FHRX STUDIOS VEHICLES – THE ONES WE’VE USED TO DEMONSTRATE SOUND HITHERTO

If you’re a regular follower of the audio competition scene you’ll know the season finishes in late November and commences around late March. During this time you’ll find most competitors busily working on their rides in order to ready them for the upcoming year’s competition. Marty Price and the team at Fhrx Studios are no different. One of the leading pro street / expert class competition cars is Marty’s red 200SX; a true stalwart not just of the competition scene but across the industry as a whole. Although Marty normally writes most articles here; this particular article sees yours truly (John Cross) listening too, looking at and generally harping on about the car. No pun intended.

We’ll kick off with a brief history. Many around this great wide land will remember at one stage quite a few years ago Marty’s car had Rainbow Reference speakers installed; yes the $15k ones. Therefore topping them was never going to be an easy task. However Marty felt the need to have something new. After taking into consideration the vast array of component speakers he’d tested for various publications, he eventually settled on the Focal Utopia Beryllium Kit 7 which were clear stand outs during testing. Editors note; these are being replaced with Accuton Ceramic components soon, more about that later.

Let’s start right at the front. If you’re a habitual reader of the forums then you’ll appreciate some of the arguments Marty has had with people who claim you cannot fit two batteries into the front end of a 200SX because of the intake and intercooler tubes. Guess what; you can! To supply power for the system the 200SX utilizes twin Stinger SPV44 gel-cells which supply well over a thousand cranking amps with plenty of reserve charge, meaning the car can be demonstrated for an eternity without running.

Now while having the batteries physically in place is one thing, the process of actually getting them there wasn’t quite as straightfoward. Both are held in place with custom aluminium 6061 alloy brackets with the drivers side unit dictating very careful placement of the intercooler tube. The passenger side unit requires relocation of the charcoal canister and air intake. Luckily because the car utilses an aftermarket computer it doesn’t require the standard bulky air flow meter. 0AWG cables flow throughout the car and earthing is handled by a custom made eight point Fhrx Studios earthing kit. The main system fuse is seated adjacent to the battery on a custom beveled and flame polished 12mm Perspex plate. In order to keep in line with the competition rules this fuse can be disabled very quickly.

Interior side; the system starts with a Pioneer DEX-P99RS source unit. A more recent upgrade, some have questioned why the old unit was replaced. Marty retorts: “The previous head unit was becoming quite dated and often struggled to communicate with many modern digital storage devices. The DEX-P99RS is the current benchmark when it comes to high-end source units and I was extremely impressed when I reviewed one recently. Not only does its onboard processing suite make most other decks look positively archaic, it also boasts some very cool technological advances such as sporting quad 24Bit digital-to-analogue converters; just to touch the tip of the iceberg. Overall; it’s ‘the’ deck to use if you demand serious sonic performance.”

The entire car body has been layered with multiple layers of sound deadening and diffusers have also been installed in key areas to eradicate wave reflections. The deadening thickness varies from single layer under the dash to triple layers on the doors. This keeps the cars noise levels to a minimum; even with the absurdly modified SR20 under the hood. Taking care of creature comfort and safety duties, the first of two fire extinguishers is located under the passenger seat whilst the other lives in the side of the boot in a special compartment.

Moving to the front stage; the 200SX currently employs Focal Utopia Beryllium Kit 7 which is a three way component set, though these are soon to be upgraded to Accuton Ceramic components as Beryllium’s are no longer produced. The 6Be midbass drivers live in the fully prepared doors complete with reinforced and sealed baffles and enclosed front face. Boy can they kick! Handling the middle and higher frequencies are the 3Be midranges and Tbe Beryllium tweeters respectively. Marty explains his choice: “After reviewing many component sets, none came close to matching the superb detail of the Kit 7, especially that Beryllium tweeter. Coming from an engineering background I know just how difficult materials such as Beryllium are to machine, so one must tip their hat to Focal for this monumental effort. The Beryllium combines superior rigidity with low moving mass and the inverted dome profile is very impressive boasting an azimuth of over 180°. Together they give the tweeter extreme resistance to deformation while at the same time dispossessing the edginess often associated with harder domes. To the point where the Be tweeter is perhaps the smoothest you’ll hear in a car today.”

The midranges and tweeters once lived in the custom made fiberglass kick panels but now reside in custom made fibreglass A-pillars which are actually small aperiodic enclosures; the latter being employed to keep internal resonance and reflection issues to a minimum. The reason for the initial kick panel design was that Marty wanted to keep all three drivers close together to avoid separation and phasing issues. However he had to move the midranges and tweeters up to the A-pillars to achieve the best sound stage height for competition. He explains further: “When choosing a location to mount tweeters and midranges in order to achieve the best sound stage you’re always faced with various issues. To get a decent result you need adequate width, height and depth. Put the tweeters up high and forward and you’ll get good depth and height but the stage can sometimes suffer from being narrow. If you mount them high on the kick panels you tend to get good width and depth but a low stage, especially around that midrange driver. This is because the pinna (outer ear) are most sensitive between 2000-5000Hz so while the tweeters tend to be above that and will happily provide a car full of sound, the 3″ midrange tends to localise these frequencies, dragging them towards it. Therefore you need to be careful where you place this main information driver. Once you have location chosen you’ll want to pay considerable attention to the crossover summations; because if you don’t choose the right roll-off logarithm you can end up with some very nasty results.”

Even the angles are important to the stage and sound. Marty continues: After much experimentation I settled on these angles for a few reasons. First off, the speakers fire across the dash but slightly angled towards you. This puts the driver and passenger well within the speakers’ dispersion azimuth without being right on axis, which tends to lend itself to a very shallow stage. They’re also as close to the front of the car as possible and angled slightly upwards to offer a deeper and higher stage. Finally, they are angled away from the windscreen to avoid reflecting certain frequencies. So far as speaker cable goes; the old stuff was replaced with the latest and greatest for this evolution of the install.

Despite the head unit being capable of extreme levels of processing, Marty instead opted to keep it outputting plain music; all processing is taken care of via an ARC Audio PS-8 located under the passenger seat. The PS-8 is universally accepted as being the worlds best in-car processor and is programmed using a PC via the USB port. It boasts eight fully assignable channels and using it in open architecture mode (a.k.a. professional) you have complete control over every facet of your system, from configurations, crossovers and line driving through to time alignment, equalization and phasing. I won’t go too far into PS-8 abilities because you can read about it via Marty’s review recently (email him for a copy). Moving to the rear of the car and you’ll find the bulk of the system living there. The heart of the Focal Utopia Kit 7 and indeed why the components work together so seamlessly is the beautiful crossover. A lot of external testing was done on the crossover with a few things changed in order to offer the best in-car response with the least amount of inconsistencies and idiosyncrasies. The gang at Fhrx Studios remain quite tight lipped about the actual settings that Marty uses on the processor and crossover; such is the nature of serious competition.

The power is provided by a triplet of heavily modified Focal Dual Direct amplifiers and when I say power; I’m talking many thousands of watts! Yet despite this massive ability, the amplifiers are set with their gains on one from a possible forty. There is method to this madness though as Marty explains: Just because an amplifier is ‘stable’ doesn’t mean it’s necessarily happy. Your engine is ‘stable’ to 8000rpm; however you don’t do it all day do you? Amplifiers likewise; a gargantuan amplifier turned right down tends to have very little comparative workload. This equates to a happy amplifier, and happy amplifiers stay cool, run more efficiently, don’t dehydrate components and most of all possesses a titanic amount of head room which equates to zero hiss, zero noise and bugger all artefacts finding their way into the sound stream.

The amplifiers and crossover are presented upon three beautiful CNC machined LED backlit Perspex shelves. These have been flame polished to reflect a red ring of light around said components when viewed in dim light. The entire amplifier rack support is made from machined high grade alloy and is welded up not onto to handle the rigors of track racing but also to serve as the cars main rear end reinforcement. All cables used throughout the rack are high quality and remain neatly underneath out of sight of the viewer, and include double runs of power and earth to each amplifier to increase current flow. Dead centre of the rack is an engraved plaque in what Marty affectionately refers to as “nailing ones colours to the mast spiritually”.

Moving along to the final component in the system, choosing the subwoofer was a but of a challange. Marty originally had previously used Image Dynamics IDMAX’s, Morel Ultimo’s, Diamond Hex’s and even the Focal Utopia subwoofer. This is one serious list of contenders offering some choice-grade subsonic tunes however he eventually settled on a DynAudio E1200. He explained why “when talking high end subwoofers these days its all about how hard they hit, even how sharply if you’re an SQ head. However we need to remember that we should also be listening to the thing too. That’s why I chose the E1200; put simply it’s the first sub is years that I’ve tested where I could actually hear things such as horse hair bows running across the strings of a double bass, or the timbre from a bassoon. We’re so hell bent on hammering ourselves into submission these days that we’ve forgotten how to listen to bass. The other reason is that the front speakers in the doors already extended way down so I required something that was suited to the 15-40Hz region. This is because the less a speaker cone moves, the less it distorts. Therefore I needed to find a subwoofer with a very low FS and the newly released E1200 fitted the bill perfectly.

Back to Marty’s particular subwoofer; it was sent away to have its parameters measured before the enclosure was built into the boot floor using a combination of fiberglass and marine ply. The exact volume, plate angle (it’s not completely horizontal) and how much fiberfill etc is contained will remain secret for now but it does allow for a constant group delay throughout its entire frequency range in addition to offering an extremely low roll-off. Marty is more than happy to play pipe organ tracks to demonstrate this design (the bottom pipe of the pipe organ is tuned to the point of you feeling it rather than hearing it).

The top of the enclosure is painted in five layers of Nissan red and five layers of clear to give it a really deep look while the surrounding grey panels are trimmed on vinyl and dyed to match the factory Nissan trim. The subwoofer is supported and reinforced by a custom machined alloy trim ring. One of four sway bar bolts through the floor and keeps the rear end of the car nice and tight without affecting the subwoofer.

That’ll do for now regarding the stereo aspect of the car. For those interested in having a look or more importantly a listen; please contact Marty and the team at Fhrx Studios to organize an audition. Just as an aside for the petrol heads; below are some shots of the endless engine work that’s continually occurring in order to satisfy Marty’s incessant ‘midlife crisis induced’ quest to reach four figures of horsepower.

When Andy first brought his stunning 57′ Chev down to us we knew we’d be in for a challenge because, as is always the case with old classics like these, you cannot just install any old component set because space is at a premium in addition to the fact these cars tend to come out with some very obscure sized speakers; 4″ x 10″ in this particular example. Therefore when undertaking this install we’d have to develop some way of installing the large amount of planned audio gear without damaging and the cars trim pieces and secondly; we had to ensure it could be removed again if upgrades were plumbed in further on down the track.

Starting at the source literally, the Chev uses a Kenwood XXV-01D as its main head unit and this was chosen primarily for its ability to reach full preout voltage without any hint of distortion. We tend to check each and every head unit and amplifier here on the oscilloscope for distortion and this deck got the nod because it’s output is so impressively devoid of any such sonic anomalies.

