The SoundQ Garage
Tech talk for the DIY car audio enthusiast that care about sound quality
The SoundQ Garage
Engineering the Perfect Sound Without Touching Your Car Ep 5 w/ Matt Kim
Matt Kim's journey from curious high school student to innovative car audio entrepreneur reveals how passion can reshape an entire career trajectory. After installing his first subwoofer and noticing inconsistent bass response, Matt's natural inquisitiveness led him to online forums where he discovered the science behind sound quality in vehicles. Despite pursuing a biochemistry degree with medical school aspirations, he couldn't ignore his growing obsession with car audio.
The turning point came when Matt decided to follow his passion professionally, reaching out to industry leaders and securing apprenticeships at premium installation shops. His path took him from Portland to New York, working alongside legendary fabricators Nick Apicella and Kevin Mullings, absorbing invaluable knowledge about custom fabrication and tuning. Each professional step elevated his understanding of vehicle acoustics and installation techniques until he eventually found himself at AI Design, one of the world's most prestigious automotive customization shops.
What truly sets Matt apart is his revolutionary approach to custom audio fabrication through his company, Audio in Reach. Recognizing that geography shouldn't limit access to premium installations, Matt pioneered a remote fabrication process using 3D scanning and CAD design. He rents identical vehicle models locally, creates precise digital designs, and fabricates custom components that can be shipped nationwide – eliminating the need for customers to part with their vehicles for weeks. His dashboard pods and A-pillars optimize speaker positioning and acoustic properties, delivering sound quality improvements that factory locations simply cannot achieve. As Matt prepares to relocate his operation to Houston, his waitlist continues to grow – a testament to how innovation can transform a passionate hobby into a thriving business that's changing the car audio landscape. Visit www.Audioinreach.com to discover how custom fabrication can reach you, wherever you are.
Welcome everybody to episode 5 of the SoundCue Garage podcast. In my last episode I had a guest that was on the cutting edge of car audio in the 90s. Now fast forward to 2025. Cutting edge of car audio in the 90s now fast forward to 2025. Today we're talking with someone who's turned a high school curiosity into a career at the cutting edge of sound quality and fabrication, from world-class shops to launching his own company. My next guest has an incredible story. My guest today is Matt Kim. Calm down, everybody Calm down. Everybody's excited, matt. So for those of you, that don't know.
Speaker 2:Tell us a little bit about yourself, matt, and how you got started in car audio. Yeah, so I kind of started how many do? In high school I had a friend who installed a subwoofer and I thought it was neat, but I didn't really see what was so special about it. So eventually I got my own car when I was 16 and installed a kicker sub from Best Buy and something I noticed was that some of the bass notes were a lot louder than others and some were really quiet and I kind of grew curious like why was this happening? Why does my car sound this way? I didn't really like it and I went online, looked up like why does my sub sound bad? And I eventually ended up on DIY Mobile Audio and that's kind of where it all started I think that's where it started for a lot of us.
Speaker 2:So you're on dyma doing research yes, and I came across um was it aaron hardison's thread? It's called the essentials of sound quality and I read through the entire thing and I got a little better understanding of what was causing my sub issue. So then I got a mic, I hopped on Room EQ Wizard and made some measurements and I slowly started deciphering what was going on. And I got my first DSP. Try the best I can on the tune. At the end of it the bass kind of leveled out. So I was able to do some rough eq work and from then on I was hooked. I'm like, wow, this is so cool, you can change how it sounds and you're, you know and all this stuff.
Speaker 1:So yeah, that's kind of how it started yeah, it is pretty cool how you can shape the. You know the, the basically the sound to your taste, but pretty much you're trying to get that sound to be nice and clean too. What kind of dsp did you start off with?
Speaker 2:something I just saw on youtube as someone recommended, I think it was a rockford fosgate dsr1 oh yeah, yeah, I remember that that.
Speaker 1:I think it's still around too. A lot of people still use it yeah, it was.
Speaker 2:It was good to start with um. It had, you know, parametric eq, which is pretty good. So you know not, not what the cool kids use these days, but good start what do the cool kids use these days? The good ones helix arc audio, the mini dsp with dirac's pretty good goldhorn's coming out.
Speaker 1:I'm hearing things about them yeah, I am hearing a lot about goldhorn. I keep seeing it more and more. I see some youtube videos. What do you think about goldhorn?
Speaker 2:It looks. Hardware wise it looks very good. I've actually heard a few cars with them at SVR and they sound great. Seems like it's a good product to me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, one floating around too is Museway, the Museway stuff.
Speaker 3:Gary Bell swears by it, and I've heard pretty good stuff about it but hasn't quite got caught on.
Speaker 1:I have a couple muse way amps sitting right here in front of me but I haven't, you know, touched them. But seems like pretty good stuff, I think muse way is a little more.
Speaker 2:It seems bigger in the industry side of things, whereas in the hobby side it's not quite quite as popular.
Speaker 1:It doesn't get talked about much on the hobby side it seems like some of this stuff is like in other countries. It's bigger, but you know they're starting to kind of creep their way over here in the united states they are. I've noticed that too so you're in high school and you're fiddling around and so you're starting to uh play with dsp. What type of uh experimenting and what type of speakers did you start to use and stuff like that, like what?
Speaker 2:yeah, so I started with a two-way passive kit from crutchfield. It's like infinity kappa something like that. Yeah, and I installed that of my first setup ever. That was nice, sounded a lot better than factory. Then, after the whole dsp adventure, I got the morel virtus three-way set, also from crutchfield yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's pretty good, that was my first yeah, it was my first three way set and I remember I built these pods on my dashboard that were god awfully ugly and I put the mid-range just straight on axis right at me and I thought it sounded amazing, went from there. Then, after reading more and more on DEMA, I saw audio from as a thing. Oh, what is audio from? People are raving about it. I was like, okay, that's a little out of my price range because for a young kid I was starting, I was right around college age Like this was right when I started college. Okay, that's a little much for me. So I sticked with the Morel and just tuned and tuned, and tuned. So that was really my first real system that staged and imaged and had a decent tonality.
