The Tech Zone Does IASCA

Written: 11/11/2000
Written by: Dave "Slam 4X4" Chow

IASCA.... What does that mean? That’s what I had to explain to the border guard when I went through the border Tuesday morning. It stands for International Auto Sound Challenge Association I told the guy. I think that made it worse and he hauled us in for interrogation. After explaining our trip he did let us pass and we were on our way to the biggest car stereo competition on the planet. 

After arriving in Oklahoma City we checked in and headed over to the convention center to see what this whole thing was about. I was amazed at what computers have done to the car stereo industry. There where at least six cars there with full blow computers in their cars. I’m talking AMD T Birds and Pentium IIIs running Windows Me and 2000, not CE. They use the computer DVD ROM to play CD through the car stereo system. I saw one car that cut up a key board so they can move track and volume without using the full keyboard. Q-PC is the company that makes these systems. From what I can see it’s a desktop computer with a special hard drive and power supply. You can order them in many configurations. I’ll have more on the Q-PC on a later date as they are sending us one for evaluation soon. 

The rest of the show is quite amazing. The level of installs in cars today are incredible and of course there was the bikini contest! :) There are two types of competition. One is call Sound Q, which means sound quality. From the name you would guess that these cars are build for sound quality and not so much for getting loud. They judge these cars by the quality of the sound and installation. The other type is IDBL which stands for IASCA DB League. Only thing that matters in this competition is who is the loudest. The convention center was section off into three spaces. The middle section was for the manufacturers booths. Right next to that was the judging area for the Sound Q cars and in the hockey rink area was the loud contest.

This year they did something new and broke the world record for the loudest db level inside the rink part of the convention center. The previous record was 128 db done but a full house of scream fans. They line up all the SPL cars and put the mike 100 feet away to measure the sound. I knew the cars would be loud enough to break the record. However, I didn’t know they would destroy it. The new record is now 143.8 db.

Next page: Let's see the cars!

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