Mobile Electronics Australia

Scott Buwalda needs no introduction when it comes to car audio. Scott is a seasoned champion of sound quality competition, and more recently, founder of speaker company Hybrid Audio Technologies.

Scott has been building his 1995 Nissan Silvia GT-R in somewhat secrecy over the past 24 months from his home workshop in Georgia, USA. With over 10,000 hours of labour invested in the car’s last two iterations dating back to 2003, it’s no real surprise when you start delving deeper into what could arguably be the most advanced car audio system we’ve seen.

According to Buwalda, there are three simple areas when building a car of this nature which he refers to as the three S’s. Speed, Styling and Sound. This Silvia certainly addresses each of those aspects!

If you’re going to build a car to this level there is no alternative but to strip it back naked and start with a clean canvas. To complete the look for this ride, a Vertex body kit was fitted and moulded, a Silvia S15 front-end conversion completed, and the car was treated to a new sleek black Sikkens paint scheme. Keeping it rolling are Volk Racing GT-U wheels wrapped tightly in Falken Azensis RT-615 tyres.

The stance alone suggests the Silvia means business, but we’re all about amps and subs, not turbo’s and pounds of boost, right?  So let’s get into the nitty gritty of the audio system ...

Scott began the transformation of the Silvia by welding shut all the holes in the unibody and reinforcing all areas that would play an important role in the system. The kick panel areas were modified with welded steel enclosures to push the midbass location into the wheel well to optimize pathlength differences. The entire surface area of the interior has been treated with catalysed truck bed coating along with copious amounts of B-Quiet sound damping.

Wanting nothing less than the feel of a $400K Italian sports car, Scott opted for genuine Bentley Wilton wool carpet. Oh, and the covering you see gracefully trimming every custom panel of the interior is 100% unprocessed horse leather from the same dye lot.

The dashboard was constructed from scratch to optimise listening paths, to create the waveguides for the midbass drivers and also to create the subwoofer enclosure, but more on all that later.

Let’s start at the beginning ...

The Denon DCT-Z1 CD tuner provides the ultimate in source unit quality. We’ve seen a few of these units in Australia around competition circles, but none that have had a going-over from JK Labs. This DCT-Z1 has been modified with a digital volume control and to allow interface with another world renowned pro audio processor, the DEQX. The DEQX allows the ultimate in tuning ability from crossovers to equalisation, room correction and much more.

This ultra clean, accurate signal is then passed through IXOS IX-3 pure silver cables to four McIntosh MCC602TM two channel amplifiers. Can it really get any better than this? The MCC602TM’s, in Scott’s opinion, are some of the best amplifiers on the market today, with a signal to noise ratio approaching 122dB. That and they worked so well cosmetically with the theme of the car!

Now being the founder of Hybrid Audio Technologies, creating the sound stage up-front is a set of the HAT Legatia 3-Way component speakers.  The L8 8” midbass drivers have been grafted into the newly created enclosures in the kick panel area taking care of frequencies in the 30Hz to 160Hz range. We’re told the waveguides formed into the dashboard are the secret here for ‘steering’ the dispersion pattern of the L8 drivers.

Residing up the top of the dash in an infinite baffle setup are the Legatia L4 4” midrange drivers, coupled with the Legatia L1V2 tweeters sharing a common steel baffle. The top of the dashboard is acoustically transparent and the speakers are mounted to optimise pathlength difference.

These speakers are not modified in any way from what is available to the market, other than being hand matched to ensure the highest quality. There is no smoke and mirrors here, nor are you likely to find any snake oil. A simple three way setup well executed with the focus being on installation and listening paths.

Keeping up the lower end is a custom Fi Car Audio 12” subwoofer mounted into the dashboard enclosure. This infinite baffle arrangement is vented through the transmission tunnel. There is certainly no time alignment required in the Silvia to allow the bass to sound like it is up the front of the vehicle ... it really is!

When we spoke with Scott about featuring his car, we began talking about the technical points and showed him our tech sheet to fill out. It became quickly apparent this would not work as he then gave us his modifications spreadsheet .... all 400 entries!

The technical ability of this vehicle is second to none. All electronic control of this vehicle from power, window operation, monitoring of fuses and voltages, security, heating and air conditioning control, and much more has been handed over to a custom built in-car computer. This is controlled by the Xenarc touch-screen mounted in the dashboard. There is even a camera allowing monitoring of the subwoofer movement.

Our tech readers will probably want to know the ins and outs about just what Scott and his loyal team have created with the PC control, but we might take a separate in-depth look at that side of this vehicle in another editorial.

So how does it sound? Well if its debut is anything to go by at the recent IASCA North American championships, the Silvia placed 1st in the Expert Ultimate two-seat division. If that alone isn’t impressive enough, how about the fact that it also achieved the highest score ever in IASCA competition (22 year history, internationally). Scoring 920.5 points, 200 points higher than the next closest score ever recorded. We here think that based on the outcome, along with the good reputation Hybrid Audio Technologies speakers have, it’s fair to say it sounds pretty darn good!

Owning a vehicle of this nature may remain a dream for most of us however. Scott indicates that to achieve the great three S’s we spoke of earlier, Scott has spent approximately USD $130,000 and that’s not including labour!

Scott would like to make mention of many people involved in this project and offer his personal thanks (in no particular order): Dwayne Blackwood, Clay Howard, Jeremy Carlson, Patti Buwalda, Jeff Scott, Simon Drummond (NZ), Kevin Lewis, Dave Brooks, Russ Goggans, Chris Ott, Brian Kaywood, and Keith Housworth.

Thanks for sharing this work of art with us Scott! A truly remarkable project and a credit to yourself and Hybrid Audio Technologies.

Words: Marc Rushton
Photos: Joshua Buwalda