Week Forty-One: In Which There’s Empirical Woodsmithery Afoot

Regular readers may know that if I have a pet hate, it’s the wannabe with a mouth on it. The one who brags all about what they are GOING to do but don’t ever do it. That said, you cannot help but bubble over with enthusiasm, if you really have the bug, at your next project or the single install-of-a-lifetime or whatever you are working on and want to talk about it. So, of course, I get to hear of a lot of plans. Some fail to come to fruition because of lack of money or sense. Some because they thought they would get sponsorship just for designing a system with someone else’s free equipment, rather than actually having any success or name for themselves in the first place.
But there are those who are full of crap and whilst you are as keen as a reporter to find out the latest things, (funny, that) you do tend to take some people with a pinch of salt and others you just plain disbelieve. However, when I first met the boss of BassZone, with his van piled up high with ready made bass boxes, I did believe him when he said he was going to come back next year with a full-on custom build. He did! And likewise, I have heard so very many folks talk the talk about a Transmission Line design enclosure. Put simply, it’s a complex bass box built like an organ pipe and has been made to make a six inch woofer destroy rooms with bass in home HiFi by TDL. Insane efficiency. The bass of two badass 12s on five kw from one ten and 30 amperes of juice? Never been done in-car that I have heard of.
But when I talked to the man at the ‘˜Zone about them, he got on the ‘˜net and got building! No ‘˜just talking about it’ for him. Early results look promising, with a mad long pipe on the back of a ten inch being the first try. Like the genius of the REL ST series of home woofers, designed by Richard Lord, the man at BassZone is getting sawdust in his hair as he ‘˜sucks it and sees’. Which is less posh a term than ‘˜Empirical’ but means the same thing. Actual bass experiments in our time. The BassZone site is here lots of boxes. link
Meanwhile, it’s the week of the big industry shindig, the Mobile Electronics News magazine awards evening. I am compere and it’s a James Bond themed night, so in the tradition of allowing parodies to be included, I reckon I aughta get into character as Mike Myer’s Austin Powers’ Fat Bastard
Still got to get at more woofers but they have started to flowthe Infinity was cool. I have drivers from a few others to pull out yet. I’ll go write the news about Pioneer and EMMA now.
Adam Rayner Online Editor