Speaker 1:Yeah, one thing about Dyma is I call it. You know me and other people. I'm not the only one, but we got the forum boners.
Speaker 1:It's funny that you mentioned that about the audio frog, because if you've been, a long-term member over there at Dyma, you'll notice that there's a pattern of stuff that people have. Right now. A lot of people are into Excelsius and Akiton and stuff like that. But it's funny how, how like they all kind of like all get in sync with each other and you see a lot of the dyma forum members using a lot of the same equipment and, like I said, I just call that the forum boners.
Speaker 1:Nothing, you know. I mean it's good stuff, good stuff is good stuff, but it's just it's kind of funny like that. That. You know, you talked about audio frog being the the hot thing back then and everybody was using it, and now it's kind of funny like that that you know you talked about audio frog being the the hot thing back then and everybody was using it and now it's kind of died down a little bit, not saying audio frog is bad stuff, but I just think it's an ironic thing like, within reason, they're all the same to me, it's just the attention that's given to them by the community just changes with the tide, you know yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So you're in college, right, and so what are you majoring in at that time? What are you? What is?
Speaker 2:your uh, yeah. So I was majoring in biochemistry, so it's like biology and chemistry combined. And the reason I did it was for med school. So I was, uh, one of those pre-med students heading towards hospitals. But, oh wow, it was mostly my parents like convincing me to do it. I just kind of followed what I thought I was supposed to do and I got about three years into college. Things were going pretty well.
Speaker 2:I started getting more into car audio around the same time. I eventually found myself like questioning my career path. Like do I even want to do this? Like I love, I loved car audio so much like I couldn't do anything else. I was in my driveway from morning to midnight, like days at a time, just working on my car, working on my car, and after some time I eventually decided, you know what, like I want to just go all in to car audio. I don't care, like I don't care what people say. You know like what? What I'm giving up. But I just wanted to do it so badly that I just took the dive yeah, I think.
Speaker 1:I think there's a saying don't quote me on it I know there's a saying out there that says if you do what you love, or it's never work or something like that. I'm probably tearing up that quote, but it goes something along those lines.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if you're doing what you love, it's not really work, you know, and if you can make, if you can get really good at it make money at it you love, it's not really work, you know, and if you can make, if you can get really good at it, make money at it, then you know it's not really work. So uh, yeah. What happened after that? So you started, did you quit school or did you?
Speaker 2:So I got through school, um, just not to waste the years and money you know, get my degree at least. And afterwards, while I was quote unquote supposed to find a job, kind of did some more research online and I posted on DEMA I want to make cardio a career. Someone help me out. Where can I go? What do I do? And one of the first people who responded was Nick Apicella. Nick's a big name in the audio game, definitely so.
Speaker 2:At the time he had just opened his new shop. He had just kind of taken a leap. He private messaged me. He told me hey, what city are you in? I told him was in portland, oregon at the time, west coast. And he said oh, okay, I know a shop down there that's pretty reputable. You should go over there and introduce yourself. Okay, maybe I'll do that. And the shop was called music car northwest very premium work, very good guys as well. Um, I went over there, I begged for a job and eventually I got my foot in the door as just a pretty much an apprentice or intern and yeah, I kind of shadowed the installers there, learned the basics, you know, just clean up, help answer the phone, and just did whatever I could to just be in that environment of high-end car audio.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, Kind of nerve-wracking right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it definitely was. I was a fish out of water. I had no automotive experience, hardly any car audio experience, hardly any work experience, even, yeah, and it was completely, just a completely different environment that I was thrown into. But I was excited and I loved every day of it, so no regrets.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so Nick recommended that shop, kind of like because he wanted you to get experience first before coming over to him.
Speaker 2:I don't. I don't think he was planning that far ahead. I think he wanted he just wanted me to be exposed to something more than just forums and, like you know, mom and pop shops. I think he wanted me to see what high end audio looks like in person and gain that experience.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you're basically an. You started to become an installer over there.
Speaker 2:No, actually I never got the chance to install while I was there. I was too green. They didn't trust that I could you, you know work on these expensive premium cars. And looking back, I agree I don't think it would have been safe for me to do so yeah, yeah, it is it is yeah, it is kind of hard.
Speaker 1:It's not like so since this was a high-end shop, I'm assuming they had like lambos and porsches and stuff like that. So exactly a porsche door panel doesn't exactly cost 40, 50 bucks right right the most I did is sound deadening and wiring.
Speaker 1:I think that was the extent of my labor in a way, you kind of got thrown into the deep end. If you're working at a high-end shop, normally people start off at like a best buy and work their way up and, you know, gain experience. But yeah, getting thrown into the deep end. What type of things did you learn? A? Lot though did you.
Speaker 2:Some of that experience must have rubbed off on you though I would say the first thing was just a reference of what proper installation looked like, and you won't really learn that from looking at pictures online. So just it. It changed my standard of what is correct and what is not in terms of you know wiring, mounting things securely to the vehicle, how to take panels apart correctly, how to treat and protect the vehicle these sorts of considerations that most people don't think about. I was. It was drilled into my head that these are, first and foremost, the most important things. Also, kind of more of a, I got opened or exposed to custom fabrication.
