nissan Titan you see below (with more pics after the jump!), built by Kustomz Unlimited, Inc of Garland, TX.

Check out the gallery over at SoundDomain!

Vote for your favorite… We’re celebrating Car Audio and Electronic magazine’s 20th anniversary this summer. See the October issue for a special retrospective covering some of the best custom car audio rides from the show and sound competition circuit. Online we’ll be featuring each of the vehicles from the retrospective with additional pics. Every week users can vote for their favorite cars from the different categories. Here I’m posting interior shots from various Alpine demo vehicles (the full features can be found on our site). Chronologically you have the Honda Civic, Mini Cooper, BMW X5, The BMW 645 and the MBZ R500. Tough choice but I think I may have to lean toward the Civic that Chris Yato and Steve Brown built, partially because it’s the vehicle that really got the over-the-top demo car trend going. And you see variations of different design elements from the Civic in the cars that followed. Comment on your favorite and vote for yours starting next week on the Car Audio website.

Follow the jump to check out the legendary rides!

Continue reading "Car Audio mag 20th Anniversary" »

• I took my first driver’s license test over 15 years ago and I still remember every gruesome minute. I actually did fairly well, but I did lose points for driving too cautious and slow! Boy have I proved them wrong since then! And so did the kid in this video. Johnny punked five driving instructors by taking them for one of the worst drives of their life!
• This wouldn’t be a proper SoundDomain Sound-Off without a mention of the Master of Bass, Steve Meade. Watch him school a few new victims in the science of SPL.
• Photoshop FAIL! Looks like this big box retailer needs to send their Photoshop pros back to school or at least hire their car audio installers to build an actual custom install for their Sunday circular ad….
• There’s no better place to live than the good ‘ol USA. Unless you want these sweet Harman Kardon amplifiers in your car.
• Team SoundDomain’s Robert Petty looked at many different radios closely before deciding on the Alpine IVA-W205 for his SQ competition car, and here’s why. Hop over to SoundDomain for a break down on this impressive multimedia navigation-capable radio.
• JVC and Danny Klein (Yep the same Lotus Exige S-driving Danny Klein from Bull Run glory) put together a pretty steamy music video to celebrate some of the cool features in the new JVC Kameleon source units. Wow.
• Yep, you can hate me too. I got to drive Lambos. But day before I was working on my GTI project car and made some solid progress in the hatch area.  What’d you do this weekend?

• Pioneer’s Sound Build-Off was a huge success and to help promote the individual shops that participated, Pioneer put together some short videos showcasing the owners or installers providing the details on their custom work. Cartronics FJ Cruiser is pretty impressive inside and out, but Horizon Audio’s Hot Rod is a sight to be seen!
• If you’re a regular tailgater, and often find you and 20 of your closest friends bbq-ing it up outside the stadium or arena, then the Party-to-Cargo kegerator is probably right up your alley! This trailer-hitch mounted box holds a keg (that’s about 160 beers folks), and features a complete audio system, perfect for setting the party mood or blasting the pre-game show.
• We headed over to Benchmark Motoring last Friday for their annual summer BBQ kick-off event for some burgers, dogs, and hot hot cars. Benchmark always manages to fill their parking lot with many Lambos, Porsches, Ferraris, BMWs – all available for guests to drool over, some with beautifully stealthy audio installs too! We’ve got a full gallery of photos over at SoundDomain! Oh yeah, and don’t forget to check out Benchmark’s customized flatbed hauler!
• Has anybody every screwed up your car during an audio install? Drilled the gas tank? Shot through an airbag sensor? Sliced a wiring harness? It happens, sometimes too often. Got a horror story of your own? Share it!
• Scrapin’ the Coast had a bunch of lowriders, tuner cars, hot rods, and old schools, but this high riser Cadillac Fleetwood limo floored me! Loaded up with a complete MB Quart audio system and 32" LCD, this is one way to roll in unique style!

• Elemental Designs is closing out their 13Kv.2 D4 and this is one smoking deal. If you need a sub (or two or six) then don’t pass this  – $50 for a quality sub is not something you see everyday!
• Ben was judging competition sound quality cars at the Tuner Evolution show in York, PA, but in his spare time he snapped off a bunch of pics and we have three galleries live on the site!
• Mr. Mobile is back with another installment of "I Want That", and this time we get the details on the Zoombak GPS tracking device. This portable "big brother" can be used to track the location of you car, dog, motorcycle, whatever you need!
• Old school  car audio equipment always  has a soft spot in the hearts of enthusiasts.  Whether it’s that first car stereo, the amplifier you saved all summer to buy, or just a sexy subwoofer you never could quite afford but finally sold enough pints of blood to add it to your arsenal, sometimes you don’t have need an excuse, or even a use for it, you just want to have it. What’s in your collection? Check out what’s in ours!
• Steve Meade has become somewhat of a legend here on CarDomain and SoundDomain. There aren’t too many people who have had the opportunity to play with Rockford Fosgate’s legendary and almost mythical T15kW amplifiers (You know, the $25,000, 15,000 watt powerhouses?), So what makes these monsters so amazing? Steve hooked us up with a video featuring the amplifier’s design engineer breaking down the details.

