Tim and Cindy Goudy, United States Autosound Competition International (USACi) sound quality judges, have been car audio fans for years. Tim first got into car audio as a high school enthusiast in 1981, but over the years he's competed in major car audio competitions across the country. These days, Tim and Cindy team up to judge up to twelve USACi competitions a year.

CrutchfieldAdvisor's Matt Freeman and J. Stoll met Tim and Cindy at the USACi competition in Daytona Beach, Florida during Spring Break Nationals weekend. Matt and J. were fortunate enough to follow Tim and Cindy as they went through the judging process for the USACi Advanced Sound Quality Competition.

USACi Sound Quality Judge Tim Goudy discusses scoring with Rodney Findley, an Advanced SQ competitor sponsored by Sony.

CrutchfieldAdvisor: Tim, tell us about your background in car audio — how you got started and how you wound up as a USACi SQ Judge.

Tim Goudy: I basically got into installing because I wanted a stereo as nice as my friends in high school had, but couldn't afford it. My first system was a real hodgepodge of mixed pieces I bought at the flea market in Houston. It got loud and that's all I cared about at the time.

As time progressed, I was gradually able to afford nicer equipment (I was in the military at the time), so my systems gradually got better and better. I was hanging out at my friend Raymond's shop (RND Sounds in San Antonio, Texas) one day in 1990, and those guys were big into the competition scene. They were getting ready to go to a show in Houston, and I was helping them load everything up. One of their "top gun" competitors was real cocky at the time, since he had never been beat in competition. He told me "you will NEVER beat me".

I'm hyper-competitive by nature, so I took that as a challenge. I bought a ton of books on acoustics and started hanging around the shop a lot, learning competition installation from their lead installer, Mark Merkel. He'd get annoyed with me when I asked questions, so I just kept my mouth shut and my eyes open. I started doing some of their "[cassette] deck and 2 [speakers]" work, as well as their warranty work for free — just to get experience. I also assisted on some of their competition installations, until I got my truck done for the 1991 competition season.

I started competing at some local shows to see how I would do. I got smoked! I wasn't afraid to rip things out and start over, so I continually rebuilt for the next two years until I hit on what I thought was a good combination. I started competing around Texas in 1993 and got smoked again. I kept rebuilding until I made it to the Thunder on Wheels Finals (1st place 0-100 Consumer) and the USACi Finals (6th place 0-100 Consumer). I lost in USACi by 1/10 of a point, which made the drive back from Memphis, TN to San Antonio, TX looooong.

I started judging late in 1993 to get ideas for my new rebuild, and also to see how these other guys were beating me. I rebuilt and judged in 1994, and then started competing again in 1995. I was undefeated in my class until I ran in to Frank Rougeau in Shreveport that year. I didn't have time to make up the almost 100 points. I ended up tying for 5th at the USACi finals in 1995. My install was 2nd in my class, but my SQ hurt me — I had to replace a [speaker] driver at the last minute, and that got accidentally wired out of phase.

I've since worked with Mark Fukuda, Wilson Adcock, Skip Alexander and a bunch of other top-notch installers to learn from them. I helped Mark set up FAST (Fukuda Audio Specialist Training) when I was in Houston; I also learned foam and fiberglass from Mark when he owned his home theater business. I still do competition cars every now and then, and everything I have done since 1995 has placed at finals.

So to answer your question — I've never been a professional installer. I've read books and worked with my friends to learn what I've learned about car audio. I've done some occasional contract work for friends' shops when they were shorthanded, but usually got paid with equipment or the use of their shop when I needed it. I started installing in 1981 and still troubleshoot and do the occasional install. My background is in telecommunications and component-level repair, so that's where I learned a lot about electronics. I've also got a background in mechanical and architectural engineering, as well as a ton of experience as a general contractor (family business), so I learned early on how to look at things and "figure out how it works and how to fix it." I've been around music all my life — I was born in West Virginia, so I grew up on unmic'd Bluegrass.

Cindy Goudy reviews Rodney Findley's battery installation at the USACi Advanced Sound Quality Competition.

CA: How about Cindy?

Tim: Cindy basically got involved by default. She used to stay home when I went to shows, but she figured out going was a lot more fun. She does all of my detail and prep work for me, and she gets to get the trophy when they hand them out. That's our trade-off. She also has watched me do a ton of work on cars in my garage, as well as at the kitchen table, so she knows what it takes to make something work. That's how she got into judging shows.

