Slashdot Mirror
dB Drag Racing
Exedore writes "For a paltry $80,000 outlay, you too can fight back against the punk kids blasting gangsta rap from their Honda Civics. Enter the strange (and rather loud) world of dB Drag Racing and join a small group of dedicated competitors in their quest for the loudest car sound system possible. The numbers: 130,000 watts output, 177dB, 10,000 lbs. of equipment (including the vehicle and all the sound insulation needed to protect those nearby). It might not be quite up to Disaster Area standards, but it's not far off."
I Wanna hear Britney Spears wail !!
*Sounds* like they need some melamine ceiling tiles.
"Protect those nearby"?? Isn't the whole point of these things to annoy the hell out everyone in a 10 mile radius?
How much many more news articles is slashdot gonna post from that one popsci issue.... FAWK SAKES!
I choose to fight back with an EMP :P
My sound system is loud enough to cause me physical injuries! Hooray!
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
do you need to win a dB drag race?
...it's a single frequency sound, not music. That said, it still sounds better than that crap coming from the car next to you at the stoplight...
Be excellent to each other. And... PARTY ON, DUDES!
Those guy's don't stand a chance against my overclocked athlon, that thing sounds like a jet engine, and I mean it, it can even hum tunes if you adjust the fans real fast or with an automatic controller. Promise ;).
http://funstuff.digital-bless.com/
These guys have to be starting to bump into limiting returns... the maximmum possible dB in free air is 194 IIRC. I wonder if it would be legal to pressurize the vehicle to achieve higher max dB's...
Why doesn't someone build/sell a small EMP weapons? You know, enough to reboot anything electronic CD player/radio within 20 feet?
Hell, i'd camp out at the store the night before to buy one of those.
Bowie J. Poag
I still have my stereo in my car from the 80's when I did the SPL scene...
I absolutely love having some wannabe pull up with his sky-hook wing and blasting ICP and trying to look cool... when I look at them, put in ear plugs and Blast them hard with either whiney country or something else that they would find horribly obnoxious... (Pointer sisters works great!)
I produce a tiny 112DbI but then I have only 1000 watts in 11 year old amps and rockford fosgate speakers in that convertable... but I completely drown out the stereo they are listening to in their car.
you CANT beat a custom 7th order isobarik subwoofer box.... the off the shelf junk is just that.... 100% junk.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
db....sound....lots of cars. Yah. There it is.
rejected (19) accepted (0)
Is there a psychological term related to getting your stories rejected on slashdot?
But why is it the Rap stations only have commecials for used car lots, and bail bondsmen?
Off topic. Nevermind.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
How close are we to getting a cheap, easily deployable, noice cancellation system? Living in a city is great because my job is only a mile away and i can walk, but the "ghetto" blasting is getting extremely old. I mean, even through triple paned windows and extra sound insulation in the walls i can still here 50 cent in the middle of the night...*sigh*
I've always wanted to see if one of those boomboxes on wheels would shake itself to bits if it were to play the right frequency of infrasound.
I read this article earlier today, and it just struck me as pointless. I guess there are other competitions which are even more contrived, and maybe I just don't "get it." I suppose anything that keeps the youngins off the street and out of trouble is good.
But honestly, how can it be a car stereo system when the car can't even move by itself! And given that you can't even listen to these things without: a) killing yourself, b) going deaf, c) being real far away, d) turning the volume way down or e) insulating it to lessen the sound; it just doesn't jibe.
I guess it's the thrill of competition, but there have gotta be more intersting engineering challenges than this.
How lame can you get.
For my modified radar gun.
:)
It's amazing how many speakers blow when mosfets overload. Quality sound.
Who all looked at the subject and thought, "Gee, I wonder how postgresql does against Oracle?"
OK, and who all thought, "How do you get a db into a dress??"
-*- Any technology indistinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced -*-
dB drag racing
Boy, did I ever read that wrong:
"Aaaaand they're off!! It's DB2 in the lead with Oracle11i gaining on its heels and SQL Server a few furlongs back..."`
The coolest voice ever.
A lot of it is unquantifiable physics. You're trying to get the wavelength so it matures right at the microphone.
*shakes head* Imagine if somebody who had a CLUE entered these competitions.
Hmm, if the goal is to vibrate the air at a certain frequency, why do they use electromagnetic speakers? You'd think something else would do a better job like a bunch of explosions in a row or something.
Whatever. This "sport" is a bunch of BS if you ask me.
Dodge Caravan represent!
After the SPL thing wears off for them, they move into the world of PC video cards and CPU coooling systems..
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
Sure, you can torture folks with how loud a piece of music is played. However, as with most things, it's the content that annoys. For me, for example, a barely audible Michael Bolton would be enough to infuriate.