Speaker 2:The shop that I was at is, I would arguably say, still one of the best custom fabrication shops in the country. Even looking back now they're still the best, and I was very lucky to witness in-person them building, you know custom panels, custom sub-enclosures, you know controller mounts, all these crazy things that I thought were impossible. I saw them do it firsthand. So it kind of gave me the inspiration to know that, hey, I can kind of do this too. It's possible, and I think that was a really, really valuable, valuable experience so are you a fast learner or I?
Speaker 2:yeah, I would say that I'm I pick things up pretty well after. I remember I would see the installers work on the on the router table and I just observe them really closely and I would go home I got my own router table, I build it myself and I would try to copy exactly what they did and kind of learn myself. And I did a lot of that just on my own time. I would experiment, break things, try new things, and that's kind of how I've always learned is just by observing and experimenting myself so from oregon.
Speaker 1:Where did you pivot from there?
Speaker 2:uh, after you got that, yeah, your toes went with the yeah so actually after music car I went to a normal shop to get more experience with normal cars, if that makes sense so you dove into.
Speaker 1:So, if we were to put this into skiing terminology, you went for the double black diamond first, and now you're into bunny slope.
Speaker 2:Yes, okay it's a little backward, but it all worked out. I mean, I got my hands on, you know, normal cars and got a sense of how to work quickly, under pressure and was you know, I was exposed to a lot of variety, but at the same time I I worked on higher end projects on my own. So on my own vehicle, I would try the craziest custom fabrication I could and I would tune, and tune, and tune, and I do all this stuff on my own time so that I had a balance between fast car audio and more premium car audio that makes sense yeah, yeah, oh, it makes perfect sense yeah so tuning is an art itself.
Speaker 1:Are you? Were you teaching yourself how to tune, or were you? Did you have any? Buddies around that were more experienced in tuning, because that's an art in itself.
Speaker 2:It is the first few years of my tuning is all just reading forms. It was I try this, see how it sounds, try that, see how it sounds. And it got me to a certain place. I would say is the objective portion of tuning meaning taking a measurement, interpreting the measurement, making your EQ changes and doing your time alignment, those sorts of things. I had down decently. It was the listening portion and the subjective evaluation. That's the part I couldn't learn online.
Speaker 1:It's literally freaking a dark art, because I literally tried it for like eight months myself and I was just like throw, throw in the towel and have somebody help me, because it was just like yeah, you know, you'd be tuning for four to five hours sitting in your car, sweating bullets and you're like I got this great, I got this awesome tune and then you get in the car the next day and you're like this sounds awful yeah, I, I totally agree that having someone who knows what they're doing teach you is so valuable.
Speaker 2:You skip so much error and mistakes you know so you're at the normal shop.
Speaker 1:What, what happens from there? What's the next step?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so from there. So I built what I consider my first true custom system in my personal car is a Kia Optima at the time and it had laser cut panels and crazy Moscone amps and Focal Utopia speakers and everything was custom that you could possibly imagine Kick panels, front sub pillars, sail panels, everything I could get my hands on that I could customize. I did Just for the sake of practice, you know, and I posted that build online the first time. I hadn't really posted anything beforehand and it got quite a bit of traction because I was some unknown young kid that nobody knew about. It kind of shocked people like wow, that's pretty crazy for someone that doesn't have much experience. And Nick, it kind of caught his attention and he messaged me.
Speaker 1:Long story short, he offered me a position at a shop so from Oregon to New York, right, because that's where new Nick yeah, yes, yes, I was.
Speaker 2:That was quite the move. I pretty much packed up all my belongings and drove cross country from Oregon to New York. That was quite the adventure.
Speaker 1:I mean, most people don't have the guts to do something like that. You must have had a good support system behind you, though, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was. It was definitely scary and I, you know, I talked to my family about it, especially my dad, and you know he just told me, if this is how you're going to grow in your career, then it's worth the risk. And yeah, it's worth the risk you're taking and that I should just go for it. And I was 25 years old at the time, still young, so I didn't have much obligation back home. I could go anywhere I wanted, so I just decided to take that leap.
Speaker 1:So you landed in New York and now you're working with Nick, and what's that like?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was another eye opener Because the level of sound quality that he was doing was completely different from what I was used to back home. So I kind of shopped like wow, like the cars that are coming out of the shop sound miles better than what I was used to. So it kind of kicked me into gear like pick up the pace. You need to get with the schedule here. So it was a really, really eye-opening experience at the start.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Nick's like an audio savant.
Speaker 2:Yeah, definitely, definitely learned a lot from him. So, yeah, the first six months or so at nick's shop I was kind of just getting used to the culture shock of being in new york and getting my life together, starting to settle in and I was starting to work on projects that were out of the scope of my comfort level. So a good example would be what was it? It was a s-class mercedes that came in and I don't think I had ever worked on a car that nice. We wanted to do custom mid-range mounts on the door panels. This particular trim of mercedes had this carbon fiber panel that was worth about four thousand dollars. I was scared to do anything but you know, the work had to get done and I just powered through it and it turned out pretty good. I was very happy with what it was. You know, and that's just kind of how I learn and how I grow. I just push myself into new challenges and it just ends up working out, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Cars like that, I think would make anybody nervous.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean yeah yeah, you don't grow without a challenge. So, yeah, exactly, every car nick shop was just high-end build after high-end build, and we always had to innovate and try new things and make improvements to our process and our install practices and it was just. It was just that all day, every day so how big was uh nick's team?
Speaker 1:how many guys were there at that shop?
Speaker 2:um, I think it was at the beginning, it was nick, kevin mullings and myself, so three at the time oh, okay, yeah, and kevin's quite the fabricator too oh, definitely, yeah, I learned. Yeah, I didn't. I didn't work with him for that long, but I definitely learned a good chunk of custom fab from him, namely how to make a pillars and custom a pillars. Yeah, he was. Yeah, nick and kevin were kind of mentoring me through my first a pillar. That was very, very fun and exciting to do.
