Bass. The lowest frequencies of human hearing, and below. Boom. Associated with wealth, anti-social personality disorder, reckless behavior, teenagers, inherited wealth, the Lowest of the Low. Bling.
I love bass. It reminds me of carefree college Friday nights spent absolutely fried on Ecstasy wandering around in Club XCess (cunningly named) standing in their twin bass horns, being hammered by acoustic waves at 20Hz to 120Hz at about 130dB. The somatic sensations were so intense, they bordered on climax; the shuddering waves of rich, MaxxBass- or UltraFex-enhanced bass rippling through my body on their way to the hot brunette next to me, writhing a millisecond later to the wave I'd just enjoyed...Ah yes, college. No mortgage/kids/insurance!
So I've decided to relive these experiences in a Mature, Responsible Way. Subject, of course, to my beautiful pixie-like but Fierce wife's approval! Of Course!
Yes: I have built my second Bass Horn*. Pictures included above, in no particular order.
The first bass horn I built was a straight horn, modeled after those at Club XCess. It was limited to a lower frequency of 60Hz, because it had to be semi-portable and fit in a dorm room leaving room for Drunk Chicks and their attendant Football Players; the horn math came easily but separating those two never did.
It was cast in the Diabolical Dimensions of 6 feet by 6 feet, by 6 feet, for a 36 square foot mouth. Its response was smooth and even, but its lower registers were lacking.
For this latest incarnation, I took advantage of "floor loading" to create a quarter-space-capable horn with a lower cutoff frequency of 32Hz. Its mouth is a relatively tiny 24 square feet (5.6 m^2), while bending it like a nautilus shell allowed me to extend its length to 2.5m--about 8 feet.
I'm so pleased with the result. Today, it's still sitting in my garage awaiting final lacquering, but having tested it with a small 800-watt Carver amplifier, I'm satisfied it will Blow the Doors Off. My previous horn actually pulverized the concrete door frame of our dorm room, leaving us with a rattling door that rebounded off its post like a pinball off a flipper with every beat; it added harmonics to the 2LiveCrew album but just sounded like noise everywhere else. We played 2LiveCrew a lot.
The new one is New And Improved; I built it with absolute rigidity in mind, modulo a need to actually be able to lift it into our house; thus, I chose birch plywood and rigid A+B two-part expanding foam as the structure instead of concrete and steel. Had I begun earlier, I would have cast it in concrete like the rest of the house!
A moment's note: WAF, or "Wife Acceptance Factor"; this horn borders on Un-Acceptable, like a motorcycle or an Ariel Atom. But I digress. The Wife, Mighty Master of the Domestic Universe and All Entangled Quantum Entities, has Decreed that this bass horn is Acceptable.
Hence, I'm finishing the fucker as quickly as I can before she Changes Her Mind, the wife's prerogative.
I'll soon post actual at-the-mouth performance figures, biased to our decidedly odd concrete-and-steel house's acoustics. Should be interesting. I estimated that with 400 watts of input from the Carver, it was already louder than the un-reinforced 145dB of the previous horn. Theoretically, the Crown amp I will use to drive it with 2,000 watts will yield a peak performance of 151dB at 35Hz; it should be interesting.
To what, dear reader, will I listen? Well first, Maor Levy's "Shapes", then PAFF's "There Is No Spoon". Followed shortly by the acoustically excellent "War of the Worlds". I'll throw a house-warming party--a year after its completion--like a retro rave for 30-something Establishmentarians who wish they were X-ing!
pictures:
*
http://www.royaldevice.com/custom.htm
http://www.eaw.com/info/EAW/Loudspeaker_Product_Info/Current_Loudspeakers/BH760/BH760_PHOTO.jpg
http://ldsg.snippets.org/HORNS/images/hornsub/hornsub2.jpg
http://vincent.brient.free.fr/bass_horn.htm
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