OTOH, there's also music out there that does sound great...but loses its meaning when played too loudly.
did the SPL scene...
a custom 7th order isobarik subwoofer box
How is this informative? I can't understand half of what you're saying!
"Just too Fast , Just too Furious"
for the last time people, I am "frodo from middle eaRTH", not "middle eaST".
I just finished the hitchhikers series (and i liked mostly harmless).. now I can finally get all the references that get posted everywhere, yay!
(no the subject isn't a spelling error -- it's a pun!).
I have no idea why anyone would want to turn their vehicle into the equivalent of an acousticaly driven blender.
"take one nerdy noise-fanatic with half a brain but a fully loaded credit card. Add a 5 GW audio system and mix well in the confined space of an autombile. Now pour the gelatinous mass this produces into molds and allow to set for 4 hours. Yes folks, you to can make your own geek mousse."
I think the right music could work wonders at significantly lower volumes. Say, ferinstance,
a good dose of "Madame Butterfly", or "Into the Woods" or a Sousa march, or... well, you get the idea
Jimmy Cauty aka Rockman Rock of the techno act The KLF allegedly had an interesting mobile sound system, courtesy of the British Army. From the KLF FAQ:
... [Cauty] first tested it at a Wire gig on Hungerford Bridge in May. ... ... A fax from Mr. Smith, the Head Of Commercial Exploitation at Advanced Acoustic Armaments, was sent to The Maker. It read : "The test took place to establish the parameters of the new vehicle solo and in tandem with its sister model, SS 9000K+L. The test featured new software generated for our latest commercial client, EXP LTD, and is described by Mr. Cauty as featuring 'the ultimate battle between sound and commerce ending in the death of all musicians and their ascension to rock-n-roll heaven or hell as befits them.' Yesterday we received communication with ex-Government employees who, in the Sixties, worked on audio weapon development with an offer of help and some ex-classified equipment. We regret any such death or damage that has resulted from our tests, but there are casualties in every war. The Triple A Formation Attack Ensemble will perform 'Foghorns Of The Northern Hemisphere' as part of an educational programmed supporting our research shortly."
Q: What's Jimmy's sonic weapon?
A: Jimmy purchased two Saracen armoured vehicles at a scrap yard for ukp 4,000 and found equipment in them which he thought could have been used for sonic warfare. He has tried to assemble the acoustic gun from information he found on the Internet. Installing huge amplifiers and special speakers to cope with the very low frequencies cost him tens of thousands of pounds.
The 25,000-watt sonic gun can project sound for around 7 miles, and Jimmy annoyed his Devon neighbours by testing it on Midsummer's Day, 1996. Jimmy said: "I moved to Devon six months ago for a bit of a rest and this is a project I am taking an interest in. I do not see it as music or art." He said that he aimed the gun away from homes and it seemed to have no effect on sheep.
The Melody Maker said: "He was testing his two Audio Weapon Systems in a field near his new home. 'He alerted people to the fact that he was doing this by setting off some military flares. Then he
tested his Audio Weapons System for an hour for a very select group of scientists and friends. The Audio Weapons System is not designed to kill people."
In January, Panasonic [ the "Finnish conceptual techno nutters"-NME] borrowed one of the Audio Weapons Systems for tests on how sonic waves affect the human body at Brick Lane in London.
Most of this is probably scam, but Cauty has recorded an album of sonic waves for Paul Smith's Blast First label under the name AAA. The album is in the hands of lawyers who are trying to clear some of the samples used on it, and has yet to be released (07/96). It appears to be a Cauty solo project.
More recently, Jimmy teamed up with new Asian-techno group, Black Star Liner for a _happening_ in a field on Dartmoor. Jimmy chartered a 'chopper to take BSL and assorted journos out to Dartmoor, where he intended to remix the Halaal Rock track in his tank. Apparently, BSL bumped into Cauty on London's South Bank, while he was driving about in his tank, he got hold of their album, and said that he wanted to work with them. Anyway, the chopper was grounded by severe fog, so everyone was put on a convey of buses. All the journos were given _orange_ jackets to wear. They eventually arrived at a field full of military vehicles, and people in _yellow_ jackets, wearing goggles and ears protectors, doing some form of formation dancing. The journos were lead to the ir seats, and had large floodlights shone into their eyes, while the yellow jackets let of flares all around them.
There were a load of goats skulls on sticks around the field, and a whole pile of fireworks let of towards the end of the mix, when Cauty was mixing in some Jimi Hendrix. However, this d
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Did anyone else read the headline and think the article was going to be about benchmarking databases?
