OVERVIEW

For years Car Audio has been focused on the one part of our industry (SPL) that doesn't lend itself to making money or to promoting those in the industry. Although SPL once was a viable means for judging sound systems in cars, it should no longer be allowed to jade the end users view of what a sound system should be.

Car Audio is not only a science … it is an art. Customers who spend their hard earned money on their sound systems & modified cars want a platform to show case these systems to get recognition for their efforts. This being a passion and ego driven industry we need to start capitalising on this. MAGP is our answer. MAGP will judge Vehicles on every facet of the vehicle from back to front. This includes interior and exterior modifications. The vehicle will be judged in a non-biased manner, with the scoring system leaving very little to personal opinion so judging is fair and unquestioned as well. Scores will not be influenced by price or branding of components used, although inferior products will show up as such through testing. This should not be considered a bad thing.

Testing of vehicles will be an interactive experience for the customer. Allowing the end user to be part of the judging process not only educating him/her but also giving them a better understanding of their own system and what upgrades he/she needs to focus on next. E.g. a customer with a set of 6x9's on his back shelf and a sub in the boot will look at purchasing a set of splits to boost his front stage. After being escorted through the testing process the customer will better understand the impact and advantages of a set of splits will offer him. This in anyone's language means business to the industry and new found enjoyment for the competitors.

MAGP events will be BIG!! Well-publicized and beneficial to ALL who attend, bringing credibility to installers and suppliers alike. Many other activities will be included into each event making it a spectacle and a success.

The shows are already a success; your participation will only lead to more promotional recognition.
No supplier or dealers will be permitted to enter their own vehicle for judging. The display areas are sized per vehicle, each competitor will be given the testing material on CD and MAGP the rules, each entry will also receive a MAGP cap (this may vary dependant on the venue) and a cetification of participation. Trophies will be awarded to the best over all vehicles in each class and best overall RTA curve and Best of Show as judged by public vote.

THE NUTS AND BOLTS

The primary need for such an association to exist is to allow the distributors, retails and consumers to be heard. The fundamental purpose of any so called sound-off organisation, be it for Sound Quality or Sound Pressure evaluation is to create a platform to judge product credibility and installation skill evaluation. There are two main ingredients required to create a successful event, namely a well promoted suitable venue and a format that meets the needs of the consumer. This is the intention of MAGP.

Since the word sound quality unfortunately carries a lot of baggage and there are too few consumers who actually understand good sound from bad especially when the material used for referencing is of a nature that they would not relate to or care to listen to. More importantly a person can only make their opinion on what they evaluate to be good, which can only based off their last best experience. To overcome this problem, we have made this our obsession to find a solution for the industry we are so passionate about . It is common knowledge that the modern consumer in the mobile audio industry is aged between about 18 and 28 and has no interest in establishing as to whether their centre channel is staged correctly or their stereo speakers are imaging properly and if the plink was heard before the plonk, blaa…blaa..bla.

Don't get us wrong, we understand the importance of this criteria to evaluate a good mobile audio system. But just like all sport we first need you to learn the game before running with the ball. However, since we all are not between the ages of 18 and 28, its more important for the ones who know the game to understand the needs of those who spend the money! Yes that's you the consumer, which is not your dad or mom. We know you don't care too much about his or her music tastes or their opinion about the subject. But we hope by the time you reach their age, you will still be competing with the same enthusiasm but with different criteria and objectives, which clearly current formats have failed to achieve. We know what's important to you and that is how good your club mix or hip hop sounds in your ride and how cool it looks. The bottom line is protect your reputation at all costs and since statistics have proven that this is mostly a male dominated sport, designed to establish one common goal, that being, who's the coolest badest boy in town and most importantly who gets all the attention during & after events
By then we hope that this great format will have achieved the platform necessary to launch you to the next level of competing, this class will be called the formula intermediate class. The ultimate platform lies ahead to take you through your mobile music years and beyond that being the Formula PRO class. At this point the plink and the plonk and why it is so important, will all begin make sense………..

So if what you've read has got your senses alight and you feel the need to be included, this audio organisation requires only one criteria, LOTS OF PASSION!!!

Should formats be there to profit from the mobile audio industry or should the industry profit from the formats (putting it another way who is the platform & who is the baggage)

The following format is intended to provide a platform by which all industry distributors & specialist retail fitment stores can have the opportunity to showcase their skills and their products through their customers, with the objective of creating the opportunity for a potential consumer to evaluate accurately without bias or distortion of the truth, as to what products are available and where to purchase them, while being educated on criteria such as (sound quality, reliability, expandability, safety, price v/s quality, installation options, spl) & most importantly this must be achieved whilst making it fun for all.