From here the signal heads to the Audison BitOne processor. The more processing abilities a system has, the better we can tune it to sound. For this reason we often install the BitOne as its a complete digital sound processing suite that offers the user total control over every aspect of the sound.

From the processor to the engine room of the system; the three huge Focal Dual Direct amplifiers. These amplifiers represent the pinnacle of Focal’s amplifier engineering abilities and not only offer an abundance of clean power and headroom, they’re output is virtually free of additional ambient noise such as whine. The system is setup in a semi-active configuration which sees one amplifier running the tweeters and midranges, one amplifier running the midbass drivers whilst the remaining one compliments the subwoofers.

Shooting a sideways glance at the boot, you could be forgiven for thinking it’s just a simply flat wood false floor however nothing could be further from the truth. Upon closer inspection you’ll notice its construction is actually from fibreglass and has quite a few contours and curves in it as it leads from the boot rear seal right up to the enclosure face plate. The design of the floor keeps within the classic lines of the Chev and matching the side carpet was no easy task either just quietly with us scouring all over the US trimmers for a match. For additional decoration we created a perspex plate which breaks up the edge between the amplifiers and the carpet. This ‘window’ is the flame polished and edge lit using bright red LED’s. We’ve welded and polished up a new alloy bracket to hold the nitrous oxide bottle for those moment where planting the right foot aren’t quite enough. Under the right hand side of the boot floor is a compartment that holds the jump start and power supply leads, used for shows. Lastly the BelAir badge was added as a discrete highlight and is mounted on the front sloping contour of the floor plate.

The front end of the system is taken care of via a whole swag of Hybrid Audio Technology components. Fitting them in and making everything look like it belonged proved to be the largest challenge of this install due to space really limiting where components could be mounted. The location for the tweeters at the base of the a-pillar was chosen in order to offer a high stage and whilst we would have liked the midranges to be right up there next to them to minimise phase issues, the full size 4″ were just too large to mount there without impacting significantly on the viewing window. Therefore the midranges went down into the kicks where the massive midbass drivers live.

Just like the boot, the kick panels themselves are not as simple as they first appear either. Mounted to a custom anchor frame which bolts to the car, the they’re constructed wholly from fibreglass and actually contain small aperiodic chambers for the 4″ to work in so they’re not impacted by significant airflow from the larger midbass drivers. The entire 6.5″ portion of the kick panel itself is also a sealed enclosure and like the tweeter pods they’ve both been coated in multiple layers of black two-pack black to match the car body colour. We’ve created grilles to protect the speaker cones and trimmed them in grey grille cloth to match the interiors three tone grey-scale colour scheme. Additional red LEDs were installed above them to highlight the footwell area in the dark.

With sixty hertz and up taken care of it was time to address the bottom octave of the sound. The subwoofers chosen were the mighty Focal Utopia 33WX2s because of their tight and accurate bass output. In the correct enclosure (and it does take quite some research and testing to get the enclosure correct) they not only sound amazing but can easily hold their own with many of the louder subwoofers on the market today, especially with their thirteen inch ‘W’ sandwich fibre / composite cone. In the middle of the enclosure lives the cars battery; a gargantuan Odyssey PC1500. This has been de-labelled and it’s alcove home painted in two-pack black. The entire front face of the enclosure has a custom made trim panel which curves up under the shelf and like the floor it too has a black surround with bright red edge lighting. All in all the boot offers up quite a few special reflections when lit in the dark.

Last but not lease there is the custom dash work. When the car first came in there was talk of modifying the factory dash but we immediately turfed that idea in favour of manufacturing a fully custom centre console to not only hold the deck but also the gauges. This option was chosen over cutting the original dash because let’s be honest; who wants to cut into a genuine 57 Chev dash? The front plate design of the console was a mammoth challenge too as it had to fit around the gate shifter but with patience and about twenty trial plates, it is now in there and also finished in two-pack black. More LEDs have been installed under the shifter to give it an unearthly glow when the lights are lit.

So there you have it. From conception to completion; the Chev is now kitted out with the latest and greatest audio technologies, all whilst retaining its classic lines. Best of all though; nothing has been damaged in the process of installing the great sounding system.

When approached buy a Piano teacher of fifty plus years, we knew the system would have to be perfectly accurate as ears so finely tuned would pick up on mistake right away. Enter head installer Marty Price from Fhrx Studio’s. Other requirements included not demolishing the bank account and not taking up any space.

The system starts with an older Alpine TDA-7554 head unit and CHA-S601 shuttle combination. From there it runs into a Audison SRx3 amplifier mounted into the tailgate and under the factory trim. This required a fair amount of work to relocate the rear door lock in order to fit the amp and it’s cooling fans. The amp is accessible for servicing purposes via a small door worked into the trim on the drivers side.

Front speakers are Pioneer splits for budget accuracy and live in simple custom built door pods, necessary to keep the midrange speaker away from the window mechanism. You’ll also notice the midrange sits a long way rearwards in the door and this was due to our no metal cutting policy requiring its placement be there. Because of this distance the tweeter could be mounted immediately adjacent to it, all but eliminating any phase and origin point issues. Ambient rear fill is provided by Alpine co-axials which reside in custom roof binnacles behind the back seats, ensuring they’re kept right away from the luggage area.

To handle the subsonic duties, a Kicker Solo-Baric 10″ subwoofer was introduced into the fray. The area surrounding the subwoofer is fully sound deadened and the sub is carefully mounted into a sealed 26 litre fibreglass enclosure behind the drivers side trim panel of the boot. The original panel has been removed and replaced with a reinforced grille for protection as well as looks.

When head installer Marty Price came to installing a system into his brother’s new Toyota Prado, it required careful consideration seeing as the 4WD was to see a lot of off-road and consequently rough action. The system starts with an Alpine CDA-7962 CD player coupled to a Alpine CHA-S601 6-disc shuttle.

The source unit is mounted using a custom surround that houses a CB unit as well. The shuttle is located inside the glove box and is seated on liquid dampers for cushioning against the rough ride.

From the front the signal then runs into a Boston GT-50 five channel amp and GT-24 two channel amp. The four satellite channels on the GT-50 run the front and rear speakers which are from Polk Audio. The fifth channel on the GT-50 runs the two 8″ Polk midbass drivers mounted in the boot.

The GT-24 is bridged to deliver a whopping amount of continuous to the Stereo Integrity subwoofer. Both the midbass and subbass drivers are mounted in side mounted custom fibreglass enclosures, both of which are removable should you want to pack the truck full of camping equipment. In the boot center is a false floor containing the crossovers for the Polk drivers as well as cabling and a triplet of half farad Stinger power capacitors for extra power delivery when the cars power system is under load. Not that it’ll be under duress often, for residing up front are twin Optima D34M gel-cells separated by a voltage sensing relay.

Let’s get one thing out the open right from the outset. John here is an audio nerd through and through. His home theatre setup is quite something to behold. However despite all this knowledge, he was still wise enough to appreciate the car audio environment is a totally different beast to its large-room relative. So between John and us here we began nutting out a killer system for his special edition VF HSV.

The system employs dual sources, the first being an Alpine direct-fit head unit designed to suite the VF Commodore. The other is a high-resolution digital audio player. These feed signals down custom made cables to the mighty Brax digital sound processor, arguably the best car audio processor money can buy.

The front stage employs Brax’s flagship Matrix range of drivers, starting with the foundation pairing of mighty ML6 midbass drivers. These provide midbass accuracy and kinetics aplenty for John and his passengers.

The front doors, and the entire car actually; have been treated to copious amounts of deadening, diffusion, sealing and foaming. Thus ensuring ambient noise from outside remains there. Even the roof has been deadened.

Filling out the middle through to high registers are a pair of Brax Matrix ML1 1.1″ tweeters and ML3 3″ midrange drivers. These are set into custom fibreglass pillars featuring aperiodic membranes behind the smaller woofer.

The a-pillar build procedure was a little more challenging than most thanks to the air conditioning ducting running through them. But where there’s will there’s a way, and we got them done with air vents intact and fully functioning.

Powering the system is a trio of gargantuan Brax Matrix Pro powerhouses. The front end is running off a pair of MX4’s whilst the subwoofers are powered by a rock-solid MX2. Signals are fed to these amplifiers via Toslink optical cables from the Brax processor.

Due to their high-end nature and intrinsic switching topology, it’s no secret the Matrix amplifiers tend to run warmer than many. To keep this under control an array of whisper quiet cooling fans were installed and draw air through the rear plate before expelling it through the bottom of the custom built amplifier rack.

Living just above the amplifiers is a dual 12″ subwoofer enclosure, which has gone through a couple of iterations hitherto. The first two subwoofers residing there were Image Dynamics IDMAX12’s. However due to a little accident a few months post installation one was made holier than the Vatican.

So rather than staying at the same level John instead opted for an upgrade, as you do. Hence they were replaced by a pair of Hybrid Audio Technologies’ flagship Legatia L12SW subwoofers, as these return a far superior Q measurement in the 38 litre apiece volume available. This led to them playing extremely deep and articulate subbass.

The boot is finished with a decorative wall that features various materials such as perforated leather, suede, carbon fibre and other themes. These all closely match the cars special edition interior, right down to the genuine white HSV stitching used on these custom panels. The subwoofers are now also better protected via mesh grilles to avoid a repeat of the past.

Power for everything comes from a Varta gel-cel, and not just any Varta cell. This is the biggest bad-boy able to fit in that space, usually found residing in small trucks. Cabling throughout is Stinger and Audison Connection, with everything aptly supplied the current they require.

Often the task of finding a trustworthy audio store seems more daunting than actually getting the system completed. Like most Fhrx Studio’s customers the owner of this MR2 wanted a high end system without removing what little practical space already had available to him. One main prerequisite for the install was that the boot must remain untouched, so head installer Marty Price opted to utilise the small space behind the seats seeing as this was a hard top. For only the targa top versions stow the roof behind the seats.

The system starts with a carefully installed Alpine CDA-7998R receiver. In order for the 1.5 DIN face to clear the dash when the screen was deployed, Marty used Toyota Camry head unit mounting brackets and modified to top mounting point to sit the deck an extra two millimetres off the dash. This gives the deck 1 millimetre of clearance between the face and dash plate. The entire dash itself including gearshift surround has been removed and painted in baked two-pack gun metal grey.

Moving onto the binnacles behinds the seats. The drivers side binnacle is actually a sub enclosure measuring 0.64 cubic feet and is home to a JL Audio 10W3V2-D2 10″ subwoofer while the one behind the passenger is an amplifier rack holding an Audison LRx4.300 four channel amplifier. Both enclosures were covered in grain and colour matched vinyl and removing the flush mounted grilles reveals surround painted in the same two-pack metallic paint as the dash.

All edges on the enclosures have been meticulously detailed to perfectly match the contours of the MR2. Various red lights light the twin enclosures up at night creating quite an eerie effect. All cable is from Stinger and features a custom mount steel fuse holder in the spare tire hole. Additionally, the cars earthing systems were also upgraded.