I saw a show on this recently... pretty crazy stuff. Their equipment is set up to play ONE NOTE, one frequency, as loud as possible. Inside their cars during the competitions, there's a single microphone which picks up the dB level. The cars have panels that are literally clamped shut to keep from blowing apart, and they're all undrivable. The speakers are custom made, and blow out pretty often. If you were inside the car during a blast, you'd likely die - literally =)
Ridiculous stuff =)
~Berj
How much sound do you need to boil water? Or perhaps turn yourself into ash when you turn the system on?
130k watts, sheesh.
Did anyone notice how the dB drag racing headline is right above the sound-dampening materials headline?
Stereo requires two separately recorded channels. If it's just one 70hz tone reproduced via many speakers, it's still just "mono".
Wired Magazine did an entertaining story about this a couple of years ago. My favorite part was the description of riding around West Palm Beach with one of the guys, setting off car alarms with sound pulses:
Wired (and slashdot??) did a writeup on this a while back:
Feel the Noise
I guess 48,000 Watts just ain't what it used to be.
Whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way...
Surely, if they're after max volume, then they don't care about distortion. I'd be tempted just to use solid state relays to drive the speakers with a square wave. That saves lots on cost/complexity/power-disspiation, leaving more for the speakers. (You could also modify the square wave using n batteries in parallel, switched in for slightly different fractions of the waveform - this would get more power into the fundamental frequency.)
Seriously. What's interesting about a bigger, badder stereo? If someone submitted a story about their overpowered PC, it would get rejected. As it should be. Builing a big sound system into a caravan makes it through though. /. the worlds biggest lasagna.
It's time for some perspective people. Next on
Two Rules For Success:
1) Never tell people everything you know.
Pfft, just wait till the 42 volt batteries hit the scene, vive la revolution!
WikiAfterDark.com It's a sex wiki, go now!
...a way to get /. submission by means of automatically referencing popluar science magazine articles.
editors? what's next? "what's new?"
SIGERR: laziness exceeds quota
Or more important, can the mighty Caravan run Linux?
Well. Seems in the absence of big v-8's tearing up the streets, it's sound competition which has taken the place of "who's got the biggest prick contest" I picked up, what I thought was a modest used Orion amplifier, only to find it's some kind of competition amp, capable of driving some serious bass. Maybe I'll get around to putting it into the car, but between 1 farad caps, heavy guage wiring, fibreglass panels and absurdly huge bass drivers, I've finally got a clear picture of what people are putting into these Civics.
I'm just glad I survived my youth with most of my hearing still intact.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Well they still got a bit to go until they got the Vogon-style PA system mentioned in the hitchikers guide to the galaxy. In short: it utillizes every single thing that could be used to make sound as a speaker for total PA perfection... Just to tell us we're about to be blow away because they're building a "freeway".
+1 Offtopic
Valenti admits he's often asked why he pursues this hugely pointless hobby. "Yeah, it's weird. But there are people who have tens of thousands of dollars invested in stamp collections, for God's sake. That to me is weird."
Ok, so it's not Jack Valenti, but who reads the articles anyways?
I've actually been to one of these dB drag races, and I must say, it was rather disappointing. I sat around for a few minutes, and all I got was low end bass. Barely audible, and extremely boring. Something I wouldn't purposely go watch again.
-Boo
'Give me one more medicated peaceful moment'
with an engine? With that sort of power, why not just point the speakers backwards - and off you go!
I love music. But I hate to hear someone else's music. And also I hate whn my 6 month old baby is disturbed by the sound that outloud all other motor engines around. Even more, I hat to hear their music in my appartment at 7th floor.
I think once the law doesn't protect me from those crazy guys, then I have to go crazy myself and kill them all. One by one. I am serious. Just where is my gun?
Less is more !
I always wanted someone to form a band called Disaster Area. Another good band name is from Red Dwarf: Colostomy Explosion.
Ew.....
The GEEK shall inherit the earth...
Do they hand out ear-trumpets to the spectators on their way out?!
What's that you say old chap? Say again?
I SAY COME AGAIN???
So the punk kid is feeling good and cranks up more garbage on his civic with blue lights reflecting underneath. His bright yellow dash is blocked by his sunglasses. He pulls next to some geeky kid on a red light in a toyota corolla 1991 and tries to focus on the group of girls on the sidewalk.
Then the unthinkable happens. The geeky kid in big round glasses looks at the punk kid, gives a quick smile full of contempt and turns away. The gauntlet has been thrown for the punk kid.
So he rolls down all windows and cranks up the gangsta rap to illegal decibel levels hoping to inflict pain and torture on his contender. Suddenly all attention at the crossing is focused on the battle that enrages.
