91: Jeffrey Hald on Total Tuning, Iteration Over Gear, and Growing the Next Generation of Competitors
SQOLOGY Car Audio Podcast
91: Jeffrey Hald on Total Tuning, Iteration Over Gear, and Growing the Next Generation of Competitors
Annotations will appear as you listen
0:00
89:44
Car
Chevrolet Camaro
The Chevrolet Camaro is a sporty car that many people love for its speed and cool design. It has been around since the 1960s and is often compared to other fast cars, making it a popular topic among car enthusiasts.
Car
Dodge Challenger
The Dodge Challenger is a type of sports car that is known for being fast and powerful. It's a favorite among people who love cars that look and feel like classic muscle cars.
Term
EQ
EQ stands for equalization, which is a way to change the sound in a car's audio system. It helps make certain sounds louder or softer to improve overall sound quality.
Term
battery failure
Battery failure happens when a car's battery can't work properly, which means the car might not start or the lights might not work. It can happen because the battery is old or if there are other problems with the car's electrical system.
Car
2016 Mazda 6
The 2016 Mazda 6 is a car that's known for looking good and being fun to drive. It's a good option for people who want a comfortable and tech-friendly sedan.
Term
A pillars
A pillars are the parts of the car that hold up the windshield. They help keep the car strong and can sometimes block your view when you're driving.
Term
amplifiers
Amplifiers are devices that make the sound in your car louder and clearer. They help the speakers produce better sound, especially when you want to play music at high volumes.
Part
front subframe
The front subframe is a part of the car that holds up the front wheels and engine. It's important for how the car drives and feels on the road.
Part
carpet kit
A carpet kit is the carpet that goes inside the car. Replacing it can make the inside look nicer and feel more comfortable.
Company
Kenwood
Kenwood makes audio equipment, like radios and speakers, for cars. They are popular for having good sound quality.
Car
Chrysler Daytona
The Chrysler Daytona is a car that was made in the 1980s and is known for its fast speed and cool looks. It was designed to be sporty and fun to drive, making it a memorable vehicle from that time.
LIVE
Many thanks to Resonix Sound Solutions for making this podcast a reality.
Find out more about Resonix sound treatments at ResonixSoundSolutions.com.
SVR has become one of the real checkpoints for the sound quality world. It's the weekend where
competitors bring the work they're most proud of, judges get pushed, and the community shows up
ready to listen. If you care about sound quality and the craft behind a serious build, SVR is the
place to hear what's possible and improve in venue, with a field of competitors who don't coast.
Details and registration info are available through the Still Value Regional Facebook
Group or by contacting Larry Chisner. SVR 15, July 17th through 19th, 2026 at the West Banko Arena.
Plan the trip now. Welcome to the eskeology podcast. We are joined today by Jeffrey Hald,
Hello Jeffrey. Hey there. And as usual, Mike Myers. Hello Mike. Hey, how are you? We're currently
in the snow, sleep, water, hail, ice, apocalypse, I guess. Jeffrey has been called Chasing Texas and
his car appeared to have a nice little sheen of ice on it. I think Mike is mostly getting
what, rain now? Yeah, yeah, it's mostly flooding nowadays. That can be much worse actually.
And then I got, well, according to the weather app, we got like 24 inches in the past day
of snow, but what's actually there is, I mean, it's drivable because it's so cold,
like it's supposed to be negative in the negatives and then it's supposed to be not above freezing
for the next week. So that'll probably make things interesting as time goes on, probably much worse.
But as of right now, it's just a bunch of fluffy snow. So we'll see. But anyway, as long as I don't,
you know, release this in July, then that will be relevant. Anyway, thanks. Thanks for joining us.
I know Jeffrey, we've had you on a couple of times primarily when you kind of first started
total tuning and it's kind of interesting to think back on it now because right when you
launched total tuning, then it seemed like there was half a dozen other services that popped up
at the same time. Yeah. And I know Mike has a shop and has been doing tuning for a long time,
but I would say right now it seems like you too are probably the most prolific in your own ways
as far as tuning goes. I know Jeffrey, you haven't slowed down any on the remote tuning. Miguel was
probably one of your bigger, at least visually, one of your biggest, I guess, other people out
there doing that. But now actually he's in college station. I think he's not really tuning
professionally anymore as much. And some of the other stuff out there has died off a little bit,
but from your angle, I know you've made changes and learned things throughout and you've done
constant iterations on how you send out the product and what you're sending to people and
everything else. But I guess from your angle, how has that growth been over the past, I guess,
a couple of years since you started all this? Yeah, it's been very good. Pretty steady. The
first year, I think I did 70 something. I think I'm up to a little over 300 now. So a little over
double what I did last year. Those are total tunes, not no pun intended. So basically, last
time we talked, I think I had three or four maxes total. I'm up to nine right now, buying my 10th
from Hawaii here, probably in the next couple weeks, got number 11 scoped out as well. So
I think that'll be a good number for me to hold on to for a little while. That'll let me
do upwards of four a week. I can do four to five a week every single week and have a spare land
around, which comes in handy every now and then. So yeah, no, as far as iterations, you're absolutely
right. I've changed a lot of my methods, competition driven, things like that, just optimizing
curves, optimizing the way that you place microphones, which is a huge deal. I actually want
to do a personal video on that here soon, talking about the different ways on where
aiming microphones and how many microphones and how that affects your measurements, the same vehicle
with different measurements basically can greatly skew some things. I've done a lot of work recently
to make it to where it's easier to do the tunes. I used to require two computers. I've put a lot
of money into making it to where I can send out a second screen, all the necessary cables for every
single possible iteration of a laptop. And so one computer does it all kind of thing. It's been
great and managed to do all that while keeping the price pretty steady, which I'm pretty proud of.
So just trying to keep as many happy clients as I can, 300 so far. So yeah, pretty happy with it.
Where have you seen your mix as far as the people you're doing tunes for? I mean,
because when you first kind of announced things, and I saw what you were doing compared to other
people, I saw a lot of potential market with like the other dealers essentially, where there would
be other professionals in the field, but so many of them just really aren't able to get to that next
level, but also might have a max setting there already or be using the VXI product or whatever
that you can kind of tap into easily with what you're doing. But what have you seen as far as
mix between like the serious competitor versus the guy who just bought a system and wants it
versus the shops? What's been your mix? Yeah, I'm tuning for six shops right now, pretty regularly,
like one a week, one a week kind of deal. And they love having me. So that's been working out.
And obviously, that's a non rental unit. So that means that they have their own unit
and my nine floating around as necessary to individuals, not to shops. I've seen the ratio
of competitor people versus individuals that just like good sound, obviously, you're going to have
a lot more individuals than competitors. Not that I ever targeted competitors per se. I was just
targeted, you know, just trying to get a good 80, 90% tune very quickly, very reliably. And you
have worked with competitors, as you know, just to get them over hurdles, get them on podium,
even without meeting them. But the main purpose and the main vision for total tuning has never been,
I'm going to toss these microphones in once, never listen to it, never shake your hand and
expect it to win finals. I just expected it to be better than what most shops were giving,
you know, excluding guys like, you know, Mike and the dozen or, you know, 15 other tuners around
the nation that are capable of producing a great sounding vehicle. There's a vast number that can't.
And a lot of them are graded install. But, you know, Mike, hopefully you can chime in on this. I
think that there's the amount of people that can produce a great install with the right install
knowledge, with the right product knowledge, and then finish it up with a great sounding tune.
It's nowhere near enough. So that's, that's what I was targeting.
Yeah. I think it's a great service, honestly. And the way that you partner with other shops,
I think is a really smart service. Because I think, I think that Cliffin is right, and there's
probably quite a few shops that probably have a max that that intended on learning to use it,
but maybe they haven't put the time or the practice in to get really good at it.
And, you know, having you, you know, log in and tune it for them kind of gives them
number one, a visual aid, and then a great benchmark to try to achieve, you know, whenever
they're practicing with their own stuff. But to mirror what you just said, you're right.
Unfortunately, there's not enough shops that I've seen
that can produce a really high fidelity sound on the first go round in a,
in a reasonable amount of time. And I don't, I don't know why I don't know if it's,
if it's lack of education or lack of practice, or maybe they don't understand what
a high fidelity sound is, or a mix of all of it, I'm not really sure. But
I think that's a, that's a cool way to help, to help those guys out.
It's been, it's been fairly good. I mean, I've got some guys in Valdosta, Georgia.
I've got some guys in Ohio, guys in Kentucky, couple in Denver, one in Florida. And it works
out really well because I, there's actually a few of them advertise me and say, you know,
Jeffrey Hall is going to log in and a few of them call it their house tune. I don't care
either way. I just want to make sure that the end result is good because, and I think I said
this on the previous podcast, but I still believe it to this day is that the, the dying off of audio
is because people are getting better sound out of their factory systems when, you know,
guys like myself or Mike Myers or the, the, the, you know, dozen or so other people,
we can produce something that sounds infinitely better than, you know, the OEM systems.
