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World's Most Powerful Subwoofer
dponce80 writes "This $13,000 subwoofer, the TRW 17 from Eminent Technology is billed as the world's most powerful due to its ability to reproduce sounds with frequencies as low as 1Hz. Typical subwoofers bottom out at 20Hz, and while the human ear can barely hear below that point, it is still possible to feel the sound. This particular woofer does not have an enclosure, instead relying on a fan-like design, wafting a cone of modulated air into the room, and effectively turning it into a resonating box, in its entirety!"
COULD YOU REPEAT THAT?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Can it blow a woman's clothing off?
I wonder if this will affect deaf people's ability to 'listen' to music at all. Having a wider range of frequencies should allow for more variations in vibrations, no?
Note: I have not yet read the article because the server seems to be dead.
Is this subwoofer even legal? International law bans transmitters which are capable of transmitting on the frequency of approx 6 or 7Hz because that's the resonant frequency of the human ribcage. Seems like this could be used as a pretty lethal weapon from the (short) description in the posting.
George Wright
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Not without a real reason necessarily. I mean you may not be able to hear sub 20hz (most people can't hear below 30, especially as the age group gets older), but you can definitely feel it. The feeling of the lower frequencies can add a lot to the music, because it can add the real "boom" to certain things like cannon fire (used in on some classical concerts before you ask). Though I've never built a system sub 20hz (my current system peaks around 44hz and dips way down in the 30's) myself, I've heard a lower and they are really amazing. Just don't get going on kimber cables...
Sounds like the old arsequake concept has been resurrected. For those who can't be bothered to read the link, various armies have tried to find a bass frequency that, aimed at enemy soldiers, would cause them to involuntarily lose bowel control. Of course, as bass is omnidirectional, you need to make sure your own troops have earplugs or a full enema beforehand ;-)
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
Check out the USB version: http://www.thinkgeek.com/computing/accessories/5de e/
The glass is half-full. With poison. And there are cracks in the glass. The dirty, dirty glass.
Although there are several patents already held in the field of military and defense-related technologies for ultra-high intensity infrasonic weapons capable of destroying concrete structures from a distance (it's rumored to be able to do far uglier things to the human body), and this since the early 50's, there are some other considerations to keep in mind when attempting to use such a monster subwoofer at home or in a small enclosed space.
Without taking the time to quote the exact sources, it is known (another urban legend?...) in the field of both professional studio and live sound that certain subsonic frequencies are likely to inflict severe punishment to the human body, from memory I seem to recall 3 Hz causing nausea, loss of equilibrium and balance, some other frequencies nearby incontinence or cardiac arrhythmia, and one in particular (??...) rumored to be fatal at certain elevated sound pressure levels. All of this between 1 Hz and 25 Hz. (someone please take the time to dig up the precise data and papers on this?...)
Further, it should be understood that most audio mastering engineers will severely filter out any frequencies below 25 Hz as a matter of habit from the old mastering vinyl days, but also as those sounds do 'cloud up' the 'bottom end' audio in final mixes, and possibly because some of them are aware of the inherent risks posed by having those stray frequencies played at very loud volumes in enclosed areas.
Although this piece of gear sounds like it could be terrific, it may also pose a very real threat to its users if operated improperly. So far, we're not even talking about the possibility of inflicted hearing damage from exposure.
YMMV, as always, and most certainly in this case, batteries definitely not included.
This reminds me of a classic Stan Freberg skit - one of the "Herman Horne does Hi Fi" - where he lampoons Hi Fi hobbyists of the 50's - he's just described a full on sound system, but without speakers:
:)
Interviewer: But what about the speakers?
Horne: The whole house becomes a speaker, you move into the garage!
(snip a few lines)
Horne: As you and your wife sit of an evening, shivering in your garage....
Brilliant stuff - if you've never heard Freberg's "Herman Horne" skits, you absolutely HAVE to get them - it fits so well with modern hobyists/geeks/obsessive types:
Horne: They can sit there and watch their husband suffer with old equipment that has been obsolete for at least a week!
I left my body to science, but I'm afraid they've turned it down...
Imagine a Beowoofer Cluster of these!
As regular viewers of the excellent MTV educational show "Pimp My Ride" will already be informed Xzibit and colleagues recently installed a 12,000 Watt subwoofer in one of their patient's vehicules. The subwoofer itself is here: http://www.cardomain.com/sku/MTXT992244.
