I thought I was already on all the forums but just randomly saw a link here, so I thought I'd register. Check things out.
I saw a link from the worst place humanly possible... a Facebook car audio group that is usually more painful than enjoyable to follow. But it is what it is.
To some degree, it's just the state of the car audio industry. Through the '00's and early '10's I watched the decline, attending 10 CES's and 3 SEMAs... each being notably lesser than the prior year. I was attending either as an engineering rep for small car audio enthusiast brands, or as buyer and manager for a large local shop in my area (for three years I was actually recruited out of my IT career - the owner was willing to pay me the same salary - but IT has more recruiters and bigger pocketbooks, what can I say). That was actually a great opportunity for upping my own game, though - during that time, we brought in Bryan Schmitt (Mobile Solutions) to train our whole fabrication crew (including myself) and we pulled in legend IASCA SQ champion Scott Buwalda (Hybrid Audio) to do a SQ seminar. Awesome experiences.
I don't want to sound negative on the state of affairs today - I love passionate enthusiasts, and there's still some out there. It's just that I used to be a moderator on several mobile audio forums in the '00's back when I was more professionally involved... now some of those don't even exist (anyone here from CarAudioForum.com?) I got into loudspeaker engineering and eventually programming SMT machines for aerospace contract manufacturing... and then back into my core IT career as a more stable, higher paying field. But I still occasionally keep getting pulled back. I'm first and foremost an enthusiast, the thing that 27 years ago originally led me into electrical engineering before the IT degree. I would love to see a resurgence of the technical discussions that used to be so valuable to me - eventually fun seeing light bulbs go off over other members heads too "Oh - now that makes sense! I get it!" I love that stuff.
At any rate, I enjoy a good deep-dive into understanding things - and that seems to be few and far between these days. But I'm looking forward to eventually finding those passionate, open-minded enthusiasts (of all knowledge and experience levels) again - hopefully this is the place!