The front end preparation took a fair while to do. Kick panels and door trims both had to be reformed and now hold Kicker RS6 Resolution splits rather than the factory paper dual-cones. Matching the door contour too perfectly butt up against the dash when closed proved to be interesting to say the least. After forming, they’re vacuum formed in matching MR2 vinyl.

While not screaming at you for detail, the doors main difference can easily be seen when the factory door panel photo is inset into the finished photograph. Double layers of Stinger Road-kill and a diffuser plate cover the outer skin directly behind the midrange. The inner skin also copped a layer or Road-kill. At the end of the day one very clean install.

You can simply tell right away when someone is passionate about their car, like Tyson; the owner of this jet black IS300. He wanted the best he could get, in every department. This included shoehorning a three litre twin turbo 2J from a Toyota Supra, adding enough products from Trust, HKS and GReddy to sink a ship and not too mention fully adjustable Tein coil-over suspension all round. So naturally when it came to the sound system, the choice was logical. Fhrx Studio’s had to install the best gear around for his budget.

The hardest part of this install according to Marty was the dash. “There are so many controllers to be mounted into such a relatively tiny space. Besides the Clarion VRX935VD DVD / monitor head unit, there is a Tein suspension controller, GReddy turbo timer, GReddy boost controller and a boost controller remote handset. Now getting all this in was quite a task, to make it look factory is near impossible.

The traction controls and seat warmers had to be relocated to start with. The traction control switches now live on the drivers side dash while the heater controls are in the center console between the two front seats. The console itself is constructed from three layers of carbon Kevlar and while light remains expremely strong. From the head unit the signal travels down Stinger RCA’s too three Audison amplifiers; an SRx4 for channel and twin SRx2S mono-blocks. The SRx4 controls the front and rear channels from the Clarion DTS decoder while each Srx2S runs a JL Audio 12W7 each.

Moving to the boot the first thing you’re presented with is nothing. Just a matching carpet panel complete with embossed Lexus logo, thus keeping in line with the stealth theme wishes of the owner. Pulling this panel aside however reveals a pair of JL Audio 12W7’s complete with two-pack jet black fibreglass surround. Peering through the ski-hatch reveals the front of the amplifiers lit under neon light.

The doors are fully sound deadened inside and out and both have sound diffuser panels fitted to aid in midbass wave dispersion. The doors are home to Kicker Resolution 6.5″ midrange drivers and the kick panels are home to Kicker ND-25 1.1″ tweeters. Stealth was a large consideration for the doors as well so Marty opted to run with the factory trims.

Having a occupation as a pilot, Craig knows more than a thing or two about being precise and accurate. So when time came to rework his R33 stereo system he wanted a clean and precise install, kept simple to avoid potential hiccups as the car aged around it.

The system starts with a flagship Eclipse CD7200 MkII receiver and Alpine digital sound processor. These create and manipulate the signal to perfection before sending it south to the amplifiers. The receiver remains in the factory location whilst the Alpine processor is located under the front passenger side floor well.

Providing the power for the system are twin Audison LRx amplifiers, an LRx4.1k for the front stage and an LRx1.1k for the subwoofer. These are feed current aplenty from an Optima D34 yellow top and custom made earthing kit. The amplifiers are stacked on a 6061 alloy rack with clear acrylic shelves that’re backlit with a subtle blue lighting.

The speakers comprise of Oz Audio Matrix two-way component systems, and those familiar with these speakers will know just how much work is required to make speakers of their ilk fit into a Skyline. They’re quite simply enormous in every way. But wow; can they kick like a horse when asked.

Rear fill duties are handled by similar Oz Audio Matrix speakers, however they’re reconfigured with grille mounted tweeters so they can run as coaxial pairs. These are mounted in custom piano black shelf that’s topped with backlit acrylic.

So coming into land, let’s discuss the subwoofer. See what we did there? Ahem, moving right along. Yes this is the infamous Oz Audio Power series 12″ monster. Yes it does have quad voice coils, and yes its does weight more than the spare tire. However one of these titanic beasts is easily capable of providing more than enough subbass for almost any human on God’s earth. It lives in a custom moulded fibreglass enclosure which is topped by a thick fibreglass plate finished in the same two-pack silver as the car. The subwoofer also features a backlit clear acrylic ring to match the aesthetic theme of the install.

When you’re the importer of some of the world’s best audio gear you’ll want a decent car with a decent system to get around in. Luckily Phil was thinking the exact same thing. As the importer of Audison from Italy at one time, he knew his Jetta needed to be decked out with the flagship Thesis range equipment.

Starting with the source; the OEM receiver remained in place, with a secondary source being a digital audio player. This feeds high resolution signal to an Audison BitOne digital sound processor.

From the processor the worked signal is shipped to a trio of Thesis power blocks via digital link. These three units are mounted vertically behind the rear seat to relieve thermal stress via vertical convection, and provide power en masse. They’re surrounded with a contour matched plate painted in the same two-pack metallic silver as the car.

Tunes for the occupants are provided courtesy of Audison’s flagship Thesis components. The pillars are home to the TH 1.5 II Violino 1.5″ tweeters and TH 3.0 II Voce 3″ midranges. They reside in aperiodic enclosures, providing absolutely stunning resolution, realism beyond expectation and near-perfect imaging thanks to their careful angling.

The doors are home to the Thesis TH 6.5 II Sax 6.5″ midbass drivers. These setup the foundation for the front stage and provide kinetics aplenty. Naturally they’ve all been well treated with deadening, diffusion, sealing and the like. A deader door you’ll not find in a days march.

Bring up the lower frequencies and providing a bedrock solid foundation for the music to build upon are a pair of Thesis TH 10 II Basso 10″ subwoofers. Living in a single fifty litre enclosure, these subwoofers are easily controlled by the Thesis amplifiers and provide astounding quality subsonic and infrasonic tonality.

Power comes courtesy of a massive gel-cel mounted in the factory location, which shunts its power through an Audison Connection distribution system. All these components live in a side mounted bathtub which is painted in the two-pack metallic silver matching the car.

When Peter’s bright red Impreza first appeared on the sound off scene around mid 2006 most people didn’t pay it too much attention. Even after hearing it many people were quite impressed with its sound but some didn’t see it as anything to specifically write home about. It was only upon discovering the car was competing with only a head unit and a set of splits that they were shocked. That’s right; no amplifier and no subwoofer but it still sounded superb! How this was accomplished will remain a Fhrx Studios secret. Moving along to today; we’re pleased to present to you the latest incarnation of this smart looking beast.

Whilst content, Peter wanted much more post the 2006 sound off season. See Peter is a hopelessly addicted audiophile, has been for many years and has a serious amount of knowledge and experience within the audio sphere. He wanted to dramatically improve the sound that the Impreza was outputting, hence he sat down to plan stage two which consisted of amplifiers and the subwoofer. Now when audiophiles go looking for components they do not impulse buy. They tend to undertake a lot of research, listen to a lot of products and pile over mountains of information before settling on components. In the same light, when looking for someone to install their new system they do not take to this task lightly either. They expect the sound quality from the system to be paramount and are not satisfied until it is. This is where the relationship between Fhrx Studios and Peter flourished.

Fhrx Studios had just taken on board DLS products when Peter decided on his amplifiers. This worked well for both parties because what were chosen to perform the amplification duties were one of the best DLS amplifier ranges available; the Ultimate series. These two amplifiers run the whole system and a third is planned in the near future. The massive A4 amplifier runs the front stage actively while the small but strong twin mono design A3 runs the subwoofer.

The system begins with a Alpine CDA-9835 head unit which controls all crossover points, slopes, levels and equalization. From there the signal travels to the two DLS amplifiers which are seated in custom bathtubs. Each of these bathtubs and their surround panels took installers Marty Price, Michael Waugh, Joel Cheeseman and Jack Horrocks days to prepare and the bathtubs themselves are coated with five layers of two-pack red and five layers of two-pack clear to achieve that so deep you can swim in it look. The bathtubs are surrounded by fibreglass covers that are molded to match the boot sides and seals. These are vacuum formed in vinyl and colour dyed to match the cars internal grey panels. Small plexiglass windows in the top of each panel allow the viewer to see into the area behind each amplifier rack where two Stinger Expert 1.2 farad power capacitors are located and lit by blue backlighting.

While the boot panels were coming along nicely the rest of the system install was also attended too. The entire boot and various parts of the cars floor are deadened with Dynamat sound deadening so give it a much quieter interior. Up front under the bonnet an Optima D34M deep cycle battery offers power aplenty to the system. Running in conjunction with the twin caps, this car should just about never run out of power. As per the norm, a Fhrx Studios custom earthing kit was made up and installed along with Stinger fuse holder. All aftermarket parts are mounted to custom alloy brackets to avoid drilling holes anywhere. This also allows the car to be returned to factory should Peter ever sell it. Stinger Expert zero gauge and four gauge cables are used everywhere within the car as are Stinger speaker and RCA cables.

Moving to the front stage, the doors of the car are fully deadening inside and out with two layers of deadening. There are also Dynamat DynaXorb diffuser panels installed inside the door to prevent sound wave reflections. The baffles are custom made to attach to the factory screw locations and are sealed into the door to give the Morel Elate 6 midrange as much midbass punch as possible. The Morel Elate tweeters are located in custom made fibreglass A-pillars that have also been vacuum formed and dyed to match the cars existing interior grain and colour. These give the car an amazing sound stage, despite the apparently obscure mounting axis.

Last but certainly not least, the subwoofer was the last hurdle to overcome. After listening to a plethora of subwoofers both here at Fhrx Studios and at sound offs and other events, the Diamond D9 12″ was chosen due to it’s remarkable accuracy and ability to play right down into the lowest infrasonic regions. The subwoofer lives in a custom painted enclosure that measures 35 litres in volume. This gives the subwoofer a superb roll off curve and allows it to handle all rumbling duties admirably without fuss nor hint of struggle. And just in case Peter feels like letting everyone in the neighbourhood know that he is feeling jovial, the subwoofer can be turned up to the point where it makes ears hurt.

So for now the car is ready for the upcoming competition season. But as aforementioned; both Fhrx Studios and Peter have bigger and better plans for the install.

The plan for Edwin’s WRX STi was somewhat simple in the beginning; what happened by the end was a different story. The owner had some old equipment from previous installs and wanted to transfer it into his new ride. However much of the old equipment had succumbed to the curse of time and with electronics advancing so fast, the gear was not going to keep up with the owners taste for sonic purity. This is where Fhrx Studios, Oz Audio, Zapco and Audison Connection come in.

Fhrx Studios is well known for incorporating the various products it sells in its demo cars. However, although selling many Oz Audio and Audison Connection products, we still had no permanent demo cars purposely equipped with Oz Audio or Audison Connection components. After hearing that the owner of the WRX had somewhat growing plans for the install, Fhrx head installer Marty Price and pro Fhrx installer Greg Penny began talking to the various distributors and nutting out various plans for the car to not only demonstrate the various companies’ products but also spearhead the attack on the following year of Pro class / Pro Show sound off competition using some of the most advanced car audio components available at present.