Speaker 1:That's awesome I imagine most people would be loving it to have not just only nick but kevin. You got two world-class fabricators there, that some of the best in the country, so you're getting golden nuggets from both of these guys, I imagine yes, yeah, definitely yeah I know kevin's got his own shop now. So, yeah, you're trucking a lawn and uh, what happens next after that? What do you? Uh, what was the next step in?
Speaker 2:your journey. It was about a year year and a half two years of working at Nick's shop. We expanded and merged businesses with another local car audio shop and that was Vanguard, if you've heard of that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I remember when Nick.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so Vanguard was kind of the next chapter, so to say, and it was a continuation of the high-end work we did, with a little more focus on. It was a little bit more premium, I'd say, more professional, got polished and more of that. I know there are things that happened with Vanguard that are probably best kept unsaid. Yeah, so after Nick left Vanguard I was sort of in a state of confusion. I didn't really know where my career was going and I was going through the motions, doing my normal installs.
Speaker 2:Cardio was kind of starting to fade for me at the time. I started caring a little more about you know, like where I'm living, like hanging out with friends, kind of normal life stuff, and cardio was on the back burner for a couple months or so. Out of the blue, I got a phone call from the owner of a shop called AI Design, and this shop is arguably one of the best shops in the entire world in my opinion. They're a very specialized automotive shop, so they don't only do car audio, it's all automotive customization, from wheels to body, to exhaust, to interior design, fabrication and, of course, audio. So that was a new experience for me. And where are they out of?
Speaker 2:They're in Westchester County in New York of they're in westchester county in new york, so still, yeah, so I was over there. I was the main tuning guy and audio technician that's what I originally came on the team for and I event, I kind of expanded my responsibilities to fabrication and design and that's really where I kind of honed my cad skills.
Speaker 1:I'd say is at that shop.
Speaker 2:So you started, you started dabbing with cad at that point. Um, I had yeah, prior to that I had only done cad for laser cutting. So the difference being cad for laser cutting is all in 2D. So it's just a flat canvas that you draw your lines and the laser will kind of cut to those lines. So I had experience with 2D CAD, but 3D CAD was completely new to me.
Speaker 1:I had to learn that from scratch, and that seems to be what the industry industry is going, the direction that it's going with all these new techniques and new hardware and computer-based stuff that's pretty amazing compared to what people could do back in the day, and even what with the 3d scanners and stuff like that it is changing the game.
Speaker 2:I'm I'm seeing it happen live like shops, hobbyists, everyone, the. The accessibility to cad and 3d has gone up so much lately that it's kind of exploding in the in the car audio space so what do you think in in terms of like 3d, cad and stuff like that?
Speaker 1:does it just help you build a faster product? I know it builds a product that looks pretty much seamless once done but is it speeding up the process for you guys or is it just giving you just an awesome finished product at the end of the day?
Speaker 2:It depends on what you're doing. There are actually instances where doing it by hand is a lot faster. You have to use your judgment on what CAD is used for. So let's say you're making just a circular speaker adapter, you could cut that on a router table in probably 10 minutes, versus CAD designing it and waiting for it to get 3D printed. It'll take a whole day. So there are things that can be done faster by hand. But on the flip side, there are definitely things that are faster in cad than it is. You know, putting on the body filler and this fiberglass, waiting for it to dry and sanding it and sanding it again and body filling it again and sanding it again. It definitely makes that process more efficient, if you know what you're doing Saves a lot on manual labor.
Speaker 1:Time is money, so more profit at the end of the day.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it's a product that is a one solid piece of plastic versus 20 pieces of body filler and wood stuff like puzzled together More of a robust end product. It also lets you. One of the main strengths of CAD is that you can design and plan every aspect of the project before you even touch anything physical. You can design the angle where the speaker is aiming, you can design where it is located, you can design what the grill is going to look like, the end result of the aesthetics, or you can design how much airspace is in the past. You can do all in cad and know for sure. Okay, from a to z, this is how it's going to turn out and there's no guesswork involved.
Speaker 1:Yeah, some of the stuff, some of the stuff that I've seen like online and I see like the 3d renderings and they're seeing they're they already have a picture of what's going to happen before it's even happened. Exactly.
Speaker 1:Because some of the work that I've seen like from I see a lot in the Asian market. They use the 3D CAD and I'm like how come a lot of this stuff hasn't come over here in the US? Peter was actually talking about that how these guys can like build a huge system on a car in one day over there at the asian market yeah, I see that on instagram.
Speaker 1:I'm like, wow, these guys are freaking, doing some works of art, and but he said that a lot of them don't don't do like sound treatment and stuff like that, or um, they're not big on front front woofers yet, but he said some of those guys like uh mop the floor with some of the installers over here from the us I could see that yeah you have to keep in mind that design and manufacturing extremely it's extremely well represented over in asia.
Speaker 2:That's where everything's built and manufactured. So their skill set in cad and 3d printing and manufacturing is miles above what we have over here. So it makes perfect sense that they'd have that kind of talent. We're not competing against that right now, but hopefully in the next coming years some of us americans can level playing field.
Speaker 1:We'll see well, the thing is is like you know. So you know, I know you spoke about kia and toyota earlier, but when you have like a lamborghini or a mercedes, or people can make some amazing stuff by hand. But when you can have something 3d CAD printed or you know, printed, uh, and it literally looks like it came like that from the factory, it that's pretty amazing. You know what I mean. And if you can afford something like that, most people are going to side with something like that, where it, where it integrates with the car, where I've seen some of this stuff, some of this stuff, some of the the cars from morel looks like, you know, it came like that from the factory.
