ElectronicHouse.com has featured more than its share of over-the-top theaters and their associated A/V gear, but few rival the “Real Total Horn” listening room of Italian design firm Royal Device, at least not in terms of size (or obsession).
True, this story has been around for a while, but it’s surfaced again (thank you MAKE) to the amusement and astonishment of home theater junkies everywhere…
In a nutshell, the subwoofers consists of two horns placed into a subfloor cavity approximately 3 feet deep. The horn walls are made of brick and lined with an anti-resonating material. To keep the entire enclosure from moving about (important for compression) a 1500 pound slab was place atop. Wall and ceiling treatments assist in delivering the horn’s full impact to the listening position.
Check out the slideshow for a construction walkthrough.
Nice, but you need FIVE for surround sound !!!
P.S. – Here is a FIVE Horn System, with horns large enough to WALK INTO !!!
http://scrounge.org/speak/burwen/
P.P.S. I’d like to see the overall impulse response of the complete system ……
Dang – someone REALLY likes their Britney Spears.
This has to be from the 70’s or early 80’s.
Anybody have a date on this?
I believe this is used to produce the elusive “Brown Note”.
Audiophools and their toys…
Seems like the amount of air in the cavity would take to long to move. You would really be able feel an explosion in a movie, but I don’t think you would want to listen to music on it. The phasing would be horrible.
The phasing would be horrible.
Phasing in that range of frequencies is essentially irrelevant.
In general, phasing in highly overrated. There are frequency dependent voltage and current delays at every point in the circuit where there exists either capacitance or inductance. That’s pretty much EVERY single part of the system. Anybody who claims to even get it close is lying.
these must have been used by douglas adams’ hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy, “disater area” the loudest musical group in the universe, who’s concerts are banned by weapons treaties.
Can it be used as a bong?
#9, ubiquitous talking head,
Room tuning is so important to low freq. phasing. SW height and angle to within degrees. It’s almost impossible to get every sq. yd. in a large room perfect without reinforcement, cancellation or standing waves, unless you use multiple long throw subs and excellent channel separation.
I’ve been quite fortunate with a combination of 3 B&Ws — 2 front for L/R, and 1 front center. The room has a slanted ceiling towards the front and large ports at Ft/R and Rr/L. Works good enough.
Just don’t walk down the hall to the other part of the house without chest protection.
So if it has to be that big to handle the low frequencies properly. How is that little Bose “Wave” box any good? And why is a plastic box with little air channels inside, so damn expensive? I’ve seen one open at a repair shop. There’s nothing in it, but empty space, channeled in a kind of mini-maze. Supposedly, some frequencies go the longer way thru, while others take a shortcut. And both come out the grids at the right moment. But high quality audiophiles (I’ve know a few) never worried about this before. Or they would have made more speaker boxes for each range, a long time ago. Rather than keeping most of in in one large speaker cabinate. And I’m talking about $1000 speaker boxes. How could Bose hope to do better with a $300 plastic case? It’s just a gimmick, to fool the novices. A moneymaker they can advertise in the magazines. But it’s still a $50 CD player, built into a $250 plastic box. There should be a Youtube clip of someone opening one up, and being DISAPPOINTED!
Why is this all over news sites again all of the sudden? This was on Digg like 3 years ago, and everyone is re-posting it all of the sudden.
#9, – ‘Phasing in that range of frequencies is essentially irrelevant…’
Thanks for laugh, I needed that. Spoken like a true electronics guy with little to no acoustical experience. From 350Hz on down to 1Hz, phase is very important for a clear and articulate bass response, music or movie. Mechanical alignment of speakers is important for phase control. But it comes down to the room, the listener, and air pressure. This is not to say that physics takes vacation with sound and phase with outdoor systems. In fact the rules are more exaggerated due, in part, to the volume and the physical amount of speakers used. Then there’s other factors like humidity, temperature, etc. So, no, phase won’t be perfect across the lower spectrum, but it is important to be as close as your can be
#10, – ‘Room tuning is so important to low freq. phasing…’
Absolutely. The acoustic listening space is highly important as is the placement of the speakers and the listener’s ears. While a perfect response is technically possibly in anechoic chamber, you wouldn’t want your living to look or sound like one.
#13, – ‘So if it has to be that big to handle the low frequencies properly. How is that little Bose “Wave” box any good?…’
In a word, ‘psychoacoustics’. When the human brain get enough of the sonic information it can ‘fill in the gaps’. For instance, logic tells us that a 4″ diameter Bose speaker can’t physically reproduce a 40Hz tone, yet we hear this low tone clearly while listening to music. If our brains hear enough of the octaves above this freq (80, 160, 320Hz, etc.) our brain will interpret and support the lower octaves that we can’t hear well or at all. We have taught our brains, via full range systems, that these freq’s exist and should be there.
This is an old picture\story. This is nothing more than ‘transmission line enclosure’ for a speaker. In this case for subwoofer system to produce an extremely low (sub 10Hz) range for effect. Stone makes sense for construction. I’m betting the walls are filled with sand as well. This rigid enclosure will prevent resonance and pressure loss at very high volumes. The Bose Wave Radio also uses a transmission line enclosure (made of plastic though). This allows a tiny speaker a smoother and deeper bass response and allows enough bass information for psychoacoustics to take over.
That is COOL!