# Car Audio Tournament of Champions™ (CATOC™) this Saturday!



## Dave Ritter (Apr 23, 2010)

The Car Audio Tournament of Champions™ (CATOC™) Southwest Regional Finals at Torque Meet Tour on the campus of Universal Technical Institute in Avondale, Arizona is this Saturday! If you have not pre-registered for the event, the time is now!

If you simply want to display your car, or if you plan to compete in the CATOC™ event, you will need to pre-register with Torque Meet Tour at Torque Meet Tour – A 5-City FREE Automotive Event Series.

Please contact [email protected] for details regarding CATOC™ pre-registration incentives and discounts for competitor members of other sanctioning organizations for competitive car audio portion.

No day of show registration is available (due to contract agreement with the venue), so please don’t roll in thinking that you can compete or display.


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## UNBROKEN (Sep 25, 2009)

How many vehicles are you expecting for this?


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## Dave Ritter (Apr 23, 2010)

As of yesterday, there were 60 pre-registrations overall. Past Torque Meet Events have drawn over 400 vehicles, so estimates are about the same. We are competing head to head with the Good Guys show the same day, just so you know up front.

Please e-mail directly if you are thinking of coming out [email protected]. 

Here's something to consider: Anyone who has a stereo of any kind *right now*, even a stock stereo or a deck and 4 could compete and earn competitor points on Saturday. The system could even fail during judging and a CATOC member will STILL earn points! No other organization does this! CATOC membership is required, but incentives and discounts are available. Again, please e-mail me at [email protected].

CATOC will be hosting qualifying events in conjunction with the 2014 Torque Meet Tour events, as well as in areas in which enough people ask and make a commitment. The biggest demand for events (in addition to Orlando, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago and Phoenix) has been here in southern California and parts of northern California, in the Northwest and Rocky mountain areas, and Ohio.


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## thehoff (May 7, 2013)

Just curious how the turnout was.


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## Dave Ritter (Apr 23, 2010)

Turn out for Torque Meet Tour was over 400 cars according to the TMT promoter, which looked to be about right based on what I saw. That is very good considering that TMT was competing directly with the Good Guys show that was held the same day.

There was a little bit of miscommunication between Andy the Torque Meet Tour promoter and me; (I take responsibility for that). I thought that once _advanced_ registration had closed, that no more cars could be brought in. (This is done for insurance reasons at some venues.) It turns out that people could have pre-registered with me up until midnight Arizona time on Friday night. I posted this on Facebook when I found out.

Candidly, many of the best SQ (competition) cars (that I know about) did not make it. I expect to see them at the show in Scottsdale on December 7th that is being held along with Cars and Coffee. (By the way, this does NOT conflict with the afternoon MECA event in Tempe.)

If you like to see bad ass cars, it's worth it to come out for that alone. A few of those cars are shown on my website Car Audio Tournament of Champions™ (CATOC™).


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## thehoff (May 7, 2013)

I was just curious...I ran up there to check out the sq forum and couldn't find you. I would be intrested in competing, but I have an issue with pre-registration, as well as quite a few others. I'll try to make the next show, but there is also a Severed Ties show that morning as well.


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## Dave Ritter (Apr 23, 2010)

There are a number of very specific reasons that pre-registration is required. None of these reasons, stated here or not stated, have nothing with trying to be "hard asses". 

SQ focused events take A LOT more planning than events in which even SQ and SPL are offered. This has to do with the fact that a vast majority of serious SQ people do not want to be around bassheads. This is not random opinion, nor is a reflection on "good people who love bass". I learned this from direct personal experience over the course of all (or parts) of four different *decades* of "sound off" competition. _By the way, most of the bassheads who I knew from events of which I was involved were pretty damn cool._

Please keep in mind before you read my reasons that I started in sound offs as an SQ competitor in 1988 before IASCA or MECA existed! I won over 90% of the shows in which I ever competed (in SQ), and I eventually headed up the most successful SQ/SPL competition team of all time in the early 2000's, Team Driving Force. My point is that I have a very high standard of excellence because of this.

I've competed and/or judged or trained judges, and/or hosted and run events in the 80's, 90's, 2000's and now, and I am the only person in car audio to have been a contracted event director for all three sanctioning organizations that offer an SQ format. Here are just a couple of the reasons pre-registration is required:

The number one reason is so that the event can be staffed properly. There are very few people who are properly qualified to judge an SQ contest; it is far more involved and requires A LOT more training than judging SPL.