• Ben Vollmer has been in the car audio industry for many many years. He’s seen many many demo and competition cars come and go. But a few have always stood out from the rest, and when the opportunity arose for him to actually buy one of his favorites, still with the award-winning competition audio system still intact, he jumped on it! So what’s he planning on doing with it? Find out!
• Al & Ed’s Mr. Mobile is back, and this time he’s featuring a SmartTop convertible roof controller. What the heck is it and what does it do?! Hop over to SoundDomain to find out. And if you’re lucky, you might just win one!
• We jut can’t get enough…. Steve Meade hooked us up with some video walk-arounds showcasing the current status of the Escalade’s insane install. We’ve got three videos to show you, each one testing the system with a different style of music. The old school Micheal Jackson is my particular favorite!

Continue reading "SoundDomain Sound-Off" »

• SoundDomain moderator Richard Vedvik was curious how much louder a system would sound if his amp ran all four speakers at 50 watts versus just the front speakers bridged to the same amp at 200 watts. It would be kind of a PITA to get out of the car and play with the amp wiring to go from bridged to four-channel, so he put together a series of relays that could do the job for him at the flick of the switch!
• JBL just released info on their new GTO series subs and we got the details and pics! You gotta check these beauties out!
• Our boy Steve Meade came through with some exclusive pics of the new 18" Fi BTL series subwoofers. These babies aren’t out yet, and they’re not even on Fi’s website! I guess that’s the benefit of being an big bass bad ass.
• Suzuki just announced they’ll be be adding a Garmin-powered navigation system in every 2009 SX4! The system will flip-up from a custom compartment in the dash and include Bluetooth connectivity, real-time traffic info, and possibly MSN Direct.
• We got our hands on some sneak peeks of the new Audison Thesis amps not too long ago and now Audison has finally released actual photos and an amazingly detailed breakdown of the amp’s features and technology. I was pretty blown away!

• Steve Meade, as we’ve learned, is one crazy mofo. He’s a bass junkie with a glutton for subsonic punishment. The build in his buddy’s Escalade is coming nicely (you know, the one with six 18" woofers and 30,000 watts of power?), and he just finished the custom door panels. When’s the last time you saw doors with five pairs of 6.5" woofers, five 1" tweeters, and a 10" subwoofer. Yep… That’s per door!
• Japan is the holy land for gadget and mobile electronic junkies. They always get the cool stuff first. Take the new Clarion DriveTrax P7DT for example. This portable navigation system sports bluetooth, GPS, 3D street level mapping, a DTV tuner with recording capability via an SD card, video and music playback of all kinds of formats, and 4.3" touchscreen. This little guy is HOT.
• The Chinese have really upset many automotive manufacturers by blatantly ripping of their designs and selling them as their own. The subject has come up in the CarDomain Blog many times, but automotive manufacturers are not the only people dealing with it…. Check out this blatant rip-off of a Pioneer CD player. Ridiculous.
• MB Quart has announced an all-new Discuss line for 2008. The Discuss line represents Quart’s mid-level series, but for 2008 they’ve updated the line with the soon-to-be famous inverted-dome WideSphere tweeter. They’ve also released a new Discus line of subwoofers. It’s all pretty sexy, you should check it out.

Continue reading "SoundDomain Sound-Off" »

• Orion is giving away a professionally installed $10,000 car audio system! That’s enough money to buy a complete HCCA system and get a pretty pimp install to boot! Have you signed up yet??
• Cerwin Vega just released details and pics on their new Vega series subs. We’ve got the details!
• High end car audio manufacturer Focal has a new set of Polyglass series components available: the 165VR. The woofers feature paper cone fused with micro glass beads an aluminum/magnesium tweeter. That’s one sexy looking set of speakers.
• Trapster is the wave of the future. This new (FREE!) service is based around an online community where users can submit speed trap, red light camera, and traffic camera information to an online database. If you sign up, the service interfaces with your cell phone via GPS positioning or cell phone tower triangulation and will actually alert you via SMS text messages when you’re approaching a speed trap!! Really.. This is too cool.
• Mr. Mobile of Al & Ed’s Autosound has another "I Want That" installment over at SoundDomain for your viewing pleasure. He explains why the new Sirius Stiletto 2 portable satellite radio tuner is so cool, and how you can use and control it through your aftermarket or facotry radio with their new universal docking port. Get connected.
• High-end home audio manufacturer ScanSpeak has released the details on their new audiophile car audio speakers, the Illuminators. You’ve never seen a component set that looks like this!

I just got back from the Pioneer Sound Build-Off in San Diego where Pioneer not only hosted a really cool sound-off competition, but they also unveiled the new AVIC-F series navigation radios. The new AVIC-F’s have all of the goodies you’d expect from a full-featured in-dash navigation piece, but Pioneer stepped it up a few notches and included built-in Bluetooth, voice recognition and control, and MSN Direct data streaming! Get all the details, features, and check out a small gallery of the new devices over at SoundDomain.