The aural domain of the system starts with a Pioneer single DIN receiver which then feeds into an Audison BitOne processor allows to complete manipulation over everything aural. From there the signal is feed via balanced SymbiLink lines to three Zapco amplifiers. Located just behind the processor are the Zapco SymbiLink converters and these are set to 0dB boost / attenuation. Next to them are the Oz Audio crossovers that have been customised and wrapped in fabric to protect them from harm. The decks internal amplifier runs the rear speakers. Behind the deck are custom made 5000Hz / 4ohm / 6dB custom L-pads / crossovers to attenuate and cross the secondary tweeters.

The three amplifiers in the boot driving the system are a Zapco Reference 750.2 (2 x 175 watts @ 4ohm @ 0.022% THD) driving the front splits, a Zapco Reference 1100.1 (1 x 880 watts @ 4ohm @ 0.015% THD) driving the subwoofer and a smaller Zapco Reference 350.2 (2 x 100 watts @ 4ohm @ 0.015% THD) running the stage lifting tweeters at the front in the pillars.

The larger amplifiers are both located against the back seat in a double stacked alloy frame marine ply rack which has been coated with five coats of Subaru brilliant white (51E) and five coats of clear. The amp rack has large holes at either end where the fans force the hot air out. The side rack is also painted in ten coats of white and clear resulting in a stunning visual appearance for both racks. All panels in the boot have been vacuum formed in matching vinyl and sprayed dark grey to match the car.

Being an Oz Audio demo car the speaker selection was never going to be rocket science with the best of each Oz Audio range being selected for the main aural duties. The front main splits are three-way Oz Audio Matrix series with a 6.5″ midbass in each of the fully sound deadened, diffused and sealed doors while the massive 4″ midrange drivers and 1.1″ tweeters live in custom fibreglass a-pillars. The a-pillars have also been vacuum formed to match the cars existing interior grain and colour.

Marty also decided to install a set of entry level splits in the back to “give people a listen to as much as Oz Audio’s range as possible”. These live in a fibreglass re-enforced rear shelf that has been vacuum formed as well. Subsonic duties are taken care of by Diamond Audio’s superb TDX10 10″ subwoofer. This lives in a custom made Kevlar reinforced fibreglass enclosure that measures 27 litres in volume. The subwoofer surround has also been painted in five coats of white and five coats of clear. The boot floor holds the distribution block and cables and can be lifted to gain access to the spare tire. Yes, the spare tire is still accessible!

Taking a closer look around the installation you’ll soon discover there are various little touches that will keep the most avid Subaru enthusiast entertained. This includes a custom made front roof console, custom made dash to house the suspension and boost controllers, a rear fully motorised shelf and center custom triple gauge pod. The roof console not only holds the two courtesy light switches but also the interior and boot light emitting diode switches (there are just over 100 LED’s in the boot and interior alone). Also housed in this console are switches to turn the amplifier fans off or on. The rear motorised shelf is located in the boot just above the amp racks and subwoofer and with the flick of a switch it automatically slides forward to reveal two draws containing spare fuses and vaious other tools. It has been trimmed with matching vinyl and carpet. The center dash console is the home of three Defi gauges and also has a head up display living in the back of it. This displays various engine stats onto the windscreen next to your line of sight to keep you informed what is happening under the bonnet.

Now speaking of under the bonnet; lets take a look at the interconnects. Seeing as this STi is to be an Audison Connection demo car it naturally copped the full treatment with all the best Audison Connection goodies being installed. The power source starts with an Optima D34M deep cycle battery, Audison Connection battery terminals and main power water proof fuse on a custom white painted plate. The marine version of the Optima D34 was chosen for its extra post terminals. This means the owner can avoid damaging his terminals if there is a need to jump start something.

From the battery the power travels along MP1/0BL 1/0AWG (American Wire Gauge) power cable and down to the rear of the car where it meets the largest fused distribution block Audison Connection manufacturer. Under the bonnet is also a custom earthing kit to assist not only the audio system but the cars various electrical systems as well. This is constructed using custom alloy bars and MP4S 4AWG earth cable. Moving down to the rear of the car the two large amps are fed by 4AWG while the smaller amplifier is fed by 8AWG cable. Marty commented “This ensures people viewing the boot can view all the different sizes of cable Audison Connection offer”. The task of carrying the tunes to the speakers is taken care of by Audison Connection FL216BL 16AWG (twin runs for subwoofer) speaker cables. All cables coming from the amplifier were also left visible to display terminals and things similar.

So at the end of this stage the car is now ready to go out and about. There are still further developments coming including some air brushing and more motorisation but for now the owner is very pleased with the sound and the visual impact of the install. The car has also been competing for many years now and has won a swag of awards.

The ideology for our Brax demo car was to be a little different. In that we wanted it to be completely standard to the naked eye, with nothing drawing unwanted attention to it’s high-end components. This includes under the engine bay where everything was hidden and black to match the OEM components.

This meant installing everything completely hidden or as close to as possible. The front Brax Matrix ML6P midranges live in completely deadening, diffused and sealed doors. They’re secured via custom machined aluminium baffles for a most solid kinetic kick.

The Brax Matrix ML1 tweeters reside just above them, in custom made fibreglass triangles that are colour matched to the colour of the central door insert. If you didn’t own one of these cars you wouldn’t look twice at them.

This results in the doors looking all but factory all but the most attentive Santa Fe owner. Power for the system comes courtesy of a Helix P SIX DSP; this handles all power and processing duties.

Lurking beneath the boot floor are two Brax Matrix ML10 subwoofers. Subwoofers world renown for their ability to move with a fluidity and accuracy that’s beyond impressive.

These are kept completely out of view most of the time, with a cover machined with many through holes in it and trimmed in matching boot floor carpet. However for shows we also made a second set of covers.

This lid can be lifted to reveal the subwoofers, living in their twenty-six litre sealed enclosures. The enclosure is a crescent moon shape, fitting perfectly into the OEM mounting location beneath the factory floor.

The covers are decoratively machined. One side has the Fhrx logo, the other a bible verse from Isaiah 53:5; both have custom pressed grilles for protection.

The enclosure is completely removable should you need to place the OEM cargo bucket back in place. it simply unplugs and lifts vertically out of the floor. The cargo bucket then bolts back into the same place via the OEM holes.

When Kris decided to upgrade the audio system in his little Mazda 3 he didn’t want to go too over the top, however he did want superb sound. So a careful review of components resulted in an Alpine double DIN receiver and six disc shuttle in a custom glove box mount. Attached to this is an Alpine digital sound processor which handles all tuning duties.

Power for the system was supplied via an Optima D34M, the marine version chosen for its extra posts. This avoid having to put any clamps on the gold terminals as gold is intrinsically soft and easily scuffed. The car is thence liberally peppered with Stinger power and earth cables, everything from 0 Awg for primary power and earthing cables through to 4 Awg for the secondary cables.

The heart of the operation is a single Audison LRx5.1k; this five channel behemoth is easily able to power the entire system without even breaking a sweat. It’s seated in a bathtub below the boot floor that’s two-packed metallic pearl white the same as the colour as the car.

Protecting the investment is a 12 mm plexiglass window which is engraved with the Audison logo and backlit with a soft blue hue. This gives the overall boot a tidy look, highlighting various aspects without going overboard on unnecessary bling. The LED edge lighting also makes the logo standout.

On the right hand side of the boot is a custom side panel which holds a fire extinguisher, thus adhering to the competition scene rules. There is also a custom hemmed floor mat to make everything look original when needed. The subsonics are handled with aplomb by a DLS Nordica subwoofer. This lives in a side mounted sealed fibreglass enclosure and returns a superb Q and hence deep roll off.

Last but not least; the front stage is courtesy of Focal’s K2 Power range. Mounted in full deadened, diffused and sealed doors; the woofers kick like a horse. The tweeters are mounted in custom fibreglass triangles to afford Kris superior staging and imaging. All in all a nice and neat little system capable of satisfying nearly any requirement.

Good friend Paul actually has a few cars featured in this gallery, with one of the more unique being his daily driver Ford Territory. Not only because it resembles something the US president would get around in but also because of it’s interesting system design.

The system starts with a flagship Pioneer DEX-99R receiver, this sends a crystal clear signal down the line thanks to its extremely impressive and vastly complex onboard processing suite.

Moving along to the front stage. Despite being nearly twenty years old now it still turns heads and raises questions and comments aplenty, with many people asking if the pillars contain little bar heaters. No, they’re actually ribbon midranges from Italian stalwart Hertz. Impressive in the extreme; the Mille ribbons are capable of providing a dazzling array of crystal clear midrange sound. The tweeters live just adjacent to them and handle the highest frequencies.

Running the system are a trio of Hertz HP Power amplifiers, carefully mounted to a foundation plate within the boot floor before being surrounded by a matching trim panel with a brushed silver ring that matches the various trim rings around the interior.

Aside from the satellite speakers these amplifiers also power the subs; no less than three of the titanic Hertz Mille ML250 subwoofers. These live in a sealed seventy litre enclosure and are also trimmed to match the interior colour and theme.

The car is completely sound deadened from one end to the other, including diffusion and acoustic foam to combat rattles. Power and earthing is provided by an Optima D31M gel-cell. No that wasn’t a mistype. It’s a behemoth D31M, not the normal D34M we see. This bad-boy is usually found starting large size marine cruisers.

Overall the system sounds absolutely extraordinary, yet also retains the ability to cave your head in should you experience a rush of blood to the head from time to time.

Fhrx Studios undertake many smaller, twin seat car system installs. These installs can be tricky, as fitting everything in can cause all matter of issues if not carefully thought through. Anthony’s beautiful CRX was brought in with a request for quality sound without the rattles that the CRX is famous for. Easy to ask sure. However about as easy as striking a match on a cake of soap in reality to achieve.

The system source starts with an Pioneer DEH-P8450MP and travels via high-end Stinger interconnects to an Audison SRx3 amplifier flush mounted into the passenger side of the woofer enclosure. The front stage features Boston Acoustic components residing in fully deadened, diffused and sealed doors.

A single enormous rear piece holds both the subwoofer and amplifier. This one unit took an incredibly long time to build and is constructed totally from fibreglass. The original CRX rear binnacles were removed and the new cabinet was made to fit snugly into the rear of the car retaining somewhat of a factory appearance. It features removable grilles, lifting to reveal black painted surrounds for that showy look when the need arises.

The subwoofer is a JL Audio 10W3V2-D2 and sits in a 25 litre sealed enclosure located on the drivers side of the rack. The amplifier resides on the passengers side. In the boot behind everything is a dual channel third-octave analogue Phoenix Gold sound processor. This processes everything to perfection.

As aforesaid the biggest issue with the CRX platform is the rattles. To that end the entire back end of the car has been fully sound deadened and foamed. Even the rear window was taken out and rebuilt with new bushes to stop it rattling.