In SQ, the ability of a highly trained, well qualified person to judge a vehicle is affected by listener fatigue. One can only listen to so many sound systems - even really good ones - over the course of an event before hearing is negatively affected. 

A fresh judge can hear things that I tired judge cannot. One really bad sounding system can increase listener fatigue significantly, so measures have to be taken into account to deal with this accordingly. It is not fair to any competitor to have their system judged by someone who is not judging to their full capacity.

Second, it takes a lot more behind the scenes work to host an SQ event than a regular car show. If we have enough judges for 25 competing cars, and 75 cars show up to compete, it is not fair to the competitors judged toward the end of the event. If we hire enough judges for 75 competing vehicles, and only 10 show, that is unfair to the judges who made the commitment to be there.

I mean no offense when I ask the following, but why is that so many people complain about "not enough notice" for an event, yet many of the same people complain about "not just being able to show" up?

Commitment to a successful event is a two way street, especially one that has to be staffed with enough *qualified* people. In order to have them present *for you*, we have to know for sure that you are going to be present to make *their* time worthwhile.

The best comparison I can make is the difference between showing up at the park to play pickup basketball at the local park versus wanting to compete in a full fledged basketball tournament with referees, scorekeepers, held at a basketball arena. 

A casual car show can afford to have people decide on the morning of - no big deal. A serious car show that requires serious staffing literally cannot afford to do that.

Would you host an event knowing that you would have to *commit* to paying an average of $30 an hour per judge ($10 per car, 3 cars per hour) out of pocket on the chance that "maybe" someone will compete? Probably not.

I hope that provides a better insight into why CATOC™ asks for a mutual commitment from competitors as well as staff. It allows us to provide the highest quality of events.


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## thehoff (May 7, 2013)

I understand your points. But when was the last time 75 cars showed up for a SQ event, let alone 25? Why can't we pre-register without money changing hands?


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## Dave Ritter (Apr 23, 2010)

thehoff said:


> I understand your points. But when was the last time 75 cars showed up for a SQ event, let alone 25? Why can't we pre-register without money changing hands?


Hi Daniel. That is a valid question, and I appreciate that you're asking. 

A huge investment in time and sweat equity has been by me and others in putting together *an organization* in order to have a season(s) of events at nice venues for the people who want nice venues and high quality judging. 

I've been putting in an average of 65-70 work weeks for zero salary since the March of 2012 in order to make all of this work. It's _still_ a work in progress. 

It would be nice if everyone was like you and some of the other good people that I had when I was running MECA Southwest Audiofest with Michael's help. The problem is that a lot of car audio people expect all of the commitment to be on the event side with no promises on their side.

At the risk of being blunt, money talks and ******** walks. What's unfortunate is that experience and good mentoring has taught me that everyone needs to be treated the same, which can be "difficult" on the people who actually follow through. The challenge for any organization is that it's the people who are flakes or make things difficult are the one's who screw it up for the rest of us.

I have been involved directly in more sound off events than virtually anyone else in car audio. There are people who have competed more, there are others who have run more events, but I don't know of anyone else who has had the combination of experience in the sound off scene than I have.

One of the things that all this experience has taught me is that for long term success, ground rules need to be firmly established in the very beginning. It is much easier to relax standards over time than it is to tighten them up. It is much easier still to simply be consistent.


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## SouthSyde (Dec 25, 2006)

thehoff said:


> I understand your points. But when was the last time 75 cars showed up for a SQ event, let alone 25? Why can't we pre-register without money changing hands?


IASCA finals this past year. They were expecting 30 but had 72 competitors. They only had 2 judges. I felt bad for the judges to say the least.

Just sayin...


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## chefhow (Apr 29, 2007)

The End of Summer Showdown in 2012 had 39 SQ cars and 60+ SPL cars Daniel, the highly attended shows are out there, you just have to make an effort to find them and be part of the group. 

Every show I hosted for 3 years had a minimum of 20 cars, most were SQ only shows. With planning like Dave is putting into his shows and committed attendees the numbers will be there.