And that's what, that's what people want when they spend 10, 20 grand, you know?
Yeah. It's, it's much more difficult nowadays to achieve something that's actually better sounding
than, than the, the higher end OEM systems that you can find these days. I, you know,
a lot of people that, that try to just rip all the speakers out and replace them and slap a five
channel lamp in there and then hope that it's going to be better. That's just really not,
that's just really not a good way of making it actually sound better. So, so I think maybe they
just don't understand what they're dealing with signal wise or, or what they need to try to achieve
sound wise. I'm not sure, but it's good to see that, that you're helping a lot of those guys out
with that. It's a cool service. You know, as, as you know, people, people have to come to me if
they want to, if they want me to tune it, I'm not, I don't really have the time to, to travel a bunch
or I'm not really great with the remote tuning. I already do enough traveling with judging. So,
so if you want me to turn it, you're going to have to bring it to my shop.
Well, and, and I tell people all the time, I, you know, without you knowing possibly I use you
as a reference, like if you want to talk about someone that's great at tuning and great at judging,
you're, you're one of the people that I constantly point to. So, you know, whenever I have someone,
even within a couple hundred miles of your area, you know, with like, you know, the development of
the, you know, WCA, MCA, ECA kind of thing. And I'm just like, Hey, after this, go to a show,
who's the judges? Okay, listen to that judge, listen to this judge. And I'm constantly encouraging
people to go to shows after the tune that I do. Because, because they're, you know, their first
question or the, you know, the first day, it's always, you know, oh, it's perfect. And then they
get to listen to it. And then they go, Ah, I heard this, how can we move this? And I go, Well,
I'm not there. I could probably pick it out, you know, but the whole crux of this is that it's
remote so that it's a lot less expensive. And so that it's a lot, you know, more convenient for you.
But at the same time, we can get those results. If you just simply go to some of these events,
whether, you know, whether whatever the org is, listen to these judges, they have great ear,
it's very consistent. You go and get that feedback. And then, you know, I've talked with them enough,
I can probably apply the changes necessary to get us pretty close. Yeah, yeah. Do you ever find
yourself, do you have a difficulty sometimes trying to get an idea of what sound a customer wants
to be able to hit that target? So I think that there, there's only been three or four that have,
you know, almost stumped me out. I'll say almost because I did end up making them happy and they
did end up doing, you know, public reviews and all that just to support that. But for the vast
majority, I use the same curve that I do for a competition vehicle. It's, you know, specific
to the way that I set my microphones and all of that with Max, we've had obviously conversations
about that in person, you know, with microphone position things and curves. But, you know,
basically, I started out with, you know, let's just say curve TT for total tuning, right. So,
and then, you know, they give their feedback. And those couple of people that I'm talking about,
I would end up either messing with virtual, if it's a Helix or a ARC product using the universal
in the front or whatever, and get close to what they want. Or sometimes I've even had one where he
made a tune sound tonally like he wanted. He just couldn't make it image or stage or any of that and
had phase all messed up and all kinds of stuff. So what I would do is I would just say, okay, cool,
put my microphones in, put them in the way that I prefer to have them, let me measure it, and then
it's just redefine my target. If my targets, you know, X, Y, and Z make it this curve instead,
and then just reset up my individual targets and away I go. It's the same process. It's just a
different target on the screen. And, you know, funny enough, I've actually had those couple
people that I'm referencing, one of them's in Washington, he has his own special curve,
and I was actually able to use that curve on another guy in New York, funny enough.
He liked the same thing. He had very similar words on my stock curve, you know,
saying that he wanted a lot more energy, like not three or five dB. I'm talking about like
10 dB more energy below 400 Hertz. And like just wanted this enormous amount of lower midrange,
male vocals, mid bass, you know, just super thick drums, all that stuff. And I was like,
okay, well, I happened to have a curve that a gentleman vetted with me that said similar things,
let's try it. And so I just quickly redid it and we didn't spend a whole lot of time on imaging.
And he goes, oh, yeah, that's what I'm after. Okay, cool. Now let's refine your imaging.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I always found, you know, for most people that come to us for tuning,
I use the same target. But every once in a while, you'll have a person that that came to us for
tuning that was suggested by somebody else, but they're not really like a sound quality type of
person. And then I'll tune it and then I send them in the car, take a listen to see what you think.
And they're like, well, can we add more bass? I'm like, yeah, I mean, that's easy enough.
And then, you know, like, can we add more trouble? Yeah, I can do that, you know, and then and then
you're like, okay, this is we're getting a little far away from where, you know, I would call it,
you know, really good. But, but, you know, as long as they're happy, the other third person has to
pay for it and drive it around and be happy. So I don't really care. I don't really care what it
sounds like other than I want them to to be very happy with what the finished product does, you
know. Yeah. And I think I think we're, it sounds like we both have similar experiences, you know,
one out of 100 or one out of 200 is like that for me personally, where it's like,
my normal curve doesn't satiate, but the techniques are still the same, how what microphone you use,
or, you know, what songs you like to listen to or whatever, you know, or, you know,
however you get images to line up, all that's the same at that point, it's just total preference.
Right. Yeah, that's a, I just wondered how, how much of that that you run into. So it seems like
it's not very often same, same with us. So that's pretty cool. Now, as far as I'm sure that you've,
you've changed like the microphone array over what the stock, you know, just like bar thing is,
is that something that you can disclose any, or, or you just wanted to do your own video for that,
or? No, I'm happy to talk about it. So I mean, it's no secret that I, I've found success with
the, the Mark Eldridge array, very similar, very similar design when set up right, because you
can put all the mics on the top, you know, which is one way that Mark does it, you know, we've kind
of played around, I have my own version of it. I actually set them up a little bit more like a
Getty's array where they're split higher and lower. And, you know, the goal is basically, for me at
least, to spread them out as much as possible to get as much height variation as possible.
Because, you know, I give you a great example of, of body types here, you know,
guys like Harry Camaro and guys like, you know, Tim Gowdy are similar heights,
but they have very different torsos. And I've noticed that when I use the bar array that,
you know, originally came with Max, not talking bad about it, it's very space efficient. But,
you know, you didn't get the, the, the forgiveness on your height variances there because you
spread out the mics enough. So, you're super critical on where you place your, your listeners.
You know, of course, yeah, it's going to sound great using an array that's, that's tighter focus.
But if you spread them out like, you know, Natons or, you know, just a, any, any microwave where
they're spread farther out, particularly from a, you know, lower in the front, taller in the back
kind of motion. And then using a reference might kind of in the middle, depending on the person,
depending on the technique, it normally works pretty well. Yeah. Yeah. I, you know, that seems
like a pretty good way to do it because it's rare that you would have, I mean, it's, it's pretty
easy to have different sized people, you know, listeners as far as height wise, but it'd be
really weird to have someone sitting like left of center or something weird like that, unless
you're at SVR, but
gotta bring that up.
But yeah, I mean, that's between y'all.
But that was a, you know, but that seems like a pretty wise decision. So, yeah, went to basically
all the finals, you went to the MCA finals, the Aggie Light. How was that?
It was fantastic. I really like ICA as an org. I think that the, there's a lot of good things
about it. I think that there's obviously improvements that every org can make. But I think that ICA
addresses a lot of, a lot of good things. The classifications are pretty good at spreading
people out. I think INT4 is a little light based on normal modifications that I see. But overall,
really like it. And, you know, Aggie Light was a pretty good success overall. Had a lot of the
Texas crew, you know, from all different campfires, you know, even in Texas and,
you know, neighboring regions, there's still little camps of groups of people, you know.
Oh yeah.
There's lots of fun. I think it was a very, very well done show as normally with,
you know, with the people that involve themselves around the Aggie Lands and the Aggie Lights,
so including all the judges. So I think that judges always do a great job and,
you know, the support staff, organization, all that. Obviously, there was a lot of awards handed
out for, you know, the people there. And I was very happy to get the David Seal Award,
which was the MCA Cup. So that was super, you know, just flattering. So honoring such an
awesome dude, anyone that doesn't know David Seal, he was pretty much as good as they came.
So pretty cool awards. The highest scoring car at the finals event.
Yeah. I mean, great work. Got that one up top. I'm working on the new shelves and clearing
space for the upcoming year. And that one's, hopefully I get my name on that one the second
year, because I kind of like having it around. So I don't want to give it back. So I just got
to win again. I'm just going to have to keep doing well, because I don't want to give it back.
Yeah. There's a few people in your area rebuilding, you know, I think they're coming for you.
Oh, no. There's always been a couple key areas of the country and, you know, I'm very happy to be
in the Texas region. One of the key areas in my opinion, lots of good cars, again, from those
multiple campfires that I was referencing, but there's a lot of good cars. And just around my
campfire, we've got, we haven't officially announced it and, you know, had our, had our
jackets shown off at a show together yet, but we've got a team of 13 that we're,
we're all kind of trying to organize and spread across classes and help each other
rebuild and, you know, tuning and, you know, all that fun stuff. So
cool. It'll be lots of fun. It'll be a great year coming up.
