Fast Car Street Bass Challenge
DND Services Ltd, Stevenage - 12th November 2003

It all started with a phone call from my good friend and Car Audio Journalist, Adam Raynor. He wanted to run past me an idea that he had for a major feature in Fast Car magazine. Now, over the years, I have got used to Adam`s ramblings, but this actually sounded quite good, so I agreed to be the guinea pig for the feature. The theory behind it was that anybody could have a loud bass system in their car, but it wasn`t necessarily what was classed as respectable Street Bass. Adam wanted to find some cars that would give some good SPL figures at specific frequencies, namely 30Hz, 40Hz and 50Hz. Ritchie from Fuel Records was also very interested in this idea and asked if he could send over one of his Fuel girls. There was no way we were going to refuse this now, and he sent along the delicious Vanessa to oversee how our testing went on. Adam brought Spike the photographer along to also record the days events.

Because this was a pilot idea, I carefully selected five cars with a good range of Bass, and more importantly some Guys who would be up for a bit of fun and a challenge. If all has gone to plan, you should have read about this in Fast Car around the February 2004 issue, (on sale in January), and the feature should hopefully be ongoing.

After spending a fun day discussing sound systems, what the results told us, how the data could be used, etc, etc, I fairly rapidly reached my own conclusions for what the day was really about and have put a link to my observations at the bottom of this page.

The Players, and the Results

A brief explanation of the figures and how we achieved them. The cars shown above have different makes and sizes of subwoofers fitted, mounted inside different shape boxes. We played a specific frequency through them, 30Hz, 40Hz and 50Hz respectively, with the lower figure being the deeper bass. We put a special microphone inside the car to record the Sound Pressure Level (SPL) that was generated by the speakers, and this was measured in Decibels (dB). Although the results look fairly close, it is not until you realise that every 3dB difference is actually double the volume. For instance 139dB is twice as loud as 136dB, so you can now appreciate that this shows some very significant results.

And some pictures from the day

Now Click Here

For What the day was Really About !