The geeky kid gives another smile despite the pain threshold, and turns on his very own techno. And then, he turns it up. A few notches along, he opens the glove compartment and wears a defensive headset ready for the blastoff to space. He also rolls down all his windows to make sure they dont break, and pumps up the volume till a few windows in the surrounding buildings break. The punk screams in pain and runs the light, his tail between his legs.
Next issue: The loud barney song as torture in Guantanamo Bay and Iraq in search of the ever-elusive WMDs
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
I happen to be privy to some Auto Sound information, and the numbers they have there are actually from the MTX competition systems. The way you make that much noise is 3 letter. RFL. MTX makes a subwoofer called the RFL that requires 1000W of power just to hit, and can handle 4000W of power peak.
The decibel race is just starting, with new competitors and new ways to make more Watts for the buck. Pretty neat stuff.
I got nothin'.
My idea is to set up enormous propane jet powered flaming tuned horns. With a music keyboard (at a descreet distance) then shake mountains from miles away. Forget about electronics. What you could do with huge steel horns driven by combustion would db speakers to pieces, and anyones ear drums within several hundred yards, might even do more than that.
Just imagine Die Kunst der Fuge played with echo effects in the Rockie Mountains and audible for hundreds of miles. Eat music you thumping Honda junkies!
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
Oh the memories of making my friend puke durring late night system tuning sessions in my shop
Was setting out a 50Hz tones at near full output and he spewed all over the floor of the shop.
Who would have thought 6, 10" subs would have done so much?
I love you JL Audio!
Pretty Pictures!
Thank you slashdot, for arming me to battle these little bastards.
Build Your Own HERF Gun
and
HERF Gun: Make it in your basement
These little assholes drive up and down my street day and night, cracking my skull with this shit.
My eardrums are damaged, I have severe inner ear problems and the sound pressure levels these things produce cause me agonizing pain in my inner ears and that causes me intense migrane headaches.
The cops will not do anything about this.
This is an invasion of my privacy.
In my house I have the right to peace and quiet.
NO ONE has the right to intrude into my privacy by any means. These sound systems are invasive, obtrusive and dangerous.
Because the police will not do anything about it, I will. There are some kids living across the street from me that park in the front of my house and turn that shit up LOUD. There is NO ESCAPE from it.
Be it known, here and now, that I am taking the law into my own hands. I am waging war.
I will lay the buttons down on the HERF GUNS and I will melt their shit. I hope they have to call a tow truck to haul off their trucks.
I hope that I destroy everything electronic in their home, their cars, anything they are carrying, and if they get too close, I hope I cook their stupid freaking brains.
Anyone that thinks this loud shit is "cute" or "cool" is a retard and should have the ever loving shit stomped out of them until they stop breathing.
Thank you Slashdot for helping to arm me with a most excellent weapon for this new war..
I would think that the makers of Viagra would do well sponsoring a limp-dick group of folks like these guys.
I'm sure it's not as loud as my G4 Macintosh!
Best Buy can have you arrested
fight back against the punk kids blasting gangsta rap from their Honda Civics I'm surprised such blatant racism made it's way onto the front page :(
What upsets me is that so many old people won't give the music a chance just because they don't like black people...
Also, the quote seems to imply there's something bad about honda civics, when in fact they're good, cheap cars. Just because not everyone can afford the same expensive cars that you old people do, it doesn't mean that you should make fun of them. :(
dont these guys annoy the hell out of you? dont the realise muffled bass outside the car sounds terrible as the car panels viberate, making them seem like idiots?
over here in New Zealand our ex All Black rugby star Jonah Lomu is a huge fan and enters his car into the yearly competitions, he has clocked up 160db, so he must be the worlds most famous db drag racer! Go Jonah - get well soon -although somehow i doubt you read slashdot~ ;0
Do you need a website upgrade?
Is it just me or are they just posting articles from a 2 week old issue of popular science?
what is this for? oh well
This is the second story that came from Popular Science's website...The story about the UL guy is on the same page.
huh, I can't hear you?
That's where David Shriner's Klingon zapper comes in. Wait until a traffic light, point and zap, I mean *ZZZZAPP*, and enjoy the silence. Plus, it destroys the electronic ignition of the prick's car, allowing you to drive away without fearing a pursuit. Now if only RadioShack carried them...
I am going to market them to retirees and quiet-loving coders under the brand Rap-B-Gone (TM). Any takers?
--
Mad science! Robots! Underwear! Cute girls! Full comic online! http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/
If you were actually sitting in this car, wouldn't your brains be converted to a slurry? What's the point? Or is that the real explanation?
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
From the article: "every 10 dB increase equivalent to a doubling of perceived sound."
