There can be no denying that Sony’s presence in the car audio field has been a little, well, flat in recent years.

Sony might be a household name and command respect for its television and home entertainment products, but as regards car audio, there hasn’t been much to talk about for a while.

True, the up market XES technology was there for a while, but it was too up market for most and the price plus features gap back to the lower end of the market was a chasm that simply wasn’t being filled by the one and only. Hopefully, all the Sony executives out there will keep reading before diving for their phones to abuse this author for those opening lines!

Because you see, Sony has turned the corner with respect to car audio.

The Xplod factor
All that pent up technology and resources resulted in the Xplod range of gear being released last year and with a new range of Xplod equipment just around the corner, things are looking up for Sony on the car front.

Add in entirely new marketing strategies, including the appointment of state reps dedicated solely to car audio and the revival is underway.

Adrian Infini in Perth is actually Sony’s first ever WA car audio only rep’. Not surprisingly, one of the first things Adrian wanted to do was get a new WA demo car happening and the result is this 98 VT, "S Pack".

Admittedly, Commodore demo cars have been done to death of late and perhaps Adrian could have gone for something a bit more stand alone. But Australians love their Commodores and nothing complements a classy sound system better than a classy car.

Installation duties on the new WA Sony Commodore were entrusted to a relatively new Perth car audio outfit called Interact in the northern suburb of Joondalup.

Interact’s head man, Derek Gale, has been around the Perth scene for a while and performed all of the installation on the Sony Commodore himself.

In search of quality
But what sort of a sound did Adrian want to recreate in the new demo car anyway ?

"We wanted a focus more towards sound quality rather than SPL," he says. "There are so many people out there who think that sloppy, booming bass is all that matters. I wanted to reproduce sound the way it was meant to be heard, like in a studio."

Preparation work for the install saw eight (8) litres of Rockford noise killer applied to the doors, boot and parcel shelf. Indeed, the parcel shelf and stripped down boot were extensively treated in preparation for the major installation work that would be carried out in those regions, while Dynamat pads were added to the factory door locations.

With the preparation work complete, the model selection process began with some guidance from Sony’s product specialist in Sydney, Stuart Jackson.

One of the first pieces of hardware to be chosen was a MDX-C8900 head unit. "Obviously we wanted the concept of MD in dash - even if everyone else is now using it, Sony invented it!" says Jackson.

Starting out with power
The MDX-C8900 is no ‘El Cheapo’ radio, but the most powerful head unit in Sony’s present range.

With the ability to control an external DSP unit and a rated output of 180 Watts (45 Watts X 4) and twin 4 Volt pre-outs, the 8900 is a good start to any system.

There’s no television screen and no fancy graphic equaliser lights therefore, but the second DIN slot has been taken up by a custom panel with the X from the Xplod logo backlit as its central feature.

Sony rely on their powerful X logo and Derek has done a terrific job of recreating it here from a Mazda 121 single-din pocket, a fluoro light with transformer, red perspex and some black vinyl! It’s certainly a neat touch.

Backing the 8900 up is Sony’s CDX-727 10-disc CD changer, complete with the electronic shock protection (ESP) that any decent stacker should have these days.

So far everything sounds like your normal high quality car audio install, until we get to the piece of equipment that essentially controls the whole system in this car.

Three vital links in one
We’ve seen a few high tech digital processors enter the market these past few years and Sony’s answer is the XDP 4000X.

It borrows its technology directly from the XES Reference Series and is basically three devices in one - a digital crossover unit, a 10-band digital L/R parametric equaliser and a time alignment tool.

With this kind of flexibility for EQ, cross-over points and independent time alignment to all speakers there are virtually no limits in creating personalised sound.

The really neat feature of the XDP-4000X however, is that it comes with Sony’s Digital Sound Creator software. With this loaded into your lap top or home PC, the XDP can be data cable connected to the computer and the car’s sound system adjusted in every way possible.

During the photo shoot, we thought Adrian was going to perform some running adjustments to his car with the lap top, but when the boot lid was lifted and the data cable got plugged into the sound system, we had to have a second look!

Considering the capabilities of the XDP-4000X, the crossover points and other capabilities of the system’s four XM604EQX amplifiers are not used.

