• SoundDomain moderator Brian Murphy wanted a stealthy sub box for his Lancer Sportback, but nothing was available that met his needs. So what does a professional installer do when nothing is available in the stores? You make it! Check out Murph’s fiberglass sub tub enclosure build over in the forums.
• Team Bassick’s Bangin’ Burban build is coming along nicely. The steel cage for the subwoofer box is just about complete and man does it look burly!
• As of July 1st many states have a new law on the books that makes talking on your cell phone while driving illegal, unless you have a handsfree kit. Just as a friendly reminder, Scosche put out this public service advertisement announcement.
• Steve Meade added three new videos to his mix.Two are new old stock that you haven’t seen yet but don’t want tomiss, and he also added a fresh vid of a new victim getting a taste ofthe Tahoe!
• In case you missed it, Texas Heat Wave photos are live!!

Well I guess it took a bit longer to get this gallery live than it does most of our other events… Why? Because I made it a point to shoot every car, truck, and two-wheeled vehicle that crossed my path! There are almost 1500 pictures in our Austin Heat Wave coverage, with an amazing amount of trucks, SUV, domestic and import cars blazing in the hot Austin sun. There were even a few crazy motorcycles, ATVs, and a few lowrider bicycles to add a little flavor to the show. Can you find yours? For a break down on the coverage, check out the SoundDomain Blog.

Check out the complete coverage!

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" »

The Texas Heat Wave show series is one of the biggest in Texas, and quite possibly the entire South. I attended back in 2003 while working for Custom Sounds (the title sponsor), and was blown away. I had never attended a show with so many cars in one location! The event offers a lot of everything: from hot rods to muscle cars, to donks, boxes, and bubbles, to sport compact, trucks, sport bikes, choppers, if it rolls on wheels, it’s here. Seriously, this show is ginormis! Soulja Boy, Paul Wall, Lil Boosie, and Lil Will will also be performing during the weekend—and then there’s the bikini contest. I just hope I have enough time to check it all out! I’m heading down to Texas tomorrow to get ready to shoot the entire show, and we’ll have my pics posted as soon as I get back. There might even be a few Team SoundDomain members on hand at the car stereo competition. More details to come, so stay tuned!

Get more details over at the Heatewave’s website!

• 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?

Continue reading "Car Audio Mag Future Feature: Audible Excellence" »

• 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.

• Boston Acoustics announced they’re shipping their SPG555 Passive Radiator system. Adding this to your Boston SPG’s subwoofer box gets you an extra 3dB of bass. May not sound like much, but to your ears that’s almost twice as much bass!!
• So you want to share some music from your iPod with your buddy, but since the iPod is an iPod and not a Zune, you can’t do it…. That is unless you have a miShare!
• Multifunction rearview mirrors are not new, but with all the technology that’s coming to market lately, these things can do just about anything shot of walking of dog or getting you a cold one from the fridge!! They’re not always the most attractive add-ons for your car, but does it matter?
• I’m sure you’ve seen all the commercial on TV telling you that your normal cable and rabbit ears will quit working in early 2009; you need to upgrade to a digital box. But did you realize this also means your car stereo system’s TV tuner is going kaput too? That means new things are the horizon for mobile digital TV. Welcome to the new mobile TV format wars!
• SoundDomain would like to welcome our newest guestblogger, Adam Rayner! Adam comes to us from across the pond, and is the online editor for the UK’s famous Talk Audio website. He has quite a history in the mobile electronics industry and of course, we’re looking forward to sampling his sarcastic British sens of humor!

• More Steve Meade: Rapper Young Ren tha Muddville King stopped by Steve’s to sample his new CD on the Tahoe’s monster sound system, and of course, they had to get the "true test" caught on film– the Hair Trick!
• e-Ink is the latest digital display technology and can be found in devices like Amazon’s Kindle ebook reader. But this tech is posed to really work well in the automotive environment for things like alarm remotes and radio displays because it it’s thinner, flexible, and be cut into odd shapes. Just check out this cool looking alarm remote from Delphi.
• True car audio geeks consider their future car audio upgrades when shopping for a new car. Have you ever considered your future upgrades when shopping for a new car?
• Us older guys like to reminisce about the "good ‘ol days" of car audio. Recently Ben had a chance to wax nostalgia with this Suburban’s old-school inspired install featuring some true hardcore old school SQ gear from McIntosh.