The SoundQ Garage
Tech talk for the DIY car audio enthusiast that care about sound quality
The SoundQ Garage
From Car Tunes II to World Champion: Dan Herrington's Audio Journey
What happens when you reconnect with a car audio legend after nearly 30 years? Pure audio magic! Dan Herrington, former co-owner of Car Tunes II and IASCA World Finals champion, takes us on an unforgettable journey through the golden era of car audio competition and beyond.
Starting with his early days at San Diego Auto Sound in the early 1980s, Dan shares how his obsession with overcoming the physics of car audio led him to create some of the most innovative sound systems of the era. The centerpiece of our conversation is Ray Brodeur's legendary 1993 Honda Accord—a vehicle Dan spent two years perfecting with groundbreaking techniques like flat copper ground conductors, motorized subwoofers, and custom-machined adjustable tweeters. This wasn't just any competition vehicle; it was a masterclass in sound engineering that defeated international competitors to win the IASCA World Finals.
But Dan's story doesn't end with car audio. The same principles that made him a champion competitor inspired his next venture: Proclaim Speakers, revolutionary spherical home speakers filled with sand that earned rave reviews at prestigious audio shows like CES and Stereophile. With the same attention to phase, balance, and placement that defined his car audio work, Dan created $26,000 speakers that audiophiles couldn't resist—until the 2008 financial crisis brought his manufacturing dreams to an abrupt halt.
Whether you're a seasoned competitor or just discovering the world of sound quality, Dan's insights remain as valuable today as they were decades ago. Listen now and discover why physics is physics, why simplicity often trumps complexity, and why the pursuit of perfect sound never truly ends. Ready to be inspired by a true audio pioneer? This episode is your front-row seat to excellence.
Welcome everybody. This is episode 4 of the SoundCue Garage. Today we are reconnecting with our legend, Dan Herrington, on sound quality, competition, builds and audio passion. Welcome to another episode of the SoundCue Garage podcast, where we dive deep into the world of automotive sound quality, one story at a time. In this episode, I reconnect with someone I literally haven't spoken to since the 90s my former boss and longtime friend, dan Harrington. Say hi to the internet world, dan, hello internet world. So why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself, dan? You know, starting way back when you were co-owner of Cartoons 2. Does that imply that there was a Cartoons 1
Dan Herrington:Yeah, well, I'll go back a little bit. So you know I grew up in Middlefield, connecticut. I went to Vinyl Tech for electrical and when I graduated high school I you know I was a I was a rambling type. So I I took off for San Diego with two toolboxes and and two suitcases and just to go out there and see what would happen. I was out there for about a year. I came back and I started a job actually in San Diego. I went.
Dan Herrington:The job that I found after being there a month or two was San Diego Auto Sound. It was kind of cool because you drove around Escondido, encinitas all the way down to National City and Poway anywhere in between. So I got to see the place you know in a year really well and we'd go to car dealerships and upgrade stereos. I remember the, the old five oh Mustangs were coming out and those things were awesome and you know I did cruise controls and sunroofs and and um, all this stuff. So that's where I got my my, my toe dunk in the water of car audio and then came back to Connecticut and I was looking for a job once I got back and I found a job at Cartoons the original Cartoons.
Dan Herrington:There were three owners from a store that was on Main Street, middletown, or just off Main Street Middletown Fred Locke, maybe I don't know. There's a bunch of old names of not only car but home audio stores back then. And the three guys left that store and they started cartoons and that little, that little plaza, there were Route 72 diners there in East Berlin and my wife always corrects me on that it's Berlin, I think, instead of Berlin and so so I start working there and, uh, they tried me on a saturday. They had an installer and, um, you know, I went in there and I I went at it, you know, back, you know I didn't have the toolage I needed or it was, you know, metro was probably just getting started.
Dan Herrington:Back then I, I would imagine it's about 1983, I think and, uh, and I I did a saturday and they fired the guy and they hired me. So, oh, wow, I did that. Yep, we were there for about a year, year and a half, and then we moved over to the um, the plaza behind burger king there in cromwell on route 72 yeah and um, and that's where.
Dan Herrington:that's where it really took off. You know, we did home audio and car audio Mm-hmm and it really was awesome. I mean, we, let's see. That brings us up to somewhere around 1987. And Car Audio Nationals alpine sponsored event, um, they did. You know, local shows. We had one at our store there and um, and then if you won there you went down to the semi-finals in new york, somewhere just out, I think it was long island, um, that represented the winners on the east coast and then they shipped.
Dan Herrington:I did a, a van for a handicapped guy. Okay, he had gotten in a car car accident. Yeah, rob gurnier was his name, he was a good man, and um, we did a unique van install there, alpine amps, alpine head unit and I, I got introduced to rod drivers, so I started doing rod drivers. They were Gauss subwoofers that's a name I haven't heard in a long time. I had peerless dual six inch mid-bass Dynaudio D52 mid-range. I can't believe I'm believing these or memorizing these. Uh, these model numbers, um, and then, uh, d 28 Dine Audio tweeters. Those were in the back, in the front, in the front I think I had Phillips um six inch mid base and Phillips tweeter, yeah, and and that thing sounded incredible. It was all active crossover, you know all active back then sounded yeah, yeah, yeah, this is, this is early days, you know.
Dan Herrington:Yeah, yeah, I mean usually those, uh drivers that you named.
Edwin Alvarez:They're still pretty big to this day. Dyna audio playlist they still make. They still make good stuff no, absolutely.
Dan Herrington:And uh. So we ended up, um, uh, winning the east coast. So this is 1987, yeah, 87. And and so they, they shipped the van out to san diego. Okay, sea world, you know, paid for my wife. Wife came and another guy from the store and we're staying in this awesome hotel in San Diego. Yeah, and it was like it was at SeaWorld and it was like a Hollywood event Fireworks and all this stuff going off.
Edwin Alvarez:Wow, and that's exciting.
Dan Herrington:Yeah, yeah, we got second place by one point.
Edwin Alvarez:Wow.
Dan Herrington:And I think I saw that van.
Edwin Alvarez:It was a, was it a dark colored van could swear that van yeah, like a dark maroon. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I remember, yeah, yeah yeah, that that, that that van was in more than one magazine actually, I don't remember it was early, early magazines.
Dan Herrington:Really I don't remember magazines when I was starting out in this thing. It seemed like the magazines came, you know, probably in the later 80s. I could be wrong about everything I say today, but you know it's a long time ago. But I remember it was maybe the first issue of one of the major magazines.
Edwin Alvarez:Yeah, yeah. But anyway, I remember when I first met you uh, believe it or not, you're one of the main reasons I got into sound quality in cars you started talking about madisound. Do you remember madisound? Yeah, that's where I would get my broad drivers. Yeah, they're still around to this day. But back then they had like a catalog. You would get a catalog and, uh, you, you told me about morel. They're like, oh yeah, morel and vifa and all this. And I'm like what the hell is this guy talking about? All I you know, back then I only heard about stuff from crutchfield, like um right pioneer sony, yeah, alpine, you know I thought, and here you are, I'm, I'm meeting you for the first time.
Edwin Alvarez:You were always going 100 miles an hour. I remember that about you. We had to walk and talk. You were you. You.
Dan Herrington:You were co-owner of cartoons too, but you were also an installer, correct yeah, so I, you know we won that in 87 and I worked for cartoons. We eventually moved out of cromwell. The two partners left and and the one partner moved it over to uh, on 60, you know, kind of behind Monroe Monroe muffler. Yeah, it was only about 20, 2,200 square feet. It was a small place.
Edwin Alvarez:Yeah, I remember that it was a tiny little place.
Dan Herrington:Yep, and I worked for him for a couple of years and then, and then I left, I, I just um, it had, you know, it had its heyday and it was kind of piddling out and you know there was lack of money and stuff. I I went to work for sound playground. Remember them?
Edwin Alvarez:yeah, yeah and uh yep, yeah, I haven't heard about that place in a long time. Sound, sound playground.
Dan Herrington:Yep, yep they did a ton of. I mean those those five to 50 sales were just unbelievable that people would be lined up down the street about a mile, yeah. And then when the doors all sprinting and tripping and it was, it was wild, but I worked there for about a year and the managers of the store maybe not even a year, but one of the managers of the store, um, came to me and said let's start our own car audio store. So that Alan I that was Alan Yep and a real nice guy, great guy. So, um, you know, and that was the month he asked me to do, that was the month that I month, that I became the number one salesman in the whole company Out of 250, you know, selling those warranties. I'd sell the warranties way up front in a sale. People wouldn't even know they were getting it, I guess. But anyway, you know, I was trying to support my family, of course so yeah, so, uh, we, we get to.
Dan Herrington:Uh, I call up the owner of cartoons yeah and bob, and, and he sells it to me for you know, dirt money to just come in and take over wow.
Edwin Alvarez:So I'm surprised, because car audio was really starting to get its wind at that point.
Dan Herrington:He just didn't have the people. He was trying to mow it along and you know it needed, you know, the fresh air of new meat. So I came in and you know, the first year we like tripled what he was doing. The second year that doubled. Then it doubled again. We were doing over a million dollars of that, 2200 square feet wow yeah we paved a parking lot and back because there was no room for cars.
Dan Herrington:You know, yeah, yeah, so. So now it's about 1993 and uh, and Ray Broduer, I had done a car for him out of my garage when I was working at Sound Playground and he came in and he wanted to do a killer system. Yeah, so I said to him, he bought a brand new 93 Honda four-door, yep. So I said to him you know, why don't we? You know, why don't we? You know, initially want to spend probably 10 to 15 grand, if I remember right. I said why don't we do? I ask a competition and he says all right, I'll work overtime. The guy worked nothing but overtime for like 80 hours a week right to pay for it.