In other words, the amps in this car are simply used to amplify, delivering 60 Watts RMS to all coaxial and component speakers (4-Ohm) and 150 Watts RMS bridged mono to each of the four subs. The system is actually run fully active except for the four tweeters which are parallelled.

Bearing all of this in mind, the four outputs from the XDP-4000X have been set up as outputs taking care of bass (99 Hz and down), mid bass (99Hz -1.25Khz), mid range (250Hz - 6.5Khz) and high (6.5Khz plus).

Some easy choices
Now as any Commodore enthusiast will tell you, only the Calais comes with speaker holes in the trimming of the rear shelf, even if the metal work underneath in all models has the appropriate holes.

Obviously, this made the choice of XS-F6920 6 X 9s for the rear shelf an easy one and once again Derek did his thing here with some nice custom covers.

The Sony 6" magnesium cone splits (XS-HF78) had their mid ranges on the other hand - all four of them - fitted into the stock factory door locations with relative ease.

As can be seen too, they’ve had their Sony Xplod badges removed and these now reside on the stock Commodore grilles along with a coat of black spraypaint. A small touch true, but it’s part of the overall detailing which makes a system like this notable for not only its sound, but its presentation.

As for the four tweeters, these have been kept nice and high and those associated with the HF78s in the rear doors have actually been brought up to the front of the car. As such, a tweeter in each dash air vent fires directly at the windscreen, while two others on custom pods in the front door sailplanes, have been appropriately angled into the car on axis.

Having listened to a number of tracks in the WA Sony Commodore myself, there’s no denying that the staging is quite high. Undoubtedly, the high frontal position of the tweeters helps in this regard, but there’s another aspect to this car and that’s its tight, punchy bass.

Those XSF6920 mid bass two-ways on the rear shelf must surely help to throw the bass forwards, but what the listener receives is exceptionally tight and accurate. There’s some time alignment trickery at play here too.

Perhaps surprisingly, each XSL1230 sub is only helping to generate 150Watts RMS in its bridged mono mode. That’s not a lot of power for a sub in anyone’s book, yet there’s no denying the power of the bass in this car and perhaps the key is the Isobaric set up inside the sub box.

While the sub box was the biggest job down the back of the car, it never ceases to amaze how individual installers can come up with so many different ways to create Commodore boot installs that are individual and unique. (Maybe the editor should do a feature on ‘Best Commodore Boot Installs’!) No, that’s your job! Ed.

With the sound deadening completed, Derek began recreating the Sony Commodore’s boot by turning the spare wheel well into an amplifier well.

As is always the case, various ways to mount the subs were considered, but the effect here works well and is certainly aesthetically pleasing.

To the left resides the XDP4000X processor and 10-disc stacker. Whilst it appears that they have simply been mounted to a mere side panel, behind the scenes there is an intricate MDF scaffolding arrangement that holds both pieces of electronic hardware firmly in place.

On the right hand side of the boot is the system’s single stiffening capacitor and a couple of distribution blocks to feed the four amplifiers.

A bit of art, a bit of magic…
But back to that Isobaric subwoofer box, which is constructed mainly from 18mm MDF. Derek described the construction of the box as "time consuming" rather than difficult, with plenty of hand laid fibreglass and sound deadening being applied.

The box is firmly secured to the floor of the car and further support comes from brackets on either side. For visual effect, the inside faces of the box were painted red and then yellow and black paint was simply ‘splattered’ on for an explosive type effect.

At least you don’t need to be an artist for that bit, although the use of mirrors to give the illusion of additional subs under the floor has a touch of David Copperfield about it!

The plexiglass is 20mm thick and had to be cut by hand specifically to fit. The Isobaric arrangement meanwhile sees 16mm between the faces of the two pairs of subs, with each sub in a fully sealed 1.3 cubic foot enclosure.

Actually, the front two subs are not in fully sealed enclosures, as they port through the arm rest.

Perhaps though, the trickiest part of the entire boot install was creating that Xplod logo on the inside roof of the boot. Hours of fibreglassing weren’t the only hassles here.

"There were a few failed attempts with halogen lights and different colours of perspex," Adrian explained. "After much brainstorming and driving around to signage companies, we finally came up with a plan to create a hologram effect."

Three separate colour layers of the X have been used between two layers of clear 5mm perspex to create the ‘illusion’, but a cavity with another mirror is also employed. Add some sunlight and the effect is quite unique.