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.

Comments

Re:The "Biggest"

[winkydink]

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

You mean...

[sxltrex]

...like this?

Re:Biggest?

[InsaneGeek]

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.

Re:bigger isn't always better

[djh101010]

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.

Done before - at the New York Experience Theatre

[vtweb]

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.

Re:Audiophile

[sogoodsofarsowhat]

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.

correct - had a DAT that recorded DC.

[morcheeba]

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.

Re:The "Biggest"

[blinder]

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 :)