BOOM Cars : Super-Stereo Craze Is Deafening Its Participants, Irritating Passers-By
Something strange happens when Peter Hofsaess turns up his car stereo.
“It’s kind of difficult to breathe and swallow,” said the 21-year-old waiter. “The entire car starts moving. You start moving. It’s really something if you’re not used to it.”
Of course, Hofsaess doesn’t have your typical factory-installed auto stereo. His beige Plymouth Sapparo is hooked up with no less than $12,000 worth of Sony equipment that’s capable of blasting 143 decibels of music through 24 speakers.
In a word, his system is LOUD--louder than a jet taking off or a jackhammer tearing up the sidewalk.
But Hofsaess is no audio freak. The latest expression of automobile hip these days is a car stereo like his, so big and so loud that it can blow out windshields and bulge car doors.
Common Sound With Cruisers
The boom-boom-boom of a super stereo bass has become a common sound along popular cruising streets from coast to coast, and hundreds of competitions called “sound-offs” are held around the country.
Super-stereo owners even have their own Top 40 song--a tune by female rappers L’Trimm called “Cars With the Boom” in which the duo professes, “We love the guys with the cars that go boom.”
Meanwhile, police, community leaders and hearing specialists are worried that all this booming may be getting out of hand. They say the stereos drown out emergency sirens, anger neighbors and can turn the inner ear to mush.
“It’s noise pollution,” said Sgt. Dennis Zine of the Los Angeles Police Department’s traffic division. “These cars just drive back and forth, cruising, playing their stereos so loud you can hear it a block away.”
“It’s a nuisance, and it’s dangerous,” said Bellflower City Councilman Randy Bomgaars.
“To me these stereo competitions are nothing more than a contest to see who can go deaf first,” said Dr. Maurice Miller, an audiologist at New York City’s Lenox Hill Hospital.
For super-stereo owners, such talk is harder on the ears than the rock group Van Halen at 124 decibels. To them, the high-powered systems are more than just a hobby--they’re an art form, an expression of individuality and a statement to society.
“Who’s anybody to tell me what’s too loud?” asked Hofsaess, who has been cited a number of times for noise violations. “I mean, what might be too loud for one person, might not be loud enough for another person.”
For Hofsaess of Fullerton, very few stereos are loud enough, including his, which has unofficially reached 143 decibels and officially peaked at 136 decibels at a contest.
To put that in perspective, the sound of a jet taking off ranges from 125 decibels to 148 decibels. A power saw is 110 decibels, a drill press is in the 90s. Normal conversation is 60 to 65 decibels.
And since the decibel scale--like the earthquake magnitude scale--increases geometrically, a 143-decibel stereo is thousands of times louder than a 65-decibel conversation.
Frank Schettini, 22, of Chatsworth, said he has reached 141 decibels with his 1,000-watt Rockford-Fosgate system featuring 21 speakers, all packed into a customized four-wheel drive Chevrolet pickup. The price tag for components and installation: $20,000.
‘Addicting Type of Thing’
“I’m partially going deaf, but I blast mine as loud as I can everywhere I go,” he said.
Schettini, who operates a car customizing business, enters his truck named Big Dummy II in as many competitions as he can.
“It’s an addicting type of thing. You get, like, the fever,” he said. “Somebody started it and now it’s just going. It’s another stage of competition for people who are not athletically inclined.”
When Schettini cranks up his stereo, the music fills the whole vehicle. The force of the wind from the rear-mounted speakers feels as if somebody were kicking the seat.
He called it a “clean sound” and likened the pressure on the ears to “going to the bottom of the swimming pool. It hurts your ears maybe for a minute after you get out. The harsh highs and harsh mids (middle ranges) tend to hurt longer.”
Thousands of car stereo buffs like Schettini enter sound competitions, which have names like “Full-on Audio Bash,” “Sound Quake” and “Thunder on Wheels.”
Besides volume, Alpine stereo’s “Car Audio Nationals” judges audio quality, installation and other categories. Alpine sponsored more than 300 contests this season, its biggest year yet.
“It’s the creativity they’re showing off. It’s a personal statement,” said Jim Wunderlich, technical communications specialist for Alpine.
The Texas-based “Thunder on Wheels” specializes in volume competition. This year’s national winner, Thomas Fitcher, 22, of Houston, blasted his stereo at 154.7 decibels.
Anyone who lives near popular cruising streets in areas like Hollywood and the San Fernando Valley knows it’s the thump of noisy woofers, not the neatness of installation, that is prized by car stereo enthusiasts.
“It’s a growing problem. We call it the boom-boom,” said Zine, adding, “It’s a hazard.” A motorist with his ears full of super-sound is likely not to hear an approaching ambulance, paramedic or police car.
The car stereos have become such an irritation in Bellflower that Bomgaars says he may draft a city ordinance or press for a state law to quiet them.
“We’ve asked the Sheriff’s Department to enforce the current laws as strictly as possible,” he said. “Then we’ll see what needs to be done.”