The Boxster is a challenging car to install a system into, and not only because it’s a soft-top. One of the other main challenges is the fact there just isn’t much room to put things in unless you want them in the front boot or behind the rear-mounted engine. Challenge accepted.

The system starts with Boston Acoustics GT series amplifiers mounted into the front boot. These are stacked vertically and live behind a backlit plexiglass protective cover that’s engraved with the complex Porsche logo and fitted with cooling fans to keep everything thermally happy.

The front stage is courtesy of Boston’s flagship Z6 component set. They’re set into the doors along with the tweeters just adjacent, resulting in a wide and high stage and pin-point imaging. Their proximity is also conducive to minimal phase and origin point issues too.

The Boston components are set into fibreglass full length pods that replace the carpet panel that usually resides on the Boxster door bottom. They 6.5″ woofer is backed by aperiodic membranes to allow them to breath into the doors with the illusion of far larger enclosures.

When it comes to the Focal Utopia 21WX subwoofer we didn’t want to install it in the front boot, nor did we want it behind the engine. This is because in both scenarios you’d have it working its guts out just tb felt. So it now lives in front of the passengers feet in a custom fibreglass enclosure. This is then covered with a genuine Utopia grille before being covered with trim that matches the OEM carpet colour and feel.

One of the biggest issues with many an audiophile is that they never do anything by halves. So when it came to shoehorning a three-way set of Focal’s original Utopia components into a kick panel and door trim of this Lancer it was a task Christie left to the professionals. The aim was for a stock look, well enhanced sound quality and awesome staging. The results literally speak for themselves.

Each door is deadened with almost two square metres of sound deadening with another fifteen spread throughout the cabin. This ensures this car is ultra quiet! The system starts with an Alpine CDA-9815 receiver. From here the signal runs to a Tru-Technology Billet amplifier which in turn drives the Focal splits. All cables and interconnects are Audison and Stinger. This system was purpose built to win SQ competitions and has done so, time and time again.

The doors are made from fibreglass and although looking stock actually represent over a hundred hours of labour each. Many state that this is how they should have been from the factory. But sadly Mitsubishi just doesn’t care for high-end sound quality. That said; just in case you thought this install was looking rather factory in appearance, here’s the proof in the original trims got comparison.

Another unusual item in this system is the small 8″ subwoofer. The sub is housed in a custom labyrinth ported fibreglass enclosure and is fed copious amounts of power from a Tru-Technology Billet amplifier. Achieving high quality subsonics is more then just raw power and titanic cone areas. It’s all about controlling the motor deceleration and reciprocation accurately. However despite the subwoofer being on the smaller side, the amplifier controlling it does so without any trace of effort thanks to its impressive damping factor. The entire enclosure is covered with matching boot trim to hide from thieving eyes. The carpet over the top doesn’t bother the sound either, given the long wavelengths within this at this frequency region.

Power is supplied by a faithful D34 deep cycle gel-cell, along with earthing aplenty to ensure copious amounts of current can make its way around the system. Overall the little Lancer is now one of the most successful competition cars the high-end audio scene has known.

When Matt approached us with his ultra-clean Audi we first ascertained what is was he was after. Sure it had to sound good, but he also liked to hammer it every so often. He also needed as much of his boot as possible. Truly a challenge but with boot-side mounting of components it could be acheived.

The system starts with the OEM source as primary and a digital audio player as secondary. This is then plumbed into an Arc Audio PS-8 digital sound processor. From the processor the now sweet tunes flow to a single titanic Audison LRx5.1k. This is mounted into the drivers side boot via a full custom fibreglass panel.

The subsonic department is located in the opposing boot side, in the form of the mighty IDMAX10 subwoofer. This provides tonally accurate subbass aplenty and kinetic force to boot. It’s mounted in a 36 litre sealed fibreglass enclosure and both sides trimmed in matching Audi carpet.

Making up the front stage is a DynAudio System 242GT component set. These are mounted in fully deadened, diffused and sealed doors and the OEM location in the pillars for the tweeters. The processor ensures the stage and image are absolutely pin-point accurate.

When Focal’s superb Utopia M range of components dropped they needed a car in Australia to demonstrate just how impressive this new range was. The Utopia M represent the epitome of high-class audio reproduction. We’re not talking about just making a heap of noise either. These drivers are meticulous, accurate and the very definition of professional. The install, of course; was to display similar attributes. With that in mind, naturally Fhrx Studios was enlisted to get the install undertaken.

We began with the doors. All four are completely sound deadened, diffused and sealed using Focal’s BAM products. Then a fresh new set of 6 WM 6.5″ midrange drivers were installed into each door via acrylic baffles through OEM holes. Bandpass gaskets were also included upon the front side of the drivers to seal them against the doors trims.

The TBM 1.1″ tweeters are housed in the factory locations however they’re mounted on special angled acrylic rings which allow them to tilt towards you a little. This helps minimise reflections from the windscreen. The rear doors in the other hand have them mounted in the original location firing through the grille towards passengers.

When it comes to power delivery many tend to overdo the power cables thence overlook the earthing. Not here though peeps. We machined up a custom earthing rail with the Focal logo engraved on it which is capable of flowing almost 1000 amperes of current.

That said power absolutely wasn’t overlooked. The car has a 900 CCA battery installed, when then tapped off of this via twin Focal fuse holders using Focal 4 Awg cables for each amplifier. This ensures current flow aplenty to the power blocks.

All components within the boot reside beneath the boot floor and are strategically spaced around the spare tire that remains in its place. Nothing worse that a car with half the functionality missing. The electrical componentry is then all bolted to a 5183 alloy rack plate with is fastened to the car via OEM mounting bolting locations.

Naturally all equipment was to be from Focal so there is a pair of impressive FPX5.1200 five channel amplifiers feeding each door and a voice coil of the subwoofer. These provide clean power in droves with head room aplenty remaining. All processing is handled by Focal’s neat little FPS-8 digital sound processing suite.

Subsonic duties are left to a mighty 10 WM 10″ subwoofer mounted in a circular twenty-nine litre sealed enclosure. It resides beneath the boot floor almost completely within the frame of the spare tire. There is a two meter lead connecting it, meaning if you need your spare tire you simply lift the enclosure out and put it to one side.

Keep with the professional and tidy theme, we added just a little highlight in the way of custom pressed grille with the Focal logo. This is then surrounded by a ring that’s two-packed in the same silver as the car and a black vinyl ring which matches various black polypropylene interior trims of the boot.

All the shapes, angles and radii matched the cars aesthetics. It’s important to make custom stuff look as factory as possible.

We also knocked up a second cover which protects the subwoofer, this takes the place of the showy cover when the car is being used for actual work.

This cover however isn’t just some quickly knocked up item. It’s machined from a solid 5183 billet aluminium block. We did this because the car is sometimes used as a functioning delivery car. And when piled to the roof with heavy boxes just any old timbre grille wouldn’t support the weight.

We machined up a male and female press with the Focal logo for a more showy protective grille. Once pressed this grille was powder coated in mat black for a ultra-tidy appearance. No chrome here please. So overall she’s one very clean install, all but completely hidden from prying eyes. It’s only when you sit down, close your eyes and hit un-pause; that’s when you realise just what magnificence you’re sitting among.

When James approached us to undertake the install in his latest of many Golfs, we didn’t hesitate to start the planning. However unlike previous versions, this time he required all his boot space. Meaning things were going to have to live elsewhere. Side mounting; once again here we come!

The system starts with a custom fibreglass double DIN dash piece for the dash. It’s custom because the lower half of the second DIN space houses two gauges for his high-performance engine.

The front end features Morel’s superb Elate Carbon 63 three-way component set, these are set in rock solid baffles in doors that are completely sound deadened, diffused and sealed. They’re able to provide a mighty kick not to mention delectable vocal tones and crystal clear highs.

Moving to the power department. Juice for the system is provided by a pair of Zapco Reference amplifiers. There’s a 350.2 running the front end whilst a 500.1 provides power aplenty for the subwoofer. The amplifiers are mounted above one another with a full fibreglass trim surround panel added. All power is supplied by Audison’s flagship Sonus power cables and ancillaries. We were also careful to ensure all OEM functionality remained like interior lighting and power sockets.

Subsonics are delivered thanks to a Seas Lotus Reference SW250 subwoofer, all the way from Norway. These subwoofers are famous for being some of the nicest subsonic drivers available in the world today. Running in a sealed thirty litre enclosure; it can plumb the depths of sound like few others can.

The centre section of the boot received new hemmed floor carpet, and last but not least the entire car was sound deadened from end to end using various acoustic products to keep it whisper quiet.

Some cars develop a cult following among enthusiasts simply because of their ease of modification. Some examples of this phenomenon include the myriad of Mitsubishis, Nissans, Toyotas and the like. Then of course there are the breeds that attract fans because of their strong on and off road racing heritage and while Subarus seem the most common of the rally cars, there are various other makes and models that boast similar off-road pedigree but just aren’t as common. These are often European and include such names as Lancia, Renault, Citroen and of course; Peugeot. However believe me when I state that there are no more fastidious owners than those of the mighty Peugeot 205. What they do to their little 205s must be seen to be believed. This is where Antonio and his gun metal grey example enter the picture

When the trendy little French hatch first arrived at Fhrx Studios all the equipment had already been purchased and the install was looking pretty straight forward. Then someone made the mistake of mentioning that the classic old French design would make a brilliant Audison Thesis demo car. We could marry up the latest and greatest audio equipment with one of the worlds most famous rally cars. The rest, as they say; is history. It wasn’t too long before the existing equipment was swapped for even higher quality goodies. Sure it might have been multiple times the value of the car itself but hey; such is the nature of the audiophile beast.

From concept through design to implementation and reality, every aspect of the install was changed in somewhat dramatic fashion. The front end went from a two-way passive component set within the factory doors to a three-way active set in completely fresh scratch built door trims. This is not quite as easy as it might look because you may notice those factory door surfaces are not flat. The single amplifier ideology was ditched in favour of a new triple amplifier layout offering far more grunt and the single existing subwoofer would never do so that got the punt in favour of much higher quality dual subsonic units.

Starting at the front, the source is a Pioneer DEX-P99RS. This state of the art deck is arguably the best sound quality deck on the market today and is widely considered to be the successor to the Clarion HX-D2 and Eclipse CD7200 MkII so far as uber quality source units go. Besides having the ability to run fully active via its eight individual high voltage pre-outs, the DEX-P99RS also possesses incredible processing power including complex crossovers, time alignment and full thirty band parametric equalisation.

From here the sound stream is shunted down shielded high-end RCA cords onto the triplet of amplifiers. The tweeters and midranges run from a Pioneer Stage 4 PRS-A900 which is an audiophile grade class A amplifier and provides a warm and controlled sound as it feeds fifty watts continuous into each of the four higher frequency components. The PRS-A900 lives seated in the middle of its two larger partners in crime; twin ARC Audio SE2300 powerhouses. These class AB amplifiers run the midbass drivers and subwoofers, feeding no less than 300 watts into each midbass driver and 1200 watts continuous into the subwoofers; how’s that for headroom? All three amplifiers live in a custom built rack which is surrounded by a gunmetal grey two-pack trim ring and finished with a lighter grey Mercedes macrosuede top trim plate. Beneath this plate the area surrounding the amplifiers was left open to allow maximum air to flow around the power generating components, especially that class A unit.