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## Dave Ritter (Apr 23, 2010)

chefhow said:


> The End of Summer Showdown in 2012 had 39 SQ cars and 60+ SPL cars Daniel, the highly attended shows are out there, you just have to make an effort to find them and be part of the group.
> 
> Every show I hosted for 3 years had a minimum of 20 cars, most were SQ only shows. With planning like Dave is putting into his shows and committed attendees the numbers will be there.


Thank for the encouragement and for sharing *recent* examples of success in the SQ arena! You made my day.

This _can_ and *will* work, especially if people know that they do not have to build a SEMA car in order to compete and have fun, and have some success in the process.

My end goal in all of this is to help car audio enthusiasts find direct access to jobs, educational opportunities, and business partnerships in the car audio and automotive industry. There are a lot of bright, talented people on this forum, many of whom would do well within these industries, IF they could simply connect with the right people.

On LinkedIn, I have over 2,500 connections who span a wide variety of industries and who live and/or work in 6 continents. Some of these people occupy very high level positions within their respective industries. My profile was in the Top 5% Most Viewed out of 200,000,000 LinkedIn users. This year, I have a chance to be in the Top 1%. I am bringing that up not as a bragging point, but as a measure of how I could help connect each of you to someone who could improve your quality of life via car audio. 

I got my start in the car audio industry out of college; however, the car audio industry really opened up to me because of my involvement in sound offs as a competitor. This was back in a day in which their was industry support all the way down to the local level. (That is no longer the case these days.)

At the very first IASCA 2X event in which I competed in 1989 - ironically it was in Phoenix at the Veteran Memorial Coliseum - there were 323 competitors in SQ alone! I finished 1st out of 43 cars in the Amateur 251-500 watt power class.

While winning that show was an honor, and totally unexpected, the biggest reward came from meeting people who are now positively influencing the direction in which Car Audio Tournament of Champions™ (CATOC™) is heading today and in the near future. I wish I could tell all of you what is going on behind the scenes - it's very, very cool, and many of you will end up benefitting from it. However, I can't tell you . . . yet.

The biggest challenge is overcoming the stereotypes (no pun intended) regarding the current state of the "sound off" scene, specifically the manner in which car audio is perceived by other segments of the automotive enthusiast community.

The following fact may surprise you, but a significant majority of automotive enthusiasts DON'T LIKE US! They think of us as thugs, posers, and general low life's. I have worked my ass off working to overcome this perception for the simple fact that we *NEED* to overcome this. 

Part of the problem stems from how we allow ourselves to be portrayed as a whole. Part of the problem, unfortunately, is that there have indeed been a small, but negatively affecting number of individuals who do fit the perception who had slithered their way into the competition ranks in some manner. The good news is that those people seemed to have gone away. I, for one, sure hope so.

Nonetheless, CATOC™ is creating a great framework upon which success in the SQ realm will be available to all of us.


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## SouthSyde (Dec 25, 2006)

Who are some of the good judges you plan on having?

Thanks


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## Dave Ritter (Apr 23, 2010)

We are primarily seeking well trained sound professionals from outside of car audio. I want fresh faces who don't know competitor "street cred". Our people will have perspective on good sound from live acoustic performance experience, studio mastering experience, and/or home audiophile backgrounds. Oh yeah, they will be ones who will tell it like it is - diplomatically.

There are a few well seasoned car audio judges who I would _like to have_. The challenge is that most of them have left the industry because of the nonsense with which they had to endure while in the traditional sound off arena.


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## SouthSyde (Dec 25, 2006)

Dave Ritter said:


> We are primarily seeking well trained sound professionals from outside of car audio. I want fresh faces who don't know competitor "street cred". Our people will have perspective on good sound from live acoustic performance experience, studio mastering experience, and/or home audiophile backgrounds. Oh yeah, they will be ones who will tell it like it is - diplomatically.
> 
> There are a few well seasoned car audio judges who I would _like to have_. The challenge is that most of them have left the industry because of the nonsense with which they had to endure while in the traditional sound off arena.


Good deal! If you ever come to Texas please let me know.

On a side, note nothing wrong with pre registering.


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## Dave Ritter (Apr 23, 2010)

I would like to host a series of events out there in Texas, provided that there is a large enough group of potential competitors to make trips worthwhile (beyond the "hot women factor"). Keep in mind, a clean basic system can do very well in the lanes under CATOC™ rules.

Please e-mail so we can set up some shows out there, if you're interested. Thanks.


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