Can subwoofers put a crack in a building?

[Pearljam5000]

Is it really possible?

 

[BeeKay]

Europe unlikely, but maybe in the former English and French colonies beyond the pond.

 

[Pareto Pragmatic]

Rephrasing: What would it take for a sub to crack a building?

We know speakers can shatter glasses, if the speaker plays loudly at the resonant frequency of the glass. So...

If a building has resonance issues, meaning surfaces move in response to sound, those surfaces will have a fundamental frequency. If sound is played at that frequency, the surfaces will get more and more movement. Play loud enough and long enough and sure, I can see things cracking.

Ceilings, mostly. Walls? If the structure of the building is allowing the walls to move in and out under the load of the house, you have some serious structural issues to deal with. But maybe if a floor is REALLY bouncing, that could transfer energy to the walls and lead to some cracks. In a poorly built house.

What does google say? Seems 120db or louder may damage things. The OMA sub is reported as 104db for 1w@1m. So it should hit 120, and for "a few of them at full power". I can see how that would crack a wall, but not the BUILDING wall. The finished wall yes, the structural wall no.

So could it happen? Sure. Will it happen? Doubt it in any real world building at any real world SPL.


So this seems like a claim that can be defended, if you twist definitions and squint just right.

Show me the things cracking a building real time, then I will believe it.

 

[Old_School_Brad]

A hen house is a type of building, right?

I've seen broken windows and damaged roofs in cars from loud subwoofers. But a house? No.

 

[Oddball]

Theoretically anything is possible. Practically, those US basements with 130dB subs at MLP still don't take down the US style build houses. I do have a nasty room mode at 15hz and if not EQd, it does shake pretty thick reinforced concrete walls to point of discomfort and subs do cry for help.

One morning fund broken window glass next to the corner loaded sub. Not possible to fully blame the sub as did not caught it in the act, but was thick dual layer iso glass so not really that easy to break. Sub was looking quite guilty. There was no other hazardous activity in the flat at the time. Glass replaced, but sub also moved to a different position.

 

[alvigg]

They can also put out small flames. I was on a panel that looked at that possibility for firefighting but only small flames with very powerful subs.

 

[amper42]

You can easily break windows in a home even with the speaker outside. In my youth, I was building a subwoofer outside using an 18" EV woofer in a large cabinet with dual transmission lines. I started testing it at 10Hz with a signal generator and my Mom comes running out of the house as every window was vibrating and one cracked. I had only been running the test for 2-3 minutes. Low frequencies can be powerful.

 

[Old_School_Brad]

You can easily break windows in a home even with the speaker outside. In my youth, I was building a subwoofer outside using an 18" EV woofer in a large cabinet with dual transmission lines. I started testing it at 10Hz with a signal generator and my Mom comes running out of the house as every window was vibrating and one cracked. I had only been running the test for 2-3 minutes. Low frequencies can be powerful. Get the right frequency for the human colon and the results are crazy.

Ahh, I think that last one is a myth that I remember was busted many years ago..

 

[amper42]

Here's a crazy device...

Directional Sound Weapon: A Silent Threat Unveiled

Directional sound weapon for precise targeting and control. Ideal for security and crowd control.

bosshorn.com

 

[Waxx]

I've done (as organiser, sound engineer, dj and public) tons of raves and dubparties where the speakers have huge subs with a combined theoretical output of +150db (in big halls) and never had building damage than broken windows and vandalism (grafiti and others) during the +/-20 years i was involved in that scene. Those 150db was never in one space, it was all subs combined counted. Mostly the sound of such a rave is arround 95-105dB on the floor max (and 105dB is eardeafening loud wihtout ear protection). But a massive 30Hz bass at 105dB hits you hard. The crowd will first be severe damaged before the building (except windows) when going that loud or louder.

 

[somebodyelse]

Ahh, I think that last one is a myth that I remember was busted many years ago..

Mythbusters worked with Meyer Sound for this one.

Multiple large subs modified to operate at lower frequencies than usual. 120dB @ 9Hz, peaking at 153dB somewhere over 20Hz.
The original page on Meyer's site is gone, but there's a copy preserved here:
https://www.toysintheattic.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/MythBusters-Brown-Note.pdf

 

[Old_School_Brad]

Mythbusters worked with Meyer Sound for this one.

Multiple large subs modified to operate at lower frequencies than usual. 120dB @ 9Hz, peaking at 153dB somewhere over 20Hz.
The original page on Meyer's site is gone, but there's a copy preserved here:
https://www.toysintheattic.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/MythBusters-Brown-Note.pdf

Exactly. And I remember it wasn’t their bottoms that broke, but rather the myth itself...