Once the power is generated it’s then fed to the front doors actively via six runs of Audison Connection Sonus silver and copper twisted-pair speaker wire. Comprising the front stage are Audison’s award winning Thesis components with TH 1.5 Violino tweeters handling the higher frequencies, TH 3.0 Voce midranges handling the middle portion of the sound whilst a pair of TH 6.5 Sax handle the gut kicking duties of the front stage. These are all housed in beautifully finished individual gunmetal grey fibreglass pods while the remainder of the door is trimmed in the similar macro-suede to the rear. We’ve been asked numerous times why we didn’t run with the traditional a-pillar mounted components and the reason behind the door design is that with all the speakers located on the same plane and firing from the same origin point, there is no phase issues to speak of meaning the image is as near to perfection as you’ll get in an automobile.

With the upper octaves of the sound sorted out we couldn’t just leave the bottom end to some droning excuse for a subwoofer. It would take a serious quality subwoofer to keep up with the Thesis front end so you guessed it; the Thesis TH 10 Basso subwoofer was chosen as the weapon of choice in the battle for superbly defined subbass. These subwoofers are arguably the best sounding subsonic transducers in the world however SPL is not quite their forte. “That’s no drama – we’ll just install two” says Antonio who is not afraid to turn it up every now and then. So to that end; there is a subwoofer installed on either side of the boot in completely custom built fibreglass and marine ply enclosures that are designed with a perfect Qtc for the little 205. Both enclosures are trimmed in macro-suede and to add a nice little cosmetic touch; painted decorative plates have been added just forward of each subwoofer face.

The entire car is completely sound deadened using Dynamat and StP deadening products and the enclosures are painted internally with Fhrx Studios deadening paint. The power supply has also been beefed up thanks to a Stinger SPV44 gel-cell and cables utilised throughout the install are Stinger and Audison Connection. Other smaller features include the moving of the power window switches to a custom made roof console and Viper alarm keeping the entire car and system in the owner’s possession. Naturally the sound is absolutely superb so now Antonio has turned his attention to the appearance of the car both externally and internally. Word on the street is that a completely new dash and full custom carbon fibre interior is not off the cards in the near future so watch this space.

One primary conceptual idea for this stunning Subaru WRX was clean matching lines with a little artistic license in the background to highlight the various components. The owner Paul quite often carries equipment around so the car was to remain clean and functional while looking pleasant to the eye.

Starting at the front end; under the bonnet an Optima D34M was installed with custom made and painted fuse holder to make sure the system has plenty of power reserve to draw upon. The double DIN factory unit was removed and system source unit is now an Alpine CDA-9831 receiver. This unit has been mounted carefully into the dash using custom made aluminum brackets. This is done in order to set the deck back about 5mm which keeps the overall dash fascia flat.

The front stage is courtesy of Focal Utopia 165W components and the tweeters live in the kick panels for wider staging. Despite them being low time alignment allows for a high image definition. Anyone that knows anything about WRX’s will be the first to tell you how much room there isn’t in the doors. To this end we had to create carefully designed five piece speaker baffles to get the large midrange drivers in. The window mechanism has also had various parts machined or replaced all together to help the window clear the driver.

With the front end sorted we got stuck into the boot which was to house two amplifiers and the subwoofer. A Soundstream Rubicon amplifier is mounted in a custom fibreglass tray that fits snugly into the spare tire itself while a Zapco Reference 750.2 amplifier for the front stage lives in a custom built amp rack that is mounted in the front on the boot floor. The amp rack has a special cooling slot along the front to allow the fans to draw air in and the rear of the amp rack is left open to allow the air to exit. These were all trimmed in matching carpet to keep the clean look.

Moving along to the sub, this is where everything started to go down hill real estate wise. For if you thought there wasn’t much room for the Utopia drivers in the front, try fitting the massive Image Dyanmics IDMAX10 into the boot on one side; and make it look like it should be there. The IDMAX10 D2V.3 subwoofer is nearly eight inches in depth; it was no small task for Marty to get the unit in and looking at home. The fibreglass enclosure is reinforced with carbon and measures just under thirty litres in volume. This gives the subwoofer a Qtc of 0.65 which allows it to boom a little whilst still holding high quality and possessing a respectable bottom end extension. Around the subwoofer is a two-pack painted baffle and the entire surround has been made from scratch and trimmed in matching carpet. The baffle face and trim surround actually took numerous attempts to get around the complex boot mechanism.

Return customers are always desirable but not for the reason you might think. Sure with each new vehicle they purchase they do tend to upgrade their equipment meaning each system gets better, but also they tend to become more creative with the install itself each time. This is why we enjoy return customers as it gives us a higher bar to strive for each time they return.

Matthew, the owner of this Stunning arctic metallic white E-2 has had many of his vehicles done here previously and I say vehicles as opposed to cars because we’ve done his watercraft too. His first car was a standard run-of-the-mill commodore which received a simple Focal Polyglass upgrade. From there the bug bit so when he moved onto a new black HSV it received the far superior Focal K2 Power components. Naturally; the car nor the system kept him happy for long so when he made the ultimate step to a brand new flagship E-2 the audio choice was becoming pretty obvious. It just had to be a Focal Utopia system.

When it came to actually designing the system Marty had an interesting time. Seeing as the Utopia components were on the table for discussion he suggested that the owner first listen to his car seeing as it is Fhrx Studios own Focal Utopia demonstration vehicle. The owner did just this and his comment was simple enough; he loved the sound of Marty’s car but his had to be twice as loud. So Marty set to designing a system that basically contained double of what was in the red S15 at that time.

The system starts out with a factory head unit. This was left in place for a couple of reasons, the main one being that it looks at home in the dash and it interfaces with all the cars systems such as blue-tooth, navigation and the steering wheels controls. From here the signal runs into an Audison BitOne processor which not only handles all equalisation and tuning functionality, but also all the time alignment and crossover duties too. From the processor the sound stream runs into three separate Focal Dual Direct amplifiers. These two channel amplifiers are capable of outputting two hundred and fifty watts into each channel or twelve hundred into one channel when bridged, all with a total harmonic distortion measuring in thousandths of a percent. Now that’s clean power.

The amplifiers are setup in an configuration which may surprise some people as many guess one runs the component set at the front leaving one amplifier for each subwoofer. Not so. The first amplifier runs the two Tbe 1″ tweeters and two 3Be 3″ midranges of the three-way Focal Utopia component set in the front. These are setup in a semi active arrangement and this leaves the second amplifier to run the 6Be 6.5″ midbass drivers on its own. The third amplifier actually runs both the 33WX2 13″ subwoofers.

The front end is setup for maximum stage and image presence and naturally this means custom a-pillars had to be fabricated from fibreglass to hold the 1″ tweeter and 3″ midrange. Both these drivers sit on the same axis and are tilted slightly away from the dash and the windscreen. The identical starting point eliminates phase issues while the angle keeps the sound away from direct reflections and absorption from the windscreen and dash respectively. The midbass drivers are actually closer to 7″ despite their part number and are housed within fully sound deadened and diffused doors. These drivers are sealed into a marine ply baffles which have been deadened and treated with acoustic paint and the baffle itself is sealed to the inner metal door skin. Between the three separate components and the way they’re setup and time aligned, the E-2 front stage is very well pronounced and dead central on top of the dash.

Turning to the subsonics; the two 13″ subwoofers provide more than enough punch to keep everyone within the vehicle happy but the enclosure is also designed to bring out their sonic best as well with its QTC being around 0.73. This is keep very close to the optimum but provides a little boom in order to get through the seats and into the interior. Because the Utopia subwoofers have such lightweight motors constructed from exotic materials, they only require a few hundred watts each. This means the remaining Dual Direct amplifier easily controls both of them and still has plenty of head room left over.

So far as the actual install itself goes, getting everything in was helped immensely by the fact the E-2 is quite a large vehicle to start with. The three amplifiers are seated in a rack which is built into the floor but can be lifted to provide access to the spare tire. A floor was manufactured to surround the amplifiers and has been trimmed in matching carpet with a two-pack arctic metallic white trim ring. For extra protection a floor mat was also made with the number plate embroided into it. This protects everything when the owner wants to pack the boot full of luggage. The name TECHNO refers to his IT related occupation by the way, not the genre of music.

The enclosure also came in for some aesthetic attention too. The rear face that holds the subwoofers is finished in a neat blend of two-pack metallic arctic white and acrylic, with the Focal logo engraved proudly in the centre and is edge lit with LEDs. On the front side of the enclosure, viewable when the seat is folded down, the BitOne processor is also surrounded by a two-packed surround. Overall the E-2 sounds phenomenal and the owner is very happy with it. It outputs crystal clear sound all day every day and when those times come up for a coast run; believe you me it can literally rip your head off if the need so arises.

Here at Fhrx Studios we often create systems that can be removed with relative ease for those times when owners feel the need to get stuck into the loud pedal at the race track. This Golf was no different. The challenge was to showcase the new Boston G5 series subwoofer but still have the install simple enough to be removable for track days.

The system begins up front with a Clarion DXZ-835 receiver. From here the signals travel along Stinger high-end RCA cables to the back where the Boston GT series amplifiers take command over the sound waves. The three amplifiers are a 1 x 1250 Watt GT28 to run the subwoofer, a 2 x 120 Watt GT24 to run the front splits and a 2 x 45 Watt GT20 to run the differential rear fill.

The front doors are home to a set of Boston Pro series 6.5″ components with the crossovers mounted in the left hand floor of the boot. The rear doors house a set of Boston NX67 coaxials drivers and all four doors are fully deadened, diffused and sealed with acoustic foam.

The boot floor and enclosure are constructed using a combination of timber and fibreglass to achieve a strong foundation for what is ultimately quite a heavy amp rack. The lower two amplifiers hang down into the spare tire and are cooled by slots behind the rear of the amplifiers. Even though the rear end of the subwoofer was left hanging out to show off the awesome motor structure of the Boston G5, peering through the window you can see the cone and Boston logo reflected off no less than fifty mirrors located within the enclosure.

All cable, from the 0 Awg power cable through to the high-end speaker cables are all from Stinger. A Stinger one farad power cap with digital LED meter sits off to the right hand boot floor. The entire boot is showcased under perspex and blue lighting. One other small but neat addition was a gauge pod built into the front drivers a-pillar to let the driver know what the engine was doing boost wise.

High end audio manufacturer Vibe Audio hail from the Untied Kingdom and have participated within the world scene for many a year now. When it came to expanding the range down under, Vibe knew they would need more than just a few demo boards to display it’s awesome products. Customers these days desire realistic demonstrations and want to hear components installed inside actual cars. The challenge therefore was to create a neat and clean quality install without demolishing the bank. The remedy naturally was Fhrx Studios.