In high school physics, I was taught that an increase of 3dB doubles the intensity/amplitude of the sound. My teacher concluded that +3dB would mean you hear a sound twice as loud. Then he went on to explain that P (power) is directly proportional to 1/d (the inverse of the distance squared).
I know that the Richter scale works on the idea that an earthquake of 6 on the Richter scale is double the strength of one of 5 on the Richter scale.
But have I been mislead? Is "perceived sound" different from amplitude/intensity? Did I really get staight 'A's in pyhsics?
Mike
Tux, myself and my lady regularly engage in 3somes - over the home network.
Alma Gates! The Beast!
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
I'll stare into my laser beam headlights
Slashdot Eds Link Anonymous Posts With Logged Posts
They Are Vermin Feeding On Each Other's Feces.
I Hate \.
-dB
"It if was easy to do, we'd find someone cheaper than you to do it."
The breakthrough came when they found a way to crank the volume dial up to 11...
Looks like those boys need to:
spend some time on the overclockers sites
slip some liquid nitrogen out of the chem lab
quench those coils
it was some sort of database contest, like seeing who can move throught a billion rows the fastest.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I just need to detonate a 300 kilotonne hydrogen bomb in the back seat of my saturn. I guarantee that the noise generated in the subsequent 3 seconds will put them to shame. Ah well, I was going to junk the car soon anyway.
My rights don't need management.
Techology - creating better assholes...
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
What a fuckwit you are! Obviously there are bigger fuckwits around, as the article shows, but you... ...think your chinese-made "brand name" speakers are something special ...can't spell "convertible" ...can't spell "isobaric" ...don't know what "isobaric" means ...feel the need to make wannabes look sad
lame and sad, "Lumpy". And your low slashdot ID just proves you've been hanging out in Mom's basement tinkering with your penis, your "convertible" and your computer (in that order) for a very long time.
11!
The cars that go 'BOOM'
...that is, Alma Gates, sixty something year old owner of the infamous "Beast" and two time world champion. She's also a friend of mine, and an honored member of teamROCS.
She ain't no punk either. One reason she got into car audio was to "get even", but then she found she loved the competition, the friendships, and the enthusiasm of thousands of young adults. That's when she formed Team Gates. She has been featured not only in Car Audio and Electronics, but has been featured in Wired (10/2000, pg 260), and named in nearly every major media outlet (Washington Post, Boston Globe, New York Times, MSNBC, TechTV). Hell, she's even been on ESPN2! Let's see Lawrence Lessig or Linus Torvalds get that kind of coverage!
..is a directed active noise cancellation system targeted specifically at those civics. Imagine the situation. You're at the intersection waiting for for a red light. Now this punk comes by with loud throbbing thump coming out of the windows of his car. Your car starts shaking. You press the right button, and active noise suppressor (kinda like the one they use on F-117s) supresses this motherf@ker's subwoofer and makes his entire sound system sound like a tin can until he closes the windows. Now that would be cool.
The following article describes using sound as a lethal weapon in the form of an invention by Norris called "Hypersonic sound".
(This has been discussed on slashdot before, twice.)
Excerpt from the Los Angeles Times article: "It gives you the equivalent of an intense migraine headache," said Elwood G. Norris, the company's chairman and inventor of the device. "It's just totally disabling."
3dB is the limit of relative sensitivity, that is, average person can only hear the difference between two sounds if the difference between their loudness is 3dB.
Is there anything to make that rasberry fart exhaust EVEN LOUDER too!!??
John Kerry is a Joke!
I read the title, and though of mobile DBs ('ttle computers on these(1), or even better these(2)), with the winner as the server that move the fastest, go the furthest while also (with the joys of wireless) crunch the most recorlds.
What a letdown.
(1) I want one
(2) Gahhh, and one of these
Wow, I should not post when knackered.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
This aint news for Nerds!!
db?? Damn! I was expecting a dragster race with different databases involved competing against each other to see who gets the results the fastest.
What type of non-nerd, outdoor shit is this?
"I used to have that really cool,funny sig
Ever since I bought the first GeForce FX I could get my hands on, I've noticed how much better Quake is without any background noise. If only I could hear my headphones!
...
Of course, it is going to be a tad difficult to get that Caravan in my office.
Oh, excuse me, I have to go, I think I see my supervisor trying to using that bullhorn again
Words to men, as air to birds.
"punk" kids to not listen to "gangsta" rap. punk and gangsta are two different genres.
... because all you need is to go out and grab a couple GeForce FX 5800's.
.
Hey! you promised you'd tell us how to fight back against the punk kids blasting gangsta rap from their Honda Civics! Just what does it take, short of a Mossberg, to get them to realize they're being assholes?
.
