Park Life

Our first bit tuned car reviewed!

Park Life

 

We took Walter Anderson’s VW Touareg to the park. Not for a picnic however, but so we could audition his excellent audio system which had just been given a bit of a tweak using an Audison Bit Tune.

 

Audison Bit Tune is a device, which automatically adjusts the parameters of any Audison Bit product to get the best from a system. When we arrived at Norwich In Car Entertainment (aka NICE) to photograph the car, it had just undergone the Bit Tune treatment and I sensed we were in for a bit of a treat.

 

Unfortunately, Walter couldn't be with us at the time and although I met him briefly on the day, I caught up with him by email some weeks later to find out more about him and his system. The following is a “lightly edited” transcript of that communication.

 

DS: Where are you from and how long have you lived in the Norwich area?

 

WA: I'm originally from Edinburgh. I've been living in Norfolk since 1996.

 

DS: What do you do for a living?

 

WA: I'm a Food Hygiene Consultant. I work with food manufacturers to make sure that food is produced safely. I do lots of training all over the UK and Europe.

 

DS: What led to your appreciation of good sound and what is your home system like?

 

WA: I'm rarely at home, which is why I want a really good system in the car. I do love good sound though and I think I have a reasonably good system at home, which is the classic British component system. Naim CD, Michell turntable, Quad amps and Monitor Audio speakers. I tend to listen to DAB radio now though and have tuners throughout house.

 

DS: Is there any music in your background? Do you play any musical instruments or did you grow up with musicians in the house?

 

WA: No, my extended family is quite musical, but my father is an Electronic Engineer who knows a thing or two about sound. He's a great believer in valves for sound quality and I knew the difference between various types of amplifier from an early age.

 

DS: Was any equipment moved across from your previous car?

 

WA: The Hertz amplifier and Audison Voce speakers were the main items brought across from my old Audi TT.

 

DS:  Tim Pooley (proprietor of NICE) tells me you had researched much of your system before you got to him. Where did that search take you?

 

WA: Mainly American in car entertainment forums. They do some extreme stuff in terms of custom builds and I reckoned that was the way to go. I'm not a fan of VAG's in-car entertainment systems. They work well enough, but they are clearly designed to “boom and tizz” on a test-drive but it gets wearing after a while. The original equipment was very boomy but it just wasn't crisp. The start and end of drumbeats were very soft and piano notes blended into one another rather than starting and stopping like they do in real life.

 

DS: How did you find NICE?

 

WA: Almost 5 years ago the factory fit Satnav in my Skoda Fabia died. I went to NICE as they were listed on all the manufacturer websites, as agents and I wanted a choice of head unit. They had Alpine, Clarion, Pioneer and Kenwood. I selected the Kenwood because I liked the built-in Garmin navigation and it was cheapest and easiest to install. After that I got a similar head unit for my Audi TT, a hard-wired Garmin for my Audi A4 and I wasn't going anywhere other than NICE when I got the Touareg!

 

DS: How did you find the service?

 

WA: Tim's approach was excellent. Rather than forcing equipment on me, he offered to put a system in my Audi TT and, if I didn't like it, he'd take it out and give me a full refund. He asked many questions about the music I listened to, what annoyed me about the existing system and what sort of kit I had at home. Then he put a system together and installed it. The whole thing was properly done with lots of vibration damping and strengthening of panels. Needless to say, the kit stayed in the car!

 

DS: How long did the install on the Touareg take and what brief did you give to NICE?

 

WA: I left the car with NICE for three weeks. Because of this, his installers could work on the car in between other jobs. The main brief I gave them was excellent sound quality, and a factory look.

 

DS: Did NICE get it right first time?

 

WA: They got it bang-on. They did have to do a little bit of rectification work after the car had been driven as something came loose under the dashboard, but that was down to the company who fitted my tow bar fitted.

 

DS: What sources do you use for music?

 

WA: Initially, I listened mainly to my iPhone but the system really shows up the lack of dynamic range on AAC files, so I now listen to CDs, and also DAB radio.

 

DS: What was your first impression on collection of the vehicle and did the system change over time?

 

WA: I was pleased, but the dominant feature was bass, which surprised me, as Tim and I are not really bass-heads. The Subwoofer did relax over time and, apart from some boomy male voices on the radio, I was pretty happy with it. Once it had been Bit Tuned, I was amazed at how much better it was.