Dan Herrington:Overtime for like, yeah, yeah, it's like 80 hours a week right to pay for it. Yeah, and I start doing that job. But the business is growing like exponentially, so I'm trying to do the business, get out before midnight and you know, and do this big car. Yeah, you know, without the facility that you would really want to do this thing, so it dragged out for two years, but I I didn't compromise on any aspect of that car as I was working on it. I would just make everybody wait, if that's what it took to do it.
Edwin Alvarez:Well, the main reason in my mind it took so long was because Ray insisted, or did you insist, that only you work on it, and is that?
Dan Herrington:he was. He was very patient with me because you know, no, I wanted to be the one doing the work on it you know I'd have. I'd have tidbits of the job worked on by other people.
Edwin Alvarez:You know, here, do this for me, do that for me, but I I'd say 99 of the car I did yeah, I remember and um, and that car, sounded in it, but fantastic I remember, uh, so I remember I know it went through a couple iterations because when, when you were building it, I remember you had kef uniq's in the kick panels, but didn't we keep, didn't the uniq's keep blowing, and then you pivoted to the dyna audios um if I remember it's been so long.
Dan Herrington:I don't remember that yeah, I used to use kef unicues once in a while, but I don't remember that. I mean it could be true. You know I am 62 years old. Yeah, because I remember you had the kef.
Edwin Alvarez:That's how how I was in when I heard it. I was getting my Civic worked on as well.
Dan Herrington:That's right. I remember you had a Civic.
Edwin Alvarez:Yeah, I had the purple Civic that had several systems. And then I worked for you for a little while. I don't know if you remember that. Remember that I accidentally crashed that kid's car. I backed up and I crushed the kid's door.
Dan Herrington:No, I don't remember this.
Edwin Alvarez:You don't remember that? No, well, when I first started working for you, you had me doing like little things, like picking up around the store and you know organizing things. And then you started to trust me with small jobs like deck and two, deck and four. I think I did a few alarms I started to do, you know, yeah, but one day I was ready to get into it.
Edwin Alvarez:Yeah, oh God, I was that pesky kid. I don't know if you remember. When you first met me, I was 17 years old. I literally lived 45 minutes away, but I was at your shop like once or twice a week scoping out stuff.
Dan Herrington:Yeah, yeah, no, I remember that haggling with you for prices and and.
Edwin Alvarez:And I remember you telling me this guy memorizes all the prices. I'd come in with the uh car audio and electronics. I called it the bible because I had all the prices in there. And uh, me and you would just go back and forth haggling on the prices and uh, so one day I, I think I told you I want to work there and you're like, you just want to work here for the employee discount yeah, did I say that, that's funny yeah, yeah.
Edwin Alvarez:Well, you were joking, but I was like well, yeah, it would. But I remember when I was working there, even when I clocked out, I still hung around, I hung around, I, I was I loved it. Was this at the coven or was it up um behind monroe muffler on no, I worked on uh when we worked at the uh at the coven drive, at the uh old sears building yeah, yeah, yeah, that was a great building, oh man yeah, you guys.
Edwin Alvarez:Yeah, that place was. It's funny, if you want, if you want to go into that, how you guys went from 2,200 square feet to what? 20,000 square feet. Why don't you talk about that?
Dan Herrington:So we're like you know. I mean the business is doubling every year. And when you're doubling your business every year, it is stressful. I was so stressed out I had at that time probably five kids, four or five kids, you know, and I have nine now and um you know we uh, the oldest.
Dan Herrington:The oldest is 18. No, the oldest is, I'm sorry. The oldest is 40 and the youngest in September, and the youngest is 18. Oh, wow, and uh, it's out of the house this year. So my wife and I are looking at each other, going, okay, it's time for us now, and uh, I don't think we know what to do with ourselves. So, so we, we were just man, it was rocking. You just couldn't, we didn't advertise, you didn't have to. We did this little cable commercial one time, real spoofy and goofy, and it was fun, funny. I had a video. I probably still have the videotape of it. It was great. But you know, we put it out on cable but we really didn't need it. We were doing cell phones alarms as fast as we could get the cars out, you know car phones remember the car phones go home.
Edwin Alvarez:You guys had a car phone section too.
Dan Herrington:Remember that we got, yeah, when we went down at the Coven. So I'd say probably in 96 or 97, you know, sears had moved out of that automotive right on the highway. You couldn't make any of a more perfect scenario for a shop. Make it any of a more perfect scenario for a shop. Matter of fact, there's still um a shop there now that does you know leather seats and moon roofs and all kinds of. They do a great job. They're really good businessmen, those guys really good well, it's a perfect location.
Dan Herrington:It's a perfect location it is yeah, yeah, yeah. You throw a banner up and the whole world sees it driving down home, you know, into those towns all below and stuff. So so we moved down there, um, in the winter, it's probably 96. No, no more. Yeah, probably 96. And that's where I finished Broder's car Um, staying late every night, you know it just didn't end. You know, trying to get out of there at a reasonable hour to be with the family. That was. That was a tough part of that. You know you take people's keys, you want to deliver you know, always had urgency to to give customer service to the max.
Dan Herrington:you know, Yep, and there's a sacrifice to that. You sacrifice your own life.
Edwin Alvarez:Of course.
Dan Herrington:So I'd probably do it again, do it again if I had to do it again. I loved my customers. I had such faithful customers. It was wild. They would come from way out of state. We had people coming up out of New Jersey, new Hampshire, massachusetts. They'd take that drive. I just wanted to make sure they were hooked up. I remember At one point there I get done with broder's car and you know we win the world finals and I mean that car was special, it just was, you know. So it was done with no knowledge of what the rest of the industry was doing. Everything was kind of unique, I remember.
Edwin Alvarez:I remember that car actually had some really unique things. Like you had these ground straps made out of copper and sonics on the roof right sonics liner or something along those lines and you had.
Dan Herrington:You remember that?
Edwin Alvarez:huh, I remember all that because I it was so different that I was like, wow, and why don't you tell people about some of the unique features of that car that got you the winning?
Dan Herrington:formula when I was driving down the road. I'm thinking about this stuff. I'm laying in bed at night, I'm thinking. I wake up in the morning, first thought in my mind is overcoming the physics. Overcoming the physics, you know, you're trying to create a 30 foot wide soundstage, 30 feet deep. You know, and and imaging. You know, when you're sitting off to one side all these things in a in a car, right, that's all glass, reflective glass around you, and and and resonating surfaces. You know. So I'd always try to work all that out in my head. You know, on the best way to do each thing. So I mean the grounding. You brought up um, I had a next door neighbor that was a Motorola guy, real deep Motorola guy's whole career.
Dan Herrington:You know two way radios and all that. And he says why are you using round ground? I go what do you mean? You know everybody uses round ground. No, he says round ground has eddy currents running around the surface, the skin effect on a wire, and he says it acts like a transmitter. If we tried to ground a trunk that had an antenna for a two-way radio, it wouldn't work with round ground. So he says you get, you got to do flat. I said really Okay.
Dan Herrington:So I looked into that back then. There's no internet but I don't remember where I got my information from, but I I read on that and stuff, and and so I took copper flashing. I calculated the thickness of the copper and how wide it would need to be to equal the size wire I was shooting at, and um, and then I laminated it like your driver's license is laminated. Yep, I ran it through it. I ran it through a laminator. My buddy's father was building these laminators. Can I borrow one? So?
Dan Herrington:So I, so I insulated it, you know, with laminate, and and then laid it flat. I mean, think about how it runs under the carpet. You know, you don't even know it's there, yeah, it's flat, and if you got to take a corner you fold it over, you know, go another direction and then. So everything's grounded with flat conductor. And then I went to the. I brought everything down to the center ground plane of the vehicle, the central point, you know, probably under the console. So all grounds come back to one point on the ground plane of the vehicle. And then I ran a static strap to the road so you ever get in your car and you get snapped by the door, you know, on your arm.
Dan Herrington:Yeah, static electricity. So okay, let's get rid of static electricity. So when he drives around, the entire car is being grounded at all times with the ground strap, right. So that was that was, uh, you know, and everything you're doing in a car like that if you're going after I ask it is you're thinking, you know, international auto sound challenge association. You're thinking about how can I score points beyond the norm, you know, yeah, so you're always trying to come up, like in the, with the power wire at the battery.
Dan Herrington:So I had one of those big bus fuses, you know, with the clear cover, and so what I did is I I drilled through the phenolic or whatever the material is around the fuse. I drilled through it and I ran a little thin piece of flexible wire around the fuse filament and then put a, a red handle, which was an emergency pull. So if you had like a problem, you know you're not going to tool take the fuse out, you know, disconnect the battery. So you, you just go in there and you, you grab this little red loop and pull it and it'll rip the fuse in half. Wow, so you know that gains points, right, yep, and then, like you said, the Sonex foam. I created a grill that flushed into the ceiling of the back seat and did Sonex know foam absorption foam? That's incredible.
Dan Herrington:And then I made the, uh, the back of the of the fold down seats, the rear seat, I made it completely grill. There's a great company out there, uh, called mcnicholson company. If any of these car audio guys haven't found them yet, they're out of, I think, new Jersey. They sell all kinds of different great grid. You know anything you want. It's like great stuff, you can do it. Stainless steel, any kind of material you want. And so I made the whole back seat completely breathable. And then I did the same thing with the rear deck Cut it all out, forget if, weld it in maybe, um, you know some grill material thick, you know grill material, yeah, um, to make to make the car breathable from trunk to the front of the vehicle. And then, of course, uh, you know the obvious would be the, the dynamat. You know it's probably two layered or whatever.
Dan Herrington:And then, and then, um, then the subwoofer enclosure was this you can see it in the pictures or the magazine article. It's a, you know, stop sign shaped box and machined up you know a stand for it out of aluminum, and I went to the junkyard and I got a power seat motor out of a Tempo Ford Tempo, yeah and then rigged that so that and then packed it in sound. I forget how I did it, but I packed it like under the vehicle so you wouldn't hear the motor. So it was like a silent motorization where you can face the woofers forward, face them up off the glass, face them to the rear for a bump, right, yeah, so you can change the positioning of your subwoofers firing to change the sound. Yeah, I had a control up front where you can. I mean, when you were listening to that and moving that back and forth, total difference, even by inches, you know, oh, yeah, I imagine it made a huge difference and a fun fact too.
