Your bass notes are NOISE POLLUTION

The BBQ Pit
1

I can see how having a good system in your car can make music more enjoyable. I can see how if you’ve spent a lot of money on an expensive amp and subwoofers, you’d want to drive around showing it off.

But I can’t understand how it’s enjoyable to drive around with bass notes so loud that they actually vibrate your fucking hands on the steering wheel. So loud that you can’t even hear the music. So loud thad you can FEEL them from up to a dozen blocks away.

How is this fun? I don’t get it.

It’s sure as hell not fun to have to hear it all the time (and living on a college campus means that you hear it quite often.) For me this is an example of noise pollution, and it should be against the law and punishable by a fine to drive around with obscenely loud bass notes thumping.

2

While I agree with you about the pollution part, bear in mind that bass frequencies, especially in the range pushed by the subs in these systems, have extremely long waveforms.

Somebody in the car actually feels LESS bass than somebody 25 feet away.

I used to perform with an 18" speaker in one of my bass rig cabinets in the larger venues and festivals. When my tech would soundcheck the 18 at full volume (to check the headroom and frequency response for the venue - we didn’t play THAT loud), it would be absolutely crushing in the audience or out by the soundboard, even without the PA subs. We’re talking throbbing in your chest/nausea inducing loud. Onstage, checking at the same volume, my drummer would have a hard time hearing the bass over the drums.

Somebody else can delineate the physics. All I’m saying is that bass frequencies are a lot louder and more penetrating from 50 feet than they are from 6.
That doesn’t mean those who boom their systems over a 5 block radius aren’t complete and total self-absorbed fucktards, however.

3

Well, look on the bright side, most of the losers who go around cranking their crappy music at eardrum-splitting volumes will be deaf (or at least experience severe hearing loss) by the time they’re in their 30’s…

poetic justice really :wink:

4

I believe that such systems can cause heart arrhythmias in some people.

5

Stop! In The Name of Love
Before You Break My Heart!

-Nice little urban legend, that.

6

I’ve always wondered what music they are listening to. I hear them go by on the busy street outside, and I can hear them indoors, upstairs, with the windows shut, and I can’t make out any melody or lyrics, just BOOMda-BOOMda-BOOMda. Any idea what the musical tastes of the Decibel Dorks are?

7

BOOMda-BOOMda-BOOMda.
Get down on your knees.
BOOMda-BOOMda-BOOMda.
On the floor.
BOOMda-BOOMda-BOOMda.
Like a two bit whore.
BOOMda-BOOMda-BOOMda.

-REAL LOUD, every day for two weeks.
I don’t think melody was a concern for the listener.

8

How many times have I wished someone would invent a device that could be pointed at an offending car and silence/disable/fry their amplifier. I would pay good money for something like that.

9

Evanescence. Looooong bass notes. I could barely breathe. (And I was stopped at a traffic signal next to the loser. 20 seconds of torture!)

10

I’ll second that. I get people driving by my house at 2 in the morning with that shit. And if 2 AM wasn’t bad enough, they have to drive as slow as humanly possible. I don’t know why, maybe just to be sure they generate the maximum amount of irritation.

11

So say the guys in my band :wink:

12

I live in an old flatblock constructed mostly of wood, top floor, with an interior staircase up from the street. The guy who lives next to me, in a flat what mirrors mine, installed subwoofers. Every night at 6 pm, he cranked up his stereo – stuff was literally falling off my walls; the 20 foot high wall we shared appeared to be visibly expanding and contracting with the bassnotes.

I asked the landlady if she would have a chat with him, three times. Nothing would happen. Finally after she did nothing for the 3rd time, and the pounding started again, I couldn’t stand it anymore.

I went to his door, and had to pound on it for about 10 minutes serious blows. The neighbour underneath him came outside, and said, ‘You know, if he can’t hear that over his stereo, it’s a wee bit too loud’.

When the guy finally heard me, and came to the door, I was very polite, and I asked him, to please put his stereo back on at the volume he had it, and come next door. He was literally shocked at what his subwoofers sounded like in my flat – he’d had no idea. Apparently he’d moved to this flat from a detached house, so didn’t even think about the shared walls, &c.

We went back to his flat, shut the subwoofers off but kept his stereo at the volume it had been (not really cranked, but a good volume), and went back to my flat. Couldn’t hear a thing. Then we tested my sound system and instruments to see where I was pushing it, since he works nights and sleeps during the day.

Even when he had the subwoofers set less than .5 on his stereo, and they sounded fine in his flat, they were vibrating my flat (and nerves) to pieces. It’s amazing just how much bass does vibrate even at a low volume like that.

Anyway, he didn’t mind disconnecting them (the bass on his sound system is quite good, but doesn’t come through the walls and floors like the subwoofers do), and I haven’t heard anything from his stereo since.

:cool:

13

Unfortunately, as their hearing starts to go, they’ll just crank up the volume.

14

(1) Type of music boomed out of car speakers: it is NEVER classical. It is NEVER jazz. It is RARELY country & western. Rap, rock’n’roll, and–oddly enough–Mexican oompah bands.

(2) Many of the people who play it think it’s FUNNY that it makes your windows shake until they fall out, wakes up your children, and gives you a headache. BUT . . .

(3) It really doesn’t sound all that loud from inside the car.

I speak from many years of living way too close to a Burger King drive-through.

15

Right. THREE things.

16

well if the are not 100% percent deaf, won’t they need even louder systems so they can hear it?

17

Is that sort of reverse “Hi Opal”?

18

Weird but true, the first guy I met who had a mega bass system in his car was stone cold deaf-- from birth, or soon thereafter.

19

When I studied audio engineering I asked one of my teachers about his car stereo system expecting him to have something really flash. He had a really cheap lo-fi stereo system that he said was like listening to a transistor radio. His attitude was that you can’t create good sound in a car so why bother wasting money trying.

20

It is a shame that so many young men feel the need to compensate for their tiny penises with BOOMA-BOOMA speakers and farting raccoon mufflers.

I’d support a law empowering police to approach a vehicle with excessive bass, and shoot the stereo. You like loud? Here’s a few .40 JHP for ya.