 

DS: How did Bit Tune change the sound?

 

WA: It really opened up the sound stage, stereo separation is unbelievable and the boomy male voices have largely gone. The heavy bass has also disappeared.

 

DS: How does the new vehicle compare in sound to the previous one?

 

WA: It's not fair to compare them as the last car had a high quality head unit whereas this one uses the factory unit EQ'd and amplified to make it sound as good as it possibly can. They are both very, very, good systems.

 

DS: Do you have any plans to further develop the system at all?

 

WA: Possibly a video input so I can have a tyre pressure monitoring system installed that shows the readings on the head unit. I may also go for a TV tuner and better DAB antenna.

 

DS: The sub enclosure takes up so little space, what was the inspiration for this?

 

WA: The guys copied a US pattern custom subwoofer enclosure made by a guy in Missouri. It's a real work of art. They mirrored the install, but using Audison and Hertz rather than Mosconi, JBL and Arc Audio and extensively applied sound damping in the doors and floors.

 

Having not heard a car that had been set up using the Audison Bit Tune before, I was very much looking forward to hearing this car although a little doubtful of the technology. The Bit 10 processor installed into the vehicle had two settings stored; the original set up made by NICE and the new Bit Tune set up - This was going to be interesting!

 

The first track played was “Protection” from the Massive Attack album of the same name. As with other Audison Voce installed vehicles I have listened to, the striking separation between all the sonic elements lays the production on the track out in front of you. If you close your eyes, you can physically pinpoint every sound. Tracey Thorne’s vocal begins at 40 seconds and I’m away. After a short while, the separation is so vivid, I find myself looking around at the speaker placement and notice that the tweeters on the A pillars above the dash are something like three feet away from the woofers which sit quite low in the doors. Looking behind me, the location of the subwoofer in the luggage space looks miles away however everything hooks up well and the relative balance across the frequency range is good. I decide to pull up the Bit Tune setting on the Bit 10 remote and my jaw drops to the floor. The difference to stage depth, width and height is astonishing and the overall sound so much more coherent. The effect is so dramatic it is hard to comprehend what is going on. Surely this effect was due to the production on the track?

 

A change was necessary so I selected “Summertime” from Miles Davis’ Porgy and Bess album. I swear the temperature in the car plummeted as super cool Miles blew his way through this Gershwin classic. Once again the separation allowed detailed listening of every element. No mean feat for an album recorded in 1958 on ancient equipment with minimal microphones.

 

Next, I tried some acoustic guitar, “layover” from Michael Hedges Breakfast in a Field album. Clarity and positional information was once more delivered with unerring accuracy but I felt the guitar sounded a bit too bright. Later I discovered that Bit Tune can optimise set up by genre and of course, it would be easy to store an acoustic setting for this kind of naked, recital-style music also, the use of Bit Tune does not preclude a final tweak by a human after all.

 

Having been so blown away by this car, I threw a number of other tracks at it including my favourite Nelson Riddle arrangement of  “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” by Frank Sinatra and also “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” from Abbey Road. The trombone to brass section balance during the solo of the former was the best I have heard and I could clearly hear the reverb on the great man’s voice. John Lennon’s vocal carried even more emotion and the keyboard was further forward than in other cars (see Audi TT piece) and Ringo’s deftness of touch on the cymbals was extremely prominent.

 

After a longer than usual time listening to this great car I began to feel an anticlimax coming. How was the sound here ever going to be bettered?

I am certain it can be as this is not a stupidly over the top install but it is one that has been carried out by a FOUR MASTER that really knows it’s stuff. Walter has the final word on this; “Tim and the guys are genuinely artists in sound installation and they really do deserve some recognition” On the evidence of this car, I must wholeheartedly agree.

 

Walter’s Top Five Driving Sounds (and reasons why):

 

Gimme all your lovin' - ZZ Top (great track, horrible sound quality)

Titanium - David Guetta (it just shows the system off perfectly)

Open our Mind - U.S.U.R.A (I have to be careful, the car speeds up by itself with this on)

Time is tight - Booker T and the MG’s (Stax records really made superb recordings)

Hawaii Five-O theme tune - The Ventures (the drums on that are just beautifully recorded)

 


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