By Tan Chong Yaw

The ride: Audi TT - a November 2006, 2.0-litre sports coupe

The owner: Raymond Loh, 40, a service industry entrepreneur

The mod: Raymond enjoys classical music, particularly piano concertos. Audiophile - upscale sound - systems feature sound from only two directions. He needs sound from five directions - to enjoy movies. That also meant a screen.

The speaker installations, which can be garish, had to be discreet.

Being a sports car, the Audi TT is tight on space. However, his installation company, Swift Motion, packed in 10 speakers driven by two amplifiers.

The only visible speaker is an oddly named Bazooka in the boot. This subwoofer, which looks like a short bolster wrapped in black leather, belts out the low frequency sounds that are felt as much as heard.

Music is drawn from a 60GB iPod that sits in the glove compartment. To match the $25,000 sound system, Raymond encoded most of his music in the Apple Lossless format - the highest quality with files five times bigger than the usual MP3 files.

Everything, including the iPod, is accessed through a touchscreen LCD - also a DVD player - on the dashboard. Movies are screened on the LCD too.

The process: Swift Motion (tel: 6296-6330) - a high-end, car hi-fi specialist - took four days to do up the car. The side panels of the doors were removed and soundproofing materials were layered on instead. Then, the new speakers were fixed into tailor-made housings.

Tuning the system - a combination of hardware, software and trained ears - took one day.

My 10 minutes of bliss: The sultry voice of Taiwanese singer Cai Qin beguiled me. With my eyes closed, it felt like she was leaning over singing just to me. Then I was engulfed in the roar of a tidal wave as it swept over New York City in a clip from the 2004 sci-fi thriller, The Day After Tomorrow.

Finally, in the soundtrack of Tsui Hark's 2005 swordfighting flick, Seven Swords, the pounding of big drums resonated, as if throughout my body.

I was sitting in the driver's seat - the aural sweet spot of the car. From intimate murmurs to overwhelming earthshakes, the system handled them all with finesse and power to spare.

What have you done to improve your ride? Share with us your stories at a1motor@sph.com.sg and you may just get featured in AsiaOne!

This article was first published in The Straits Times on Oct 29, 2008.

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