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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.
Howard Stern would have a field day with this puppy!
Oh man.. that room with Motorhead's Boneshaker DVD and some Fort Garry Dark Ale.
All that'd be left are greasy, bloody smudges.
I can hardly wait for someone to put it in their car, and drive through my neighborhood at 3 am...
There in lies the secret to cold fusion
I think so, but wouldn't it'd be cheaper to just buy an SUV?
Trolling is a art,
The horn is an acoustic transformer that links the cone to the air in the room very effectively. For good results, a bass horn has to be very large, on the scale of the wavelength of the notes it's reproducing.
The bass you hear on your home hi-fi is most likely produced by resonance, something you should avoid if you really want to hear what those bass notes are sounding like. But resonance is cheap! Large bass horns are neither cheap, nor easy, but they sound so much better...
-- oldthinkers unbellyfeel ingsoc
these guys build custom home cinema installations so this was either for a client or I think their own demo to show off what they can do....
...scientists are predicting Southern California could be in for a major earthquake this spring or summer.
Hotblack quated as saying, "You call that a woofer??"
Free Mac Mini Yeah, it's
The main question is, does it go to eleven?
The CB App. What's your 20?
What those apparently puddles of yellowish brown liquid in the pics near the bottom are?
ear wax
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I am a programmer. I am paid to produce syntax not grammar. Deal with it.
The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy notes that Disaster Area, a plutonium rock band from the Gagrakacka Mind Zones, are generally held to be not only the loudest rock band in the Galaxy, but in fact the loudest noise of any kind at all. Regular concert goers judge that the best sound balance is usually to be heard from within large concrete bunkers some thirty-seven miles from the stage, whilst the musicians themselves play their instruments by remote control from within a heavily insulated spaceship which stays in orbit around the planet - or more frequently around a completely different planet.
Their songs are on the whole very simple and mostly follow the familiar theme of boy-being meets girl-being beneath a silvery moon, which then explodes for no adequately explored reason.
Many worlds have now banned their act altogether, sometimes for artistic reasons, but most commonly because the band's public address system contravenes local strategic arms limitations treaties.
This has not, however, stopped their earnings from pushing back the boundaries of pure hypermathematics, and their chief research accountant has recently been appointed Professor of Neomathematics at the University of Maximegalon, in recognition of both his General and his Special Theories of Disaster Area Tax Returns, in which he proves that the whole fabric of the space-time continuum is not merely curved, it is in fact totally bent.
this might seem odd to you, but some people design listening systems for sound quality, not volume. if you'll RTFA, you find that the amp is only delivering 6W to each of 2 horns (despite total power handling capacity of 6400 watts).
All your BASS are belong to us
Isn't it interesting how you come to recognize posters based solely on their sigs???
full-sized church pipe organs are specially tuned. Each pipe plays exactly one note, and the pipe's length determines the wave length. The high ceilings in a church also help.
Why read the article when I can just make up a snap judgement?
Speaker guy: Is there a problem officer?
Policeman: The neighbors are throwing up. Can you please turn down your gigantic, crater-filling sub-woofer?
Speaker guy: Huh?
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
...like this?
I've heard Hotblack Desiato used a black hole as a subwoofer at the galaxy twist gig next saturday.
Fans whom have will heard it claims:
-It really rocked!
Warning: This sig contains a small bug. ==> *
The question is, if he blows one, will anyone notice :)
Anyway if you had looked at the pictures, the speakers are easily accessed through a removable floor panel. Similar to the wiring in a server room.
Why is it that people look at a project, which someone else has put a ton of time and effort into, and think they can find flaws in less than a minute. Is your opinion of your fellow man that low, or your opinion of yourself that inflated?
these guys build custom home cinema installations so this was either for a client or I think their own demo to show off what they can do....
.mp3 recording of the room? I want to hear the difference between that setup and my laptop's speakers.
I'm still not convinced. Does anyone have an
When you have nothing left to burn you must set yourself on fire
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.
It's a horn. A horn is an acoustic transformer, which matches the impedence of the cone to the impedence of the air, giving a very effecient energy transfer. That means very, very fast bass, with more attack than any brute force method you describe. Your speakers are the equivalent of hitting a feather (the light air) with a golf club (heavy cone). The feather won't go far as there's a big impedence mis-match. The horn gradually makes the air the cone is trying to move match with the weight of the cone, so to speak, like replacing the feather with a golf ball in the above analogy. When the cone moves the air now, it moves easily because of the matched impedence.
To give you an example, my small horn speakers with a 7.5 watt amp go as loud as my brother's PA speakers on his 750watt amp. Do the logarithms and that means that my speakers are 20db more sensitive than his - because of the horns! (actually about 6db of that is due to bigger magnets, but the rest of the increase is down to the horns)
So, the end result is many, many times superiour, with louder sound, with less distortion than your "box" speakers.
-- oldthinkers unbellyfeel ingsoc
FYI, Church organs go to 32 foot pipes. The good ones go one rank further to 64 feet. These are the big folded pipes in back. You won't get to see these unless they have a viewing window to the real pipes. They are not the pretty pipes in front. The 64 footers are almost always folded double or triple (like most brass insturments) because the pipe loft isn't that tall. Due to the shape of the pipe, it's throat, and other attributes, most pipes don't play exactly one pitch. That's why they don't all sound like sine waves or have a flute sound. Some pipes have brass and trumpet sounds instead of flute sounds. This is due to the harmonics generated by many pipes to give them rich fat sounds by design.
The truth shall set you free!
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 enjoy visiting my audiophile friends and casually mentioning that whatever song is playing sounds a little clipped in the high end.
Then I go hit on the wife while the guy spends an hour fiddling with the dials and sliders.
32 foot pipes are the largest commonly found, and even then only on very large instruemts. A 64' pitched rank is exceedingly rare. The only instrument I'm aware of (in the US) with real 64' pipes is the one at the Atlantic City Convention Hall (website: http://www.acchos.org/ ).
The Washington National Cathedral, in DC, has a 64' pitched rank, but if I recall correctly it's electronic (using speakers), not with actual 64' long lengths of pipe.
Bear in mind, a 32' pitch C is already below 20Hz, well below what most people can hear. A 64' pitch is more of an impressive "special effect" than anything else.
Actually, if anyone else can cite another pipe organ with a 64' pitch (US or otherwise), I'd love to hear about it, so I could hear that monster!
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Much like a newborn puppy...