Death by bass?

[Toaster]

A good friend of mine is an avid automotive "bass head".
He called this past Saturday saying simply but uncalmly "get over here, this is amazing".
Knowing my friends nature for being "extreme" and almost obcessive, I dropped what I was doing to see what new troubles he got himself into.
His latest creation is a SPL/sound Q competition vehicle built around an Austin Mini cooper S.
After extensive mods by himself and a number of his friends, he created something any true believing bass head should fear. In the once rear passenger area, he constucted a sub-woofer array comprising of no less than 8 JL Audio 15W3`s. Driving these monsters are one Zapco 1000ZL-C high current amplifiers per sub. That folks is in excess of 10 Kilo-watts of power (clean and unclipped) for the sub-woofer array. As yet, the front stage is still under construction.
This thing is...well...BRUTAL, to say the very least. I was VERY impressed with these drivers because, for the first time, I got a nose bleed and I nearly vomited because of the ABUNDANT low frequency energy. Even at such insane levels and power, I came away blurred and beaten and uneasy in my act of simple walking. We mesured an SPL of 155 DB and hes only 40% complete. He placed 2nd in the IASCA regionals in 1998 with an SPL of 166 DB and Alma Gates won with 170.x DB.
While now the record is well above these figures, he still aims to unseat Alma`s "Ford" as top dog.
All I can say is this:
One can be beaten by bass alone (physical) and I tend to think that Alma just might have a competitor on her hands.


The subs are truely abusive and have oodles of output well below 10hz. The amplifiers roll off the extreme lower end at nearly 48db below 5hz and the amps will sustain short periods of "DC" before making the fuses act as flash bulbs.
Downright menacing.......GREAT FUN!

[Floppyman]

Hehe..that sounds interesting...I wonder what that's like to experience. What do you guys play for music off those?

[Toaster]

Hey there flopster,

He`s been with IASCA since `93 and I since `96. We used the official IASCA disc from `98. This disk has some ather interesting tracks. One, is of a shuttle launch and numerous other tracks. This track plus a few of the "SPL" tracks that use synthisized bass.
One tune in particular, has a "sliding" scale that starts at about 1khz and goes for the basement of 15hz. As this sliding scale headed low, the interior of the car quickly became a rather unhealthy place to be. I thought that the glass in the car was going to go but after a second look, he had already replaced the glass with a high lead content glass thats nearly an inch thick.
The "shuttle" track was done (per the CD pamphlet) at Cape Canaveral sometime in 1997. This track has gobbs of low frequency information going down to 6hz which was the lower limit of the recorder used. Unfortunately, he has nothing for tbe front stage to speak of so a "listening" test could not be performed. The current settings crossed over to the subs at 55hz with little sound above this mark.
In the coming weeks, he will have decided on components for the sound stage. On that day, I hope to be there with a few of my own recordings.

[Jenni]

Actually, the Army is experimenting with low frequency sound devices to be used as crowd control. Their setup produced the very same effects as yours, nausea, blurred vision and the like. They are looking at ways to concentrate it into a "beam" directable at specific individuals. I saw it on one of those TLC latenight programs about "less than lethal" weapons.

[Toaster]

Hi Jenni,
I also read something akin to this.
I also read that we humans were conditioned to think that low frequency sounds were only made as a threat back at the dawn of mankind. Then, low frequency sounds were a bad thing such as eruptions, preditors and the like. A focused low frequency "burst" could be a deterrant.