Edwin Alvarez:I that box. I was so intrigued by that box that your woodworking guy because you used to have a guy up the street make the boxes for you and he made a replica, another one not as intricate. You had your woofers recessed a little bit, but the guy made the same exact box for my car, for my Civic, but mine wasn't motorized.
Dan Herrington:Who's the guy that was making the boxes?
Edwin Alvarez:he was up the street. I remember you sent me to um, I don't remember his name, but I remember when, when I said I want that box, when I saw Ray's box and you called them up and you said, hey, can you make another one? But instead you made the front flat instead of the woofer, sort of uh, recessed a little bit, if I remember correctly.
Dan Herrington:I used to make a lot of boxes. I don't really remember this. There was some guy that I had making boxes for me. There was a guy, Steve, over in.
Edwin Alvarez:East Hampton. He was on Route 66. The guy that I picked up the box from you called him up and he was like a woodworking guy. I went over there and I picked it up from my civic. Yeah, because I remember I'm not I'm not pulling this up. Yeah, yeah, it was so long ago I mean we're talking almost 30, 40 years ago. But uh, the guy, the guy was on route 66 and you, I remember you calling him and you said you wanted another box and it had the same cubic airspace as Ray's, but it was, it was, it was flat in the front but it would stop.
Dan Herrington:I must've been. I must've been too busy, cause I'm still spitting up MDF at this point all these years later. Well, this was at the Coven drive.
Edwin Alvarez:Were you making boxes at the Coven drive I?
Dan Herrington:don't remember, yeah, yeah, we had that little wood shop out back, oh, tons of them. Yeah, we were making them every day. Oh, okay, they're torturous. Yeah, yeah, routers and yeah and uh, you know, you know, what was a fun thing back back at the coven is we found this paper company that this guy worked at and I'd give him 50 bucks a piece for these tubes. They were about probably 12 inch inside diameter, 12 inches in diameter and and they would come really long. I can cut them any any. You know, I remember figuring out how to do a your, your volume on a cylinder. You know, yeah, I think it was two times pi R squared or something. So you know, I I'd be able to just cut these things at a certain length, and they came with like inch and a half thick particle board end caps. So you just have to cut them out, glue them, shoot them, cut them out and then think how easy it is to do a cylinder with carpet, right, yeah, yeah.
Edwin Alvarez:Just roll the carpet on it.
Dan Herrington:I remember those. Yeah, we sold a million of those things. They sounded great.
Edwin Alvarez:Yeah, because the bass tubes were popular back then.
Dan Herrington:The the bazookas yeah if, if you don't have bazookas.
Edwin Alvarez:You, you, you. You were going to go out of business because those things were so popular back then. But I remember the the, the tubes that you're talking about. There was a whole bunch in the back and I was like what the heck are they doing?
Dan Herrington:then, you guys, were making some paper company. I give the guy he'd bring him by, his car was loaded with him. He'd bring him by, drop him off. I give him 50 bucks a piece.
Edwin Alvarez:There's no way to make an enclosure quick and down and dirty, you know yeah, yeah, hey, if it works, it works, and if it sounds good, you can't complain. You know that's it. So you guys went back from back. Oh, go ahead sorry, let's go. Let's finish broder's car here, because there's a couple of cool things yeah, that's what I was going to ask about is how did you guys pivot from finishing the car to then, um, going to ayaska, like what, what?
Dan Herrington:uh, because that's well, as it's coming together to go to coming together.
Edwin Alvarez:yeah, as it's coming together, yeah, yeah.
Dan Herrington:And as it's coming together, we just know okay, this is special, so you know, and the psych heightened, you know, and he's working more and more overtime hours to pay for it and I'm staying later and later at night, you know, as I've had to think for like a year and a half, two years or whatever it was, yep two years or whatever it was.
Dan Herrington:Yep. So the, the tweeters. I took the Dine Audio D28 tweeter which was just such a smooth, soft dome. It was just such a great tweeter, high end, you know they were. Back then they were probably a couple hundred bucks a piece or whatever, and that was a lot right. So I, uh, I went over to a machinist in portland, this old guy, and I said, would you shave down the flanges on these tweeters?
Dan Herrington:You know to the size of the magnet. And he did that for me. And then I went and I found, um, you know, like the eyeball lights grandpa has in front of his fireplace, you know, you can, you can face the lighting anywhere you want. You know it's like a ball. You know, in the, in the, in the frame, and um, and I machined those down so that they were as small as they could be.
Dan Herrington:And then, because I wanted my tweeters to be adjustable, I wanted as much to be adjustable in there. You know we have the base is adjustable, right, I want something to work with when it comes time to tweak. Okay, cause you know you could do a great job on a car, get all the way to the end, and it's like man, I'm struggling to get image in here. You know, yeah, and and um, you know it's phase balance placement right. So so I've got my tweeters that I can rotate on the dash and, by the way, I made kitty hair fiberglass mounts that made them look like they're supposed to be there up on top of the dash.
Dan Herrington:And then I ordered from Japan the factory dash leather, vinyl or whatever it was on the dashboard, so it matched perfectly right on the dashboard. So it matched perfectly right so you could rotate the tweeters to splash those off the glass at different angles. Boy, it gives you something to work with. You know you play around cause and effect and you know it takes hours and hours and hours and hours of playing with it until you get it where you think it should be with it, until you get it where you think it should be. So, um, and then I did the, the, the dine audio.
Dan Herrington:Um, I think it's a seven inch mid-range in the kick panels and that's a, that's a full fiberglass enclosure in there, pour water in to measure the volume, so it's they're both exactly the same. And then, um, in the, in the doors of that Honda. Um, you know, with the limited space, and I, you know I'm trying to make this thing look like you get in the car and you can't tell there's a stereo in it. You know, when the seats up, and you know, you, I want it to look as factory, factory as possible, which was also a scoring thing, you know, back then. And and so I, so I made enclosures that go and take up all the air volume I can in there to get to the right air volume. And I did five-inch cliff design, which I think they were just, you know, painting Vifa drivers red, you know, but cliff designs I always liked them.
Edwin Alvarez:They sounded good. That's when they first came out, I remember.
Dan Herrington:Yeah, yeah.
Edwin Alvarez:No, that was a good set of components there.
Dan Herrington:You know, yeah, a little cheesy looking, but they sounded great, I did not know that they were.
Edwin Alvarez:They may have been vifa rebranded. You would know better than I would on that.
Dan Herrington:If you held it, if you held the vifa next to it like a five inch mid-base driver and you hold it next to it, it looked exactly the same that's funny so yeah, yeah, a lot of the companies do that.
Edwin Alvarez:Oh yeah, they do that to this day. A lot of companies do that alpine used to do that a lot.
Dan Herrington:You don't have to reinvent the wheel, just make the crossover unique and right. You know there you go.
Edwin Alvarez:So no, the crossover is everything you go.
Dan Herrington:So no, the crossovers, everything you know. So, um, so that was the mid-base, and then this was to this day I go. How did I pull this off? I put under the seats. Remember how big the macintosh amps were oh, they were 100, yeah yep, four by 50.
Dan Herrington:So I got, I got four by 50 for my, my tweeters and and two channels in the back for you know the ambient fill coming from the back, yeah, and then which, which didn't really play too much of a role, I just would, I'd play with phase on them and stuff and see if I can, you know, create a bigger image and everything. But those were, that was a four by 50. The four by 100 was for the mid-base and the mid-range and those mac amps were monsters and I got them under the seat of that 93 honda yeah, they are real big I remember the seat would just miss.
Dan Herrington:The thing never scraped. Yeah, no, you don't want to scratch those bad boys.
Edwin Alvarez:Those are. They were expensive then. They're still expensive now. People, people love those amps. Those are uh oh, they're highly regarding, oh yeah, well, not brand new, but on the used market they're very coveted. They're still, to this day, one of the cleanest amps that you can buy.
Dan Herrington:You know what one of the secrets was. What's that? I keep interrupting you?
Edwin Alvarez:No, not at all.
Dan Herrington:I'm so excited to talk about something I haven't talked about in 30 years. I'm excited for you. So I had to do this 85-foot carbon fiber racing yacht. It was like the family that invented cable TV. Right, and they they would go around the world.
Dan Herrington:They had a crew in the boat that would bring it on, you know, to Italy and then down to Antigua and it's all over the place and they would do this maxi class of racing on sailboats. They're 85 foot big, right, and this guy really wanted awesome sound. So they, they sought me out, they came up with the, the boat engineer and the captain and all these people we met back and forth and it had to do about weight, right. So you had to bring everything down to the lowest possible weight, right, and so I wanted to use the Macintosh amps, you know, and get rid of all the weight to them and the size and, you know, put the circuit and figure out how to do heat dissipation and so forth, you know, in a boat, right? So, with taking that apart and analyzing it, the tracers are about the size of a hair in that thing on the circuit board.
Dan Herrington:Yeah, right, where you, you know, I was used to seeing all these amps, orion and ppi and all these you know great big tracers on the board, but that was their secret to making it sound good it's the small tracers. That. That's what the engineer at Macintosh told me. Oh wow, and yeah, that was back then.
Edwin Alvarez:That's good to know. I know they're big in the home audio scene still to this day, but as far as car audio I think they're doing a collaboration with Jeep.
Edwin Alvarez:They're doing this huge thing with Jeep. I haven't, you know, I've seen it advertised. I've seen pictures doing this huge thing with jeep. I I haven't, you know, I've seen it advertised, I've seen pictures. But as far as, like you know, regular people, like civilians, like us, we can't buy those macintosh amps or or anything macintosh audio, car related anyway, unless it's used stuff, you know from the 90s, which, like I said, it's still good stuff and it still sells for a pretty premium because those are, you know, they've been measured as one of the cleanest amps out on the market.