CA: How did you both wind up at USACi?

Tim: There's a funny story behind that too. My life seems to be full of those. I originally competed only in Thunder on Wheels. I didn't like the USACi or IASCA (International Auto Sound Competition Association) format, since I thought they were so restrictive. Raymond [owner of RND Sounds in San Antonio - ed.] talked me into competing in USACi, and I found that with a few changes to my system I could be competitive there. In 1995, there was a "points sharing" agreement between IASCA and USACi that I found out had quite a few loopholes. I thought I was qualified for IASCA finals and called to see where my invitation was. I learned that I had to qualify with IASCA in addition to USACi. Needless to say, I wasn't happy, so I never personally competed in IASCA after that conversation.

I got involved in the rules and all of the other USAC stuff by default. It's funny, I never intended to be a sound quality judge — I preferred to judge installations. But I have a pretty good ear (everyone in my family plays some kind of musical instrument but me, so I've been around natural, live music all of my life), so they had me judging sound. I'm a super-picky install judge, so I guess not judging install is a good thing. I've been judging since 1993 for one organization or another (IASCA, USAC, TOW, CMAA and a ton of local unsanctioned events.)

CA: So what are the criteria for judging sound?

Tim: Sound quality or installation?

CA: Well, I guess they're both components of USACi Sound Quality competitions, right?

Tim: Right.

USACi SQ competitors get five to seven minutes to present their vehicle to the installation judge at the beginning of the judging process.

CA: What is she [Cindy, Tim's wife and USACi Judge] doing now?

Tim: Basically, what she's gonna do is give the competitor 5 ? 7 minutes to go through and sell the car to her.

We have a set of [judging] criteria, and pretty much USAC's [main concern] is, is it's got to be secure . . . safe and secure. She's gonna check the battery, make sure it's secure, make sure all the wiring is secured down at regular intervals throughout the vehicle, make sure the wire is properly protected throughout the vehicle. Then she'll probably move to the head unit and other sources, sound processors, equalizers, whatever. She'll check the amplifiers to make sure the amps are solid, make sure the speakers are solid and well-protected.

Then what I do is I get in the car and use a standard test disc provided by Focal to judge the vehicle on tonal accuracy.

After Cindy finishes the installation judging, Tim judges the sound quality of the system using a test disc.

The biggest part of our scoresheet is tonal accuracy now. "Placement," meaning are [the instruments and/or performers on the left side of the stage] placed left in the soundstage, where they're supposed to be? Is the center [image] placement center where it's supposed to be? Is right placement right, where it's supposed to be and everything in between is where it's supposed to be? [The soundstage] should be at a stage height that's level with your eyes (a little bit above, a little below is fine). The system shouldn't have any noise in it, shouldn't have any foreign noises in it.

Basically, the way I judge noise is when this car left the showroom floor, when you turned the stereo on and off, it didn't make noise; and when you turned the volume all the way up in a zero-bit, it didn't make noise. If you added noise by adding the system, that's where you count backwards. So it's a fairly simple criteria, but there's some tough competition.

CA:Could you tell me a bit more about the test disc? Are there identifiable, well-known tracks on it, or is it produced solely for the competitions? And are there different tracks designed to illustrate different aspects of the SQ scoresheet?

The disc is available commercially, but is typically used only in competition or for very detailed listening. There are a ton of companies out there that produce "reference" disks (Richard Clark, Sheffield, Mapleshade, etc.), but I prefer the Focal disc over all of them because most of the songs on it are upbeat and most are familiar to me. You can judge the entire score sheet from any track on the disc, but I usually skip around a little just to make sure I am hearing what I think I am hearing in a car. Most judges, myself included, usually only use 3 or 4 tracks when judging a car. A good car should be able to reproduce a good score on any track of any disc that is recorded correctly. I found that the caliber of cars has risen so much that you could put anything from Twisted Sister to The Mask soundtrack in and it would sound good.

CA: So the sound quality judging is all technically subjective, right?

Tim: Yeah...

CA: In theory, I mean, it's all done by ear?

