Jack Walsh's Rare Breed

The Honda NSX h 3.5 Twin Turbo, owned by IT Tech Jack Walsh, is one of just 130 in the country

Jack Walsh’s Rare Breed

The Honda NSX h 3.5 Twin Turbo, owned by IT Tech Jack Walsh, is one of just 130 in the country. Boasting 600+ hp with hybrid power, it looks as fast as it allegedly is. Of course, we were not here to talk about cars but to look around and listen to the audio system.

We met Jack at a vehicle storage facility outside of Bristol. Jack had recently lost his inner-city parking facility, and parking a car like this at the side of the road is not a good idea. Jack tells us there have already been signs of at least two attempts to get in it. Although a sad indictment of the times we live in, this is far too common.

30-something Jack has always lived in Bristol. After leaving full-time education, he went to work with an old school friend who had started an IT company, JLC Distribution Ltd., and was ready to expand. The company has gone from strength to strength and made huge inroads into the market during COVID-19. While many companies shut their doors to ride the pandemic out, JLC Distribution Ltd. quickly developed strategies to help companies get their workforce working from home.

Jack has always been a Japanese Car enthusiast and claims to have owned almost every Type R available. He believes the price-to-performance ratio is the best, and he rates it as the fastest hatchback available. Anyway, time moved on, and Jack fancied a change.

Jack collected his current vehicle without telling his partner of four years that he was even considering purchasing it. The first she knew was when he came to collect her from work in it! She must be a forgiving soul, as she didn’t complain and has even been allowed to borrow it occasionally.

Jack has a close connection to music. His father was a record producer whose studio was the family home. Jack grew up listening to dance tracks being mixed in his house. If you are unaware of the process, producing a recording is a laborious business involving repeatedly adding sounds, adjusting levels, and re-listening. By the end of the process, anyone in earshot would have a detailed understanding of the music. Because of this background, Jack has never been satisfied with standard equipment in cars and has always taken them to his local specialist installer, Western Car Radio, to be upgraded.

This car was booked in with them immediately. Interestingly, Jack says he is not an analytical listener. I would disagree with this. He has a good ear and knows exactly what he wants. He may not have ever had to articulate this, which is different. His experiences around the home and attending many festivals and club nights have given him an innate knowledge of what sounds good. In this vehicle, he wanted to recreate the high-energy environment he has enjoyed over the years. He calls Western Car Radio his “Sound Shepherds” and told us that they are brilliant at interpreting his brief into systems that sound exactly as he wants them to. He expressed his surprise that there is so little knowledge or interest in upgrading the audio in cars. Like us, he has experienced the reactions of people who experience an upgraded vehicle for the first time.

His music preferences are “good quality” Garage, Grime, and Drum and Bass. I suspect his interest is much more comprehensive than this, but when put on the spot, these were his go-to’s. He specifically mentioned Chase and Status, Skepta, and Flowdan. Later in our conversation, he mentioned that he also enjoys the soundtrack from The Joker! For new inspiration, he tends to follow producers rather than artists. This seems perfectly sensible to me. Artists tend to have a short life expectancy these days as it is so hard for them to make a living, sadly.

Back to the system. Jack and Western plumped for a Hertz/Audison combination. This represented the best choice due to the equipment’s flexibility. The speakers are Hertz Mille Legend ML 280, one of our favourite tweeter sets, and the mighty ML 1800, 8” woofers, the perfect accompaniment. These are supplemented with an Audison Prima APS 8 R subwoofer. All speakers are powered by an Audison Forza AF M 5.11 bit, five-channel amplifier.

The speakers run actively, and all crossover, equalisation, and time-alignment settings are handled within the amplifier. An attached PC controls the setup process, which is best handled by a professional. User adjustments can be made, but the software is necessarily detailed and complex. It is easy for the layperson to get quite confused.

The installation is pretty discrete. Only the familiar Hertz tweeters are on show, mounted in modified pods to put them on axis. The subwoofer sits behind the grille of the original fit one, in a bulkhead behind the seats. The amplifier has been installed behind the same panel the sub is fitted to.

Jack chose not to have a DRC remote controller or even a subwoofer level control fitted as there was no obvious place to mount it, and he was not keen on making any internal modifications to the vehicle. In any case, the nature of the car and the roar of the engine would probably result in it being set at more or less maximum all of the time anyway.

Previously a big Spotify user, Jack discovered that he could transfer his entire library to Tidal and has not looked back. The sound quality is much better, and the rewards for artists are greater, too.

I was eager to listen and jumped into the driver’s seat, assuming that the system had been set up for driver listening, as is common these days. However, in this car, Western has set the image around the centre of the dash. This works well in this car, and the stage is stable regardless of the seat I sat in.

The first track we listened to was “This Year” by Victor Thompson. This is a very sparse track; however, a deep listen reveals many sounds filling the whole spectrum. The image was wide, and each sound could be picked out easily. When I listened on my Mac, I felt the track was missing something. Of course, it was missing everything below 250Hz, as with most computers - phones even more. When played in this car, there was lots of deep bass. This was articulate and very well-behaved. The top end features some clicks, which may be modified Tabla samples or something. They were extremely tight and helped the track move along nicely. The rest of the frequency range is filled with vocals and keyboards. I was expecting a significant bass drop and a burst of high energy. However, the track remained sparse, which didn’t hurt at all.

“Freedom 2” by Kwengface was another reasonably sparse track. Once again, the instrument separation was excellent. Lots going on and the bass entry at 55 seconds made me jump out of my skin! Once again, the Prima 8” subwoofer did a great job in keeping this musical and ensuring no swamping of frequencies close by was evident. There are lots of words in this one, and I could make out most of them. The track has excellent movement thanks to the drum track that supports the background vocal whoops perfectly. It sounds like the track was a lot of fun to make.

It was easy to tell that this system would perform brilliantly with any genre of music. Although possibly some kind of subwoofer control would be desirable when listening to live acoustic music, that is not what the system was designed to do. Jack is happy, I was happy, and I am sure Western Car Radio is happy with the result, too.

Many thanks to all involved in getting this system together, and especially Jack for inviting us to listen.

Jack Walsh’s Top Five

Glamourless - Benny Banks 
Sleepwalking - Issey Cross Ft Songer 
3 bless - Ace Hood
Caroline - Arlo Parks
Smile - Wolf Alice