Dan Herrington:So that's why I chose them for that job, because of all the amps that I'd played with through the years. To me that was you know, I'm not just looking to slam, you know, I'm going for sound quality. Oh, yeah, of course, yeah, yeah, and that that mac at that time was the best that that I knew of. So that's why I went with them. And then, but for the bass, I went with rockford. I think I had a rockford 400. Yeah, for the subwoofers. For the subwoofers, yeah, because you know, rockford's bass was always great yeah, yeah, they were powerful amps back then.
Edwin Alvarez:They're still powerful amps even now. I know a lot of people. There's some people that have, um, a passion for the old school. There's even an old school stereo web channel, old school stereo uh, facebook page and stuff like that. And there's a lot of collectors. You know the end caps on the rockford fosgate amps yeah, those are for money. They sell for money they sell for. I had a bunch of Rockford Fosgate amps. The end caps alone sell for almost $150.
Dan Herrington:Because that's the first thing people lose. I saw that recently, yeah.
Edwin Alvarez:I remember that you were a pack rat. I remember Alan goofing on you because you wouldn't throw anything away. And, ironically, one time I was trying to buy a ppi amp from you and I said I don't have the money. I said I'm gonna put it on layaway, I'm gonna, I'm gonna like. Remember we had like this layaway thing back then and um, and I said I got this sony amp that my brother wants. He wants to buy it, but I can't live without music for a week. And you're like well, here I'll give you this amp. And you went in the back and you dug around in this big pile of what looked like junk to me and you freaking rip out.
Dan Herrington:I used, I used all of it, brother.
Edwin Alvarez:I used all of it. You whip, you rip out this like punch 150 or punch 75 rockford. That was one of the I think it was probably the second one made you know from from rock for fosgate. I had never heard a rock for fosgate before this. This is, this is all your fault, man. This audio, sound quality, audio thing that I've sound quality addiction that I've had since the 90s, is all due to you, brother. So you give me this Rockford Fosgate amp. I rip out the Sony amp, I sell it to my brother. I'm like what's this Rockford Fosgate? I put it in my car and it freaking blows me away. I'm like what? How could this thing run my entire system? Because remember that you could do mix mono with the Rockford amps.
Dan Herrington:Oh yeah, and I was just blown away.
Edwin Alvarez:This thing was running my subwoofer, my two back speakers, my Morel separates in the front and then I had kicker mid-ranges in the dash and the Rockford was running it. It would get hot like crazy but it wouldn't distort and it would play it cleanly. I was blown away. I was blown away.
Dan Herrington:A lot of guys back then got heavy into passive crossover networks and would just take one amp and build the whole system around it, just playing with the passive crossovers to get everything dialed in. Yeah, you know, and yeah, no question, those are. You know, I don't know anything about the new stuff. That's the thing. You know. I follow the group you just spoke. I, you know I don't know anything about the new stuff. That's the thing I. You know, I follow the group you just spoke of. You know I follow different groups and I don't say anything because they're talking about brands and they're doing stuff. I, you know. I know, I know DSP sounds like it's a big deal now, right? Yep, which, oh, let me tell you this. So the rep for Clarion, which I always had a lot of respect for clarion they always sounded great.
Dan Herrington:You know I was alpine guy, mainly in eclipse, right, but but clarion, always you gotta respect the way they sounded. They were good, yeah, and you know they'd look a little different. You know alpine and eclipse just had a little higher end look and stuff in the dash. But so the Clarion rep comes in and he sells me and Broder last minute, I'd say six months before showtime. I don't know the model number. I tried to search it online. There's probably very few people that even know about this piece. But if you look in the pictures of the car in the back left where I made that cover over it, that's a digital analog converter with a fiber optic. This is 1996.
Edwin Alvarez:Yeah, so this was ahead of its time.
Dan Herrington:With that head unit you can do time alignment of every speaker. With memory you can do different positionings and memorize it. Time alignment of every speaker, you know, with memory you can do different positionings and memorize it time. Time alignment of every speaker, huge, huge. When you're tweaking a system, give me that, and if you don't give me anything else, I'll live with that. Right then it's got parametric eq, graphic eq. Um, oh, what else was in that thing? But this is all way ahead of its time. The crossover only made.
Edwin Alvarez:What's that? The crossovers, I imagine, right, crossover, oh yeah yeah, full crossovers.
Dan Herrington:I think you could do from butterworth to to language. Riley, you can do different 24 db. Yeah, no, it had all kinds of different 6 db, 12 db, 24 d, 18 and 24 db per octave slopes. Wow right, this was all like like way ahead of its time this was like high-end pro gear or something mentality, and they only. I found out last year who. Who told me this, I can't remember. Last year, I found out that Clarion only sold six of those units. Wow, they were $6,500 cost.
Edwin Alvarez:Well, that might be the main. Well, think about it, that was the 90s right. Imagine what $6,500 would be now. Double that, that would be like a $13,000 head unit yeah, yeah. So I mean, even now, that's a lot of money if you, if somebody said, hey, I want 6,500 bucks for a head unit, but I mean it was a head unit dsp crossover it. It ticked a lot of boxes.
Dan Herrington:It was a monster, thing was a monster so that was.
Edwin Alvarez:That was basically what you used to tune the car the that, that clarion unit that was the head unit in the car.
Dan Herrington:And so, um, I mean, think about you know I, I worked on it for hundreds of hours because, you know I, I like to poke the edges, push it in every direction, get, get so used to what it is doing that you can really dial in and play. I played the same five songs. You know real hard to make sound good vocal out of that. I Ask a Disc there. Yep, I don't remember what track it was. And then you know sine wave sweeps and and the drums, the seven drums across the stage. Yeah, to hear where your imaging is laying in. You know if it's even or if it's biased to one side or not. And I, I spent I don't know if I was to guess a couple hundred hours toying with that and, um, dialing it in. We showed up at oh real, before I go into that.
Dan Herrington:So the CD changer now, remember, I'm trying to keep this thing wide open, so it's like a usable car. You can put stuff in your trunk. I mean I didn't take up too much room overall in the whole thing. And so I mounted the cd changer six disc into the bumper. I created a fiberglass enclosure around it so it's living outside in the bumper. So when you open the trunk it's flush to the rear wall of the trunk. That's how you put your disc in. Even if you have a bunch of crap in the in the, you can still put your disc in there.
Edwin Alvarez:So you found room in there. There's like a little hollow space in there.
Dan Herrington:Yeah, the bumper was like hollow. Yeah, the bumper, you got this distance until it meets the car and so, yeah, I carved that out and did an enclosure so it wouldn't, you know, be penetrated by weather and dirt and everything.
Edwin Alvarez:Yeah.
Dan Herrington:And you know that was kind of a neat. Oh, and the floor mats. You know you can't tell from the pictures but that was pretty cool. So I machined down some plexi. It was probably a half-inch plexi. I machined it down and what you see is maybe an inch by six inches. You know, coming through the floor mat. Those are custom floor mats that I made complete. I got the factory material and sewed it and everything. So, um, what I did is I that piece of plexi is actually like four inches by six inches and then I I cut a, a channel through it to put a neon tube and then I etched in the words driver's side says Honda, passenger side says Accord EX and then put a mirror backing on it. So when you, when you see Honda, it goes Honda, honda, honda, honda, honda. You know down about 20 times. Yeah, you know glowing in blue neon when you open the door, just a little, you know sexy thing to throw in there A little added beauty. Touch, right, everybody loved that, yeah.
Edwin Alvarez:Yeah, yeah. Well, with Ayaska you had to have little things like that to get extra creativity points. I know that you'd be surprised how different Ayasca is now, because this car oh, they still have it.
Edwin Alvarez:Was it a two-seat tune? Yeah, ayasca is still around, but they're not as strict. The rules are completely different compared to the 90s. I know in the 90s cars they would check the car bumper to bumper, make sure that the fuse was x amount of inches away and it's it's. Yeah, they're not as strict, you know, because it obviously everything kind of went down with with, uh, the car audio thing.
Edwin Alvarez:I, I think, um yeah uh, I don't know the direct reason why it died down, but I would definitely say that 90s was the heyday, the golden era of car audio. It's coming back. That's why I made this podcast, soundcube Garage. There's a resurrection coming.
Dan Herrington:There's a lot more people at the get-togethers, it does seem like that. Yeah, people are getting into this again.
Edwin Alvarez:Yeah, they are, and it's mostly sound quality based, which is really nice because there's a lot of cars that were that were spl cars. But um, like I was saying, with, with, with raise a chord. You know you had to have creativity, points like that. What you told me about the battery, that's something that like tesla has. That's incredible that you were way ahead of your time with the fuse, the thing to pull it, because I know the Tesla automobiles have that for the firemen in case there's an accident, or something like that.
Edwin Alvarez:Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, there's like a ring that you pull and it disconnects the battery. But, that would be incredible to do now. That's a really good idea. I'm going to steal your idea, Dan.
Dan Herrington:I'm looking for a royalty on that actually that's great.
Edwin Alvarez:So you guys get into ayaska and are you going with ray to the ayaska competitions?
Dan Herrington:because yeah, we're in, we're in greenville, um, we, we get in the car at my house, we leave my house at night, we're gonna drive through the night and get to greenville, south carolina, the finals. So so ray, you know, has this bright idea that he's gonna, he's driving, he's gonna drink a bunch of coffee. So he has like three large coffees. He gets, he gets, he gets, uh, caffeine pills at the at the gas station. Oh, my god, he's taking these caffeine pills. And when he hears this he's going to laugh. You know, because we're about halfway down there and I'm sleeping in the passenger seat. I wake up and we're doing like 35 miles an hour on 95. And I go, right, what are we doing? And he's geeking out. He had like a caffeine trip, you know it was crazy, so racing colors.