Tim: Yeah, though it's done by my ear. We don't use an RTA [Real Time Analyzer] anymore, so you don't get an actual true frequency response. The RTA gives you a readout of your system's frequency response from 20hz to 20Khz in 1/3 octave increments, with one mic typically placed in the driver's seat. This gives you a 2 dimensional read out. But it really doesn't matter what a meter says about your system in competition — it's the judge's ears that have the final say in what goes on the score sheet.

One thing we have done this year is broken the score sheet down into much smaller little sections. This makes it easier for the competitor and makes it easier for the judges to discern exactly what we're hearing and exactly what we're scoring.

Before, we had a large category, "Staging," that encompassed a lot of things: it ecompassed placement of the instruments, it encompassed front-to-rear and side-to-side [imaging]. Now we've broken it down into [segments]: How far is [the soundstage] in front of you? How deep is it once it is in front of you? What's the width, what's your placement? So now it's in little tiny bite-size pieces.

So now a guy that used to score a little lower because he had a problem, say with a narrow stage, now will score much higher because he only loses points on that little tiny section versus the large section. And that's why we've broken it down the way we have.

CA: How about aesthetics — installation aesthetics?

Tim: That is not as big of a criteria in USAC as it is in other organizations, but it's still important.

CA: Does it need to look more "clean" than it does "hot?"

Tim: Yeah, exactly. I mean, if you look at this installation here, everything is really solidly mounted on it and it's anchored down real well. We're not really big into the things that don't belong in a car stereo installation, like a fishtank or a bubble wall or things like that. And if you look at most USACi cars that are designed for USACi, you're going to see some very very solid, rock solid installations. The cars that win, you could literally swing from any component in the car and it won't break loose from the car. It's not fluffy or things like that. We still accept that kind of thing, but you don't necessarily get points for it.

I mean you can build a car for a USACi sound quality competition and you can compete in MECA, you can compete in IASCA, and still do pretty well. You can build a car for IASCA, according to IASCA's rule book, and still compete in USACi and still compete in MECA and still do pretty well. Because the rules are pretty close to the same, there are just a few little nuances that are different.

That's exactly what we're looking for here in the engine compartment, for example. But this is an advanced car. In a basic car, you don't look at it quite as closely, but you suggest it.

So there are a lot of things that go on in a beginner class that don't necessarily go on a score sheet — things that are suggested to the customer. You need to make sure that you're terminals are tight, because if you've got a loose terminal, then you don't get good power through it. And these are just certain things that we do under the hood.

Safety is a big thing too. You've got grommets that have to be through every piece of metal, for two reasons actually: one is that you want to make sure that you keep all your like wires together ? and that's what this is supposed to do. The second thing is this gives you an extra layer of protection should something happen.

A solid, firmly-mounted installation is crucial to scoring big points in the Advanced SQ classes.

Tim: Should this cold air intake break loose and flop back into these, and these aren't protected, this is going to short out. This is aluminum. You've got rubber here, but this can and does ground out. If you ground this thing out to some part of the motor, that's bad news. I have seen cars go up in flames ? not SQ cars, though, believe it or not. I have seen street cars that have incorrectly installed systems, that have grounded out a power wire to the frame or on the firewall and literally catch on fire.

CA: So these are really quite important.

Tim: These are very important, because you've got to figure, this is a 650-amp cold cranking battery; worst case scenario, you've got probably 500 amps on tap. I don't know if you're familiar with welding or not, but 500 amps will weld. If I were to take a pair of pliers and go like this across these terminals, it would spark and it would probably stick to them.

You don't want the hood coming into contact with that. Most competitors use an oversized battery. The Optima battery is an aftermarket battery — it's not OEM. Typically, if you look at these posts, these posts are lot taller than a factory battery's. So the chances of this hitting right here are a lot greater than if you had a factory battery, in a factory location, with factory posts. There's a reason GM puts sideposts on a lot of their stuff, and that's to rule out any problem of the hood coming down and crushing into it. See, this has also got sideposts on it, and he's picking up his factory leads on his sideposts. So that's one of the reasons that we insist on protection there.

And like I was saying with your alternator earlier, we suggest an upgraded alternator because you're adding so much more current draw than was designed for the factory. I mean, the factory can figure we're going to have at most 60 amps draw ? power windows, A/C , windshield wipers — they always think worst case scenario. They didn't think a guy's gonna put something with a nominal current draw of 30 amps, multiply it by 5, and be drawing 150 amps. You're taking a 60 amp alternator and wanting it to put out 150 amps, you're gonna dry one of those batteries out really fast. So that's why we suggest an upgraded alternator.

