ravehorn update

someone sent me a link to this project a couple of weeks ago, I wondered who was insane enough to do such a thing. I hope your club has deaf neighbours with no pictures hanging on their walls

It's the booze that does the trick!  The city i'm in & the ravehorn will be in is about 300k with about a 1M catchment area so there's a bit of latitude to play some harder techno, d&b etc..  but not really the masses needed to put on a dedicated techno or d&b night, which is a shame.
  Estimated time of auditory assault is 6 weeks...  in fact it's looking like no infra-horn for the inauguration as i've got to have the sound system checked by a man with a db meter inside & outside the club, he'llno doubt have that bass test CD handy too Also haven't really got the cash spare for the extra amp or drivers b4 we open, have so many other things to buy 1st.
  I've built around 100m3 of 50cm to 3meter deep perforated panel helmholtz traps in a mezzanine floor that faces the subs & ravehorn, but it'll prolly only control 40hz upwards efectively, so for the opening its four 1850 clones cut off 24db at 45hz.  ravehorn will be loaded once we have all the paperwork carefully filed away....
  BTW the name ravehorn comes from the initial name of the club 'rave' but now after a bad response from investors to the name 'rave'  i've called it 'loud' so i guess that makes it a loudhorn

@godathunder:  got 1 neighbour living within 2 wavelengths of the ravehorn, they don't yet know the fear and then after a few minutes (when they realise its not armageddon) anger it'll induce   Amusingly enough, or not,  to have problems with the local authorites we would need complaints from three different residences about noise, but there are only 2 neighbours within earshot   Might buy the neighbours double glazing... or maybe double vodkas would deaden the noise better..

cheers,
  Rob

It's a job deciding how to advance it or delay the rest of the system.  It has to be in phase with the 1850's rolloff at around 45-50hz as hopefully this will give the 1850's a free lunch and couple to them.  there will be two 1850's making up the top part of each infra-horn mouth.
  What i'm really keen to tryout is pretty mad really.  All the music is either generated or passed thru a PC that runs a dj program i've written *blows own whistle*.  I wrote it primarily as an automated jukebox to feed a VJ PC too, but it's progressed so that its possible to mix on it manually (it takes joystick input for some controls & i've made a really dr-who style mixing console, so it really is manual mixing, not pratting around with a mouse & keyboard) & it also has a funky effects system.
  Anyway it has several audio outs, the main mix goes to the mixing desk as usual & there are other outs too, theres a preview for the dj phones, a VJ output, that goes to another PC, that is up to 1 second ahead of the mainmix (so that any lazy VJ software delays can be cancelled)  & an output for the infra-sub, i can adjust the delay or advance of the infra-sub out too (advance only works when the PC is actually decoding mp3's so it just gets the Low-freq from a little further ahead in an mp3 decoding buffer.)
  To cut a long story short i can advance the infra-sub independently of the normal audio chain & feed it anything i like, what i'm hoping for is to write a bass synthesizer to create a lower fundamental than exists in the music (most pop music has almost nothing of interest below 40hz , except low rumblings anyway.)  Failing that i'll just use it as it would normally be used!  Assuming the neighbours dont kill me first.
  The bummer though, is that set up this way means that live bands & guest DJ's won't use the infra-horn, for live bands thats not a problem.  I can quickly re-route the amp to the x-over but that's something i don't want to have to do once a stable setup is up & running.
  If i'm still sane in a couple of months i'll put alot more info about the setup on a website..

cheers,
  Rob

when the PC is making the music there'll be no percievable delay (maybe 1/20th of a second or so between what the DJ (me ) does & what comes out of the stacks.  In that case the VJ stuff is taken from a little ahead of whichever track is playing (obviously what the vj box gets wont be correct when theres a transition, but for the bulk of the track it'll ensure perfect sync between the music & what's on the screen)
  Guest DJ's mixing on cd/vinyl wont have the luxury tho , they'll just have to live with whatever delay the VJ software has (prolly just play a dvd in that case, britney ne1!)
  I'm testing the basic functionality now as best i can (at home), here's a pic of whats on screen (big pic, sorry..., its designed to run 1280x1024 full screen,  resizing it looses all the thin spectrum & beat detect scopes)

cheers
  Rob

Once its fairly portable i'll make it freeware, GPL stylee, too much work to make a release quality product in such a niche market.
  I'm gonna buy a final scratch setup sometime & will try to tinker with it to make it compatible.  However, I think the easist way to actually connect my software to some real vinyl decks would be to print out a shuttered disc on some acetate film, say 10cm diameter attatch that to the middle of a record & then use an opto switch to detect the deck speed, also feed the audio from it into a sound card to detect when the needle's in the groove (or use a microswitch on the arm)
  vinyl decks are the coolest thing, but i hate the limitations & the shear inconvienience of them, i dont think i could live with final scratch either, as i wouldn't be able to change the software on the fly

cheers,
  Rob
 

hehe thats like deliberatly sitting infront of several cannons!