The system begins under the bonnet where the diminutive factory battery was turfed in order for an Optima D34M deep cycle battery to take up residence. The D34M provides plenty of clean power for those big hitting bass notes. From here the power travels via Stinger Pro series power cables thorough various Stinger components. A two-pack fuse plate holds the massive Stinger ANL fuse holder and keeps everything safe in the event of an accident.

The receiver is mounted up front on custom aluminium brackets in order to bring the unit forward ten millimetres in line with the face of the dash. Moving south a little, a small bass controller is mounted where the ash tray used to reside and underneath that is an Auto Meter voltage gauge to let the driver know how the battery is feeling. The volt meter mount is made from fibreglass and fills the glasses case in the center console. Behind the handbrake are the switches for the power window.

The doors needed quite some work behind the scenes to clear the power window motors. The entire door trim has been made from scratch and is actually 9mm thick pine trimmed with Mercedes gun metal grey marcosuede. The door pods themselves are two-pack fibreglass and neatly hold a pair of Vibe ST60 component 6.5″ midrange drivers. Both doors have multiple layers of deadening installed, and diffusers installed behind the speakers to assist in preventing reverberations and reflections. The tweeters have been installed in the kick panels for optimum staging width with aperiodic membranes behind them.

The boot was the greatest challenge of the install as the Excel is not overly spacious and there were some big components to install. The amplifier rack / enclosure foundation sits underneath everything and can be raised to access the spare tire. A Vibe Blackbox III amplifier for the front stage lives right underneath the enclosure and provides 200 Watts continuous a side to the components. Towards the rear of the car, the titanic Vibe MB4 2800 Watt mono-block is seated in a two-packed bathtub and is backlit by red light. Underneath the amplifier is a large port with a cooling fan feeding hot air out of the amp when its working hard.

The subwoofers are top-of-the-range Vibe Space 12 units and one is housed motor out to demonstrate both parts of the woofer. Vibe’s Space series subwoofers actually have some extremely impressive technology injected into their development and design. From the cast and machined aluminium basket to the embossed aluminium come, everything is made to exceptional standards and the sound reflects this design. The front plate of the 60 litre sealed enclosure is half inch thick fibreglass and is painted with two-pack silver to match the car. The fibreglass side panels of the boot are custom made from scratch and wrapped in vinyl. Continuing the trim theme from the doors the boot floor was trimmed in macro-suede and the mono-block amp window is lined with a vinyl trim ring. The Vibe logo is embossed under the vinyl lock down plate on top of the enclosure.

Vibe Australia now has a demo car to attend events, shows and stores with. Whilst not over the top; the clean custom look is certainly proving to be a hit with punters. The sound quality is fantastic, as is the staging; and if you’re brave and feel the need to play chicken with the subwoofers believe me your ears will give up long before the Vibes do.

The dazzling bright red ’88’ Honda NSX sees it’s fair share of track time. However it also spends many a long day traveling around this great country to shows, events and demonstration days. For these reasons the install had to be robust enough to accommodate this lifestyle. Heading up the system is a Pioneer AVH-6650DVD touchscreen which is mounted on completely custom aluminum foundation, done so achieve the correct angle when open. This is surrounded by a custom carbon fibre centre console that extends from the dash top all the way down to the handbrake. The console alone took the better part of a week to manufacture and is extremely light and strong.

All audio signals travel along high-end Stinger interconnects and speaker cables, whilst an Optima D34 deep cycle battery sits up front providing the twin amplifiers in the boot with plenty of clean power. The current flows through a carbon fibre plate mounted fuse holder along 4 Awg power and earth cables. An earthing kit has also been added to assist the cars electrical elements.

Amplification comes courtesy of two Tru-Techncology Steel series amplifiers; an S4 to run the front end and an S2 to run the subwoofer. These are mounted upon a black power coated steel rack we welded up. This bolts to OEM boot side locations.

The front doors are home to DynAudio Esotar 2 components, namely the E110 1.1″ tweeters and E650 6.5″ midranges. These are mounted to meticulously created stepped baffles, require to fit the massive drivers into the small confines of the NSX front door. The doors, entire floor and boot were all generously layers in deadening and padding, with the doors benefiting from excessive diffusion too.

The enclosure is somewhat of a work of art and took a few attempts to get just right. The factory NSX uses a small 5.25″ subwoofer in a ported enclosure and removing this in favour of fitting a 10″ Digital Designs monster in the same space was never going to be easy. The front of the enclosure is 18mm timber while the back end uses a mixture of carbon and firbeglass to achieve the perfect volume and shape. Over all the entire sound is exquisite in the now far quieter interior. The owner is very happy with his new found sound, as are we.

When Boston Acoustics released the mighty new G5 series of subwoofers there was nothing but praise from all over the world for Bostons mighty new baby. Naturally we just couldn’t wait to get one into one of our cars and so we actually began building our G5 demo car long before the G5 ever arrived in Australia. This caused some issues which are explained later.

This system begins with a Pioneer AVH-P7550DVD touch screen / commander which lives with an Apexi AVC-R controller display in a custom built carbon fibre console. From there the music heads down Stinger high-end RCA interconnects to a pair of amplifiers housed in the boot. The systems amplifiers are two Audison SRx2S’s and they feed 180 Watts into the front splits and 600 Watts into the subwoofer. The amplifiers receive their power via an Optima D34 deep cycle battery up front, along with a custom made earthing kit to aid current flow.

At first glance the boot looks somewhat simple because it is relatively flat with the exception of the edge rise. However, under that top plate the boot foundation and sub enclosure are entirely fibreglass and kevlar for strength. The boot actually had to be re-worked a little, because when the big G5 did finally arrive she was about 25 mm deeper than what we were led to believe.

Seeing as the WRX was built to show off the mighty G5 subwoofer, it lives as the center piece while the amps flank. All three components are finished using a combination of two-pack painted blue trims, vinyl, carpet and perspex. The perspex surround plate that goes around all the components was meticulously hand-cut by Marty over a period of about three hours and flame polished. Blue LED’s light the perspex delightfully at night.

The front doors are home to a set of Audible Physics RAM 406 components and the entire inner and outer skin of the doors are deadened using various sound deadening and diffuser panels to help cancel internal resonating. Editors note; we lost the images of the original doors in a HDD accident years back, hence the dark grey WRX door with the same speaker set. The rear shelf is home to a pair of Hertz ECX165 coaxials for rear fill. These are covered in grille cloth even though they reside under the shelf, as this assists in keeping damaging sunlight away from the speaker surrounds.

When it comes to demo cars, you expect them all to be flashy, high-performance vehicles would you not? Not if you’re Fhrx Studios. Hell even our delivery van has a killer system. Not only because it spends many hours a day on the road. But also because it’s one more platform to showcase our wares, as the in-car experience is vastly superior to any demo-wall.

The system starts with a Kenwood flagship double DIN receiver, soon to be updated to the new optical equipped Kenwood DMX9724XDS. These receivers are absolute monsters, about to interface with just about everything from CarPlay to HDMI. They’re a floating screen too; indeed one that measures a whopping 10.1″ in size!

From the source unit the signal is passed down to a pair of Helix amplifiers via our own custom made Ultimate RCA interconnects. A Helix P SIX DSP handles the three-way front end whilst a P ONE MK2 handles the subwoofer duties. These are stacked vertically and live under the drivers seat. All other cable throughout the van is by Furutech.

The doors are home to Focal Utopia M 8″ midbass drivers. These can output an incredible level of kinetic force, indeed one that needs to be felt to be believed. The doors also have a mountain of deadening, diffusion and foam installed into them too, making them one of the most solid environments around.

The pillars are completely custom fabricated. They start with a fibreglass base frame which has a CNC machined bathtub mounted to it. Into these bathtubs are seated a pair of Utopia M 3.5WM 3.5″ midrange drivers and TBM 1.1″ tweeters. They’re mounted on the same axis to avoid any phase or origin point issues.

The angle is actually slightly forward and is done on purpose. See in the van you sit very high and just about on top of the speakers. So insofar as stage depth is concerned; you often end up with the singer literally nose-to-nose with you. By angling them forward slightly then carefully setting the time alignment and phase you end up with a far deeper stage depth.

Protecting these satellite speakers are custom pressed grilles. This not only guards against grabbing hands but also ultraviolet light and prying eyes. For a little extra decorative touch the grilles also feature tiny machined Fhrx badges, thus highlighting their owner. The surround is painted in the same two-pack silver metallic colour as the van exterior.

To make the grilles you need to first make both male and female press moulds. We machined these up on our CNC after spending a bit of time CAD’ing them up. They’re machined in opposite matching pairs. We then press them using alloy mesh with our industrial hydraulic press.

Meanwhile moving downtown a little in regards to both chassis and frequency; at the rear of the van are a pair of Utopia M 10WM subwoofers. These are actually installed literally inside the confines of the rear seat base, happily providing subbass aplenty for all occupants. The enclosures are made from red oak plywood and coated in our special acoustic enclosure paint.

Each enclosure is a little smaller that we’d have preferred, being around 22 litres a side. However fitting anything larger within the confines of the seat frame just wasn’t possible. We did add some interesting geometry to the enclosure sides though, to make use of every nook and cranny of spare space available. With the most volume possible we get very close to the enclosure Q target of 0.707.

Luckily despite the Q being a little departed from what we desired, the cabin gain frequency of the Multivan resides in the subsonic realm due to the sheer size of its cabin. This means minimal boosting of the infrasonic frequencies was required to overcome the Q deficiency. Yes folks; sometimes physics loves you too!

Both spectators and competitors alike in the New South Wales car audio scene know that Paul’s maroon Lancer wagon is regular sight and can be found at most of the years events. It’s one of those cars that has been around the competition scene for so long now that some people actually walk right by it without realising how much the car is constantly evolving. So now that we’ve mentioned the car lets dive into what’s actually installed within. Starting with a brief history; the car has actually undergone quite a few changes over the years. In past lives we’ve seen it using Soundstream amplifiers for power, Image Dynamics subwoofers for subsonic duties and the front splits? Well they have been changed more times than the oil in the engine. The first incarnation saw Focal Utopia splits, then there was a brief stint with DLS components, then a few not worth mentioning before Paul finally settled on the mighty Hertz Mille components after a very long auditioning process.

Moving along to present day and we’ll start the run down as per the norm; under the bonnet. The Lancer uses an Optima D34M deep cycle battery in order to supply the better part of 1000 cranking amperes of current to the car. This is then sent via a Stinger ANL fuse holder down Stinger zero gauge cable to the distribution block in the rear. The distribution block in the rear keeps an eye on voltage and sounds an alarm if it drops below eleven.

Moving to the interior, the deck now used is the Pioneer DEH-P9450MP. Along with the inbuilt multi-band equaliser this deck offers all the useful tuning features without the useless bells and whistles usually associated with decks at this level. The deck then sends signals to Zapco SymbiLink line convertors located behind the dash. Here the signal is balanced and boosted to eighteen volts, thus providing a completely noise free signal stream. The entire car body has been layered with multiple layers of Dynamat sound deadening, foam and diffuser panels. Thicknesses vary from single layers under the dash to double layers on the doors. This keeps the cars noise levels to a minimum and had improved the noise floor remarkably. Thermal safety is covered using a small fire extinguisher which is located in front of the passenger seat.