And then, like I said before, with an upgraded alternator comes upgraded grounds, because current flows backwards. And you know you get an upgraded voltage lead, a hot lead. And I'm sure that's in here, I just haven't picked it out because everything is covered up.

If you look — now this is kind of flashy, if you move back to the back here — this is a lot of labor, everybody's doing fiberglass. Everybody's doing nice looking fiberglass.

Advanced SQ competition is so intense that a poorly sanded fiberglass installation can be the difference between winning and losing.

You know, when you get down to the attention of detail, we even look at little things like this ? if you run your finger across that, you'll feel a rough spot. I mean, that's something you don't want an install judge to walk by and gasp at.

CA: Is that due to impact?

Tim: No, it's pits from the Bondo, when you sand it down. If you look at all the rest of this car, it's really really done nicely. But if you have two cars sitting side by side and they're identical, what separates a really good car from a great car? You've got to go to this level, where you're running your fingers over panels, where you're looking at the way grilles line up. You see, if you run your fingernail down this grille, this one fits tighter than this one? That's where you get into the attention to detail parts.

Competitors must show the judges how the system was installed, whether with pictures taken throughout the installation process, or even with PowerPoint or DVD presentations.

CA: Now he's showing her pictures.

USACi: He's showing her pictures of things she can't see.

CA: And that's basically a requirement?

Tim: Yes, that's basically standard throughout the industry. IASCA, MECA, and even USACi, we like picture books. She just got done with a competitor that did a DVD presentation. As his car went together, he does a DVD. He puts it in his Alpine head unit with a DVD player built-in, she sits in his car and watches the DVD presentation.

So it's exactly seven minutes, he does exactly what it's supposed to do, and he can edit it so that he can hit all the high points. She gets all the information she needs.

CA: Do you give consideration for somebody who doesn't speak in public that well?

Tim: Exactly, that's what a lot of guys are doing that have a lot of problems speaking in public. They'll do a DVD or a PowerPoint. Even though most of your competitors probably don't do 100% of their installation, we still want the competitor to know the installation. We want the competitor to know how to fix it if something were to go wrong. That's why we want the competitors as familiar with the installation as possible. The bottom line is, an installer could do this whole thing for the guy, the guy could write a check, and the installer would be the only one that knows how to work the car. We want the competitor to know how to do it.

A lot of this is for show. This competitor could've done probably 4 10" [subs] with those 3 amplifiers, left the rear seat in and folded it up, and bolted it all in place, and it probably would've been pretty secure and looked pretty nice. But he's sitting in a Sony booth — you've got to draw in the consumer. You've got to draw in the guy off the beach.

Cindy Goudy finishes up scoring the installation portion of the SQ judging.

He's got a choice — he can to the car show, or he can go the beach. We want him to come to the car show. We want to show him nice stuff. That's what these types of cars are designed to do. They're as commercial as anything. You know, it's another way to spend your money.

CA: That's why they get the sponsorships.

Tim: Precisely. I mean, there's a few sponsored cars. I'm sure this one's probably sponsored, or if it's not, it would surprise me.

CA: It is — we saw him over at the Sony booth earlier.

Tim: A lot of times, though, you have a lot of consumers' cars that sit in the booth. You know, the manufacturers like their vehicle so much, even though they've gotten it done by somebody, it'll sit in a Sony booth, for example, or a Stinger, for example. If the guys' done a lot Stinger wiring in his own install, it'll sit in a Stinger booth, even though it's not a pro vehicle. And you've got the expert vehicles. We've got two or three of those out back. JBL's got full factory sponsorships on a couple of cars out there. And they've got a lot of money into them, but it shows.

End of Interview

CrutchfieldAdvisor would like to thank Tim and Cindy Goudy for sharing their time and knowledge with us during the judging of the USACi Advanced Sound Quality Competition at the Spring Break Nationals in Daytona Beach, Florida. We certainly learned a lot about what judges look for in a top-notch, competition-ready car audio installation — we hope you did too! Who knows, maybe one day it'll be your turn to present your whip to Tim and Cindy at a USACi event. Just remember, make sure you've got your power wiring and battery mounted solidly and tightened up!