Where's the next bass comp?
Find a real bass competition near you and know what you're walking into before you get there. Every sanctioning body and link below was checked live — no guessing, no dead links, no made-up Facebook groups.
Find your region
Click your part of the country. Real upcoming meets load here daily from the calendars that publish one this site can use — IASCA's own calendar feed and the Sparked Builds aggregator — and every event names its source and links back to it. dBDRA, MECA, and USACi don't offer a feed their site terms allow us to pull, so their links are below for you to check directly.
The sanctioning bodies
Sparked Builds, the event aggregator below, listed 13 car-audio competition organizations when we checked on 2026-10-01; these are the four this page covers. No source we found counts their events or ranks them by size. Each one publishes its own rulebook, class structure, and event calendar.
| Org | Runs | Link |
|---|---|---|
| dB Drag Racing (dBDRA) | SPL "burp" competition — the original format, scored by peak dB | termpro.com |
| MECA (Mobile Electronics Competition Association) | SPL and Sound Quality (SQL). Its 2025 SPL rulebook sorts events into tiers from 1X to 4X, plus state and world finals; we found no published count of events per season. | mecacaraudio.com |
| IASCA (International Auto Sound Challenge Association) | SPL and sound-quality classes, long-running international org |
iasca.com
a second related domain, iascaworldwide.com, also exists — worth checking both for your region |
| USACi |
SPL, MUSIC, DEMO, and SQ classes
not verified by us: we could not read USACi's own rules, so check its classes on its site |
usaciworldwide.org |
Find an event near you
A community aggregator site pulls event listings and results from all four orgs above into one searchable calendar — start here before digging through each org's individual site.
Lists events by state and date, and aggregates results from dBDRA, MECA, IASCA, and USACi in one place.
sparkedbuilds.comWhat to expect at your first comp
Walking in cold, here's the honest rundown of what actually happens and how it's scored.
Two different formats — know which one you signed up for
Burps are the classic dB Drag format: one short, loud tone, scored on the single highest dB reading the meter holds. No rule we read sets its length, or even uses the word: MECA's and IASCA's 2025 SPL rules give you a 30-second pass. By custom the burp is a few seconds inside that pass (competitors on forums report 2–3 seconds is plenty). Short, loud, over fast.
Bass Race, dBDRA's cap-class format, runs Price-is-Right rules instead — you pick a cap class and your score is how close your average gets to that cap without going over. Go over the cap and you're disqualified, so this format rewards precision and knowing your system's real output, not just raw power. The six classes are under 119.9, 120.0–129.9, 130.0–139.9, 140.0–149.9, 150.0–159.9, and 160.0 dB and up. That list comes from a competitor's write-up; we could not read dBDRA's own rulebook, so confirm it there. Not every format has a cap: MECA's Park & Pound and IASCA's Bass Boxing score your highest average.
The meter and how it's mounted
The Term-LAB Magnum is MECA's official meter: MECA's 2025 SPL rulebook requires it at 3X and 4X events, prefers it at 2X, and allows any SPL meter at 1X. IASCA requires its own official meter at 3X and world events. We could not read dBDRA's or USACi's rules on this. The Magnum takes two readings. A clamp and voltage probes on the subwoofer amp's speaker output, within 12 inches of its terminals, measure the watts reaching your subs, and MECA adds those watts to your cone area to set your class. A sensor on a stand on the driver's seat, 26 inches up and 20 inches back from the windshield, facing forward, measures the dB. MECA's X classes and its outdoor Park & Pound place the sensor differently.
Hearing protection
Bring it. MECA's 2025 SPL rulebook requires hearing protection inside the vehicle above 150 dB, and above 165 dB no one may sit in the vehicle. IASCA's 2025 rules make you run the system from outside the vehicle above 165 dB.
For scale, the US workplace limits are far lower and are measured differently. NIOSH recommends 85 dBA averaged over 8 hours and halves the time for every 3 dB: 100 dBA for 15 minutes. OSHA's limit is 90 dBA for 8 hours, halving every 5 dB. Those are A-weighted workplace figures that discount bass heavily, so you cannot compare them with a competition dB reading, and NIOSH says its limit does not cover recreational noise. Earplugs and muffs also block less at low frequencies than high ones. Read the agencies, not us: NIOSH, OSHA, NIDCD.
Why competition boxes sound "wrong" for daily driving
Builders report tuning competition boxes high — 45 Hz and up — matched to that specific vehicle's own cabin resonance: they play test tones through the car to find the frequency where the cabin itself gets loudest, then tune the box to ride that peak. That is practice builders report, not a rule; no rulebook we read sets a tuning. What the rules do cap is the tone: MECA's and IASCA's 2025 SPL rules both cap the measured peak frequency at 100 Hz. It's a car-specific, format-specific tool.