You've done a great job. Your car sounds excellent.
Thank you. Working on some rebuild stuff on it. It's funny to say that, you know,
you always think that it's done and then like you get your, your finals information back or
your paperwork back from, from, you know, at least this past year was Birmingham or whether
if it's your MCA finals or whatever. And it's like, well, I can improve that. And the next
thing you know, I've got a list on my phone. So yeah, I've not heard a perfect car yet.
Yeah. One, one day there will be a perfect car. I don't know how, I don't know when,
but we'll find out. Yeah. Probably not in our lifetimes. Yeah. Tricky. You know,
the, the limiting factor is always the size of the car. You know, that's always. Yeah. And
funny enough, I've actually found some, some interesting information on that.
You know, I'm a little on the nerdy side and I like to play around with some stuff like that.
Had a 120 Hertz cancel on a Dodge Challenger that I was tuning and, or not cancel, it was a boost.
And he had kick panel mid bases. And I'm like, there's nothing in the car. There's no dash.
Like we're, we're putting foam places to find the reflection so that he can build the dash
where he wants to. And you know, the mid base response, I'd send you the graph here after
we're done. It was absolutely perfect. It looked like a trace. It just had like this little bump
at 120. Like, hmm, well, you could definitely EQ that it's only like two or three DB, but
I want to find out what it is. So naturally me being me, I play around with a couple things.
Okay, it's not the floor. It's not this. It's not that I get a hunch. I go grab three big ass
pillows off of my master bed and I throw them on his rear deck and it fixes it.
So in that particular car, it happened to be the rear deck.
Interesting. Yeah.
They just load a certain way. But I mean, you know, like spaciousness and stuff like that,
you know, it's still kind of, most cars are kind of confined, you know, to the, to the car. I mean,
they, they reach out a little bit and stuff like that. But, you know, I've heard people say,
you know, the, the vocalists just way out past the hood and all this kind of stuff. And,
you know, I've never heard that. And I've heard almost every single car in the country now.
Yeah. I mean, I think you can, you can extend some boundaries. You know, I mean,
for sure. But it's, but it's not like it's not immense, you know, that's always the hard part,
you know. Yeah. I think the difference between a okay tune and a great tune is like, you know,
pillar to pillar versus two inches outside the pillar in each direction, or, you know,
depth is, you know, base of the windshield versus halfway down the hood. I'm like, that's,
that's pretty much as far as I've seen personally. I'm not sure if you, you agree, but
yeah, that's, that's about as far as a, of a distance to stage as I've ever heard.
But yeah, so much that's perceptual, you know, it's not,
it's hard to say that physical in terms of physical boundaries, that that's actually
happening. And it's just like, well, that's what sounds like. And what's, what is out of phase
versus what's in phase, but yeah. Yeah, that's just how I've interpreted it. You know, but,
you know, I'm happy to, to be surprised this next season. I can't wait to hear
even bigger and better things from everybody. So that'll be, that'll be a lot of fun.
So after that, you went to, you know, Birmingham, compete in, you know, ISCA,
Emma, MASQ. Did you do Mecca at that one? I didn't do Mecca at that one.
Okay. So how, how was that event for you? It was very good. You know, the, the,
the judging staff always are great. And all the orbs were pretty well run. I didn't, you know,
their, their finals of years past have ran super late for this reason or that reason,
and still judging at 7pm and all that fun stuff. But everything was on running at a pretty good
click. I think I had something obscene, like 14 judges to do over the weekend. So, you know,
I, I regrettably had to, had to turn away. I didn't necessarily turn away. I just said,
like, I'm not ready yet. Come on back. But I tried to turn away some demos because like,
literally getting judged right now or like, you know, I know, I know for a fact he's coming
right now. So I missed a, missed a couple of opportunities of people that I've, you know,
but always looking forward to meet and all that and giving them demos. You know, it's one of my
favorite things to do is to give demos, but ultimately when you spend 1500 plus dollars
in entries between, you know, all these different orgs, yeah, I'm going to let the judges get in
first. And if we have a spare second, you just, just hang tight. Like we can, we can talk about
whatever you want for the next eight minutes until he's done. And then we can get in there,
I promise. So, but no, it was a fantastic event. You know, I kind of arrived there
short, short of breath, so to speak, in terms of getting everything ready.
Some may or may not know, but the, there was a battery failure in the car,
like two months before finals, and I had to rebuild the entire, you know, back half of the car,
basically, every panel, every bolt, every wire, everything got rebuilt, obscene amounts of hours,
obscene amounts of money. The car is worth six times over, actually. And
Google what my car is worth 2016 Mazda six and multiply that by about six.
So, yeah, but, you know, literally put in the last panel at 1030pm at night,
the night before, like Thursday night, and woke up at 330 in the morning, like four or five hours
later and drove to finals, was rocking the same exact tune that I had from kicker in
June, which would normally be fine, except for the fact that the A pillars were different,
the dash was slightly different. And technically, all five amplifiers were different amplifiers,
they'd all been replaced. So, yeah, even though they're the same amp, they're not the same amp
kind of thing as silly as that sounds. So, even though I literally had, if I would have had a
few more hours, definitely could have changed some things, but still proud of how everything
went down. Proud of the team, everyone on the team did well. Had a novice card, you know,
basically do well in every single org. So, pretty much everyone on the team did well. And I was
happy just to be there, you know, fanning away the lithium smell out of my trunk, just so no one
noticed. And, but yeah, it was an awesome time, wouldn't change it for the world. And, you know,
glad that I was able to attend, make it happen, see everyone. And, you know, what was the biggest
compliment to me, funny enough was, I'll call Mick Wallace out on this one, he actually didn't
even know I mentioned it during my install presentation to him and Tim. And I'm like, yeah,
in case you didn't know, it's this one, and I'm pointing out specifics of things that have changed
with the car. And he comes up to me afterwards, he's like, what in the, were you talking about?
I was like, you didn't know the car burned down? It's like, no? Thank you, yeah,
here's a timestamp picture of two months ago. Here you go, look.
I think it's a testament to the design that, I mean, you've had essentially that build for
how long now, and then you went to replace it all and you basically put it back, how it was. So,
at a lot of cost. So, I mean, it speaks again to the value of iteration over complete overhaul,
you know what I mean? Like, you know, for you to be able to go back to where it was and still
perform and be there and do what you did, like, I mean, I don't know, that's pretty cool.
It was a story that'll probably be remembered for a while, at least for me, my wife that always
supports me, even told me like, hey, this is probably too much, let's just stay home. And I'm
like, nope. I'm going to work until one, two o'clock in the morning, every single night,
the next two months, I'm going to make it happen, whatever it takes. And so, what was really cool
for me was, you know, that whole car was built by hand by James Davidson and myself and his driveway
and my driveway six years ago. We built it during COVID and released it at Lone Star,
if you remember, whatever the first Lone Star was, Clifton. So, that was the timestamp,
if anyone wants to find out exactly when the car was debuted, it was that show.
Incomplete, like, still missing some panels, but we just did the best we could.
Literally, everything was built by hand, which means, in the nicest way possible,
not every single bolt was perfectly straight. Some were, you know, a 16th inch off this way,
or, you know, they're all straight up and down, but like, they're not perfectly symmetrical,
like they were made with a C and C or a laser. And so, you know, replicating that to the T,
because every single part was, you know, handmade with either, you know, welded metal,
you know, with, you know, exact bolt holes for that panel, that exact panel. And like, you know,
now we're taking 3D scans of parts that were burnt and, you know, blown up and trying to figure out
how far the bolt, the nut cert, moved. It was pretty funny, but, you know, the whole team came
together. Shout out to, you know, Phil, Phil, that's Phil Cantu, Justin Armour, James Davidson,
Hunter Brewer, myself, everyone at Mobile Toys that jumped in and helped at the last second.
We had five or six people working on it for almost three weeks. And then I had to finish
up the rest by myself. So that's pretty intense. Yeah. I don't recommend it. Yeah. I think I would
have just been like, no, I'm good. It might have been easier for just the whole car to go away,
honestly. Yeah. But it was a great show, though. And I want to touch on the team for a second.
Because, you know, I have the whole week prior, two weeks prior, I'm, you know, tuning for other
people. And, you know, that's one of the reasons I was so late putting in the last panel. But like,
just, you know, hey, I need, I just redid this. Can I touch up tune? Can I do this? Can I do that?
And that's where the tuning in the airplane post came from. If you guys remember that.
I was flying home from a wedding and like my schedule's
so overbooked, it makes you want to cry. And then one, one of my, one of my friends and team
members, Jim Rogers calls me and he's like, Hey, I'm having trouble with this and that.