 

[amper42]

The hosts on the show tried a series of frequencies as low as 5 Hz, attaining a level of 120 decibels of sound pressure at 9 Hz and up to 153 dB at frequencies above 20 Hz, but the rumored physiological effects did not materialize.[7] The test subjects all reported some physical anxiety and shortness of breath, even a small amount of nausea, but this was dismissed by the hosts, noting that sound at that frequency and intensity moves air rapidly in and out of one's lungs. The show declared the brown note myth "busted".

 

[Svend P]

It can break the windshield of a car (look at how the subwoofers makes a car twist in the video), but I have 5 of these in my home cinema, and nothing in my house has cracked

 

[mhardy6647]

So... here's the thing.
There are several reported examples of basement subwoofers of no mean magnitude -- i.e., whole basement horn (typically, spiral horn) (sub)woofers of truly terrifying properties. Steve Deckert of Decware* infamy built one in his house in Peoria, IL in the (late) 1990s.
Thanks to archive.org (and, of course, whoever archived the URLs) you may see some images, starting here:

Graphical Tour of High Fidelity Engineering Co.

Audiophile Pages containing Custom Tube Amplifiers, Speaker Re-Coning, Lab work, Enclosures, and Car Audio, Knowledge, Parts, Links, Graphics, Animated Gifs.

web.archive.org

Ahem. At any rate, I did track down reference from Deckert to the risks of whole-house subwoofage.

Could a stereo make the roof fall down?

The midrange was the downfall of the heritage Klipsches. In all seriousness, I have a lot of admiration for PWK's iconoclasm, and I wouldn't be where I am today without the 1974 Cornwalls I bought ca. 1996 -- but Klipsch (the man and his company) had idiosyncratic tastes in sound reproduction...

www.audiosciencereview.com

I will note that one photo of the above-mentioned photo tour mentions (but does not show) a pressure relief valve.

Graphical Tour of High Fidelity Engineering Co.

Audiophile Pages containing Custom Tube Amplifiers, Speaker Re-Coning, Lab work, Enclosures, and Car Audio, Knowledge, Parts, Links, Graphics, Animated Gifs.

web.archive.org

Powered with a multitude of driver combinations, I settled on a single 12" woofer, and a 12" plug which acts as an emergency blow valve. When the pressure gets too great, the 1" thick 12" disk that is screwed and glued, blows off saving my house from permanent damage.

_________________
* So, yeah... if you don't know of Decware... they're sort of the twos complement of ASR philosophically. Maximum mumbo-jumbo. I, transiently, fell for it, but in fairness I wanted the cheapest possible SET (in this case, pseudo-T) amplifier (another story entirely) and they had it. To this day, I do still own that "Zen" SE-84B amplifier. Amusingly enough, some of Deckert's products sound quite nice (the aforementioned amp included, although the undistorted output power level is very low). Decware in 2024 is more popular than ever. Their designs have gotten somewhat more Byzantine, and their prices have skyrocketed -- but they have a months-long waiting list for their products.

If you're looking for a little hallucinatory fun, read some of his white papers!

https://www.decware.com/newsite/DECWARESOUND.pdf

here's a fun place to start: https://www.decware.com/newsite/DECWARESOUND.pdf

 

[Mr. Widget]

Pretty sure "normal" audio gear can not break reinforced concrete or even a concrete block wall as is typical in much of the world, but during my misspent youth my bedroom system in a 1950s solidly built "custom home" I was definitely able to damage the drywall.

My system consisted of 4 JBL 15" woofers (definitely not subwoofers) and a Marantz 510 amp putting out over 100 watts per driver, plus the required horns and compression drivers etc. After several enthusiastic sessions playing Led Zeppelin and the like at maximum levels in addition to getting threats of eviction from my parents I discovered to my horror that I managed to pop out a great number of the drywall nails and crack the drywall in the Living Room wall which was behind my speakers.

During one session a buddy mentioned that he had heard that some speaker was touted as being able to blow out a match... I didn't believe it so we tried it and sure enough a BIC lighter was extinguished when the flame was placed near one of the bass reflex ports.

During that session I had borrowed a laboratory grade SPL meter from my High School physics department. We were hitting peaks of 127dBA at about 3'.

All these decades later I'm amazed my hearing is still above average. Of course even though my current systems are capable of similar nonsense, my taste in music and playback levels has moderated significantly.

 

[Randyman...]

What. A. Loser.

Agreed. And Lol - The website has Amir's name in it