Dan Herrington:I love Ray so much.
Edwin Alvarez:He was such a you could yeah, he was a better customer.
Dan Herrington:Yeah, ray was a character, but yeah, his heart is gold.
Edwin Alvarez:This guy is awesome and you told me he still has the car to this day, right?
Dan Herrington:yeah, I'm gonna tell you about that at the end. There's a little little twist in the last week here. I'll tell you about that at the end.
Edwin Alvarez:There's a little little twist in the last week here.
Dan Herrington:I'll tell you about that. So we get down to the, we get down to the finals and um, I've got bronchitis and and we're, and you know, we're meeting all these cool people. Mike Mineo from New York, he was cool and, and, you know, knowledgeable and and um, I've heard his name through the years, I actually I just heard it, uh, recently for the first time, probably 30 years, but you know, he was a big, heavy hitter down in New York and stuff, and so we're up against a car from Canada, a car from Australia and a car from China. Oh, wow, you know, obviously they shipped, shipped them over for the finals, okay, and um, I mean, we won this thing, those over for the finals, okay, and um, I mean we won this thing.
Dan Herrington:Those guys were so mad, oh, they were so upset, I felt bad, I was gonna hand them the trophy here, um, but uh, they, you know, back then they judged pretty good, I, you know, probably depended what line you were in, but we got, we got, we got judged critically, you know, and and we took first place in both, um, you know, sound quality and then sound quality plus, I think it was called, which was SPL also and um and uh, we took first in both categories and it was exciting and on the ride back so we got to. You know I say 18 hours, but it couldn't be that much. Right?
Edwin Alvarez:it's probably georgia you said yeah, maybe yeah, no, that's about 18 if you're, if you're driving straight through yeah, south carolina so 16 18 yeah, yeah, you know having to pee and stuff and probably was 18.
Dan Herrington:So on the on the ride, back in the excitement, I I get inspired. And here's a weird thing I I had been obsessed with car audio. It's like all I thought about it's you know, I sacrificed my family over over it, over and over and over, which you know, I regret in a way, and I don't I but um, after winning that, I just, I don't know, I lost interest in it, you lost interest, but I know I was like I didn't lose interest in it, just I.
Dan Herrington:I I just didn't want the fight anymore or something. I don't know. I never really worked that out in my head, but but I know that on the ride back I got inspired for the ultimate home speaker, yeah, okay. So I took some of what I did in that car, actually like the adjustability of the tweeters, adjustability of the subwoofer. So that's where my mind was right, giving you something you can tweak and make it better. So so I wrote out a four page report and with diagrams and everything. I came home I didn't have a computer, you know, I probably didn't get one until 99, I think. So I came home, I went to my buddy's house, I had a computer and I had him write me a full four page report on all the details of of what I ended up calling proclaim speakers.
Edwin Alvarez:Okay, and this was about 99.
Dan Herrington:you said yeah, that was the original idea. I put it in paper, didn't do anything with it for about three years. Great idea, you know, I mean what, what? What it takes to bring something like a good idea to fruition is is a lot of work, you know, and a lot of money. And you know I'm trying to support my family so I'm not able to put into it what I have in my head. So, um, I meet, you know I'm doing home theater at this time. I go into doing home theaters, electrician home theaters, I'm I'm just like going from one house to the next whole house, audio and and uh, building out full rooms. You know upholstery, you know I'm getting into it. So that's my next thing I'm on to.
Dan Herrington:So I meet this customer that I do this big job for out of Connecticut and and he's got a lot of money and and he wants to invest in something. So meanwhile I've been working on a prototype for four years in my basement, right. So I take the prototype over to his basement one night with another guy that wants to invest. You know, this other guy just happened to be doing this half million dollar millwork job for this medical company and he says you know, I want to invest in something. I get some money. I want to invest. Do you have any ideas? I said, yeah, I got a speaker I've been working on. So I meet with all three of them and I play it for them and they're just jaw dropped and they, they said, okay, we want to invest. So I quit my job and I start working out of the garage um, making making good money, you know, working out of my garage on developing this speaker. So I worked on it for probably a year and a half. I bought this lathe that was a 21-inch bed over lathe to be able to create the molds and stuff for building these things. And I experimented with spun aluminum with a layer of concrete on the inside, because I want to.
Dan Herrington:You know the goal is I want, first of all, I'm doing toilet reading in the Encyclopedia of Audio Engineers from 1948. And it shows graphs of the frequency response coming off of different shapes. It shows a cylinder, it shows a triangle, it shows a square rectangle, all these different shapes and what happens to the sound because of the shape that it's coming off of, and one of them is a sphere. So it says at the end of the article this is HG Olson from RCA Records writing this, and he says this experiment shows that the only true shape to originate sound from is a sphere. Now, if you think about sound propagating from a cone of a speaker, it's trying to fold around 360 degrees, right, yeah. And if you have a, if you have it mounted on a baffle that goes six inches and off to each side, this, these frequencies are coming off, hitting the baffle, reflecting out and clashing with the original frequencies coming from the cone, right. So that made sense to me and I go, okay, I'm starting with a sphere.
Dan Herrington:And then I was reading about, like the types of materials you know we do, like double MDF, heavy MDF, braced, and all this to get, because there's so many forces that are happening when a cone is going right, that the surface it's mounted to and the surrounding surfaces are resonating and all that's doing is it's, it's, it's like sending mud into the good sound, okay. Plus, it's canceling out the, the, the, the driver itself and all these other problems, right? So so I go, okay, if I'm standing on a six inch thick slab of concrete and you're standing 10 feet away from me, if I slap my floor on the ground, my foot on the ground. You feel it in your feet, okay. So concrete's not the right thing, it's still rigid, you know, and it'll translate the vibration. So.
Dan Herrington:But I said if, if we're standing at the beach and I come up and I slapped my foot down next to you, three inches away, you don't feel nothing because one one grain hits, the next hits, the next hits, the next, and it gets dissipated. By the time it's a few grains away from the original impact, right? So I go? All right, I'm using sand, which I know Yamo had done something with sand in the bath with her speaker years ago and stuff. So that's not like an original idea, kind of obscure but not original.
Dan Herrington:So, all right, what kind of material can I make this sphere out of? That would be the strongest, you know, like an egg. You take an egg and you try to crack it by by squeezing it, right, you can't because of the shape makes it automatically strong, right? So a sphere is a very strong shape, very rigid and strong. So I did fiberglass, an outer fiberglass shell with an inner fiberglass shell. So I got to make two shells pain in the neck.
Dan Herrington:And then I put seven-eighths inch of sand, compacted. I used multiple different grains of sand so that they would compact tightly and I vibrate them. I got this air vibrator this thing is like radical, you know and I vibrate the sand into the walls of this enclosure and let me tell you what man it is. I think it's awesome and these things just breathe. You put on a track with a good center image and a band that the drummer might be back there 20 feet and the sax is over there 10 feet back on stage. You hear everybody from where they're playing, from the depth, and you close your eyes. You cannot point at the speakers that's incredible.
Edwin Alvarez:I imagine they were heavy, because if you're using sand and fiberglass, I mean these things must weigh a ton, right they're like 110 pounds a side, yep.
Dan Herrington:So. So now I'm thinking to myself. You know, back to the adjustability thing. Right Now I need to make a stand for this thing where I can orient my mid range and tweeter to any position. Right, the woofer, you can kind of move it around, you can point them up into the middle and you can. You know, you can move them around because they're a sphere on a stand, but the mid range and tweeter, you can. You can back one off, pull one forward, separate them a lot from each other, put them right next to each other, just really be able to play with it and see what cause and effect is Right. I don't do much with science, I just go cause and effect. I don't do much with science, I just go cause and effect. So, um, I do this adjustable stand, which I actually ended up getting a 21 claim patent on. You know, we, we, we, we filed for a patent on that and it came through two years later, which, you know, after like six months, everybody goes, ah, if you didn't get it yet, you didn't get it, but it, it eventually came through two years later.
Dan Herrington:So I take this prototype to the Stereophile Show in Manhattan in the fall of 07, october. It was like 11 in 07. And we're coming out of nowhere. No one knows we exist. I, um, I got a manufacturer to lend me an amp and, um, honestly, my little 25 watt per channel Harman card and receiver I bought for my wife for Christmas when I worked at sound playground. That thing is awesome. I love that thing, so to this day I still play it. If I played it for you and go, that's 25, what so? So I, I show up at the show and and we're there for the weekend.
Dan Herrington:It takes over the entire hotel, the grand hyatt, I believe it was down in, uh, you know, the middle of manhattan. You know it costs a lot to be there, and so when I first set up in there, I I'm like man, this is nothing like I have in my other rooms. I've put this in. It's like this room was covered, covered with corners, lots of moldings, and corners, corners, corners, corners, corners, and it just blew the image out terrible. So I slid them around the room and I put them in a location that they sounded where they're supposed to, and it was inconvenient for people coming in and listening, but it ended up getting from a lot of the main reviewers in the industry. I won't mention their names, but there's a bunch of them and it got best sound at the show, best of show, most innovative product, some of the best sound. I mean on and on and on.
Dan Herrington:Wired Magazine calls me immediately, wants them down on the west side of Manhattan for a photograph. And I'm in this photo studio. It looks something out of a movie, you know, it was huge. And they the guy pulls the Nike sneakers off of the stand and puts my speakers up on the thing. He let me stay. He was reluctant but I said can I stay? I'm all the way down here from Connecticut and, um, he let. I had my daughter with me. She was like 12, you know. And he says, yeah, okay, you know, but he didn't realize I was going to watch everything he was doing. And I did some great photographs later when I saw how he filmed such a thing. So it just takes off. It's like a thousand pages deep. I mean I can't be getting the advertising I'm getting if you spend a million dollars, right? So we're like, oh man, what are we going to do now? All right, we got to put together a manufacturing facility. So I buy a CNC machine, full machine shop facility over in Durham you know it's an old manufacturing facility split up in the suites and took that over and now we're off to the races. So I'm I'm shipping these things to. And now we're off to the races. So I'm shipping these things to.