Speaker 1:So it's pretty amazing, uh, to do something like that where it doesn't look tacked on or it doesn't look custom, so to speak, it looks literally, looks oem, which is amazing. You know, some people love that, that custom look. But I'm kind of a OE plus plus kind of guy. And when you can make some pillars that literally look like. You know, if you sit somebody in there and they're like those, don't. Those don't look custom at all, that looks OEM. That's got some value to it, in my opinion, you know.
Speaker 2:Absolutely Not to discount guys that can build well by hand. I have worked with installers throughout my career. They could create things that look very OEM all by hand, but that skill set is very rare and hard to come across in the industry. Um, it cad definitely makes it more possible because you don't need the fine hand skill to create those types of things you could. If you can imagine it, then there's a possibility that you can design it and print it, so it kind of just makes it more accessible to more people.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah, yeah, I've seen. I mean, you know, take Kevin, for example Some of the pillars that he does. They look like works of art. I'm not discounting anything those guys do Absolutely.
Speaker 2:It's actual sculpture.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but it's labor intensive and I'm sure. Kevin, if he can make something that's even better looking from, you know, from computer aided drafting, he's going to welcome it because it's. It also gives him a higher profit margin to be able to to do something like that. He could probably even demand more money for that type of.
Speaker 2:I'm of the opinion that you should charge Based on the end result. So if you could get a better end result using CAD, you should charge more for it, because it's that much better. Of course, yeah, it doesn't matter that it took less time or it was less sweat and tears to build. I think that if you're delivering a product of a certain level or caliber, then you could charge what that's worth.
Speaker 1:So you're at that shop. What was it again? It was called AI. Yeah, the shop name is AI Design. Now are you still there or did you move on from that shop?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I think what was it? March of this year I made the decision to start my own company. And what's it called? Yes, so it's called Audio in Reach. And pretty much the reason I started it was to get back to my roots.
Speaker 2:I came into this industry, or started car audio as a career, mainly because I wanted to improve my skills, learn and just get better so that my car got better. I know that sounds kind of odd, but that's really the reason I started. This is for the love of audio, just to get a better sounding, better looking car audio system. And after all the experiences I've been through and um shops I've been to cars I've worked on, I was starting to lose sense of that original purpose and my passion was kind of dying for audio. I didn't care as much about sound quality and you know the little details and all the little nuances that we care about in this hobby. I started, you know I started missing it, so I decided, you know I'm going to do something that's more aligned with what I want to do, what I'm more passionate about, and that's exactly what Audio Reach is. So we pretty much only do audio work. You know that's what I want to do is pure audio at the highest level that I possibly can, so are you a?
Speaker 1:solo act or you got guys working with you over at audio and reach.
Speaker 2:Yeah, right now I'm solo. Um, the business is very new, probably five months in, yeah, and I kind of just saw an opportunity to change the way that people look at custom fabrication. Um, usually you have to drop your car off at a shop for weeks at a time months sometimes and sometimes people don't have shops that are close to them. They have to drive bays or have to ship their car something wild. And I thought, okay, how do we get custom work to more people? Okay, wait, I have this CAD thing. Maybe this CAD thing can help, okay, and I kind of just put the pieces together, came up with a game plan of how I can do things remotely and once that clicked, I can scan cars, build things remotely for people and ship them things, all without having their actual car with me. And that idea kind of spiraled and grew into what the business is now.
Speaker 1:Okay, I'm getting what you're putting down. That's why you call it audio, and reach.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah, that's a great, that's a great idea yeah, that's really yeah, it's, that was the the main purpose of the company while I worked. So I worked at these high-end shops and we had great clients. Sometimes it felt kind of weird when we would spend months upon months on one car and deliver the end result to the client and they're like oh cool, thanks Bye, I'm like what, come on. We put our blood, sweat and tears into that project yeah, I was kind of like not really satisfied with that experience.
Speaker 1:So I wanted to work with clients that are more that would be more appreciative of, of custom work and that's kind of more of the hobbyist space so how do you get like, let's say, I have um 2025 toyota camry, for example, and it's got a new you know, let's say toyota for 2025 or 2026. They they changed up the dash and the pillars aren't like the 2024 version. But I'm all the way out in Los Angeles, california, and I want some pillars. From the famous Matt Kim Do I say hey, matt, I want some pillars, this is what I want. I know your CAD machine is all the way down east in New York. So what do you do? Do you rent? Do you find somebody with that make and model and 3D scan that car? How does that work?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're pretty on the dot. So when someone reaches out to me asking for something particular in their car, the first thing I do is I research that vehicle because I need to know that it's accessible to me locally. There have been many times where someone has a rare, old classic car that is that's in Los Angeles and I can't do anything for them. It's it's a one-of-one car. I have no way to get to it and unfortunately I can't do that remotely. I would need to be there in person. So once I confirm that okay, I can easily find this car on Enterprise or Turo or Hertz. Then we kind of talk about what they want, what speakers they're using, how it'll fit, how it'll'll look, and we kind of go through a little consultation on that and, yeah, then I rent the car, do my 3d scanning and once I get into the design phase I we work with the client to to kind of finalize exactly what they want. And so far the clients have been really great to work with. Most people are pretty cool just letting me take the reins and choose a design and choose how the speaker is going to mount and all the little fine details. They just let me work it out which has been nice, um, yeah and that, and then it goes off to the 3d printer and then I finish by hand.
Speaker 2:I think this portion is what people don't. They don't get to see is from cad to finish. They don't get to see what's involved. I think there's a misconception out there that just because you can do it in CAD means that it'll magically turn into this amazing custom finished product in a car, and that's pretty far from my experience. I basically have to use or I had to use, all the years of me learning manual fabrication in order to get to bridge that gap between CAD and a final product. And there's. So there's still sanding, there's still cutting and grinding and upholstery and you know all the other things involved. But yeah, that's the general gist or workflow of a typical project.
