Earmark Car Audio - Competition Bloopers

COMPETITION BLOOPERS

Click on any of the pictures below to see a larger version.

Saying you’re the best is easy. Anyone can claim they have award-winning installations without having to prove it.

This competition bloopers section is dedicated to exposing the rhetoric and the really awful installations.

We are careful that every statement is absolutely true.

We don’t mention the competitors by name.

We’re not saying we always operate mistake free. However, you can be certain that our day-to-day installations are vastly superior to our competitor’s and our proposition carries more value. Anyone can make miscalculations and error, but you will see examples of competitor’s being cheap with materials, cheap with effort and simply not caring. There is also sufficient evidence that some competitors out of desperation put unqualified and untrained technicians on the job.

Split seems, water stains, mildew, eggs, maggots and spiders inside the box.

The most interesting part is that the competing company’s marine sales manager told me eyeball to eyeball that he has never had to replace a subwoofer enclosure due to water damage.

One of the competing company’s technicians told me that at one time there was a stack of faulty enclosures piled up in their 121 shop. Their intention was to bondo up the split seams, resin coat the repair, carpet over the repair and resell the box on another boat.

A local company claims they gel coat their marine sub boxes. There is no gel coat. All they really do is resin coat an MDF enclosure. Fiberglass resin is porous and MDF is constructed with water-based glue. All of these boxes will eventually decompose. To make matters worse they mount the box to the carpeted deck of the boat. This creates a moisture and mildew trap. The box wicks up the trapped moisture. As you can see in the photos the bottom of the box is swelling and blistering plus all seams are separating. This competitor claims they have never had to replace a box. However, one past employee said there was usually a stack of damaged enclosures that are repaired and then installed in someone else’s boat. A Plexiglas window serves only to reveal the failure. Also, the MDF façade is covered in automotive trunk liner versus marine grade rubber-backed non-mildew carpet. Within a couple of years the facades deteriorate and become unsightly. They also smell from the mildew and mold.

The roach motel.
One reason not to use a ported subwoofer enclosure with a Plexiglas window in a boat is this dead 2-inch roach.

A good view of dead spiders too. Looks like a science project, especially when it’s lit up with neon.

As is the case with most of the ported boxes that this particular company builds, the enclosure dimensions are grossly undersized which produces a misaligned tuning. This yields a bass peak at low volume levels but at high volume levels the distortion takes over. It’s just a one-note boom box with zero tonal construction.

No terminal cup, just a hole and silicon. At best this is a clumsy attempt to seal the box. This box was never airtight. The wire easily slides in and out of the box. A slight leak in an acoustic suspension enclosure will cause the subwoofer to prematurely fail. It’s just as important that the main chamber of a ported box is sealed.

This isn’t the worst we’ve seen from this competitor but this Nautique installation is typical of their efforts.

If nothing else, it clearly demonstrates that they don’t care very much and what they say they always do is definitely untrue.

There is no question that this approach to installation creates more frequent installation failures and more frequent product failures.

Usually there is decent equipment involved, but the value of the equipment investment is diminished by poor system tuning, short cuts, substituted wire and connectors for out of stock parts plus some really bad installation practices.

Beyond the electrical, mechanical and acoustic flaws, it’s hard for a boat owner to take pride in something that aesthetically looks thrown together plus, it has to be frustrating that other than the stereo installation this is a really fine boat.

The amplifier installation in the port side locker.

Close up of the wiring.

Subwoofer box under the driver’s helm console. Sitting directly on the sole so it will wick-up water and decompose. No mounting other than two small back braces. Only ½-inch MDF used. No terminal cup, just a leaky hole. Not airtight.

Red wire is used for both positive and negative cables to the battery. There’s no difference between polarity. The Perko battery switch is mounted directly to the sole so that the terminals set in water.

Non-soldered terminals at the battery quickly corrode.

An 8-guage power wire between the amp and battery was converted to a 10-gauge. The current capacity of a 10-gauge cable is not near enough for a six-channel combined with a two-channel amplifier.

8-gauge to 10-gauge splice, twisted, unsoldered and taped.

Not a pretty sight once exposed.

Beneath the radio an un-mounted Clarion module.

The amplifier was mounted to an untreated piece of water-soluble MFD. This panel was already starting to bloat and decompose.

A good end view of the amp panel bloating and delaminating.

A Clarion amplifier mounted to the backside of the same amplifier panel. There is no way that the weight of two amplifiers was going to stand up to the rigors of choppy water with the flimsy mounting provisions.

Supra Bloopers

At first glance this Supra job looks okay. But looking past the surface exposes numerous flaws, some of which could become serious problems.

There isn’t adequate clearance so when the subwoofer is driven hard the woofer’s foam surround makes contact with the raw fiberglass edge.

A ported/plexiglass sub enclosure was cut into the floor under the drivers helm. Any structural value of the hump has been defeated. The path of control cables have been altered to fit the enclosure in. As a rule you should never change the radius of a steering line or throttle cable.

The holes for both the woofer and LED light strip are not airtight. Terminals were not used. The foam tape that is supposed to seal the clear plexiglass face leaks at the seams. Two holes in the plexiglass face are also used to mount the cover façade. This is problematic for subsequent boat service and the helm is a location frequented for service. If a technician doesn’t perfectly line up the screws that hold on the cover façade (and alignment must be done blind) the plexiglass can be fractured. If the screws are over-tightened this will also split the MDF box.

The subwoofer cover facade is made of water-soluble MDF and sits directly on the sole of the boat so that it will wick up water and break down. The façade is covered in a cheap automotive trunk liner that will mildew in a marine environment.

