The claims sound somewhat exaggerated, 5kw of subwoofer is nothing in live music venues, though they purposely don’t go as low. Here’s some more modern “big” subs, which are larger and can radiate significantly more power
https://www.aia-cinema.com/products/the64-sub-pro-passive-se...
https://www.aia-cinema.com/products/the100-sub-pro-passive-s...
Thanks for the links, that is a company I did not know existed, and the woofers are interesting. Really makes you wonder if they have overcome the traditional problems of large woofers. The Fostex super woofer users recommended rotating it once a year due to its own weight possibly deforming the spider structure of the woofer, at only 27" across. 60" or 100" across is back to the future level ridiculous. As another poster said, I can not see this outperforming several smaller units, but I would love to see/hear it in action.
Is the article itself written by the manufacturer or a 3rd party? It keeps saying "we ..." but then also "[i]t seems that ...".
Edit: apparently the site is translated from its original Japanese version, which explains these weird wordings.
The original article is here, which has more pictures too: https://audio-heritage.jp/DIATONE/diatonesp/d-160.html
160cm is ridiculous. There is no advantage to this over multiple drivers in the same size enclosure. You'll get significantly lower distortion with an array of smaller units. The rigidity of the speaker cone is a big deal. Smaller ones are easier to make stiffer.
This is not built to reproduce sound, but as a vibration and sound pressure source as far as I understood it.
> It seems that the unit with the unusual size of 160 cm had a lot of difficulty in the characteristic test. At the Koriyama Test at the Koriyama Factory was carried out in the measurement room at first, but it was stopped because fluorescent lamps on the ceiling fell due to vibration. It seems that the characteristic test was carried out at the ground in the factory premises.
> The outdoor test seemed to have a negative impact on the neighborhood. At a distance of about 100m from the speaker, it was felt as sound, but at a distance of more than that, it was transmitted as vibration and earth rumbling instead of audible sound. Within a radius of 2 km from the factory, there were damages such as vibrations like earthquakes and earth rumbling, and sound of walls and windows.
Don’t they use something like this on ships to fend off pirates who want to board?
Yes, "LRAD"s.
Very sceptical that a 3kW speaker can cause "earthquake like vibrations with a radius of 2km".
Resonance! Very minor earthquakes can knock picutures off the walls, items off the shelves etc. if they just happen to hit the right resonant frequency. So if you flood the area with 8Hz-ish acoustic energy, some stuff will start to shake.
I can't help but think it would be fun to try to verify the claim, though.
Fun? Sure. It is indeed fun to play with big speakers.
Direct-radiating bass reproduction is all about displacement, and the area of the piston (cone) is certainly a factor of that. More tends to be... well, more.
And this mysterious speaker (which there seems to be no color photos of, despite the 1981 date) has a radiating area of perhaps about 2 square meters.
That's around the same as qty. 18 of 18" woofers.
It's easy to find collections of way, way more than that. People even charge money to hear them; they're on the ground between the stage and the crowd barrier at any big rock show. :)
The japanese version of the article linked in another comment has a color photo (which appears to be a magazine scan) https://audio-heritage.jp/DIATONE/diatonesp/d-160(1).jpg
Marty McFly is volunteering to test it.
Can only imagine the power efficiency of this was horrible.
For many many years I have kept a design file on a subwoofer which would be far larger than this. 3kW is jack crap. The subwoofer I have in the trunk of my daily driver is almost 1kW. I’m thinking more like 95 KVA, or 76kW at an assumed 0.8 power factor. 3” cone displacement and 18,000 LbF available to drive the cone. Low pass filtered at 2000 hz. I am entertaining all offers from our resident billionaires to quit my job at the jet building factory to create such a device. We can drag it to Burning Man. Our first capex will be this big ol electrodynamic shaker head.
https://www.udco.com/products/electrodynamic-shaker-systems/...
Gorgeous. Not a billionaire but approximately how much would this cost to build?
~100K USD
For the labor? Sure.
wowie
"The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy notes that Disaster Area, a plutonium rock band from the Gagrakacka Mind Zones, are generally held to be not only the loudest rock band in the Galaxy, but in fact the loudest noise of any kind at all. Regular concert goers judge that the best sound balance is usually to be heard from within large concrete bunkers some thirty-seven miles from the stage, whilst the musicians themselves play their instruments by remote control from within a heavily insulated spaceship which stays in orbit around the planet - or more frequently around a completely different planet. [...] Many worlds have now banned their act altogether, sometimes for artistic reasons, but most commonly because the band's public address system contravenes local strategic arms limitations treaties."
(The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Douglas Adams)
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