Speaker 1:That's awesome, that's really. I could see that change in the game. So you're saying with the CAD design it gets you about 75, 80% there, and then you have to get in there and do it the old-fashioned way.
Speaker 1:Quote unquote exactly, and start sanding and fabricating and finishing upholstering or painting and stuff like that to give them the finished product. So what? What is your typical turnaround time on uh like, let's say, a pair of pillars for a car for a prospective buyer out there that's out in alaska and he's getting his uh tesla delivered soon and he wants a pair of pillars from matt kim so the turnaround time once I actually start the project, I'd say about one to two weeks is an average.
Speaker 2:um, it goes by pretty quickly at this point because I've been able to kind of hone in on a on a workflow and you know, you see patterns in the workflow and like, okay, I can make it more efficient by doing that and I can scan it this way so I can get a cleaner scan and I can print it in this way, so it's less sanding later. And I've gotten my process down to a point where things are pretty streamlined and it just from A to B to C to D. However, the caveat is that's when I start the project.
Speaker 2:so right now I have quite a long backlog of projects that are waiting to be done yeah and it's just consistently growing and growing and there was a period of time where I just stopped taking jobs on. I can't guys, I can't take on anymore. There are too many people waiting on me. I can't keep on adding people to the wait list. Yeah, so I, for a good three months or so, I just completely stopped taking uh deposits.
Speaker 2:Wow, but yeah, um slowly getting through them three months, three to four months in advance already, huh yeah, and I I try to keep it capped at three months because you know you can't predict the future. Yeah, things can go wrong, timelines can get stretched and people start getting antsy like hey, when are you going to start mine? You know I've got 10 other ones I've worked on first. Sorry, yeah so it's.
Speaker 2:It's that's really the battle is schedule and getting projects done at a high level of finish, but also trying to meet time expectations and time frames, and that's really been the challenge of business thus far yeah, that's amazing.
Speaker 1:So, but you, you're solo right now. Have you considered like, maybe picking up like a, like somebody, a protege, or you know a new up and coming, matt Kim, that's that's you know, kind of like where you were, you know, when you were 24, 25?.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the thought has crossed my mind. I do need, I think I need to set up my business a little bit more, a little bit more professionally first, which is I'm in the process of doing so. So I'm moving to Houston, texas, very soon. Oh wow, for anyone that hasn't heard everybody's going to texas.
Speaker 1:What's going on, man? What's in the water over there?
Speaker 2:I know miguel rios just moved out there too, right exactly yeah, yeah, when he, we almost came to the same decision at the same time. So we were talking and he's like, hey, I'm going to college station, and right at the same time I decided, hey, maybe I should go to houston and it'll be a good place to kind of to grow the business and establish a like a professional scene there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's dead center in the country now I know, I know why miguel went out there but yeah what made you decide texas of all places? Like what?
Speaker 2:so one. I have family there and it makes the decision easier okay I have a nice support system.
Speaker 2:Um, I can always like lean on my dad for help. He's actually probably going to be my first employee. He's going to do some social media content, help me make videos, take pictures and help with the marketing aspect of the business Just kind of expose more people to what I'm doing. Because it's hard, because I'm solo. I'm focused on finishing projects. That's my main concern right now and I don't have three hands to work on the social media side and post pictures and engage with the community. I can't do it all, so it'll be nice to have someone helping me with that. I think it'll help show more people what's possible with what I'm doing. So I'm really excited for that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's good to have somebody you know family or a loved one, or even a spouse or a girlfriend you know, or a significant other to take some of the lighter stuff off your hands so that you could concentrate on, you know, not the real work, but you know, the work that requires your specialized skills, so that that'll free you up to get these things done quicker. So, besides pillars, what else do you offer? Like I know you, uh, I know you did a front woofer for Mike, like what, what type of things is uh audio and reach doing for the people out there?
Speaker 2:So right now my main, my main category has been pillars and mid-range dashpods. We already kind of talked about pillars, but the dashpod idea it actually came from my own vehicle, yeah. So the way this all started was I wanted to build dash mounts for a mid-range in my car and I needed a way to control the angle of the speaker, how it's reflecting off the glass and what kind of enclosure that it's in and how it's going to look. I needed a way to do that. So I turned to CAD in my own car.
Speaker 2:This was probably a year and a half ago and I was able to create a mid-range install that I was really happy with and it sounded great and looked great. It was all built in CAD. So I posted that online on think strictly sound quality, yeah, and it got a good amount of traction and I had a few few guys reach out to me asking if I can do that in their car. So I think my first customer, um, had a toyota tacoma and he wanted to fit his mid-ranges and his dash location in a way that's more acoustically favorable.
Speaker 2:So a lot of cars do have OEM locations for mid-ranges, but most of the time they're kind of sunken down in there and they're behind a little two and a half inch opening and the sound can't get out freely.
Speaker 2:So a lot of my clients, they want the best from their speaker so they need an install that'll respect the caliber of speaker they're using. So that's kind of where this CAD mid-range sort of idea came about. So basically I'm building dashpods that mount the speakers in a better orientation in terms of how they're angled or how far they are from the windshield. Because, yeah, the reflection that a speaker makes off the windshield, that behavior is very important to consider, especially in your mid-range. So moving it higher or closer to the windshield it makes the reflection very similar to the direct sound wave coming out of the speaker. They're so close together that it almost behaves as one sound versus two distinct reflections or a distinct reflection, so to say. So yeah, I've been doing lots of custom dashpods with that idea and so far it's been it's been working well. I've sent out a good dozen or so out in the open and I think people have had very good results with, like acoustically, with with my dash mounts yeah, I've been seeing that a lot lately.