The cheap trunk-liner covering the façade deteriorates easily. The short knap frays and soon looks like it needs a trim.

Every grommet was split because they were overlooked and had to be added as an afterthought. Many grommets work loose as did this one. Doing it right requires precisely drilled holes and the use of a marine-rated sealant. We see this problem routinely from this company. We also commonly see the tower pods with water inside.

An unsightly rear to front service loop in the tower. In contrast we take the extra time to conceal the wires inside the tower.

No acoustic damping inside the pods. Watermarks in the bottom of the pods. All wiring is taped even though they claim to solder and heatshrink.

The CD player was intermittently shutting on and off. Instead of using the original machine thread bolt to fit in the rear of the CD player chassis, they drove in a long sheet metal screw. Since the thread pattern was stripped out we repaired the problem by using a shorter screw and used stacked washers to space out the screw. Also, the CD player was falling through the back of the glove compartment and bouncing around freely so, we pulled out the sleeve, straightened it out and reinstalled the CD source correctly.

The amplifier mounting panel was not mounted at the sides or top. The amp was wedged behind the interior coaming with wires pinched between the amplifier and fiberglass shell.

The only amp panel mounting was at the base where screws were driven into the outside seam between the exterior hull and sole. This is a very risky practice. The same company shot several screws through the outside of a Malibu only a few weeks earlier. You would think they would learn. Also, the aluminum mounting bracket was borrowed from the driver’s helm side. The bracket was originally used to mount the fuse block which was relocated to fit a subwoofer enclosure. The creative fuse block mounting is another unfortunate story.

These are just a few of the obvious installation problems. You can never anticipate everywhere they’ve been and everything they’ve done. This particular job is no worse than what we routinely see from this competitor.

08’ Supra Bloopers

This subwoofer enclosure was represented as custom built. There are numerous problems with this subwoofer system. WetSounds specs a ¾-inch enclosure for their WS-12, yet this enclosure uses only ½-inch stock. WetSounds also specs a 1.4 cu.ft. enclosure with a 3-inch round by 9-inch long port. Obviously the surface area of the port is at least four times too large. If the port were four times as long to compensate the enclosure would be all port and no cabinet. The bottom line is that this box is grossly misaligned and is only good for lots of single note bass. It totally lacks tonal construction. To make matters worse the locker is not vented so with the observer seat cushion closed it makes for a boat shaker and not a bass maker. In fact this arrangement over-taxes both the subwoofer and amplifier. It takes a lot of extra energy to get the bass radiation out of the enclosed locker structure. Aside from the bass system there are numerous other installation details that fall short. The six screws that attach the sub box front mounting pads run up through the bottom and are in plain view inside the port. Taped electrical connections. Automotive trunk liner and water soluble MDF are used in the construction of the amp panel.

Natique 220 Bloopers

At a glance this Natique job looks like a decent job. We had an opportunity to inspect it and here are a few of the things we noticed on the surface.

Wire connections were taped throughout instead of heatshrunk.
The sub enclosure is a universal off-the-shelf ported model that is not tuned for the WetSounds WS-12 woofer being used. Of course this a cost and time saving measure. The enclosure should have been custom built for the correct alignment and best performance.
Three identical 4-channel amplifiers were used to run the system. This makes little sense. Eventually this will lead to problems. With 4-channel, 2-channel and monoblock models available there are better design solutions.
To mask the eratic response of a misaligned ported sub box, the crossover was set inordinately low which serves to overwork the subwoofer and the amplifier. This also creates serious distortion at high volumes not to mention really bad tonal construction.
On one of the sub box mounting pads the box was stripped out by the screws. For one this means the box is no longer airtight which matters even on a ported box. This also means the box could eventually work loose.
The WetSounds EQ was mounted behind and below the radio in the port side locker, which yields most of its features useless. The EQ should always be at the driver’s helm but should at least be accessable to someone.
Initially a vent was not used to exhaust the subwoofer. In the boat owner’s own words as posted on Wakeworld…”air from sub pushes against the back of interior speakers making them sound horrible. Also, the cooler door rattled really bad. Overall, I didn’t like it…” So later on a vent was added. The vent was crude with harsh router marks around all the interior slots. The trim ring was made from MDF, a water-soluble material that has no business on a boat.
Later on the system was shutting down, specifically the amplifiers. The boat owner was told by the dealer that the problem was with the Arc Audio amplifiers having a power supply regulation programming issue as a matter of a factory defect. The bottom line is the system design and installation set-up was applied wrong.

In summary, this is a lot of problems, return trips and additional expense to get it right. Also, this particular dealer has some real misconceptions about ported boxes, setting active crossovers and tuning systems. Through better system design and installation we can get superior sound and performance from the identical equipment.

Sea Doo Train Wreck

PPI amplifier fell from it’s mounting.

Wiring is a rat’s nest.

No back brace on the CD source unit. Taped connections. Unmounted Clarion module.

4-gauge power cable loosely draped over the fuel cell.
Holy bomb Batman!

Excess and non-restrained cable.

Raw holes on the tower.

Raw holes in the pods.

Raw hole in the tower and raw penetration in the deck cap.

Anodized screws throughout are rusting.

Rough penetration (gnarled by a rat) in glove box for iPod cable.

08’ Malibu WakeSetter Blooper

The top and bottom WetSounds Pro60X grills are rotated differently due to the curvature of the arch. The iron cross pattern should also run parallel to the ground. We automatically correct this in our installations.

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