Dan Herrington:The first dealer I put on in Nashville, new Hampshire. What I did is I built a mobile showroom out of an 18-foot Thule trailer, bought a brand-new Thule trailer, did the whole interior up like a car audio guy would, and so I can drive it around and demo. I took one trip and I sold initial pairs on the one trip. You know, up to boston and um and um, southern new hampshire, nashua, and um, they want a pair. And I'm like, okay, now I gotta make these things. This is hard, you know, these things aren't easy to make. So, so, so meanwhile we're setting up the manufacturing and showing them off at the same time. So it's all happening in real time. And so this dealer in New Hampshire says I'll take a demo pair, but we only sell one to two pairs of speakers over $20,000 price point a year. So he says, don't expect much business. I said, all right, you know, whatever he sells the first pair in two days, the second pair in two weeks. This guy sells nine pair in nine months and tell everybody what?
Edwin Alvarez:yeah, I was just gonna say tell everybody what the price of these were too 26 000 a pair.
Dan Herrington:I put them up Now. I made the price up the day before the show in New York. So, I should have. I should have said 39.
Edwin Alvarez:So, and this was 2007, which was huge, some of my money back. It's a huge sum of money now for speakers.
Dan Herrington:And I'm making these things and when, as fast as I can build them right, we're. We're just like all cylinders fire and trying to build these to perfection. You know you're up against China building the iPhone like perfect. You know, yeah, yeah, at these shows, everything around them is 150 grand a pair and stuff. You know they're sparing no expense and they've been doing it a long time. And I'm coming out of nowhere and you know it's like I'm creating a serious ruckus, but you know you still got to pull this off somehow. You know, and if you, if you went over to China to do business, it was, it was uh, 20%. In America it's 80%. So you know, I see why people end up doing business in China, unfortunately, you know.
Edwin Alvarez:Yeah, it's a sad state that we're in, but it's also kind of something that we did to ourselves, because people love cheap electronics. And I don't mean cheap as cheaply made, I'm talking about cheap as in cheaper prices.
Dan Herrington:Something you can afford to pay for.
Edwin Alvarez:Yeah, it's a vicious cycle, it's expensive and something unique here.
Dan Herrington:I'll pause in the story of this and say is. I always thought that. I always gloated to myself that custom, you know, custom. You know you're looking at something and you're going right, you're building something custom. I thought that was the hardest realm. Manufacturing is really hard. I give those guys respect. Yeah, to do the same thing over and over perfectly not easy. So so I I get invited.
Dan Herrington:Um, dennis had is like the, the grandfather of tube amplifiers. He's the one that kind of did the push to bring them back into the world, you know, after transistors took over. So he sees them up in New Hampshire and he goes. I want these speakers at Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas in January. It was about three weeks away, right. So I managed to put together a pair and get them shipped there. He moves the $150,000 a pair I won't say the name of the manufacturer off to the side. You know really high end Danish speakers and um and he puts my speakers there and he he sends me a note after the show, says that was the best show we had in 20 years and um and I had all the big wigs in there going wow, wow, you know I was playing sweet baby jane, right, the, the the most played song at an audio show in probably history.
Dan Herrington:And I I saw the, the head editor of stereo file Magazine, walking in the hall at the end of the day and I said can I get you to come in here and hear this real quick? And he's like he doesn't want to be bothered. He's been, you know, going all day and he's like the man you know and he comes in, he sits down. I play him, sweet Baby Jane. I said I'm going to play you something you've heard a million times that you've never heard. What are these? Where are you located? You know he wanted to come up to the factory and everything. That's how blown away he was. So that's what we got.
Dan Herrington:So we pick up dealers in Moscow, sweden, switzerland, bulgaria, netherlands, hong Kong, china. They're signing up on the spot at CES, wow. And they all want a pair. So I got to make. You know I'm ramping up. I got to make these things, hiring more people trying to source the goods. And you know, get this, these things, made. It couldn't have been any better. All I had to do is 200 pair, year two, and I was a millionaire.
Edwin Alvarez:I mean it couldn't have been any better.
Dan Herrington:200 pair and I'm a millionaire. I did the math, I'm a millionaire, I did the math, you know. So we sold 34 pair with no advertising until about April of 08. That's only four months after the CES show. And what happens? The greatest economy crash since the great depression. High end audio is the last thing anybody's thinking about. Yep, and first thing to go, really yeah, and it shut off like a light switch.
Edwin Alvarez:Oh man, that's all. That's heartbreaking.
Dan Herrington:Yeah, we lost a half a million bucks and walked away with our tail between our legs and that was the end of it. Wow, I have two pairs. I'm looking at them right now it.
Edwin Alvarez:But, wow, I have two pairs. I'm looking at them right now. So after that 08 crash and after everything sort of plateaued, did you ever consider maybe giving it another shot?
Dan Herrington:every single person. So I had yale pay me to come lecture at the school of sound design about it. This is probably, I don't know, six years ago or so, and, uh, it paid pretty good. I don't want to. I should call them up see. You want me to lecture again? It paid pretty good. So you know that's what they do. They do sound that's. You know, this is yale and they're they're high end, right. So so I set them up in there and I talked about, you know, my career for probably an hour, hour and a quarter, and then I played them for 45 minutes.
Dan Herrington:The professor that's been there for like 38 years comes down from the back of the room and he goes what are you doing with these? I go well, the economy crashed, you know, blah, blah, blah. He goes you have got to do something with this. And, and you know, again, I'm. It's back to the same old story. I'm just, I'm just trying to make a living and support my family, and you know, to take on a big transition like that, if you've got somebody with big money that wants to come in and I, you know, I'd love to do it again. Again, I, there's not much I would change, you know, I think I would like to motorize them so that you can set up a test mic and some software and they, they totally time align themselves. You know, now I do it with a fishing pole, um, and a and a knitting needle, you know where I find that, you know'll find the.
Dan Herrington:I'll set that up where your head would be, behind the chair, you know, with a mic stand, and then I'd find the voice coil, which is where the timing originates, and get them all time aligned. It does make a difference, no question there you go, you know the more things.
Edwin Alvarez:the more things change, the more they stay the same, because those same concepts still apply to this day.
Dan Herrington:It's physics right, and that was something that was on my heart in the last few days about when I talked to you. It's just like the simplicity. I don't want any features, I just want the simplicity. You know, and some of the best systems I've ever heard are the simplest ones. You know, I mean a lot of it with these speakers has to do with the crossover and you know, ping me up later and I'll send you some pictures of the design of the crossover, like when I was developing the crossover for it.
Dan Herrington:This would apply to car audio all day long, and I'm doing it on a piece of MDF with some tracer wire and stuff to you know, like flat tracer wire like you'd have on a circuit board, and I'm playing with positioning of the coils and the capacitors and where they are in relation to each other on the circuit board. Huge, huge, huge, huge. You know, because the fields of the coils are reacting with each other and you know I see a lot of talk about it online, but unless you play with it and experiment with it, you know, which I know probably a lot of people have, it is everything, but here was a big one. So, okay, the wire. You know you always see all this stuff about wire, what's good wire, what's bad wire, you know, and all this. So I'm looking when I'm developing this in my bedroom, remind me and I'll send you pictures of what this bedroom floor looked like. My wife's away for like a month and you know mad scientist shit. So I'm thinking I want the best wire that I could possibly have. So I I get a hold of like the top wire manufacturers. I need samples, I want to play with your wire. I got this speaker I'm developing, send them pictures. And then all these people are sending me wires.
Dan Herrington:And then I read this article from this guy from sweden that was an engineer. He wasn't a sound guy or anything, he was an engineer and he dove into electrically why and experimented with every kind of wire you can imagine and analyzed it and recorded it. So he came up with Teflon jacketed Teflon not pvc, not other materials, um, but teflon jacketed plenum. So it's very thin. You know a plenum wire is what you would run up in a ceiling in case there's a fire. It's like the minimum amount of smoke that would come from the wire if it would burn.
Dan Herrington:Uh, cat five wire right, your computer cabling. You know it's twisted pair, it's rejecting noise, it's, it's right. So so I I bought some teflon coated cat five wire and I would just twist all the negatives, twist all the positives, and I try this wire and it completely blew my mind. I could a be it for anybody that doesn't even know anything about sound, and they'd have to admit oh yeah, I hear that the detail and the imaging, everything changed. So so I was making my own cables, um, because of that.
Edwin Alvarez:So there's actually a guy on the uh competition circuit that uses cat5 wire and he swears by it uh for his vehicle he's right, he's one of the top winners in the in the circuit actually he is correct.
Dan Herrington:But if, if he doesn't know about it being teflon, see, because capacitance and inductance of the wire, right. Capacitance stores the charge and then lets it back out right at a certain interval. An inductor, you know, an inductor is a coil, you know what does it do? Right, it low passes right. So you look at the inductance and capacitance of the insulator. Now, if you could have just raw copper with no insulator, that'd be great, right, you know. And there's engineers and stuff that are probably going to poke at me on all this, but I'm just going by experiments and what I came out with, you know, practical experience. So it's so, the Teflon has a very low capacitance, very low inductance is what I remember reading 30 years ago. So don't quote me on any of this, but it made sense to me and it's very thin, right, cause it's plenum, right? I don't know I would challenge anybody to try it. You might be blown out of your socks. I couldn't believe it.
Edwin Alvarez:That's interesting. It's funny how some of the things have evolved over the years, like you were talking about earlier about the clarion, and now, because back in the day, getting back to um, I ask you guys had a two seat tunes correct, cause now a two seat tune, like basically the sound sounded good from both the front seats yeah, that's the hard.
Dan Herrington:That's the hard thing to do. Yeah, that's the hard thing to do.