Go ahead and mod me down. I think 99% of Slashdot modders are assholes too!
Glad I could help.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Having people that think this kind of equipment is nice to have are
* destroying their hearing (their problem)
* major sound polluters (not only their problem)
On the risk of being told I troll, people with sound systems that can be heard in a car next to you or on the sidewalk should be measured and if it exceeds the maximum sound levels for their motors they should have to give up their stereo.
This may be contrary to US culture but this is a bit that we do not need.
Freedom goes as far as where the freedom of others starts.
I know that the Richter scale works on the idea that an earthquake of 6 on the Richter scale is double the strength of one of 5 on the Richter scale.
I am not a geologist, but the Richter scale seems to follow the relationship log_10(radiated energy in joules) = 4.4 + 1.5*(richter number), or approximately so (it is difficult to decipher the language in sites like this one). It's not clear what you mean by "strength" of an earthquake, but the above formula indicates that a magnitude 6 quake would release sqrt(1000), or about 31 times as much radiated energy as a magnitude 5 quake.
Incidentally, 3dB is approximately a doubling of radiated power, and an increase of a factor of sqrt(2), or about 1.414 in amplitude. 10dB is a tenfold increase in radiated power. I'm not sure how the doubling of perceived intensity with each 10dB increase would be rigorously measured.
"Your notation sucks!" -- Serge Lang (1927-2005)
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
Only to those who can't tell the different between "Trek" and reality. Although there are a couple of cool scientific theories that present in Star Trek... overdedicated fans tend to overlook the fact that it's a TV show.
Usually if somebody starts talking about warp drives in relation to the resonent frequencies, it'll be a good tip-off.
My friend and I competed actively in DBDrags, we also held our own, certified, events in the Colorado area. The team we competed with was team Atac (Authorized Team Audio Creations) which built a pretty cool little mascot car. I was a PowerWheels with 1 10inch subwoofer mounted in it. We used the actual car for the enclosure and pushed some pretty good numbers. High 170's IIRC. And these events aren't about blasting music either. There are special CDs with different hz ratings on them that you "burp" to get your SPL level. Burp, as in play the cd for 1-2 seconds, then cut it. That's all you should really play pure bass for unless you wish to hurt your equipment. I think our best car, besides the power wheels, did a 160 something. It was a 1970's VW Rabbit with the inside torn out, filled with MDF board along the walls of the car. Then filled with expanding insulation foam, and about 12 Optima Yellow Top, deep cycle, batteries. We ran 1/0awg wire through the whole car, and even added an ignition switch to the hood, as well as throttle control, so we didn't have to sit inside the car. This is quite an interesting, and addictive, hobby to take part it. It's a shame more peopld didn't show up to the events.
Try actually thinking for yourself. It's quite refreshing.
If this is so hard on the speakers, how hard is it on the microphones? And how accurately can they measure such intense sound? I would think that the condition and placement of the microphone would swamp many other factors.
"Lord, grant that I may always be right, for Thou knowest that I am hard to turn" -- A Scots-Irish prayer
that was the title of the previous article
and now this one..
I wonder what happened to the title I entered... only "the Quiet PC" should be title... mozilla bug? hrrm :(
It's a joke. Lighten up.
I'd say you can get out of just about anything with this sort of mindless comment. Means you don't have to consider another's point of view, too.
"You can justify anything by putting it in quotes, adding a famous name and making it a sig" - Albert Einstein
That's an insult. Unless it's a race to be deaf first?
Stock schmock, give me cash.
Thousands of dB?
:) Ofcourse they probably aren't using equipment intended for music playback, but still...
If you need to double the amp power per three dB, that would require an insane amount of energy.(You do the math
I remember reading an article in some hifi magazine wih calculations of the energy and speaker requirements to produce 1000 dB, as far as I remember you'd need an energy source equivalent of more than a few stars the type of our sun. And a speaker membrane moving back and forth a distance equivalent of the size of our solar system.
250 Db @ 13 Hz
But I don't wanna clean it up
Diplomacy is the art of saying "Nice doggie" until you can find a rock. Will Rogers
Talk about compensation. Hell for that money I would buy a better car, or a computer system! Why in the hell do I need someone to hear me two miles away?
This SIG pulled due to lack of funding. (This damn war is costing too much!)
Is it really true that the sound of a nuclear explosion will kill you(if you are not already dead, that is)?
:)
And if you can die from sound, what's the limit in dB? Maybe I should ask this on alt.suicide, but whatever
~192dB sinewave sound is where the air pressure goes from vacuum to twice the normal air pressure.
If you wanna get louder than that, the wave gets distorted as it has to consist of something like 99% of vacuum and 1% of 100bar..