As far as phase and timing goes, can you log in? I'll set up Max for you. I go, Jim,
I don't know when, dude. Like, seriously, I'm looking at my calendar as I'm on the phone with
him. Like, there's just no time. And I'm like, I got an idea. Why don't you set up Max and I'm
going to pay for internet on the plane? He goes, you're freaking crazy. And I go, no, I got this,
I got this. So next thing you know, it's like, you know, you get to that 10,000 foot, you know,
you can use your, your full size electronics or whatever the hell they say. Okay, there we go.
I whip out my laptop. My wife is rolling her eyes at me. And I'm just like, okay, send me,
send me the team viewer login and tune in from, tune in from 30,000 feet. He says it was a huge
improvement. Great. Close the laptop and finish watching Gran Turismo on the plane. It's great.
But yeah, the whole team stepped up and between me doing these random, you know,
just trying to help people and then I was running out of time. The next thing you know, they're,
they're printing my install book for me or they're saving spots. They're, you know, helping me detail
the car. Like it's, it's something else having a team of people with you. I think that's probably
the most important part about finals is just, you know, having a group of group of guys that
whatever it takes, we get it done, you know, for sure. That's incredible. So what's your plans
for the coming year? Plans audio wise, pretty much, actually, let me break out my, my notepad here.
I can, I can briefly read off the, the stuff expert build. So I'm rebuilding the front sub,
putting a new carpet kit in the car just cause I'm absolutely insane. So I'm going to rip out
the factory carpet kit and put in a brand new factory carpet kit, move the ribbon, highlight
it a little bit better, make a couple of like tool kits underneath the front seats, just like
little drawers or something. So it's, you know, just little stupid things, but you know, I like
tinkering with it. And I think the biggest thing is going to be moving to a, one of the new Kenwood
eight inch direct replacements. I want to float one of those up top and rework some controls on
the car, like the console controls, things like that. Even had a crazy idea of putting a max
permanently in the car. So I didn't have to bring one with me anywhere. I could just, you know,
like roll up. And if I ever needed one, one's in the car and, you know, push my seat forward
or whatever. And there's like all the cables in their own little laser cut foam things and all
that. And, you know, undecided on that favoring not, but thought it'd be a cool idea, just
trying to think of cool things to do, you know, just to maximize points and
new creative stuff rather than just presenting the same old build for the fifth year in a row,
you know, right? So, and then total tuning wise, just get those couple last maxes and
really working on optimization, like website.
You know, I've recently made a calendar where people can book their own appointments on my
computer and all that stuff. So that's kind of, you know, just, just figured it out as I went
along. But yeah, just rebuilding the car and, you know, trying to grow total tuning and
normal life stuff after that. So what are you planning on event wise?
This year's event list. I know I'm getting ready to head to Sound Paradise, Florida.
So are you going to be, are you going to be doing the vendor thing there? Are you competing
and vendor or what are you doing?
Last year I did competing and vendor this year. I'm just competing. I was stretched so thin last
year that, you know, I didn't, you know, normal, normal me. I just, I try to do everything and,
you know, end up only doing 80% of what I should be doing. But yeah, I'm just competing this year,
Justin Armour and I are coming down and just doing the money round. And after Sound Paradise, we've
got Aggieland, then we've got Kicker, Heatwave, and the Conway Finals. I'll for sure be going to.
And then, you know, probably some local shows, whatever, whatever is, whatever supports the
team, whatever, wherever people need me. Sometimes I meet people at shows to do listening on cars
of remote tune, things like that. So the south in general is, there's not really any, any excuses
for anybody not to be competing this year. It's, it's a, you're pretty stacked. So yeah, should
be a good year. Lots of good shows this year. I think the sleeper for me is going to be Heatwave.
You know, you think Heatwave is the, the big bass show and, you know, that's all it is. But,
you know, I won't, I won't spoil all the surprises, but there's, there's some big things happening.
And I think it might even be one of the biggest shows of the year. Awesome.
That'd be cool to see. Yeah, that show used to be huge. And at least on the SQ side, it's been
dead for a decade or more. So it'd be good to see it come back. There's a lot of cool things.
I'm pretty sure I can divulge that it's at the Coda Track instead of the Travis County Expo.
So Coda Race Track and some, some things are, some things are booked for some, some high-end
stuff. And, you know, they're, they're trying really hard to make it, make it kind of in the
finals, meets Ex Bono, meets, you know, truck show, and then just go all three just now,
now kiss, you know? Right. So, I think it'll be a good thing. And, you know,
lots of people are involved. I know there's going to be some car driving on the race track
that you can pay some money to get into. So pretty much that, that count me in on that too.
Right. Drive around the Coda Track, twist my arm, please.
Yeah, a lot, a lot better venue as far as that goes. So it'll be, yeah, that's cool.
No, it's, it's going to be awesome. It'll be neat to see that, that show grow, you know,
into a larger rescue event like it used to be. Hopefully you'll have a lot of success with that.
I mean, it's always had a great base following. And I think that the previous, previous way they're
hosting it was, you know, about as good as it could be considering there was no sound quality and no
home. But this year with having that big of a venue, if anyone doesn't know how big that race
track is, it's freaking massive. So, you know, I think it's going to give everyone enough space
to do everything, but, you know, still take a short golf cart ride to get to the other,
the other sections, you know? Right. So that's pretty cool. Yeah.
You've had a lot of success, you know, throughout the years, you know, and in these,
in these recent years with competing and over the course of different organizations and finals
and stuff like that. What do you attribute some of that success to? I think the biggest thing is
knowing that there's no perfect way to do something and knowing that it can always be improved,
whether that's your install, whether that's your tune. And I think the biggest thing that
I bring to the table for myself is knowing that physical changes are number one. I think that
a lot of competitors will reach for the DSP, reach for the computer first thing, like there's a
problem. Well, the first thing I'm reaching for is a piece of foam or re-angle the speaker or,
you know, move this panel or something. Like I'm always reaching for the physical side of things
coming from my SPL background. You can't just boost a certain frequency in SPL. It's all cabin
gains. It's all physical changes. And I think that, you know, having a fundamentally sound
installation with all the things optimized before you even open the processor is by far the most
important thing. If you're hearing something, unless you think it's tune related, it's probably
physical. That's pretty cool. I mean, it looks like you make, you know, small incremental changes
rather than, you know, my card didn't score the way I wanted to. Let me throw all the equipment
away and start again. Yeah, that's another big thing. I think that, you know, there's a lot of,
this is a hot take, by the way. So I'm not trying to be controversial, but I think that a lot of
people will put weight into changing equipment rather than optimizing it. One of them is a guy
on my team that shall remain nameless sat in your car, Mike, and was instantly just like, well,
I got to have everything Mike had. And I go, why? I'm like, no, dude, no, like, I mean, we, we can,
and there's some benefits to the things that Mike is using in his car. And, you know, he's,
he's a smart dude that, you know, he, he, he makes a lot work for him with a little, you know, it's
not like these over extravagant, crazy dashboard cars, but yet somehow they all perform extremely
well. But know that copying equipment, just going, well, you know, Bruno's car, Naton's car,
Jeffery's car, Mike's car, you know, name all the, Brian's car, name all the cars and just go,
you know, I want to copy whatever they did. Well, no, you know, again, SPL background.
If I copy your build, Mike, say you're doing 150 DB and whatever clamped class, whatever you're
doing, if I copy or build, the only thing I can hope to do is get exactly 150. I can't improve
that. And, you know, if I change the subwoofer every single week, trying to hunt more than 150,
chances are you've already had the good subwoofer in this analogy, and you're going backwards,
you're going lateral, you're not making good changes. Your, your equipment is important,
but you can do a lot with a little. And I think, you know, you're, you're the poster child of that,
you know, with, with all of your bills, they're just so damn good. And they're so simple at the
same time. Well, that's because I can't do anything complicated.
Katie was never admitted on a dash. Dude, I'm telling you, just got to use some,
some, uh, sound dead or hold it down, you know,
just, you know, that's the biggest thing is I think that once people have a, you know,
fairly good product, whether, you know, this brand or that brand or mixing multiple brands or
whatever it is, I think a lot of it's install and tune. And I've, I've had a lot of, I think
that's been my biggest pushback from the internet in the past couple of years is being vocal about
that. And then them going like, no, you know, this and that, the other thing. And I go, I mean,
yeah, those help, but get your fundamentals right. If you think, if, if anyone can tell me,
if anyone can look me in the face and tell me their car is perfectly optimized and their
tune is perfectly optimized, look in the mirror, like get a hard look because it's not.
I, you know, and I completely agree with that, you know, I, I mean, equipment obviously matters,
you know, to a degree, um, you need, you need something that's, that's competent and, you know,
can, can get the frequency range that you're looking for, you know, at, at whatever volume
you're looking for and so on and so forth. But beyond that, you know, like equipment that you
choose, um, like brands don't matter, uh, as much as far as I would say the ability to extract
every last bit of sound. What I, what I end up finding is, is the brands that I choose are,
are brands that partner with me and our shop and our supportive of us and our hobby
is much more valuable than trying to chase like the highest end, most expensive piece of equipment.
