View this email in your browser

Welcome Driving Sounds Club Members

This month, we look back at our experience at AutoSport International. For us, the show was ultimately a success as we recruited many new friends and club members. We demonstrated a Tesla Model 3 on our stand with an Audison Prima system installed. We also distributed 1000’s of copies of Driving Sounds Magazine. You can read more about the system below as well as exploring our Top Five tunes used for demonstrations.

Here is a link to one of these. We were demonstrating a rendering from Tidal that we would strongly recommend you using for your music streaming needs. The percussion on this track is mesmerising and in our Tesla shoots across the soundstage in a way that is unusual in a car. Have a listen in your own car and see if it has the same affect.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeQXl_kM2rQ

If you have been lucky enough to hear the Tesla Model 3 on our demo fleet, you may like a reminder of the install particulars. Hit the button below to be whisked off to our blog on the vehicle.

Top Five Driving Sounds

When beginning a demonstration, the first thing we tend to ask people is what sort of music they like. Increasingly, folk tend to be somewhat non-committal. Occasionally, we will get a genre preference thrown our way, but the vast majority are happy for us to select a track to demonstrate to them.

As we know this, we tend to have a few faves up our sleeves before attending a show. At AutoSport International, the vast majority of demonstrations were carried out by Lee (it was his car on the stand) and me. Lee had prepared a comprehensive playlist but we found ourselves going to a few that really seemed to hit home. These are listed below.

The 30th - Billie Eilish

Human (acoustic) - Rag n Bone Man

The Boy in The Bubble - Paul Simon

I Was Made For Loving You - Maria Mena

Jamming (Remastered) - Bob Marley

Try having a listen to some of these in your own car and see how good they sound? If they don’t, your system may need a bit of work. You are most welcome to email over your own Top 5 tunes that you think sound good in your own car. Just hit the button below.

What’s With All The Shouting?

Autosport International - A festival of international motor racing? Well, I don’t need to join this debate and it would be disingenuous for me to criticise, as this show was actually very good for us. There is enough reporting by the general public on the AutoSport International facebook page. I will however, join the “this show is very expensive” brigade. £17 to park and £350 per device for dodgy wifi is not funny but then neither was the DJ set and “Rapstravaganza” that happened at Saturday lunchtime.

Rap is a very popular genre and I listen to some myself, although at reasonable levels and in good quality. It seemed on this occasion that the only way to make an impression was for the MC’s to practically swallow the mic when howling for everyone to “MAKE SOME NOISE!” - I did make some noise, I did a noise measurement while this was going on. Even though we were exhibiting some 50M away, the noise still topped 120 dB (Government guidance suggests 87 dB(A) to be the maximum safe level for sound in public spaces). I rang my show contact who had promised to visit the stand everyday to make sure everything was alright. We didn’t see him all weekend and his phone went to answerphone. I simply held my phone up in the air (7 or 8 times in succession) and the final time, politely asked him if he felt the level of noise was acceptable? Still awaiting a response.

If I had paid to go to a concert featuring the act that were screaming at ear-splitting levels, then fair enough, but this was totally unexpected and I am afraid, unwelcome.

The levels on Sunday were kept closer to government guidelines, but the MC’s were still completely unintelligible and the whole feature somewhat incongruous in the context of a motorsport show. They didn’t even play “The Chain”!

Rant over, Do take care and don’t forget, good music does not have to be loud to entertain, simply delivered in high quality!

Carl Hynes

Editor

Driving Sounds Magazine