This is essential, for the growth & survival of the mobile audio industry. Consumers are more often mis-informed & have no reference to make an accurate decision, which has most often been caused by the result of people in the industry who either don't know enough themselves & feed the consumer fiction or even worse by people who know just enough on how to exploit the ignorance of consumers. 
For example:
Most mobile audio enthusiasts are of the younger, mostly male generation hence the ego issues & politics, typically the 3 questions that are asked by a kid making his first car stereo purchase are:

1) how many watts? 
2) how loud is it? 
3) how much does it cost?

This is where mis-truth or rather extortion plays its evil hand, lets start with the how many watts question? (the more the better right?) 

If dealers or distributors alike can advertise whatever they please and there is no forum to govern what's true or what is not, imagine if car manufacture's advertised or claimed false cc ratings, kilowatts & top speeds, etc.
For example, how often have you seen mini hi-fi's advertising 3000watts & only cost R2000, or car cd players bragging 3oo watts when some car amplifiers only claim 100watts but cost as much as R4000 but are 4 times louder.
Then you get jargon thrown at you, pmpo, rms, peakpower, music power, and music peak etc.

Unfortunately most amplifiers are rated at fix resistive loads driven at 1khz which is 6 times less the current it takes to drive a loud speaker, not including the heat deficiency and whether there is distortion or how reliable the system is. Remember the only thing the consumer has as a reference is how many watts and since pmpo stands for peak music power output why not slap this rating on the box thus increasing more sales, the consumer is of course 
Unaware that 3000 watts 0f pmpo is about 10-15 watts of rms (root mean square) reactive driven load undistorted power to confuse the consumer further, the subject of how loud or how many db's (decibels) creates more opportunity to provide false value to a product. Here are examples of how this can be done and also stir up all kinds of controversies.

1) most devices used to measure spl are sensitive to altitude & barometric change. This can account for variables of as much as 3-4 db's for one venue to the next (so claiming world records & sa records breeds serious side effects).
2) the various organizations have different rules thus adding further confusion.
3) some organizations are represented without neutrality ie: compete at their own events with specific products thus by default creating doubt to the results and legitimacy to the scores.
4) it is also possible to manipulate the spl readings during testing to read higher or lower. 
5) lastly and probably most importantly excluding all of the above of which is only a sample of the issues this particular industry has, is the question of whether pure spl testing provides the tools necessary for the consumer to make an assessed decision while the following criteria have yet to be evaluated. putting it another way would you buy a vehicle if the sales person said it goes really fast for 10r 2 seconds and then blows up and did not cover points such as safety reliability/durability and quality basically pure spl can only confuse people into what is a good or bad system .as it turns out bad quality amplifiers square wave prematurely resulting in more power hence more spl but with ultimate result of blowing loud speakers and ultimately the amplifier itself. The company selling the amps are not blamed however the speaker company is .besides who buys car audio to listen to single note tones, we buy it to listen to music which is made of continuously changing ac sinwave signals not square waves that create distortion resulting in bad sound quality.
Speakers that are asked to play for 1 to 2 seconds to determine which is the superior is also not an accurate evaluation ,as it is easier to for a speaker to deal with a burst of heat to it,s voice coil for a short period . For example if you were to touch your hand on a hot stove plate for a second there might be little damage to your fingers but if you held them there for 1 minute well i think the answer is obvious. In a nut shell car speakers that play extreme low bass hence subwoofers with heavy cones and plenty of coil windings are not as efficient as ones that are designed for spl which have light cones and which don't play extremely low bass and cannot play loud for long periods at extreme low frequencies, in other words are not designed to play music as they will most often tear apart ,so lets recap pure spl requires you to purchase amps that only need to play one note tone and woofers that cannot play extreme low bass and to make it more dumb you will need to rip your ride apart to fit in the battery's and the enclosure ,and when a some one asks you to play your stereo you would have say it only plays one of three tone for two seconds which tone would you like to hear?

Think on these lines would formula one be that demanding on the manufactures if the cars that won were decided on by who went the fastest over one lap and it did not matter if you finished the race or not. 


A) products true country of origin.
B) what he experiences is in fact what he will pay for (as in spl some companies use other product to compete and    sell you the cheaper product claiming the fame).
C) product reliability when driven hard for a long time frames with music.
D) installation quality.
E) overall sound quality with an rta (real time analyser) combined with spl score.
F) cosmetics & integration. Panel beater/spray painters or one vote per spectator on all displayed cars)
H) evaluating the only reference that being the recording itself to the final result played in the vehicle based on the     engineers perception & experience not some one's most often biased opinion.