Speaker 1:Um, because I'm on, uh, sq sound quality only too, and uh, I've noticed, you know, I think a lot of people are starting to uh, uh, not steer away from the pillar builds, but they're starting to. I I'm seeing a lot more cleaner installs because it looks, it looks more oe-ish when you put the, the, uh the speakers, because, because some people don't even have dash mount locations and your dash mount pods can offer that type of install for somebody who doesn't even have a hole in their dash right.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, there have been times. A good example is the Grand Cherokee Luke's working on. Yeah, so that car has nothing there, it's just straight vinyl or leather dash, no hole, nothing. In those types of situations, the CAD work is very, very powerful. I'd say, yeah, powerful. I'd say yeah, um, yeah, it pretty much allowed us to create a pod that'll sit on the dash but mounts from the underside of the dash, so it's pretty much rock solid and will never go anywhere, and without cad that's very difficult. So, and for instances like that, it's been great. Um, so, for instances like that, it's been great.
Speaker 1:I mean not to discount the amount of labor it takes to do a dash mount. Oh no, If you have a car.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've seen people remove windshields Exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 2:If you have a car that has no OEM hole there, then it's either you remove the windshield or remove the dash from the car to do it right. Yeah, and I think that's something important to mention is people see, they see these builds online and they're like, oh, I want that too. And they reach out to me hey, can I have dash pods in my xyz car? Yeah, and I said, sure, I can do that, but I just want to. You have to keep in mind what's involved in a dash mount install. So it's either a windshield or it's coming out of the dash. Yeah, and I think people there there are people out there that don't wrap their head around that. But building the pot is one thing, but installing it properly is a whole other beast.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's the easy part, because I know.
Speaker 1:I'm in the car business. So I know that if you remove a windshield on a modern car these days it's a, you know it's not just hey, safe, like can you come and remove this, this windshield, and, you know, come back a week later and remount it. They have to like recalibrate everything because of all the modern uh stuff that's on cars these days with the with the uh, with the self-driving. I know on my car I have, um, it's got the, the thing where it's uh, it hits the brakes in case of emergency and it has the assistant driving and yeah, and, and it's got the camera yeah, it's got cameras and it's got some sort of radar in the front bumper.
Speaker 1:So when my windshield breaks. It's not a simple 300 replacement. It's like a freaking two thousand dollar job because they got to recalibrate everything and if they don't recalibrate everything, the dash. All the lights you know light up like a christmas tree so sometimes, on an install like that, might be just easier to remove the dash. But even then that's a big that. That's a big undertaking, you know. But I would almost, I would assume on an older.
Speaker 1:Like you know, I'm just throwing this out there. But like an older Jeep it wouldn't be so bad where they could just remove the windshield or remove the dash and they don't have to worry about all this electronic wizardry. But most people, most cars any car built in the last like practically 10 years has all kinds of electronic wizardry back there on the windshield. So but I mean that's the price you pay for Sonic, for Sonic Nirvana, wouldn't you say you know if you're, if you're not, it's not for the faint of heart I'll say that.
Speaker 2:Yep, good people looking for that last or that next performance bump and is are willing to do anything it takes. That's that's what it's for. It's not for the typical cardio obvious to to take on that kind of job yeah.
Speaker 1:So for the enthusiasts out there, you know, or to do it yourself, or what what should someone look for if they're, if they're looking to hire somebody like you or hiring a shop? You know, because some of the listeners out there, they could be out in California, florida, texas, oregon, wherever you know. I'm just throwing this out there. What, what, what should someone look for when they're, when they're looking to hire somebody of your caliber, nick's caliber or Kevin's? Caliber.
Speaker 2:So what I would look for in an installer. It's not what you would typically look for, so I wouldn't get entrenched in the typical car audio vocabulary what brand do they use or what, what head units are installing, or what subs they use, or you know, like that kind of. Those are kind of buzzwords and cardio that an installer can throw at you like we do this product and that's why we're so good, like I think you should be very careful about that type of vocabulary and instead you should look at someone who knows, or can demonstrate that they have a deep knowledge about vehicle acoustics. That's the first and foremost the most important thing. So someone that understands how sound works in cars.
Speaker 2:We're literally doing car audio, so that's, you know, like how reflections work. If you can ask your installer, like if I, if I mount my speaker like this, and it reflects off of the windshield, like is that a good or bad thing, and based on the response they give, you can kind of assess do they know what they're talking about? Yeah, or maybe you can ask them what is time alignment for, what is eq for? And based on the answer they give and the level of depth that they can explain that answer in kind of shows you are they about it or are they not? You can ask, yeah, all sorts of questions.
Speaker 1:Some shops aren't your one stop shop either, like I'll admit you know. That's why like people like you exist. Like people like you exist, people like Miguel Rios exist because sometimes you can bring your car to like a shop that has an awesome fabricator, an awesome installer and you know somebody who's going to give you a really nice finished product, but nobody in that shop can tune like Nick can, or nobody in that shop can tune like miguel can. So I'm just using those guys as examples.
Speaker 1:But yeah, uh, there's a lot of good tuners out there so sometimes it's okay to bring your car to two or three different spots. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:To the sort of like a contractor gets the plumber the plumber that he trusts and he gets the sheet rocker that he trusts. It's the sum of all parts that you know. You get matt kim to do your fabrication, your pillars or your or your mid pods or whatever, and you get, you know, this guy to do whatever, the, the sound treatment and all that stuff. Sometimes it's not a a one-stop shop. It's great when it's a one-stop shop because they can do everything and you can come back, you know, hand over your keys and come get your car in a month or two or whatever it is. But sometimes you know we're not afforded that, that luxury, and we have to kind of go to two or three different or four different uh, people to get to get the job done.