Despite being a WASP I must add that the car post-transformation was "phat".
John.
So a subwoofer with a 1hz capability is nothing to get excited about, you could do that with a wide variety of subwoofers. And achieving such a low, inaudible frequency sure as hell doesn't make it the world's most powerful subwoofer.
Those low frequencies at a high enough power can effect things quite a bit.
I remember years ago I was in a town where there were serious problems people were having with objects falling off of shelves and other similar places. (These objects would only last a few days in places that they had been in for years without problems)
It turned out that it was a new local Wind Power Generator that was to blame. It's very low Hz wasn't audible in the slightest, but when it's wavelength matched up with {whatever} object, it caused quite a serious effect.
This is not a dream, not a dream...we are transmitting from the year 1-9-9-9.
Not only you don't hear those frequency they actually feel like vibration, very low vibration, disturbing vibrations. Plus since EVERYTHING you happen to listen to has been recorded on gear thats doesn't reproduce frequencies below 20HZ, and even then, it's perfectly and uterly useless, for 13000$...
I've worked in studios, I've been consultant for studios and even built some, many project and home studios and 3 commercial studios (no commercial studio is built alone so count me part of a team on those). No studio, none, is equiped to deal with such low frequency for obvious reasons, comfort and audibility being the 2 most obvious, so even if your subwoofer reproduces frquencies below 20hz you will never know it.
All your bass are belong to us!
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
It won't make you deaf, it will simply rattle your colon and make you poop.
The bass actually emits from sophisticated organic poo resonance.
I won't bore you with the details. It's technical. It uses a lot of molecules, crystals, and beams and stuff.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
Most digital audio is not filtered below 20 Hz. That's a myth that persists for a variety of reasons. In the days of vinyl, audio was consistently high-pass filtered because even with the standard RIAA equalization, deep bass produced excessively large grooves. Microphones are sometimes filtered to remove rumble, but in cases where the lowest frequencies are important, such as movie soundtracks, the lowest frequencies are generally preserved, subject to limitations of the equipment, such as AC coupling capacitors. Placing a filter at 20 Hz also has potentially audible drawbacks since the phase shift of the filter will easily extend an octave higher (40 Hz).
...do you get a subwoofer?
I'm the guy who originally dug up the Eminent over at http://www.sonicflare.com/ before I wrote the companion article on ohgizmo.com (which looks dead from a quick and painless /. death...).
I'm a blogger, not an engineer, so I really have no idea what I'm talking about (par for course, right) but I did talk to the creator Bruce Thigpen a few days ago about his crazy invention:
Yes, it's real. Yes, you can "hear" it below 20hz. No, it doesn't blow women's clothes off...yet.
The way the TRW 17 (Thigpen Rotary Woofer model #17) works is the fan spins at a constant speed but the fins themselves rotate back and forth to change the frequency. Also, you don't just set this up in your living room and crank up the volume. It has to be installed in an adjacent space like your attic or basement which then becomes the actual subwoofer enclosure, firing through a chainsawed hole into your main listening room.
The TRW was demoed at the Rocky Mountain Audio Fest a couple weeks ago and the reviewers from established audio publications were actually frightened as the walls started to pulse in and out at about 10Hz. Wimps. But the surprising discovery was the sound wasn't booming or nasty, just frighteningly "there." The TRW 17 is advertised with +/- 4dB of distortion which is awesome for any subwoofer, let alone one that covers 1Hz to 30Hz.
And here's the good news: Bruce told me there's a cheaper version in the works. Not cheap like free beer, but not 13 grand. Also, there is a car version in the works that, no doubt, has Luda all hot and bothered. A "normal" version is also planned -- normal like a subwoofer the size of a refrigerator but still better than converting the den into a boom machine.
So you know, no actual music was played at the RM audio fest. It was purely a proof of concept, though it's claimed to work perfectly for music and HT. I haven't talked to Bruce in a few days (no doubt rappers are all up in his biz after I posted it on Monday) but I'm sure we'll be seeing a lot more of the TRW 17 soon.
Pictures of installations and live reports: http://www.sonicflare.com/archives/eminent-tech-tr w-17-part-2.php
Josh
And *that* is what is special about this woofer. Here and here explain it all. Basically, its very hard to move much air at such low frequencies with cone subwoofers (as you saw), so they instead the fan pushes the air with the angle of the blades being adjusted to produce the frequencies.
Paul