Comments on: A Very Big Speaker

A Very Big Speaker

bigmusic — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 20:38:17 -0800

By: bigmusic

bigmusic — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 20:38:29 -0800

via WFMU's Beware of the Blog [more big speakers]

By: flapjax at midnite

flapjax at midnite — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 20:54:59 -0800

That is indeed one big ol' horn. Beware of the Blog is a great site. They've enriched my life incalculably over the past couple of years.

By: brain_drain

brain_drain — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 21:00:58 -0800

If I had one of those, I'd hook it up to an iPod Nano.

By: carsonb

carsonb — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 21:03:16 -0800

eponysterical.

By: fleetmouse

fleetmouse — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 21:12:58 -0800

Am I missing something? The performers page has one sour looking anonymous dj. Good times.

By: carsonb

carsonb — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 21:14:22 -0800

having rtfl... this means Disaster Area can play Earth now. sweet!

By: hortense

hortense — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 21:29:06 -0800

....all powered from a commercial 12" speaker driver. I would like to hear it with the brick horn subwoofer

By: bigmusic

bigmusic — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 21:45:19 -0800

Awesome link hortense.

By: Skygazer

Skygazer — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 22:49:07 -0800

Those sound mirrors are eerie and haunting structures. Wish we had them in the U.S.

By: caddis

caddis — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 00:22:59 -0800

Very cool, although I think the neighbors might complain. I wonder what kind of output you will get with a flea powered SET amp, say 1.5 watts with a 45 tube? SETs and horns marry quite well.

By: basicchannel

basicchannel — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 00:48:11 -0800

By: hypersloth

hypersloth — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 03:33:59 -0800

Guess we can't actually hear it, which sucks.. I do love Hotblack Desiato.

By: antialiased

antialiased — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 04:04:02 -0800

Cool, but what's the attraction here? Is it a matter of amplitude... frequency range? Oh wait, I'm missing the point -- IT'S A MASSIVE HORN!

By: kcds

kcds — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 04:06:56 -0800

This thread is useless without samples.

By: SteelyDuran

SteelyDuran — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 04:45:39 -0800

This is a job for DJ Seuss.

By: flapjax at midnite

flapjax at midnite — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 05:25:59 -0800

posted by kcds: "This thread is useless without samples." But samples would be essentially useless as well, since whatever you'd hear would be coming through speakers other than the MASSIVE HORN! Y'know, it wouldn't be...massive.

By: Bugbread

Bugbread — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 05:41:45 -0800

flapjax: I think (I hope) that was the joke.

By: StickyCarpet

StickyCarpet — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 06:33:50 -0800

Now you're talkin'! Sorry no links, but some old 78 and disk recordings were made with somthing like this used in reverse as a microphone horn.

By: dansdata

dansdata — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 08:03:44 -0800

The advantage of horn speakers is that they're very efficient - the horn couples the small heavy speaker driver to the big light air much better than it can manage by itself. This is why you see horns on public address speakers and, of course, megaphones. The efficiency difference really is huge. The electricity-to-sound efficiency of a sealed box is below 1%, maybe a few per cent for an unusually efficient ported (bass reflex) box, but easily above 50% for a horn. Maybe more than 70%, even. So one watt into a horn can be worth 100 watts into a sealed box. Yes, you actually could plug the headphone output from an MP3 player into this giant horn and get a more than adequate living-room listening volume out of it. Not enough for a rock concert, but they no doubt do save on amplifier power by using horns instead of the usual banks of vented boxes. The big problem with horns, and the main reason why you don't see them in all speakers, is that they have to be quite long to work (most loudspeaker bass horns are "folded", for this reason), and their bass response is determined by the size of the mouth at the end. That's why a true bass horn - like this one - has to be so gigantic - actually, this horn isn't big enough to have real low bass output. It'll go a little below 50Hz, but that'll be it. This is why horns are normally only seen on midranges and tweeters, and on "widerange" PA drivers that don't need bass.

By: tylermoody

tylermoody — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 08:04:51 -0800

stickycarpet: that type of thing is more common than you think. The guts of speakers and dynamic microphones are essentially the same - one uses a voltage to move a coil suspended in a magnetic field, while the other creates an output voltage from the movements of a coil suspended in a magnetic field. Check wikipedia and read up on flux if you're interested.

By: Bugbread

Bugbread — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 09:11:27 -0800

tylermoody : "The guts of speakers and dynamic microphones are essentially the same - one uses a voltage to move a coil suspended in a magnetic field, while the other creates an output voltage from the movements of a coil suspended in a magnetic field." And when tylermoody says "essentially the same", he doesn't just mean that they have some similar aspects but some sort of giant fundamental incompatibility. No, they're so similar that you can plug headphones into a mic jack and use the headphones as microphones. They're not very good microphones, don't get me wrong, but depending on the headphones, they work as well or better than the built-in mics on old portable tape recorders, for example.

By: stinkycheese

stinkycheese — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 09:16:39 -0800

hortense: Wouldn't that thing essentially destroy your house and/or internal organs?

By: radiosig

radiosig — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 09:57:38 -0800

That's creator Matt Hope on the front page. The horn was his MFA thesis project when he graduated from UC San Diego in 2005. I had this guy a couple of times for a TA and we ran into each other pretty often at parties where he would absolutely always be falling-down drunk and, more often than not, making out with one of his students. A Real American Hero (except that he's British). In person, the horn actually is pretty incredible. dansdata pointed out that it doesn't go much below 50Hz which sounds about right, but what bass is there is physically blowing your hair back to make up for it. Matt spent a lot of time with CAD software figuring out how to make the range really balanced, so it sounds full and clear from both up close and from really far away (like 500 meters). Originally the wheels were going to be street-legal so that it could be towed as-is but that didn't work out for some reason so it has to be loaded on to a flatbed truck to go on the highway. MFAs Tristan Shone and Patrick Miller are also working out of UCSD on related projects -- Tristan's a one man metal band called Author and Punisher (note: like the horn, A&P recordings are somewhat underwhelming compared to the live experience) using super-sick custom cabinets and electronics, and Patrick's last project was a big woofer shaped like a huge gold bar that he uses at his DJ events.

By: StickyCarpet

StickyCarpet — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 13:40:56 -0800

Here is something else, for you DIY hobbyists out there.

By: geekhorde

geekhorde — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 16:35:40 -0800

This one goes to 11.

By: hortense

hortense — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 21:00:02 -0800

stinkycheese : depends on the records you listen to I'd guess.