Uh, because if I ever need to have a question or, or need us something else or
God forbid, break something, then these partners that I've, that I've built,
you know, as part of our team over the last years, then, you know, they're, they're vested in us,
we're vested in them. And, uh, that means a lot more than trying to chase like the,
the highest, you know, distortion rate on your amplifier or whatever. So.
Yeah. And I don't know if you've seen it in your shop, Mike. I've seen it a lot lately. Had two
last week where people send me entire email quotes from literally copy and paste chat GPT.
And, uh, I want the, I want the, this and that. And like, you can just tell by the way it's written
that it's chat GPT. And I'm like, I actually called, called one of them out on them, like,
because he asked for a, a jail, something like it was an amplifier that didn't exist. It was a
vehicle. It was just chat GPT making up stuff. It was like a speaker that didn't exist, a plug
and play harness that didn't exist with a, an amplifier that didn't exist. And, and I want a
direct quote for exactly this. And I go, well, Mr. So and so, uh, none of those products actually
exist out of curiosity. Where did you come up with that research? Did this happen to be AI?
And he goes, yes, I use AI to start all my conversations. I go, okay, well, this'll be fun.
I had a guy, uh, bring a vehicle that he had sort of tuned using, you know, AI as like, you know,
where to set your crossovers and what to type in for delays and all that kind of stuff. And that
was pretty interesting. I've had one of those too. I've seen one of those. It's funny to have that
parallel. Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah, it's got a long ways to go. I think it's getting worse actually.
Yeah. Yeah, I can't hear it all. It does get, it does give some interesting feedback if you, uh,
if you try shooting it some, you know, RTA feedback and say, okay, what do I do with this now?
And then it's like, yeah, I think maybe they're not asking the right questions or something,
you know, uh, but I don't know. I would agree. I've got mindset up to where you can set custom
prompts. And I've got mindset up to where I say, be my own worst enemy, argue with me every chance
you get, do not agree with me poke holes in every single thing that I say. And then I just sit there
and ask it questions back and forth. And it, it's more about leading me to the right answer
rather than me asking it for the answer. Right. And then research it when you're done because,
you know, yeah, because it's probably wrong on specifics, but it could definitely be a useful
tool. And I think it's, you know, we'll see how it goes. It depends on where the money leads. So
we'll see if it gets better or worse over time, I guess. Right. Yeah. It'll just lead to more
advertisements, honestly. The amount of AI videos I've seen of, of car wrecks and snow this past
weekend has been hilarious. And I know they're fake because the cars flip upside down and there's
no way they run out of it. That's funny. From a competitor standpoint, there's been, I think
most of the major shows have been announced with dates and places and times and judges and, and
everything else. I have my own thoughts on parts of things and whatever, but what are your thoughts
being in the industry and, you know, as a competitor and working with a lot of newer competitors and
that, you know, what, what can, you know, those of us like, you know, me myself as a lowly one event,
you know, two event event director, but on top of that, you know, the people who might be listening
who are, you know, running finals and other big events and everything else. And then, you know,
the judges like Mike and others, I mean, what, what can, from your perspective, what can we do
to serve the, you know, that community better, you guys as competitors?
Yeah, how do we make it better? How do we get more people, you know?
And I think that that's a great question. I've put a lot of thought into this. There, there's
been some recent discussions on the, on that topic and, you know, regarding this order, that
Oregon, you know, not going into specifics like that, but I'll, I'll give my, my take on how it's
all kind of structured and how I think it would be better suited. I think we need to define
the types of shows. Number one, is it a competitor show or is it a sales show? You know, competitor
shows, meaning it's the same 100 people, we all know each other, whether we like each other or we
don't, we all know each other's first and last name, we all know each other's vehicles, we know
the whole build about the other person, right? It's, it's a competitor show. It's all the same
people going around the country, getting re-judged, improving, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The sales
shows, in my definition, are the ones where, you know, your sound paradise, your heat waves, your
exponas, your, you know, there, I'm sure there's others where there's an event mirroring the sound
quality show or, you know, joining or whatever you want to say. And the purpose is to expose
high-end cars, these great sounding vehicles to the world, you know, to people with similar
interests. Maybe their interest is lifted trucks, maybe their interest is, you know,
high-end home stereos, maybe their interest is, you know, insert hobby A, right? Or just, you know,
people that are, you know, at least middle of the road finance-wise or better and have the
funds to put into something like, you know, this whole called car audio, right? But defining
whether if it's a sales event or a competitor event, number one, number two. And I think that if you
have only sales events or only competitor events, the industry's going to slow down and die. A great
example is, I think, in the past few years, we've had a lot and overabundance, 95 plus percent of
the shows have been competitor events, which is great. We all get to stand around and sync
Kumbaya and listen to each other's cars. But there's no new growth there unless you're actively
bringing people in. I know a few people in the industry do. I know you do, Mike. I do. I know
Brian Mitchell does. A few other people in the industry are bringing new people in. But that's
onesie-toosie stuff. You know, me working as hard as I can, I'll bring in two or three last year,
and that's it. You know, we need dozens and dozens and dozens. And so I think what happens
in a very, very bad analogy that I haven't put enough thought into, your sales events
are kind of like where you get your seeds planted into the ground, right? This person that's never
seen this or never heard this or thought that it was just a bunch of boom, boom cars, sits in this
and goes, holy hell, this is amazing. That seed is planted, okay? But just having the seed planted
and then you go to a local shop or whatever, you go to a high-end shop, you send your car
across the country to have someone very good build it. Whatever you do, now you get your car back.
Now what do you do? Well, they're not passionate about cardio competition. And yeah, you got them
to spend five, 10, 20, 30 grand one time. But that's very different than what we do as an industry
and how we, you know, are constantly working on that pipeline. And so your competitor events
are where your sunshine and water come into play. You've got these seeds in the ground from the sales
events. And then you have your local events, your competitor events, where there's no other
sales tactics, there's no booths, there's no anything where you're talking to the immense
public, you're only talking to people that came there for a sound quality car show. Maybe they
have a car, maybe they don't. But it's still a very small amount of people, very intimate and,
you know, very direct in what the approach is. So that's where, you know, they go and get their
judging feedback. And then they find their local tuner. That's when they start working on their
tune, staying on their tune, improving the install. And then this passion starts burning in them,
you know, and the metaphor, the water and the sunshine starts to take effect, the plant starts
to grow. And then all of a sudden, you know, they're, they're, you know, I'm mirroring my story,
basically, I went to a sound quality show, and then I cultivated myself into, you know, deep into
the competition scene, right? It took a couple of years to cultivate that. But it didn't happen
because I went to Knowledge Fest and stood in front of a booth and talked for hours. It didn't
happen because I was at an event like Sound Paradise talking to home audio people. That's
Agilance going to your SVRs, going to your pigeonforges, going to your local events that are
1x2x and getting judges feedback and seeing improvements. And, you know, we all have the
same mentality for the most part, we want to improve, we're perfectionists in some way,
or we just love audio or a combination of all of it. And these local events or your big regionals
are going to be how you get these passionate people, passionate enough and dedicated enough to
go to your big, big events, to go to your very expensive two, three, four thousand dollar final
events where, you know, I mentioned on Facebook that finals at Birmingham was almost double what
my last two vacations were scuba diving for a week. And it was a weekend that I get to go
sit and listen to 14 people tell me how much my car freaking sucks.
Pay for the privilege.
Think about that for a second, like what would I rather do? Go spend two weeks in Mexico with my
wife or go get yelled at by 14 people telling me my car sucks. So, but I think that's my biggest
hot take on that is just knowing that we're, we have to define it as two separate events and
they're both important, they both mirror each other. And without both, the pipeline dies.
You have a bunch of seeds in the ground that never grow or you have a bunch of overgrown
plants with no new plants. So, so do you think the two, those two style of events
need to stay separate in their own lanes? You know, because I guess my view would be like
what you just said about, you know, like going to Florida soon, you know, you're going there
just to be a competitor versus, you know, trying to do, trying to do both. The reason I do what I
do as far as, you know, this and the event promotion and everything else for the past
decade or more is because I don't have the, I'm, I can't handle the anxiety of being a competitor.
Yeah. And for me, you know, being at an event where I'm asked to, you know, and I've demoed,
like I've had, you know, I've ran demo cars at Knowledge Fest and CES and other places where
I've given, you know, literally hundreds of demos in a weekend and selling car audio, right?
Yeah. But to do that and compete would kill me, you know. So, you know, it seems to me like it
almost needs to be like a, you know, a very carefully curated number of cars and people
that are working the selling events that are, you know, essentially, you know, commercializing
this to a certain degree, but, you know, it really working your ass off and doing the demos,
being able to explain it, you know, having the personality to pull it through, knowing,
knowing the source material and being able to talk to me through a demo and everything else,
all of that is an art in its own. And then, you know, also have the events where you're,
you know, you're there to do nothing but compete like IELAN, for example. I'd say that, you know,
IELAN is probably the purest form of that because there is no vendors, there is no
sponsorships, there, you know, it's, you're there and you're doing nothing but competing
for the amount, a lot of time and then, you know, you go from there. Yeah.