Moving to the doors; at the moment the Lancer is using the Hertz Mille MLK2 two-way component set. However there is an upgraded MLK3 three-way component set in the pipeline which not only includes the famous Hertz ribbon midranges but also the upgraded hand built signature Mille tweeters. Currently the 6.5″ midrange drivers live in the fully deadened and diffused doors and are happy to not only play midrange frequencies with an accuracy that must be heard to be believed, but will also kick you in the guts when copious amounts of midbass is required. The tweeters live in the custom made fiberglass kick panels, which are fitted with aperiodic membranes avoid any frequency reflections internally.

At this stage the components are being kept together for now to avoid frequency separation issues but further experimenting may soon see them located elsewhere. Head installer Marty explains further; “As is with many of our competition cars, getting the perfect sound stage is a little like playing a game of aural cat and mouse. In my own car we’re experimenting with moving the midranges and tweeters up to the a-pillar. With this car we may also install the ribbon and tweeter in the pillar but we need to perform some extensive testing before we decide on anything permanent. The sound stage at the moment is wide, deep and surprisingly high. But of course there’s nothing in car audio that cannot improve upon.”

Speaker cables run throughout the car are all Stinger 16 Awg with dual runs to the subwoofer. The beautifully finished Mille crossovers are located under each seat and have plenty of air circulating around them. This allows them to dissipate a lot heat when the internal components are warming up during periods of high demand. Upon closer inspection you’ll notice that quite a few components within the crossover are lined with large heat sinks. The Mille crossovers are very well designed and constructed from quality materials and are the main reason why the components work together so linearly. As is standard procedure here, a great deal of external testing was also done on the Mille crossovers to provide the best in car response with the least inconsistencies, peaks and dips. However, this car is a competition car so these changes are being kept secret.

Moving to the rear of the car you’ll find a trim curtain hiding everything. This is especially handy if the car needs to be left anywhere. Moving the curtain back reveals a plethora of high quality components. The two amplifiers of the system are the Zapco Reference 750.2 for the front end and the Zapco 1100.1 mono-block for the subwoofer. The 750.2 is a very powerful unit and is rated at 2 x 175 Watts continuous. The subwoofer amplifier is designed especially for low frequencies and is rated at 1100 Watts continuous. It is one of the most powerful amplifiers in the Zapco Reference range and boasts a bunch of features such as counter reaction circuits which results in an increased damping factor, damping factor being the amplifier;s ability to control cone movement. They also offer a subsonic filter, phase controller for bringing the subsonic image forward, parametric boost / cut and separate remote control.

The amplifiers, distribution block and enclosure are all presented using a neat blend of two-pack maroon and grey vinyl. Red LED’s backlight the three panels and the bright red voltage meter on the distribution block also adds to the effect. All rear panels have been routered down with a bevel bit and vacuum formed to attain the best possible finish. All cables used throughout the racks are Stinger or Zapco.

Whilst we’re going over what is in the boot, it would be a sin not to mention the subwoofer. When auditioning various component systems Paul chose the Hertz Mille so when it came to subwoofers would the Mille subwoofer keep up with the component system so far as quality, accuracy and depth was concerned? The answer is a very impressive affirmative. The Hertz Mille ML2500 not only thumps like a jack hammer, it is one of the most accurate subwoofers on the market today. Easily capable of delivering thumping deep bass at speeds with complete control and finesse.

In order to get the triangular enclosure just right, some adjustments had to be made to the enclosure. The old Image Dynamics IDMAX10 was removed and sold. The Hertz ML2500 was then sent away to have its parameters measured before the enclosure could be modified for the new driver to replace the old guard. Further testing of the front angle of the enclosure face was also implemented in order to gain the best sound quality. Eventually the enclosure was ready to head back to the panel beaters to be painted again. Upon its return the boot was all bolted back together. The results speak for themselves; hence if you can make it to an upcoming sound off be sure to check out Paul’s Lancer and see just how good these premium components can sound.

When Nic first got his license it was during the halcyon days where P-platers were not permitted to get around in turbocharged rides, hence the Impreza as opposed to a full-tilt WRX. However there was nothing in law about a rock solid sound system being installed. This is where we came in. If he wasn’t allowed to get around with mega-horsepower then mega-decibels would have to suffice!

The system starts with a flagship Alpine double DIN receiver, mounted in a customised dash kit for depth management, as there’s nothing worse that a head unit poking out like a sore thumb. The receiver feeds super-clean audio signals down to an Audison BitOne digital sound processor. This unit handles all processing and sound manipulation duties, with it’s controller being mounted into a custom console at the front of the car.

From the processor the signal is shipped back to two enormous JL Audio Slash V2 series powerhouses. These blocks provide clean power in droves; a 1000/1 running the subwoofers whilst the satellite speakers are powered by a 450/4 in a semi-active configuration. The amplifiers are mounted to smoked acrylic shelves that are themselves bolted to a study 5183 alloy frame. The entire affair is backlit with gentle blue light.

Power for the amplifiers is supplied via an Optima D34 yellow top gel-cell and a 25 farad Stinger power capacitor located under the boot floor and backlit in a similar blue to the amplifier shelving. Earthing is taken care of via a custom made earthing kit and overall it’s able to flow four figures of amperes in current. More than enough in other words.

Tunes up front are supplied in abundance by Focal’s rock-solid K2 Power ES165KX3 three-way component set. The 6.5″ midbass lives in full deadened, diffused and sealed doors whilst the 1″ and 3″ live in custom made pillars containing aperiodic membranes for the 3″ compartment. Between their careful angling and the processors time alignment controls the stage and image are perfect.

The pillars have been vacuum formed in Corinthian grain vinyl to match the car and since we couldn’t quite get the colour to match the interior of the car, the pillars have been colour dyed by Glen at Uti-Colour to make them match the existing trims to perfection. The satellite speakers all have grilles and this prevent any unwanted attention from either sunlight or dodgy individuals.

Subsonic duties are handled by a duo of enormous JL Audio 12W6 drivers. These live in 38 litre side mounted fibreglass enclosures which return a very health Q allowing them to play very low and loud. They’re finished in two-pack metallic black the same as the car, before being coated in numerous coats of clear in order to give them the same appearance as the outer body.

Overall Nic now gets around enjoying his tunes immensely. And let’s face it; it’s only a matter of time before this is all swapped into a turbo version, giving Nic the performance to match his superb sound quality.

Being both an audiophile and a long time friend of Fhrx Studios, Adriaan knew from the outset what he wanted for his spectacular new BMW M4 50 Jahre Special Edition. A rare machine indeed, it was going to take a special type of system to produce the sound to the standard Adriaan desired. With this in mind we both set out to design a system worthy of his aural expectations.

Starting with the sources; the OEM head unit and surrounding dash all remain in place, but is now utilized as a penultimate input into the Helix DSP ULTRA S digital sound processor mounted in the boot. The primary sound comes courtesy of a flagship Astell & Kearn digital audio player. This allows Adriaan to flow absurd resolution rates of music down an optical digital cable into the DSP. The secondary volume, subwoofer level and a raft of other features are controlled via a Helix CONDUCTOR which has been surface mounted with a custom made alloy ring that matches the OEM controller adjacent to it.

Turning our attention now to the speakers; the front stage begins with Brax Matrix ML28 PRO dome tweeters. Between their specially shaped 1.1″ dome and meticulously crafted rear labyrinth chamber, these are some of the clearest high-frequency drivers you’ll hear. They’re housed in hand crafted carbon fibre pods which replaced the OEM tweeter mounts without consuming any extra real-estate.

The middle registers are provided by Morel’s top-of-the-range Reference series 4″ midrange drivers, so chosen for their ability to play extremely realistic and rich vocals tones. They’re mounted in doors that are completely deadened inside and out, diffused and sealed. Additional butyl and foam deadening is also sandwiched into all the door trim cavities to prevent rattles or internal resonances.

Frequencies ranging from higher subbass and midbass right through to lower midrange are seen to by a pair of Focal’s flagship Utopia M midbass drivers. Housed beneath each seat in aperiodic enclosures via custom machined acrylic baffles; these 8″ drivers are well able to give you a right royal chest massage when required. Naturally the entire floor has also been deadened to give these enclosures extra stability.

Differential rear fill comes courtesy of multiple sets of Focal Inside 4″ and 1″ component speakers, both the standard and deeper L variants. Mounted in both the rear cabin sides and shelf; these serve to provide an ambience within the car behind the occupants, giving an immersive feel of room-like depth. The areas all around them have been deadening, diffused and filled with acoustic foam.

Primary power for the system is generated by four mighty Helix C series behemoths. They’re configured a little differently to the norm, in that a pair are assigned to run each side of the car. So one C FOUR runs a 1.1″ tweeter and a 4″ midrange with its channels 1 and 2, whilst channels 3 and 4 are bridged to feed the 8″ midbass. The C ONE adjacent to it runs that side’s 12″ subwoofer. This is then repeated on the other side. Satellite speakers are run by an Audison Forza, so chosen because it fits nicely between the triple 5083 alloy foundation longerons which support the boot structure.

Supplying the current for the amplifiers is 1000 ampere battery that lives beneath them, with shielding provided by a 6 mm Faraday plate. Four gauge power cables feed copious amounts of current to the amplifiers via a stinger fused distribution block, whilst earthing is provided via a custom machined earthing plate with the M4 Competition logo engraved into it.

Moving from power to the signal side of operations; once processed within the processor the tunes are then sent on their way via custom made RCA cables. We often make our own RCA’s here as the quality is superior to many mainstream brands, and their lengths can be made to perfection. Their synthetic Teflon jackets are all clearly labelled with heatshrink to make identification straightforward.

Handling the subsonic and infrasonic duties are a pair of JL Audio’s mighty 12W6 subwoofers; a surefire favourite of Adriaan’s. These live in an eighty litre sealed enclosure that’s been two-packed and cleared the same colour as the car. The rear window to the enclosure is no less that 30 mm thick plexiglass.

Turning our attention to the cosmetics, with all this high-end hardware in the boot naturally Adriaan wanted something more than just a plain black carpet enclosure. However he wanted the look to be elegant and match the lines of the car, not look like a 1996 Auto-Salon special.

To that end the boot now sports a blend of leather, vinyl, carbon fibre, brushed alloy and acrylic plates; with each of the colours and shapes matching the interior themes of the car.

To give the boot layout a little more personality Adriaan selected various badges and other small details like the alloy lines; ancillary details that label the install as absolutely as belonging to this car.

To finish the layout and really set it off, some subtle lighting was included. Again not too much, as the C series amplifiers already have an array of operational LED’s on board. Just a little something to highlight various aspects of the install.

All in all it’s one very tidy build, complete with absolutely superb high resolution sound quality and realism, just as Adriaan stipulated from the outset.