Thanks god there is a difference between GOOD and LOUD sound (re)production:
For $80.000,- you can buy this loudspeaker, whose sound quality is much more impressive than the loudness of any dB drag race car on this planet...
The US Navy has sonar that can reach 235 dB. http://www.pbs.org/odyssey/voice/20020906_vfts_tra nscript.html
...the car is, according to the article, "basically undrivable" at 10.000lbs, with hardly any room for the driver. You'd expect competing vehicles to be at least somewhat street legal.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Well, it's legal, like. But a car that weighs 10,000lbs isn't going to go anywhere fast, and it's hardly going to corner like a go-kart either. Plus you'd need a tanker following you around just to keep it in fuel. I think that's their point.
Then again, some people seem to think that sort of thing's clever.
What's the deal with everyone here always wanting to bash Civics? I think they are fun to drive, like gocarts :D but then again, I have only tried the VTI or something.
Note that the girls always walk off.
oh brave new world, that has such people in it!
You can't easily go deaf from loud bass.
Absolutely incorrect. Loud bass is, in fact, a sure-fire way of damaging your hearing. Read this information from an audiologist and come back when you finish.
Most noise-related deafness is from high frequencies.
Again, wrong. Hearing damage usually manifests itself as a degradation in the ability to hear high frequencies. But you are mistaking cause and effect. The hearing loss can be caused by excessive SPLs (sound pressure levels) at any audio, or even subsonic, frequency. If your hearing was damaged by 20hz bass at an excessive volume, the effect would probably be a loss of ability to hear high frequencies, but that does not mean that the high frequencies caused the hearing loss.
...yeah...bet you didn't see that one coming, huh?
Blar.
Evel never jumped the Grand Canyon. The jump to which you are refering was over the Snake River Canyon. His son, Robbie, jumped the Grand Canyon (well part of it) on a real motorcycle in the late 90's. Sorry I am not sure of the date.
If VISTA is the answer, you didn't understand the question
120dB is enough to deafen you completely 10 times over in a span of 6 hours.
177dB is so dangerous the lower frequencies may cause physical harm in certain situations, never mind taking your hearing away exponentially faster than 120dB audio!
What kind of hearing protection to they use for these things? They must use something!
Please understand that this situation wasn't normal. I had dealt with normal college noise my first year there with no problems.
ICP is Insane Clown Posse, an idiotic rap group.
"112Dbl" is a typo for "112 dB SPL", or 112 decibels sound pressure level. This means that the sound has 10^11.2 times as much power as the quietest detectable sound.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
I live next to a major thoroughfare, and as soon as the start of the summer comes around, it's hell, as it's not uncommon to be assaulted 20-30 times a day by these drive-by tresspassers. These boomcar morons think they're bad-asses with their expensive toy stereos, but what they really need to do is grow the hell up and learn something about civility.
I am thankful that our local police department takes the issue seriously- after some initial prodding, they've pretty much eliminated the problem. The boomers here might be pissed because of repeated (and increasingly expensive) fines, but they ought to be thankful that they aren't faced with a law like they have in Michigan, where the equipment must actually confiscated and destroyed.
Those who are facing this problem might be interested in this Web Site. IT contains a lot of useful information about the problem, and interestingly, the boomers themselves.
"A measured SPL in excess of 140 dB will result in immediate disqualification." http://www.termpro.com/dbdrag/rules/2002/rules02.h tml
;) My Olds Brougham gets hella SPL inside, and all you hear from the outside are faint thumps. It's these cheap-ass, plastic, asian, rice-burners that dont contain the sound that's the problem.
What a stupid "sport," if u can call it that. "Oooh, I can spend more money than anybody else and hire an EE to do a finite element analysis on my ricey car." Maybe mfgrs should preinstall "BQuiet" (dynomat clone) so u dont hear a car from the outside. The truth is that people don't want to hear your car, if you want to be deaf, it's your perogative. Besides, if you dynomat, you get a higher SPL.
The biggest trick the devil pulled was letting lawyers become politicians so they can write the laws.
Only in America could you do something this stupid and wasteful. They should hold the whole competition in a gas chamber so it can only happen once. No doubt these people will unfortunately breed and have kids just like them. Where's the reset button on this planet? We need a fresh start and flushed gene pool.
For a minute there I thought this guy was offering to take out an eighty grand hit on the hot rod punks, and while murder is a bit extreme, I can see where people would sympathize with an idea like this.
But no, he's suggesting that we might want to slink down into the gutter for them for that fair & reasonable price.
Sorry, I think option A might be more popular with more readers... :-)
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
I think that is so great. If I could afford $80,000 I would put that system in my old car and blare some oldies. That would be such a riot!!!
