Audint utilises infrasound and ultrasound to investigate how we perceive soundscapes. Infrasound are frequencies below human hearing and ultrasound are those above it. Audint do this in the context of both military and civil applications. Their hardware already included ultrasonic loudspeakers first made for the US military but what was missing was equipment to produce infrasound at military levels.
Heys and Goodman first collaborated with Traction Sound during their sonic installation at Tate Britain. During the Delusions of the Living Dead the gallery was mapped using ultrasound and infrasound. This was done on a mighty sound system from Traction Sound.
Heys comments: "The team at Traction Sound understand bass and what we were trying to achieve with Audint. They delivered an exceptional sonic landscape for us at the Tate. However, our research aims meant we needed to take this further."
Traction Sound's Billy elaborates: "If you analyse even the heaviest dub or techno track they never go as low as Audint do. Generally we design loudspeakers for music and find that there is not much need to go down below 30Hz. At this frequency you will cover everything the DJ or musicians might play. It was clear that Audint needed a custom solution."
The custom solution took the form of a 40" infrasonic loudspeaker powered by an amplifier delivering 25kW peak power. As you can imagine this isn't standard technology. It is built on Powersoft's M-Force system. Traction Sound's Jonny Goodwillie discusses the choice for the loudspeakers heart: "We have been working with Powersoft for a while now. They were keen for us to experience their M-Force system so we visited them in Florence last summer. I remember it being about 40 degrees outside but luckily they had a nice air conditioned demo room. On first listen it was clear that M-Force had great potential, it was just the perfect system to push lots of air at low frequencies. We couldn't see anything else on the market capable of getting even close."
The first deployment of Traction Sound's 40" sub woofer was at Manchester's central library. This was for the Library of the Unwanted project. The sub-woofer could not reach its full potential at this venue and structural damage started to occur before they achieved maximum SPL. Heys comments:
"We are blown away with what Traction Sound have achieved with their 40" loudspeaker. We are playing frequencies as low as 15Hz and the sub woofer just keeps going. I just can't wait until we can find a venue strong enough to withstand the loudspeaker's full potential."
(LSi Online)