Edwin Alvarez:Now there's a company called Riven out there. That's now. They developed a processor that extracts the center image and you have to have a center image speaker. But that's something new, that's in its. It's been out for the last maybe two or three years, I believe, been out for the last maybe two or three years, I believe. But, um, you know now what most people tune for is a one seat tune, because it's it's very difficult to get a two seat tune. So almost everybody, almost every car that you get into, only the driver is going to be, you know, enjoying the sweet spot, so to speak that's the hard part right there.
Dan Herrington:Yeah, we, we hit it with broder sound of the honda, though, because we had those tools to work with. Yeah, timing you know, yeah, and you guys were using kick. You can move the sound all around yep, yeah.
Edwin Alvarez:So yeah, what do you think um like the state of sound quality now versus, you know, back in the 90s? I know that you said you know you're not familiar with all the brands, but I mean, as far you know and you, you, I know you um, you, you dip your toes in some of the stuff. Uh, I'm sure you see it and you follow some of the, the four, uh, the groups on facebook. What do you think of the, the current state of sound cue? What's your opinion on that?
Dan Herrington:I would be really, really. First of all, I'm totally encouraged that it's coming back to sound quality. You know, I mean, I don't know, I just I never, I never bought into just it, it being 100, now they're up to what like 168 decibels. Oh yeah, yeah, it's like it's so crazy. They took it to the limit. These guys, yeah, and that I'm. I respect that because that's physics too. You know, yep, yeah, um, no, I respect it totally, but it was never my jam, you know I, you know I'd sit in there. In fact, I felt like I blew out my rear, my right ear, a little bit one day with this guy with a brown van that came in. That thing was loud, I think at that point it was like 158 db. But you know, now they're going way up there. Um, but um, I don't know. To me the, the, the joy of it was making something. Broder always said it right, he goes when it's right, the hair on my arms stands up. You know, it's like he's moved by it. Oh, yeah, yeah, it is it is a.
Edwin Alvarez:It is a moving experience, because when I have somebody sit in my car, for example, they they're just blown away. The people that aren't that aren't even familiar with sound quality, you know, they're just used to the standard oem system in their car, or maybe they add a subwoofer.
Edwin Alvarez:You know they don't they to the standard oem system in their car or maybe they add a subwoofer. You know, they don't. They don't really go too far. A lot of people don't go too far these days, but I mean that a lot of that has to do with the oem manufacturers have stepped up their game but you know, it's still not quite what a sound quality enthusiast you know likes. I mean, we're kind of a different breed, but um, uh, you know the uh, the the difference with a sound quality car. When somebody steps in it, they know it when they sit in it, even if they're not into sound quality yeah, they're just blown away.
Edwin Alvarez:You know, and and you might get that person to be sort of like what happened with me and you, where I was just into having clean sound and then when I got into a car with sound quality and it had an image, I was just, I was hooked, you know totally.
Dan Herrington:You created a monster, I'm so happy I got you on the morale too. I always love morale. Yeah, I was like morale.
Edwin Alvarez:Who the heck is morale? I never even heard of them and I got.
Dan Herrington:Morrells Very smooth.
Edwin Alvarez:Yeah, they were awesome drivers. I went to your shop and had them installed. I had an 83 Buick Skylark and I had acoustic research 6x9s in the back and I knew I wanted something better in the front and um, I had um, uh ppi amps installed in the trunk yeah my trunk was useless. My I couldn't even put a spare tire any longer in the trunk and um were they the white ones or, before that, the black ones?
Dan Herrington:they were black the.
Edwin Alvarez:The first ones that I bought from you guys were black yep, I bought the white ones later on from you guys um, and then I, and then I went with sound stream reference series, the blue ones when they came out and um it. You know, I I still uh, even to this day. I feel like buying um a uh, the art series amp from ebay or something and just hanging it up on the wall like a picture, because they were such beautiful amps, the art series yeah yep and the lady that created that art she, she actually passed away not that long ago.
Dan Herrington:The artist kidding yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, it was like Southwestern looking or something.
Edwin Alvarez:Yeah, yeah, they were gorgeous amps.
Dan Herrington:They came out with Sedona, the cheaper line with Sedona, Yep yep. You know what amp I liked. That was kind of a cheaper feeling amp on the outside. Mm-hmm, Was the Carver amps.
Edwin Alvarez:They probably weren't out that long oh yeah, I remember they made good home audio stuff too.
Dan Herrington:I did some nice systems with those. I did this one, a Suzu pickup truck. This was for Ayaska. He won and he was going to the no, I could be wrong on this, but I think he won the East coast. Um, I don't remember if it was long Island or where it was, but he won the East coast with this truck that I did for him. And then he rolled it on the way home. Oh no, total, total rolled it. And this was unique, though.
Dan Herrington:I took this Isuzu truck and I, I, I, I did like strips of wood that were like half inch tall, maybe five, eighths tall, all over the floor, about every you know squares of maybe eight inch squares or something, all over the floor of the truck.
Dan Herrington:And then I mounted the subwoofers. Where I made you, there were four tents, two under the seat, two, you know, just ahead of the seat, that breathe to the outside of the vehicle, so they were free air. So you were living inside the enclosure, right, it actually worked really good. And then I inlaid, I put the wood, the wood strips, there so I can inlay sand, and then I sealed it in with dynamat, right, so the sand is stationary inside these eight-inch square pockets all over the floor and the entire truck and then I did like 12-inch pieces of PVC that stuck down about six inches under the truck. And then I took some heating and air conditioning filters and created filters so that, you know, water and different junk wouldn't get up into the speaker. And that actually worked really good and he was ready to go to the finals and he rolled his truck. Oh, that's heartbreaking.
Edwin Alvarez:Man.
Dan Herrington:Yeah, a lot of guys use Infinite Baffle.
Edwin Alvarez:Oh, the Carver amps. Yeah, I remember those and I never heard one or laid my hands on one, but I remember seeing them in the magazines and I know that, carver, I think they're still around. I know that, um, back in the day, uh, this place that I used to dj at had carver amps for their pa system and, uh, I know that they used to have carver amps for for uh, for pa setups and stuff like that.
Edwin Alvarez:I used to see them at different music stores but I haven't seen. I haven't seen any carver amps around for car audio in a long time that's a tough business.
Dan Herrington:They probably stuck their toe, they probably tucked their, you know, put their toe in the water and realized that we're not going to make any money here, and they pulled out, you know, just like a lot of other brands did through the years yeah um, but you know who.
Dan Herrington:But back to your question there. Um, I haven't really sat in a high quality audio system in a car and it could be like 30 years, wow, 62, 32, um, now let's say 25 years, right, yeah, and, and I, it was this. We were at this party a couple weeks weeks ago in North Carolina and everybody was bragging about this system, this this rich guy's kid had, and and I'm like, yeah, let me check it out. Yeah, I was in the car audio heavy man for a long time. Let me check it out. I mean, and we get in the car and he plays this thing and and he's like looking over at me like, yeah, man, what do you think?
Edwin Alvarez:I like looking over at me, like yeah man, what do you think I'm? Like? Did it blow your way?
Dan Herrington:all it was was banging outside the truck and it was just like it was zero sound quality and he loved it. Yeah, the whole thing might have changed. You know, maybe people don't care, but I know, I know the older generation does and I think if you could turn the younger generation onto it they would be like, wow, this is awesome.
Edwin Alvarez:Yeah, that's that's the thing. That's the thing. That's why we do these get togethers. We we have a lot of get togethers, believe it or not. There's some that are out in your neck of the woods too there's. There's people out there. We have competitions and stuff like that out there really yeah, yeah next.
Dan Herrington:Uh, I'd find that a blast to go to something like that. You gotta just let me know when they're taking place.
Edwin Alvarez:I'll yeah once we're done with the podcast. Let me know exactly like what area you're in and I'll let you know when they're having those meets or there's comp or those competitions. That way you can hear what, uh, you know what a real sound quality car is these days, because I think you'd be pleasantly, uh, surprised and you'd be impressed because the, the technology yeah has definitely you would have to think it would evolve.
Dan Herrington:Yeah, oh, yeah, yeah it's evolved.
Edwin Alvarez:You know the techniques keeping people in that triangle, that magic, that magic triangle you know is is obviously. You know, physics is physics and the the more that you can get that triangle, even with the listener, of course. But dsp these days have evolved big time, you know. And, like I said, with that ribbon I've heard nothing. But I haven't had a chance to sit in a car with the ribbon processor, but I hear nothing but good, good things about it. I hope to listen to our car, a car with the Riven processor, but I hear nothing but good things about it. I hope to listen to a car next season with a Riven. One of my friends picked up the Riven processor and supposedly it's like the cat's meow.
Dan Herrington:So then why not? I mean, clarion did that back in 96 or whatever, right, yeah, that would have been the first touchdown into that realm and it would have to be great.
Edwin Alvarez:now you know quiet and you know everything you care about so what advice you have for for somebody who, uh, like a do-it-yourself or or even a pro now that you've been, you know you're pretty much a veteran of the industry and you know a former owner and former speaker builder what type of type of advice do you got for an up-and-comer or a seasoned pro?
Dan Herrington:is no, know the driver and understand what it needs to live in for air volume Right and and the surfaces around it. Like you know, residents will kill any good system. You know, you have to, you have to, you know, go to extra lengths to make your car deadened to sound so that your car is not becoming a speaker you know, cause.
Dan Herrington:That's, that's the most common thing. I mean, that's huge. And then phase balance placement. So I I always like to try to I create um prototypes to play with, right, so maybe put a speaker in an enclosure of the size that you know you can achieve in a particular location you're going to work on and and and just mock it up. Mock it up and play with it. Angles, um, you know positioning, you know, and you have to get center balance. You know if you got a tweeter, you know six inches away from your head, you know, forget about trying to go 30 feet deep with an image. So you're always, you're always thinking about trying to get this stuff away from you. That's what I mean. I'm going back 30 years of thinking here. But you know, get it away from you and and you know phase balance placement and and set yourself up with tools to experiment. There's a guy that used to work for me. I don't know if you remember him. His name's Chris. I'll leave his last name out.