Hey all...
:-) )and therefore we are forced to come up with a way around the restriction. To some of us its just as fun as figuring out how many gigahertz we can squeeze out of an overclocked CPU.
I didnt have time to read every response to the entire post, but I thought I would come over to your board and speak a little on the subject.
I agree that there are alot of punk kids out there that mis-represent what DB Drag is all about. And just like "hackers" give avid computer users a bad name - these punk kids or people without respect for others gives the DB Drag world a bad name.
To begin - most truly serious DB Draggers dont drive thier cars around annoying people. Yes - there alot of "us" that cannot drive thier cars around at all... but it pretty much equates to a real drag racing car - those arent street legal either. Alot of our cars are so specialized that it would simply be impossible to safely operate the vehicle in the street.
There is a world of diffrence between a DB Drag Racing competitor and a kid who has seen one too many movies about racing and hasnt developed a sense of respect for others. Myself for instance - I listen to my car system pretty loudly while on highways with the window down... but the second I come off the highway, enter a residential area, or come to a stoplight - not only do I turn it down, alot of the times it goes OFF altogether.
Not many people will ever truly understand other peoples hobbies, and DB Drag racing is no diffrent. To some people it seems a horrible waste of money. To others it seems too easy to prove a challenge. To me it was easy to reach a certain level of performance in competition, but after that you have to start applying more than simple physics or adding more and more speakers to get louder. Eventually you hit a point where you get diminishing returns. There are alot of things that are not legal in competition (the afforementioned pressurized cabins for one
The world of DB Draggers learns alot from reading feedback such as this. It is painful to think of someone defining your hobby as something used to annoy other people. But in reality it is only a small percentage of people that do such things. It makes about as much sense as racism. We all pretty much stick together in our sport, and save the bad apples - we all come out better for it.
Before I take up entirely too much space here on your board (some of you may think that already) ill draw to a close.
P.S. 10 Db IS in fact a "doubling in percieved sound level" to the human ear. When you mentioned 3db being a doubling - it IS... but it is a doubling of apparent signal level. To an electronic meter, a 3 Db gain reads as twice the signal, but is sometimes very hard to pick up with the human ear.
By the way... if you want to see the Good (mixed in with the little bit of inevitable bad... you can find a forum of DB Draggers at http://www.termpro.com
I only ask that you conduct yourselves as civilly as I have here.
Hey all... I didnt have time to read every response to the entire post, but I thought I would come over to your board and speak a little on the subject. I agree that there are alot of punk kids out there that mis-represent what DB Drag is all about. And just like "hackers" give avid computer users a bad name - these punk kids or people without respect for others gives the DB Drag world a bad name. To begin - most truly serious DB Draggers dont drive thier cars around annoying people. Yes - there alot of "us" that cannot drive thier cars around at all... but it pretty much equates to a real drag racing car - those arent street legal either. Alot of our cars are so specialized that it would simply be impossible to safely operate the vehicle in the street. There is a world of diffrence between a DB Drag Racing competitor and a kid who has seen one too many movies about racing and hasnt developed a sense of respect for others. Myself for instance - I listen to my car system pretty loudly while on highways with the window down... but the second I come off the highway, enter a residential area, or come to a stoplight - not only do I turn it down, alot of the times it goes OFF altogether. Not many people will ever truly understand other peoples hobbies, and DB Drag racing is no diffrent. To some people it seems a horrible waste of money. To others it seems too easy to prove a challenge. To me it was easy to reach a certain level of performance in competition, but after that you have to start applying more than simple physics or adding more and more speakers to get louder. Eventually you hit a point where you get diminishing returns. There are alot of things that are not legal in competition (the afforementioned pressurized cabins for one :-) )and therefore we are forced to come up with a way around the restriction. To some of us its just as fun as figuring out how many gigahertz we can squeeze out of an overclocked CPU.
The world of DB Draggers learns alot from reading feedback such as this. It is painful to think of someone defining your hobby as something used to annoy other people. But in reality it is only a small percentage of people that do such things. It makes about as much sense as racism. We all pretty much stick together in our sport, and save the bad apples - we all come out better for it.
Before I take up entirely too much space here on your board (some of you may think that already) ill draw to a close.
P.S. 10 Db IS in fact a "doubling in percieved sound level" to the human ear. When you mentioned 3db being a doubling - it IS... but it is a doubling of apparent signal level. To an electronic meter, a 3 Db gain reads as twice the signal, but is sometimes very hard to pick up with the human ear.
By the way... if you want to see the Good (mixed in with the little bit of inevitable bad... you can find a forum of DB Draggers at http://www.termpro.com
I only ask that you conduct yourselves as civilly as I have here.