Speaker 2:You know yeah, I see what you mean. I think, uh, yeah, just basically, it's good to look for, to find a mentor in this space that could at least point you in the right direction, towards the shop. Yeah, like you said, the shop can handle the installation portion. Like there are tons and tons of shops that can mount things safely, do your wiring cleanly, make sure things don't blow up, like every every reputable shop out there can do that. I think what sets a shop apart, a good one from a great one is, like you said, that full one-stop shop A to Z understanding of audio. That's quite rare to see.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, if you could find a mentor who does have an understanding A to Z, they can help you pick out okay, I'm going to do my car like this over here and they can help you with system design. System design is another huge thing that you need to look for in a shop. Can they design the system fundamentally to reach the goal that you want? Tuning is something you do at the very end. System design is what you do at the very beginning to ensure that the tuning is going to do anything useful.
Speaker 2:You know so having your systems, having the install done solidly and correctly, and then the tune is really what brings it all together.
Speaker 1:And it all merges in one cohesive work of art. I would say, you know, because once everything starts to to mesh together, you're, you're, just. That's when you get that, that, that Kool-Aid smile on your face. So, matt, where?
Speaker 2:do you see the SoundQ hobby in like five or 10 years? Um, so I think so. I was at a show recently. It was just a get together. It was for peter show.
Speaker 2:Um, peter from psn, he came over to the states to do a training and there was a little get together afterwards and I attended for fun and what I noticed was that the level of car that was there the average kind of level was a lot higher than I expected and it made me realize how good that hobbyists are becoming at car audio. Yeah, it's not just industry guys anymore that are on top. It's like, okay, everyone's kind of catching up and the whole tide is lifting. That's what I've noticed and that's where I see it going. I see, um, hobbyists competing directly with industry guys, because I think the knowledge is all out there, it's all accessible because of the internet, because of social media, because of AI. It's all there and it's just a matter of will whether you want to go through the work to actually execute the work.
Speaker 2:But yeah, I think that with more knowledge, the level of car audio will just keep on going up and up and up and yeah, I'm excited, the more cars that are good, the better, the better the hobby gets in general. So let's say, someone new in the in the hobby comes into this, comes into a show and all the cars there are just amazing. Then they're going to be more excited to do something of their own and they'll also have a lot better mentorship in the community versus, let's say, 10 years ago when half the guys didn't know what a dsp was. You know, it's what, what's the point? So it's just I think right now is a more exciting time to kind of be in this hobby and, yeah, just excited for better sounding cars it is because we're getting a.
Speaker 1:I mean not for nothing, but we're getting a smarter bunch coming on and you know, I would never think of you know, like cad or 3d printing or you know the, the things that people are doing these days with the dsp and uh, now with um. I haven't heard a car yet with it, but I hear the. The riven uh up mixer is pretty amazing but you know people are.
Speaker 1:People are really starting to figure out how cars are. Are you know how to uh work their systems with the car, so to speak? You know what I mean. Instead of they would do kind of trial and error and uh experiment with different drivers and stuff like that. A lot of do-it-yourselfers still do that, but you know, now, with the, with the advent of computers and and whatnot, here's one thing I always thought I've, I've, because I heard andy talking about some something along these lines and uh, I mean I could be crazy. But wouldn't it be cool if there was something that sort of like scans the car out, kind of like in a 3D form, and instead of you know scanning the car for how to mount things, it would be sort of like in reverse, where you're scanning the car to figure out where the best placement for speakers would be. Do you know what I'm saying? Like, like, where?
Speaker 1:Yeah, sort of how, like the tesla I don't know if you've ever seen how tesla sees the road the tesla doesn't see the road like we do like with our eyes, the tesla sees the the road in like bits and zeros and ones like it almost looks like terminator, looking, you know, through the, through the tesla's eyes, so to speak. But um, I'm talking about.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like something that scans the car from the inside and says okay, this is where you're, you know, and you input the parameters of the tweeters that you're choosing and you put the input, the parameters of the mid-ranges in the mid-base, the drivers that you're using in the, in the, in the software calculates the, the airspace that's in that cabin and and calculates the angles of your, of your pillars and windows, and says you know, this would be the optimal location for your tweeters and this would be the optimal location I don't know, I'm just spitballing here, but do you know what I mean?
Speaker 2:yeah, I can see something like that being a possibility. I think bringing that to a practical level, actually doing that, would be, that would be an amazing feat of engineering. That's yeah, that would. That would change. If something like that existed, it would completely change car audio.
Speaker 1:Well, I want some sort of royalty if you uh if you figure something out like that man, I want some sort of 25 royalty. Okay, it's, it's it's on the interwebs man yeah so we're uh. To wrap this up, where can more uh people learn about audio and Reach and follow your work? You want to give the listeners your website, socials and upcoming projects or events.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so website is simply audioinreachcom. Currently working on updating that. I've got probably months of work that I've done that I haven't posted, so there's a lot of unknown work out there. So that's coming soon in the gallery page and you can find me on Facebook and Instagram, audio InReach. Yeah, just find me on there. You can also email me. It's right on the website. Yeah, we've got a form submission on the website so you just tell me what vehicle you have, your make model, and we can just get into a discussion about what you want, all that stuff. So, yeah, pretty easy to reach me. Yeah, like I said, moving the business over to Houston, texas. If anyone's local to Texas or nearby, we can see what we can do in person.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I know you talked about Texas earlier, but when are you moving there?
Speaker 2:It'll be right around the start of September.
Speaker 1:Oh okay, oh, oh wow, that's coming up real soon yeah, yeah wow, okay, all right, matt. Well, I think that about wraps it up, man. Thank you for coming on the uh sound cue garage podcast. Uh, hang on one second. Okay, say goodbye to Matt.