What are your thoughts as far as, I mean, does it need to be more,
each need to be more focused or does it need more crossover? Do we need it all together?
I mean, I don't know. I think that having it all together, like in my mind, and again,
there's going to be people that disagree with me. I spoke with one
organer a couple of nights ago that probably would disagree with this, but I think that,
that competitive car audio and the sales events are, it's not going to be
as good of a result as your dedicated SQ finals, your SVR, your Aggieland,
where they're competitor events, in my opinion, you know, and you can try and
crush out the judging the day before, or you can try and, you know, do the judging in between,
but realistically, the way that I would do it, if it was me, is I would, you know,
have the best cars, the 10 or 20 best cars in Vitam, you know, like pretend it's a,
pretend it's a manufacturer booth at KnowledgeFest or, you know,
you know, MasterTech or something where, you know, the expenses are paid for these
10 or 20 cars, their job is to represent the brand, a.k.a. 12 volt, a.k.a. the org,
the company that their car mostly has or whatever the case may be, but those are the sales events,
and there's three, five, six of those a year, these big events with, you know, three, five,
10,000 people all at the event, all, you know, selling to these people, essentially getting
them into car audio, but then we have to have those separate competitor-only things, you know,
your local shows and your regional shows, you know, and maybe a group finals, I think group
finals is great personally, but I won't get into that, the, but having those big regionals, having
your local shows where they can go and dip their foot in, having a nice easygoing factory locations
class where a super positive, supportive judge is going to hop in there and go, hey,
you did all these great things, this is what I found bad, but you know, is this your first
show, by the way? Great job, shake their hand. Next thing you know, they're coming to another
show, they're coming to another show past that, and so you have to cultivate that. I think it
should be five, six sales shows to, you know, 50 competitor shows, and I'm not saying all big ones
like Aggieland, but, you know, there needs to be two or three or four regional ones within
two or three hundred miles, because here's the deal, these big shows, you know, if you live across
the country, right, pretend you're California or, you know, Virginia or something, and you want to
come to Heatwave, or pretend you're, you know, all the way in Arizona and you want to go to
Expona, like that's a long, long drive, right? And there's plenty of people that'll do it. There's
people with the means, there's people with the PTO, with the money, with the time, with the passion
that will make those events come hell or high water, doesn't matter if they have to travel
5,000 miles round trip, they will do it. We know some of them, we're friends, all three of us are
friends with some of them, but having those people at the sales events and having the local
events where your weekend warrior that has kids as a family that doesn't have time to take PTO off
can drive 100 miles or, you know, 150 miles to a local good event where there's 15, 20, 30 cars,
that is huge. It gives, that's what grows the industry. It's not the big events alone,
it's not the competitor events alone, because the competitor events will, you know, you'll just,
well, I've had the same judge for the past two years, I'm going to go ahead and, and skip out of
that. I think California is a great example of that, not calling any names, but, you know, there's
70 or 80 great vehicles in California, but only 10 or 15 come out typically, they're in the local
events, but they're not in the, the big regional events. So I think having that constant pipeline
flow feeding each other where your sales events feed new people for the small events to cultivate
and the small events to pick out the exceptional ones to feed into the regionals, where the regionals
get to pick a finals and so on. Like that's, that's how the cycle works in my opinion, you know,
differing from some others, but that's my two cents on it.
And from, so from an industry standpoint then, as far as, I mean, what I'm told tuning is your
thing that you're working with people on, plus obviously you work with mobile toys and then MTI
as a brand, which, you know, all, you kind of are very multifaceted, they're more than most
in that regard. And I'll give my two cents on this part and then, and then I want you to reflect
and see, you know, where your thoughts are. But a lot of people look, when these discussions come
up, you know, especially around like the various cardio finals and bigger events and everything
else, everybody is immediately on track for wanting to get the cardio brands involved.
You know, it seems like there's this constant thing where, well, we need the cardio brands there
because that's what makes it big, blah, blah. That's what makes brings foot traffic. That's,
this is that. And, you know, my pushback a little bit because, and, you know, it back in the day,
you know, people would reference like spring break nationals, you know, in the 90s and early
2000s a lot. And they'll, they'll reference like Eurofinals, you know, the MA Eurofinals because
they're such a big brand presence there. But in both of those cases, like at spring break,
you know, I was there competing and, you know, we were in a field in the back and, you know,
all the, all the brands were in the air conditioned building up front. But, you know,
those people stopped there. They weren't coming back in the, in the actual tents and lanes and,
in the field to check out the competitors. Like we were all still pretty much amongst ourselves.
Eurofinals, for one thing, you happen to have, you know, they don't have
like a multi international knowledge vest or master tech like we do. You know what I mean? So,
when it comes to getting people from Russia to Germany to the UK to hear that they're all under
one roof, it's a very rare event. So in a lot of ways, all those manufacturers coming into Eurofinals,
they're not there for the competitors, you know, they're not, and there's very little foot traffic
far as that goes. I would say Aguiland has more foot traffic to the competitors
than the Eurofinals even. It's still mostly competitors talking to competitors back in
the lanes, but the, the manufacturers are there because they're able to network with all the key
countries. And you have, because you have Asian, Asian judges coming over, even though it's the
Eurofinals, you have, and, and they're also, you have a huge crossover of people who are running
Emma in their country, and they're also major distributors. So you have, you know, that there's,
you know, they're involved with Emma and they're involved in the industry. So, you know,
somebody who runs Emma in XYZ country may also be a large distributor for AudioTech Fisher.
So being there and discussing, you know, they're there to sell and turn big money. They're not
there to go, Oh, hey, competitor, who already knows us, you know, that's the hard part. Like,
just like we know each other, none of these brands are getting quote unquote exposure for
being there. And in many of these cases, you know, as far as like, when brands get involved
in the US events, you know, it's, it's, while you might donate, you know,
basically, it's, it turns into like cardio charity to a certain degree, because it's like,
okay, I'll put my, I'll put my brand on there to feel better about myself. Thanks.
Yeah, I know more of these people than you do, by the way, but you know what I mean, you know,
so what? Yeah, but then comes the car, you know, if I'm going to go there, set up a booth,
do all this, like all that costs way more money than just the money that was laid out to be there.
So let's say it's $500, $1,000, $1,500, $5,000 for a booth, you know, if I'm going to be there and
do all that, now I got fly there, I get a crate of stuff there, I got to, you know, set up a banner,
I got to think about what I'm going to do, I got to get a hotel, I got to get, you know,
that just like competing at finals, doubles or triples, you know, it's one of those things where
the, the interfees are big, but then depending on where you're going, you might spend two or three
times that just in travel and being there, plus the time loss, the money lost. I mean, you figure
just an event like Agiland, the shop basically closing down for a day during that day and a
half during that time is a huge loss of money, much less everything else. You know what I mean?
So, but what are your thoughts from an industry standpoint on what we do or do not need to do
in that regard to tie things together? Do you think like the home audio shows, I mean, I think
are a great example of something that's more of a hybrid that's going out there to reach a new
audience, but then what we do about our own, like, you know, you got the kicker show, things are
involved there. I think you went there. I have not been there, so I can't speak to that. You know,
maybe I'm not seeing more out there, but you know, what are your thoughts there?
Yeah, I mean, I think that the, you know, having been to later age, SBN two or three, five years
before it was shut down, having, I went there originally, you know, this is like 2010, so it's
not, you know, prime SBN per se, but there's still cardio competition going on there, SPL and sound
quality. I couldn't even find the sound quality cars. And yeah, maybe, you know, you know,
young dumb, you know, 18 year old, sure, but I couldn't even find them. I was, I was looking
around the building. They're behind the building in the gravel. I know. And so, but I sure as hell
found all the manufacturer booth inside in the AC with those demo cars. So that's why, that's why
I'm a fan of not having the competitions, at least not like a giant one, maybe a super
niche one where, you know, the 10 best of best cars show up. We judge them super quick in a
four hour period, and then we stick them in booths, right? Right. But it's a sales event. The SBN,
in my head, you know, RIP to SBN, it was a sales event. It's less about it being SBN. It's more
about it involving planting more seeds, right? I'm the child of that. I wanted to get into car
audio so damn bad. And then I find, oh, God, I've got a three and a half hour drive up to Daytona.
Hey, Dad, can I borrow your truck? I want to go, I want to go listen to car audio
stereos. And he thought that I was crazy. But yeah, I showed up. It's a planting seeds event,
right? And I think that the manufacturers, you know, whether it doesn't matter who it is,
should be reaching out to these cars in the nation and trying to make their booths look
super attractive to help plant those seeds to help sell stuff. And, you know, maybe the person
doesn't know anything about the brand and their job is just demo. Or, you know, like when I go to
KnowledgeFest for jail audio, I happen to know a good bit about the brand so I can talk pretty
much about anything. But I'll still pass it off to the jail audio people with jail audio shirts on.
