Sound of the City
At work, city trader Anthony Harmer, is dealing with high stakes. His pressurised work environment affords him little time to enjoy his passion during the week so it is weekends and holidays when Anthony slips his shackles and makes a break for albeit temporary freedom.
Anthony’s pride and joy is a 1990 Porsche Carrera 2 which he has owned for eight years and has been restored from a crumbling wreck to the beautiful beast it is today over the past two years. But this is no precious restoration project born out of a need to preserve a car of historical importance. Anthony has always dreamed of using it for leisure driving and his determination to get everything right has resulted in this magnificent example of Porscheness!
However, his ambition has always been to enjoy the full driving experience. Not only the roar of the mighty 3.6 litre 247 bhp engine but showroom pristine dashboard and trim and just as important to Anthony, a heavenly audio system. In fact, he has trouble deciding between his love for cars and his love of high quality, musical reproduction. It was therefore a revelation to read our feature on a Carrera 4 in issue one of Driving Sounds. “I always intended to put a decent music system in the car but to be honest, had absolutely no idea of what was possible until I came across a copy of Driving Sounds. I have been a fan of hi-fi since I started going to see live music, as it was very obvious that what I was listening to at home was not offering the full engagement of a live performance. Some if this is due to the environment and the excitement of seeing a hero on stage but a good part of the engagement had to be the integrity of the reproduction. After some exploration of home hi-fi I ended up with brands like B&W and Arcam and fully expected to never get to these heights with car audio” Anthony told us.
“I had arranged to send the car to an interior trim company near Winchester and came across Accutek, a FOUR MASTER also based near Winchester. Having read Driving Sounds I knew the car would be in safe hands and hoped that the resulting system would leave me feeling like the other system owners I had read about.
Following a discussion at Accutek about the kind of music I like to listen to and what I have at home, they made some recommendations. I was perfectly happy in the absence of lots of time to research myself, to take the advice of an obvious expert and so my car was booked in for an Audio Heaven install. I had specified that I wanted the subs behind the front seats to be removable and so they are built into separate removable pods trimmed to match the carpet and upholstery. When they are in place you would not guess they simply lift out and unplug. In fact the most impressive thing about the entire install apart from the incredible sound is how well integrated with the car the equipment is”
In order to make a good basis for this install, the car was completely stripped and the floor, doors and all panels treated with Skinz sound deadening. With precious little space to work with an audison LRx 5.1k amplifier was mounted in the front luggage space and trimmed in Porsche carpet to look like it has always lived there. For the technically minded, this revolutionary 5-channel amplifier that uses Class A, Class AB and Class D technologies. In this case the outputs are used to drive a pair of audison Voce AV K6 2-way components at the front. These are mounted in specially designed and built pods, which were then trimmed to match the rest of the interior. As the seating position is quite low and the audison tweeters have an impressive dispersion characteristic, it was not necessary to raise them. Audison Voce speakers represent the pinnacle of car audio and deliver detail and clarity that truly make you believe you have a car full of musicians. A pair of Hertz Energy ECX 100 coaxials, which sit in equally cunningly crafted panels behind the front seats, add some rear-fill sound for ambience, particularly effective when listening to live music, but would also come in handy if recently married Anthony and wife should produce children in the future. The Hertz Energy ES200 8” subs are powered by the remaining 1000 Watt Class D channel adding all the bass that even festival-goer Anthony could need!
The system is hung together with high quality Connection cable and as previously mentioned, the entire install is integrated by using the same original Porsche trim materials as the rest of the interior for a true “straight from the factory” look.
But, what about system performance? Anthony concludes; “ I can honestly say that I have never enjoyed in car sounds as much as I do in my Porsche. I would even be bold enough to say it comes very close to the experience of home hi-fi. I am now constantly trying to find excuses to take the Porsche out even on short shopping trips for which it is entirely impractical, just so that I can turn it up and enjoy the experience!
Music for Driving
Recommended by Anthony
Forever - Papa roach
Dangerous – Michael Jackson
Faint - Linkin Park
Almost Easy - Avenged Sevenfold
Back in Black – AC/DC
Equipment list
Alpine CDA-9887R Imprint source unit
Audison LRx5.1K
Audison Voce AV K6 Components (bespoke door builds)
Hertz ECX100 Coaxials (bespoke rear panels)
2 x Hertz ES200 Subwoofers (bespoke, removable sealed enclosures)
Audison Connection Cabling
Skinz sound deadening
Original Porsche carpet
Approximate Audio Heaven system equipment cost excluding installation: £2000.00
Special thanks:
RGA Porsche, London www.rgaindependentporsche.co.uk
Accutek, Winchester www.accutek.co.uk
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