Edwin Alvarez:Was he the one with Integra? He was into modding Japanese cars, if I remember correctly. Or was he the one with the Grand National?
Dan Herrington:He's one of the most talented people I've ever met in my life. He went to work for someplace out of New York City, somewhere around New York City maybe and this shop took it to a whole other level. They'll scan the kick panel with a device that translates device that translates it to the cnc and it yeah, the 3d, 3d scanners yep, oh man, they.
Dan Herrington:They took things to a whole nother level and and chris is extraordinarily talented they took it to a level. You know I'm a grandfather in this business. You know they took it, they took the baton and went to a whole other level that's great.
Dan Herrington:Now, do those cars sound good? I imagine they do. Yeah, yep, um, but and simplicity to me. I'll take a to this day. You know you have to convince me if you just prove it to me, but to this day I'll take a pair of killer tube amps, single-ended tube amps, on my speakers, and it just becomes so wide and natural and flowing and bloomy and oh, it's just like. It's like you're you put on a live concert. You turn the lights out, the hair is up on your arms and you think you're there.
Edwin Alvarez:Yeah, I mean it just convincing.
Dan Herrington:Yeah, so I'm a big, simple and effective, you know. Yeah, keep it simple, just adding a bunch of gear and a thing Everything you add takes away something.
Edwin Alvarez:Yep, yep. Every time you add something to the chain, there's going to be a, a sonic, even if it's something imperceptible, there's going to be something. When you, even if it's something imperceptible, there's going to be something. When you add things to the chain, you're just adding more, more and more things that could go wrong, more and more things that could add to noise, more and more things that that could deteriorate also or take away from the experience. So it's usually good to keep it simple. I try to keep it simple.
Dan Herrington:I try to keep it simple myself so simple and um, and make your speaker locations great, you know.
Edwin Alvarez:So so, ray you, you told me you reconnected with Ray recently, right?
Dan Herrington:Yeah, yeah. So okay, this is a. This is a wild thing. So I called Ray. Haven't talked to him in probably 15 years and I called him up out out of nowhere. This is like two weeks ago, buddy. I miss you, man. What is up, how are you, you know? And uh, I now follow his wife on facebook. She posts all the time so, um. So she says, you know, I'm talking to him and his wife she goes. Ray's thinking of selling his car. I go go. What kind of shape is it in? It's got 45,000 miles, wow, and it's in mint condition. He kept that thing, perfect, wow.
Dan Herrington:He drove it once a month for a Sunday drive and that was it. That's incredible, and apparently the system is just like I left it.
Edwin Alvarez:Wow.
Dan Herrington:So I got to get a car for my youngest daughter and I, you know, I can picture her driving around and then I ask a winner Wow, that's more than she bargained for.
Edwin Alvarez:Wouldn't that be great if the car came back home to Papa right Full circle?
Dan Herrington:That's what I told him. Keep it in the family. Buddy, I'm going to Connecticut. I'm going to be up in Connecticut. I love to see you. Actually, this is a great thing yeah, when are you coming to?
Dan Herrington:Connecticut, um like the 14th, 15th, and I've got a wedding up um near Newport, okay, and then my, my wife's driving back and I'm staying there, I'm doing uh, I eventually got into pro sound. Along the way I did a lot of churches and stuff and then I got into doing construction of all the churches. I'll do the and I make the rooms acoustically correct, right yeah, that's a whole nother animal.
Edwin Alvarez:I dabbled into that too did you really?
Dan Herrington:yeah yeah, big, big animal. It's a good one, though I you know there's there's techniques on how to get it done right. So so I've got a church job to do while I'm up there, but I'm going to be up there a whole week. I've got like two, three days at a church. Then I've got to hang out until they have their Sunday service for like two, three days. I'd love to see you in that time frame. That'd be great.
Edwin Alvarez:You got to invite Ray. Tell Ray to bring his car that that way we can, we can, we can compare old versus new tech. Now ray could sit in my car.
Dan Herrington:I could sit in his car if at all possible, but that'd be great. I'd love to have that would be fun dinner or lunch yeah yeah, that'd be great where do you live?
Edwin Alvarez:in connecticut now ******************** I don't want to say exactly where I live because we're just going to be on the interwebs, but ********************undefined, yeah, yeah, I live down by
Dan Herrington:Yeah.
Edwin Alvarez:So I live near that area.
Dan Herrington:He lives in ********, so that's not that far.
Edwin Alvarez:Okay.*********** away from me.
Dan Herrington:There you go.
Edwin Alvarez:Yeah, this is going to work out great you go yeah, this is gonna work out great, this will be fun, let's do this. Yeah, I'd love to see broder. I haven't talked to him, I mean since the 90s. So basically when I, um, after I left cartoons, I, I, I, I had my car all prepared and I went up there and alan was still obviously one of the owners, but they were kind of I think, didn't boomer mcleod kind of, did they merge with boomer?
Dan Herrington:so, yeah, the boomer mcleod thing was they were gonna, they were gonna try to take kind of like um, true value and ace hardware did. They took all the little hardware stores in town, yep, and they gave them a name, they gave them advertising. It was a good concept, but I think the timing was wrong. Yeah, yeah, in the industry.
Edwin Alvarez:Well, that that was the. You know, that was the thing about that time that around the 2000s, you know, the dealership started making better, better uh systems, oem systems, and then they made it harder and harder to uh integrate a system into an oem.
Edwin Alvarez:You know they, they nearly made it almost nearly impossible, you know. But where there's a will there's a way, because now there's a lot of companies that make hardware to integrate into the newer systems. Because the newer systems are really complex, the radio is tied into everything the seatbelt, the tire pressure monitor system. I mean you literally cannot even remove the, the, the radio, out of a car now, because literally it's, it's the brain.
Dan Herrington:In the late 90s the honda came through with that. Everything was the computer, was like in the radio. Yeah right, you couldn't take it out.
Edwin Alvarez:Oh yeah yeah, it's, it's real bad now. So, um, what was I saying? I forgot what I was saying. What were we talking about? A few seconds ago, before the integration?
Edwin Alvarez:And I had the box that was inspired by Ray's car, and you and I had my SoundStream amps and I had a. You remember, back then the recipe for winning was JL Audio, ppi and MB Court. That was basically the recipe to win, but instead of PPI, I went with SoundStream and my car was winning left and right. You know, I take a fifth here and there, a fourth there and there. I got invited to nationals and I said, man, I want to go. You know, dan was my inspiration for all this. I want to go show my system. And it had been a few years I think this was like the late 90s and I went up there and I talked to Alan and Alan said that you were gone and I was like, oh no, like yeah, he's no longer, you know, with the company, and so you had stepped out of out of cartoons Right At that point in the late 90s.
Dan Herrington:I lost a taste on the way back from the world finals. It just. I just felt like you know, I've pursued this for 15 years. I just I'm going to do something else. It wasn't conscious, it was just. You know, you got to be driven by something, right?
Edwin Alvarez:Yeah.
Dan Herrington:But I do. I do because I've had how many years to think about it 25 years, 27 years to think about it. I do would love to do one more system before I get too old to go under a dash yeah, you said that.
Edwin Alvarez:You said that. You said you'd love to do one more system yeah, I want to do one more, so I know exactly what I would do so anybody that's out there on internet land, if you guys want award-winning knowledge, you know this guy's this, this is your man and, uh, the only stipulation is you. You got to let him take his time, leave the car with them and you're out in south carolina.
Dan Herrington:You said I'm in uh virginia virginia what?
Dan Herrington:I messed that up twice. That's okay, that's okay. I tried to find the middle of the country. So you know, it's like the winters are shaved off, they're not bad, and the summers are not bad. So it's kind of right in the middle, right where I want it, yeah. But here's, here's the rules. If I do another car, you drop it off, you leave me alone, you're just paying for it, and and I don't care what you want, I don't, you know. You know, like I don't, I don't want any of the social land, and you just leave me alone and let me be like this mad scientist and let me do it, and then you get it back, and if you don't like it, I guess I give you my house or whatever.
Edwin Alvarez:No, I think I've seen your work, I've seen your madness, because I know you're kind of like one of those people that just think outside the box. You don't do things like you know the cookie cutter or you know everything's like what every other installer does. You kind of think outside the box and experiment and it always comes together and it always sounds great, because every car that I know, when you did Broder's truck, it sounded great. I remember the Suzu you were talking about. I remember. You know, I remember all the cars. We did a bunch of cars. I mean I heard so many good cars come out of cartoons. It was great. No-transcript around the shop wasn't even getting paid and I was still happy. Those were the days, you know no, that's it.
Dan Herrington:yeah, that's it. No, it's an obsession, it's a great obsession. It's fun because, like installers, like I would hire an installer in any industry because he has dealt with so many different things Woodworking, fiberglass, upholstery, sound deadening, wiring, electronics. I mean there's so many realms involved in car audio. It's a unique group of people totally and a lot of respect for it because it's it's a hard game, man oh yeah, it's not easy you know, and on top of that, you got to please the customers.
Edwin Alvarez:You know, at the end of the day, you got customers to think about and at the same time, you're trying to make a profit. You know so. But yeah, it was great. In the 90s were probably, I would say, the golden era of car audio. You, that's what we're trying to do now. We're trying to bring that golden era back. I think we're kind of. You know, we might be in the bronze stage, I don't know if we're quite at the golden stage, but we're bringing it back. I got people like you to thank. You know, like you said, you're the grandfather of that era and I mean it's just great, this of that era, and I mean it's just great. But, dan, I think we're gonna wrap it up. Uh, don't hang up. I'm gonna wrap up this, uh, this podcast. I want everybody to say thank you to dan. All right, dan, hang on one second, okay, buddy.