You know, we're there to sell stuff. We're there to get people excited about something. We're there
to show off something. We're not there to talk about competing. And then your events like Aggieland,
you know, it's mostly shop funded with a few sponsors. I don't know all the details behind
that. But, you know, there's no like gigantic sponsors stepping in that as far as I know,
you know, 10, 20 grand sponsors putting up all the prize money. I know for a fact that Chris
comes out of pocket on at least some of that. You know, like you said, taking time off the store,
we spend a day cleaning the store, you know, with 30 people staff just cleaning the store
and making sure that it's presentable for everyone. All of this comes at huge cost,
but it's a competitor event. And that's where that's where we should have serious judging.
So I think as far as, you know, sponsorships and getting getting growth in there, if you do get
a chance, that kicker show is probably one of the better ones that I've ever been to.
Had scheduled SPL time, scheduled, you know, car show time, scheduled sound quality time,
people walking around from all three facets, which all three of us know that's very rare
when people are constantly walking around, those breaks allowed people to get away from
their sections. The sound quality people walked over to the SPL side when it was SPL time.
The SPL guys were walking over the sound quality time when it was time for them to shut the
stereos off, you know, the loud stuff. So I think that was a well orchestrated show.
And I think that if you are going to host a big hybrid show, look at what kicker did,
because they held a first class event. If you want to look at a dedicated competitor show,
look at, you know, Aguiland, I think it's a first class event. And it's not because I work there.
It's just a very well run event with great judges. And, you know, there's this huge,
you know, camaraderie and some rivalries. And there's, you know, a little tension at the end
where there's, you know, 10 people standing up and who's in top 10 and all that's nice and fun.
It's called competing. But there's never a, you know, at least, maybe not never, but out of the
42 cars that competed last year at Aguiland or whatever it was, how many of them stepped up and
had a dozen new people come in, right? They didn't leave Aguiland and go, Oh my God, you
got to try this. It was a competition event. It wasn't a sales event. When you leave SBN,
when you leave, you know, hopefully Heatwave this year, when you, when you're at Expona or Sound
Paradise and these people experienced this for the first time, they're going to get interested.
That's where the manufacturer money should be at. And then your local events, yeah, it turns into
charity slash shop funded slash competitor funded. I think the competitor funded things a good idea
where, you know, you know, 20% or 10% of all entries are put are your cash prize, your money
round. And that's how we're funding this, you know, and I think that that's how it needs to be
structured. I don't run any of these events. I've never run a single one. I've only competed
with them. So I'm definitely coming from a place of ignorance on this. But hopefully,
not all of that is completely misguided. And, you know, hopefully other people that may listen to
this find value in some of these things. So what's your thought? I think some of those larger,
you know, sales type events of the past had a larger reach than what the manufacturers
understood. You know, sure, you had, you know, at face value, a lot of, a lot of, you know,
competitors, which those aren't, they sort of are customers, but, you know, they're not,
they're asking for stuff for discounted rates and stuff like that. They're not really
where you're making any money. But, you know, they have normal consumers, you know,
that come through the booth. But I think also another big value that people don't understand
is that, you know, shops and stuff that came to those events, you know, it got them excited about
wanting to build or sell this type of stuff in a way that, you know, later that became
more like a Knowledge Fest and stuff like that, which is cool. But there's not,
there's not a lot of extra effort put into, you know, like the demos and the booths. And
there's not as much excitement, you know, as it used to be for that type of thing. And I think
that's something that some of these partnerships with the home audio type shows or something,
I would love to see, you know, a more of a car audio based when come back.
I don't know that anyone would ever agree to do something like that. But I think it would be
really cool to have, you know, they have these huge home audio expos. Why can't someone do a car
audio one? Yeah. I mean, I mean, I think it definitely could happen, but we have to grow
things in the right way. And we have to make sure not to draw unnecessary lines between people,
try to try to educate and not argue the best we can, try to, you know, make peace with other
camps the best we can, you know, try to get manufacturers back involved. Because ultimately,
if they see something negative, they might not get involved.
Yeah. I mean, and it could be something that can be attached to something else, you know,
like SEMA is a massive event, you know, and it would be, I've never been to SEMA, so I don't
honestly know, I can't speak from a ton of experience, but it seems like it'd be easy enough
to attach something like that with it to make car audio become more visible. I know it's still kind
of four shops and stuff like that, not super consumer facing, but I think we need some of that.
Yeah. I mean, that's what builds the excitement. There's a ton of people that are that are
personal individuals at SEMA. I know it's, you know, this and that and the other thing, but
I'm gonna go ahead and tell you right now, there's more than just shops at SEMA.
And there's a lot of money at SEMA and there's that you could walk SEMA every single day,
25,000 steps a day and still not see the whole damn thing. It would, it would have to take,
you know, 20 of the best cars in the nation to pull money together with car audio sponsors,
you know, making donations or whatever to make the booths happen with the cost of booths there,
but it would definitely be a worthwhile event getting in front of the show and shine people,
just like Exbonus doing with home audio and Sound Paradise is doing with home audio, like
getting in front of these other facets of the same thing. You know, we all, we all like cars.
We all like, yeah, yeah. Good partner, maybe with like some of those larger, you know, like
good guy shows and like, you know, all types of different, you know, automotive type events,
because we're all sort of into it in one way or another. And I think there's more,
there's more interest there than people, you know, might think and maybe they're not sound
quality competitors per se, but, you know, I'm sure they want to hear a great sounding stereo,
whatever they think that might be. Yeah, I run into it all the time. One of my,
one of my, you know, verbatim sales tactics at the shop is I tell people like, look,
I'm a DSP tuner. I don't consider myself a salesperson, but I'll tell you this,
if you sit in this particular car outside, you're either going to go, oh my God, I got to have it,
or that was really cool. I don't need it. And if you're, that was really cool. I don't need it.
Let's put you into some nice speakers with a nice passive amp and a nice base setup,
and you'll be good to go. If, oh my God, I got to have it. Well, congratulations to your new
addiction. Come on down to the dark side. And this is where you go to go to shows after we do your
install. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, because some, some people care a lot about great audio, you know,
and I've tuned cars where, you know, at the end of the list, they're like, man,
it sounds good, but it sounds like everything's just coming out of the center channel. I was like,
you don't have a center channel, but okay. They're like, well, I want it like, you know, like it,
my house. I'm like, okay, all channel stereo is what you're talking about. And sure, we can just
turn the delays off and make it kind of on the sides. If that's the way you want it.
Well, and one of the ways that I get around that personally is I tell people that, you know,
we can all agree on good sound. We just can't agree on the balance of your front and rear,
and we can't agree on the amount of bass, and we can't agree on the maximum SPL level of your
sound system. Yeah. So, you know, my job is to provide you great equipment and a great tune,
a great balance tune. And your job is to tell me if, you know, what is loud enough for you.
And then I'm going to give you everything else you need. I'm going to give you as much volume as
you want. I'm going to give you more rear fill than I want, but that's okay. Here's how to turn it
down. And I'm going to give you way more bass than you want or I want. But, you know, here's how to
turn that down. And by the way, if you find the sweet spot on your rear fill and bass,
you could go compete like this without a single preset change. And then they go,
oh, wow, really? That's cool. And then they end up railing both of those knobs wide open anyways.
But that's okay. Because I've had, you know, out of 10 people, I've had two or three call back and
go, man, you were right. I just turned down the bass just that little bit or turned down the rear
fill just that little bit. And everything was just better. And I've just grown to love it.
So I think rather than making a whole separate preset where there's no delays, I think it's just
giving way more rear fill and way more bass can be the middle ground for those types of customers.
Yeah, yeah. I'll give it a shot. I mean, I know all of them want more bass, but
yeah, it's okay. I mean, I try to, you know, I'll basically ignore 25 Hertz and down and
just say that that's competitor stuff. Like the only people who care about that are competitors.
