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Giant Sub-Woofer
PuceBaboon sent us linkage to an amusing story about building a
gigantic custom sub woofer. I was about to yawn until I looked at the pictures of them excavating a 60 cubic meter hole, and laying bricks. This one might be a little outside the realm of reasonable, but it's damn impressive.
By observations, church pipe organs seem to be able to produce some pretty low & loud notes. I don't recall seeing any chambers like this in the cathedrals I've visited
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Too many non-neutral colors for critical viewing. This is also impressive for people who believe tubes are the only way to go, yet tubes aren't known for neutral rendering or good bass response and horns aren't known for smooth response either. I'd say this may be the largest and most efficient home subwoofer (who knows) of its capability but I doubt it's the best. I use 12 18" BagEnd subs in a concrete chamber beneath my home theater. That a 3KW amp does the trick nicely and extends every bit as low as this job.
Perhaps not but you should have seen some very large, very long pipes that accomplish the same function using slightly different principles.
...like this?
Yea, I'm pretty sure Ellisons old lap pool beats those guys: http://sanfrancisco.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/s tories/2003/07/21/focus1.html?t=printable
A candidate for the "bored with extreme wealth" category, though not yet a grandpa, is Oracle CEO Larry Ellison. When he revamped his Pacific Heights home a few years ago and wanted to eliminate a lap pool on the bottom level, Green convinced him to turn it into a massive subwoofer instead.
Green said that when he and Ellison played Jurassic Park to test the system "the part with the dinosaur stomping actually lifted us up out of our seats. (The sound) was moving eight inches of concrete" on the floor.
No shit!
RTFA. It's a horn subwoofer, not a cone. Compression is achieved using 8 10" woofers - not one big one. I do agree with you though - I can't imagine how this could sound good.
It will just sound like an aural pool of mud.
Seems that you didn't RTFA. This was built by a company who does sound engineering, and is their own showcase system. For some reason, I think that they probably have a better handle on what will sound good or not than you could get from looking at some pictures of their design.
Further, the "attack" you mention that it won't produce for bass drums and explosions, are high-frequency components of those sounds, which are handled by the other speakers. TFA doesn't say this is the only speaker in the system, and TFPictures show what else is in use. The highs get handled by those, the lows get handled by this.
This has been done before- The "New York Experience" Theatre in New York City had a 26 foot horn Sub-woofer built beneath the floor of the audience.
It no longer exists, but was on 5th avenue in the basement of the office building for a book publisher. In the 70's I was given a tour by the operators. The theatre was housed in space that had been built to be used as a small planetarium, but had not been completed. A seating floor was built at the base of the dome, and the speaker was built in the space below. The show was a multi-screen multi-media production giving a virtual tour of NY, with physical props included.
The speaker was an exponential horn, 26 foot in length, and used twice during the show (once was during a subway station scene, I forget the other). The cones of the drivers would only last for about 4 hours of operation, so would have to be reconed every few so many shows. The was built of wood, and curved so that the opening pointed up towards the feet of the attendees.
Having attended the show many times, (early geek destination in NY), I can attest that it was an intense experience, sitting in the opening of such a speaker.
Actually... with proper use of "bass traps" you can hear real bass out of decent monitors (I'm thinking of nicer monitors... ala Event 20/20's or a nice pair of Tannoy's).
:)
Using bass traps in the corners of the room, which is where low freq's tend to rest can go a long way in ensuring that the low-end you hear is not the room, but the actual sound.
Of course bass traps aren't a "fix-all" good acoustic absorption goes a long way as well to stop the slap-back and other nasty room things.
Ah... but you'd have to be a real freak to convert a room in your house to a recording studio... errr... oh wait... heh
sad robot making broken music
Well; the army made some research on low herz weapons...
/envious I just hope it happens /envious /jealous Can we have a peek AT THE REST OF THE GODDAM HOUSE, PLEASE ??? /jealous
If I remember, 15 Hz would make you feel all wobbly, and puking, and you had lotsa other effects for every pitch up and down.
I just want to be there when his SubWoofer System will get into RESONANCE WITH HIS HOUSE !!!
With so much power, we will have something like the Horns of the Bible, and the Crumbling walls of Babylon....
I really wanna see what his Jacuzzi is coming to 8)
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
First plenty of people have explained here that hes only using 6Watts of power to do this. Your puny JL's will not do this. (These guys are using JBL style drivers...look at the cones you can tell :) ) These are not car type devices which tend to be very low efficiency. These are PRO SOUND drivers (not to be confused with the aftermarket car guys claiming they are PRO Sound. The term refers to Professional Sound Reinforcement ie Concert type speakers. JL does not do this nor does any car sub company.) These drivers are close to 100dB/1w1m sensativitey not 85dB/1w1m. Also they are most likely 16 ohm drivers giving him a 4 ohm load to his amp. Beyond all of these differences the major difference is that he has distortion in the UNMEASUREABLE RANGE.....where as IIASCA pretty much is just measureing distortion. IIASCA may make a lot of money playing to the booming kiddies out there but as far as serious acoustics and sound quality they are a friggin joke.
If you cant tell this thing must sound incredible. It has some very serious acoustics behind it and the designer has chosen to not compromise on the setup. I bet it can make your skin crawl :)
I have experienced 4 18" Pro subs in a horn loaded design (Klipsch did this a few years ago at CES). It was fantastic. They used 3 watts of power to drive the subs :)
Braggin about how many watts you speakers take is sorta like bragging about how much gas you car burns per mile. Less is more....not the other way round.
. I love the sound of burning women and screaming rubber....
I think their wrong, but at this level, it's all about taste (or lack of).
Yep, that's correct. I worked with a professional DAT player that went all the way down to DC. Of course not all DAT players will do this, and many people would consider it a flaw (since, for music, a DC offset doesn't produce any sound, but will make the A/D clip at a much lower volume).
We used it to record serial data, either as analog from the satellite, or digital after we'd sampled it, and both worked. Of course, to record RS232, we needed to keep the level in check, but the output looked square on an oscilliscope.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
f you don't want to hear the room, use headphones!
:)
Heh, um... if you are in a recording situation... the only use headphones have is for tracking/monitoring. Doing a mix or mastering using headphones? Um, no. Not in a million years
sad robot making broken music
(the 70's was fraught with disaster movies..)
:( There must have been $1,000 worth of hardwood plywood in those boxes...
and the theaters installed super huge sub-woofers for the effect. When the quake hit, they lit off the sub-woofers with sub-sonics that literally made you shit your pants in terror, not expecting it of course, and no one had ever experianced sub sonics like that before. It was awesome. The speakers were trucked from theater to theater in a semi along with the reels.
A few years ago, one of the local theaters folded and they tore it down. They still had a set of the "Earthquake" speakers there and they THREW THEM OUT. I would have picked them up and brought them home but I didn't have a truck at the time
Damn...