But, you know, it very, very, very, very, very little EQ on the bass. And, you know, just try to
barely take the tops off of any peaks and give them as much output as they can. And,
you know, you need to be able to go from slaughter to prevail to Rebecca Pigeon. And that's the way
that, that's the way that MTI does it. So yeah, I like it. Jeffrey, a lot of the way you broke that
up is good to hear. I think the way you presented it, I think hopefully, you know, more of us will
listen. I mean, I think there is definitely room for, I mean, there's always been multiple orgs in
SQ, right? But, you know, we have a lot right now. And I think, you know, the thought pattern is
constantly that things need to be the way they've always been. But if there's, you know, opportunity
for that growth and diversity, then I think, you know, everybody involved needs to
take that to heart and push into it. Because, you know, you have people
both wanting everybody to keep doing things the way they want them to do it. And they complain about
there being so many orgs and they complain about it being so expensive and they complain about
this and that and not being in my home state and blah, blah, blah. And so, you know, no matter
what you do, you know, there's going to be complaints. I've been, you know, personally,
I've been very clear from the beginning of doing this and I don't plan on changing. I'll tell you
that much. But, you know, it's my thing has always been I'm going to make the best thing possible
for the people who are involved that are here today. So, I'm not looking, you know, personally,
I'm not saying a negative towards others doing it. I'm saying personally, I'm not looking to
change an event for the people who aren't there or the people who say, well, I would be there
except this or I don't 100% of what I'm doing is based on, you know, in the same way that I'm
looking to provide competitors with the greatest value and feedback and everything else, I do the
same in return. And, you know, if you were here last year and you plan to be here next year,
throw anything at me and we're going to make this that much better for everybody involved
who is involved, who's here, who has been here, who knows what's going on. And Aggieland is an
invite event. It's fairly quiet as far as not out there trying to try to sell the event or
hype it or get sponsors or anything else. The goal of it is to make it the best competitor
event possible. And I think the fact that you kind of find that competitor versus sales event,
you know, Aggieland is not that sales event. It's anti that if anything, you know, I'm not
looking to, you know, a long time ago, I even split up the prize money from the event. I'm not
promising anybody prize money that comes from MTI and Chris and the passion to do that. I want
people to come there to get a value for for their entry, no matter where they place, no matter what
they get back, everything else is just icy on the cake. But on the flip side, there are those people
who want to go out and grow and garner new people and do that thing. I'm not that I'm a maximizer.
I'm not a developer, you know, I'm some, I'm out here to take something from 90% to 120%.
I'm not the person to take something from zero to 5%. It's, it's just not my, it's just not in me.
But on the flip side, I think there are a whole lot of people who do have that constant itch of,
hey, you know, we want this to spread out. We want this to be bigger. We want this,
you know, to grow and everything else. And I think, you know, like what I ask is doing with,
with Expona and V show and with the Florida audio expo and all those, like
it's giving it a shot. Yeah. Well, it's, I think it's, I mean, I'm glad they're doing it because
it is at least an effort in a place where no one else is doing it. And so I give them, I give them
credit for that, you know, on the downside, they're admittedly kind of cutting off a lot of that
existing, the existing competitors to a certain degree by, you know, when you, when you move
things the way they have and doing things the way they are, it's obviously a shift. And that's
going to rub people the wrong way because they've been, you know, I've been involved. The thing is,
though, that this stuff all repeats itself. I remember when Paul Papa Day is first bought
IASCA in 2001-ish, I mean, I was on the phone with him the next day, griping him out because,
you know, what we all knew was basically going to turn into Spring Break Nationals.
Exactly. Yeah. So I mean, it was, if anything was, it was the opposite case where this thing
was becoming hyper focused into this one area. And we, it was like, well, you know, there goes
IASCA because we were going from dozens of regionals and everything else, you know, all over the
country, you know, countries of regions to, it was basically going to be a Florida based, you
know, Spring Break Nationals. And it kind of did, kind of didn't, you know, it's kept going, obviously,
and it will keep going. And, you know, there's, there's a lot of opportunity there. So I would say
there's, yes, I understand both sides in that regard. Like I've said, like I understand the
frustration, I understand that it kind of feels like you're getting, you know, cut off at the
knees. And if you've been involved and invested in that and, and everything else, like it's kind
of like, well, you got to go with the flow and join in on that, or, you know, let it go and,
and find another way. There, the good part is there's plenty of other ways out there right now.
There's lots of good opportunities and there's growth opportunities for all of them to become
better at what they do. But yeah, it's going to be, it's going to be interesting to see how it goes
and see, see how we can see more ways to develop this. But I do, I mean, if anything, Jeffrey,
you've definitely made, you know, some good bells ring off of my head as far as dividing
things up that way, because it makes me, you know, I think see things more clearly that, you know,
okay, this is our, our path and they're all working together in their own ways. And I think the more
we lean into that for everybody, the better. So yeah, well done. Yeah, I had a funny analogy that
hopefully is well, well enough put together. But I think that having all the orgs is good.
You know, I'm actually not opposed to having four or five orgs, because I think that
you can't possibly have those 50, 60 competitor events, you know, without all these different
orgs, right? And maybe you can, but that's just my opinion. I'm in full support of how many orgs
there are and the efforts in their own areas of the country. But, you know, if we, if we look to our
bigger sports, our footballs and our basketballs of the Americas here, you know, I think that your,
your unified finals is kind of like when, you know, the, the, for basketball, the Lakers versus the
Heat, right? You know, you've got these, these dedicated teams at this unified finals somewhere,
you know, more centrally located so everyone can attend. It is truly the best of the best.
There's no exclusivity there. It's just let's get 200, let's get 300 cars at this event. That's
the way that my mind works about it. Then let's do the, you know, the, the, the NBA East versus West
where we take the best cars from every single nation and put them in a place like X-Bona or put
them in a place like MasterTech or put them in a place like Heatwave, you know, and let the shops
or let the, not the shops, but the, the manufacturers pay for those All-Stars like the All-Star game,
right? And so now you have all these All-Star cars at these sales events, but your competitor events
are still pure, so to speak. And, you know, it doesn't matter that they're this massive huge
event. That's great. I would love to see a two, 300 car finals at one point or another.
I just think that we won't get there without cultivating it on the sales side for a year or two
aggressively and, you know, working on the backside on the, on the pure competition side where the,
the Orbs are willing to come together and have more open communication and the, the show promoters
like yourself, Clifton would, you know, step in and go, well, this is how I would do this,
that and the other thing to make it run smooth like the Kicker SQ and HQ show did. And that's how
we get the 300, you know, person finals in a century located thing. And that's how we get,
you know, places like Expona and SBN that used to be and Heatwave and MasterTech in the four
freaking corners of the country, more or less, to all harmonize with each other because otherwise
we're just going to beat each other into a pulp in my opinion. I agree. Mike, can you input? No,
I mean, I'd like to see more events like the Kicker event. It'd be cool to see more manufacturers
kind of step into that space and, and you know, I'm sure it's difficult to make your facility
available for a bunch of people to invade your spot, you know, for a weekend or a year or something
like that. But well, and the good part with Kicker is that they're very set up for that. Like that,
you know, Kicker does these get together events constantly, not sound quality shows like that,
but you know, they're very, they're very well managed to have this style event. So they were
just able to tack a couple of more things onto it and keep going, you know, so they were, they
were uniquely, or they are uniquely equipped for that. But yeah, I agree. It would be great to see
more, more manufacturers be able to do that reach out because, you know, Kicker's doing a lot in
that regard to the community reach out for, you know, just local marketing. And it's built some
awesome brand loyalty for that company, you know, honestly, in all types of, of spaces, you know,
like power sports, you know, cars, the trucks, you know, sound quality SPL. I mean, they, they
have a pretty huge reach that, that not every manufacturer does. So that'd be pretty cool to
see. I challenge some of the other guys, some of the other manufacturers to try to, to try to, you
know, you know, maybe not match it, but start one in your area. Yeah. Yeah. Do something.
All right, guys. Well, I appreciate it. Get back together in the next three to five years and
see where things are at then. Thanks, Jeffrey, for coming on.
I definitely appreciate it, Clifton. Yeah, man.
About this episode
Jeffrey Hald joins the SQOLOGY Car Audio Podcast to discuss the evolution of Total Tuning and the importance of fostering the next generation of competitors in the sound quality community. He shares insights on his growth in remote tuning, the significance of optimizing tuning methods, and the dynamics between competitors and shops. The conversation also touches on the future of car audio events, the need for collaboration among organizations, and the potential for hybrid events that combine sales and competition. Hald emphasizes the importance of cultivating passion for sound quality to ensure the industry's growth.
Original notes
In this episode of the SQOLOGY Podcast, Klifton Keplinger and Michael Myers are joined by Jeffrey Hald of Total Tuning. The conversation digs into the realities of remote tuning at scale, microphone strategy, physical optimization versus DSP-first thinking, and what actually separates consistent competitors from one-hit results. Jeffrey shares lessons from rebuilding after failure, tuning under real-world constraints, and why iteration, fundamentals, and community matter more than chasing equipment or shortcuts.
They also explore the future of sound quality competition, the difference between sales-driven events and competitor-driven events, and how the industry can better cultivate new participants without losing depth or integrity.
This episode is sponsored by ResoNix Sound Solutions, providing engineered sound treatment designed to reduce noise and resonance and create a stable foundation for serious sound quality systems. Learn more at resonixsoundsolutions.com.
This episode is also supported by SVR XV (Steel Valley Regional 15), taking place July 17-19, 2026 at the WesBanco Arena in Wheeling, West Virginia. Registration for the Top 48 competitor field is currently full. For more information, contact Larry Chijner or Richard Papasin, and follow the Steel Valley Regional Facebook group for updates on organization registration, announcements, and availability.
SQOLOGY exists to document the pursuit of better sound, preserve the culture of sound quality competition, and keep meaningful conversations alive across seasons, regions, and generations.
SQOLOGY Car Audio Podcast
The Network
0:00
89:44