The other day I wrote about sonic weapons. After some deliberation I came to the conclusion that sound, while technically feasible is a rather cumbersome way to kill people. The Long Range Acoustic Devices or LRADS which are finding their way into the arsenals of police departments and to those at sea getting pestered by pirates, though are very good at getting their message across, are really more annoying than they are an actual threat.
On the other hand, I always did want to write about horn loudspeakers. Horn speakers are fantastic in many ways. They are extremely efficient with some producing as much as 105dB per W/m, are highly directional and if they are to produce any amount of bass at all, they must be outright huge.
Truth be told, if I were to go on merit of sound alone, if space were not a problem, and the WAF (wife acceptability factor) were a non issue, we would probably not be making cute, great sounding but small quarter wave loudspeakers.
When researching some of the more remarkable horn loudspeakers and with the sonic weapon research still under my belt I ran into a rather endearing story where sound is being used as a weapon, but this time in a form of peaceful protest against the alleged destruction of a rather lovely looking Norwegian Fjord that is famous for its salmon.
The (alleged) bad guys in this story are the evil-doers at Nordic Mining. Their sinister plan is to make use of their 2006 mining concession and dump about 200,000,000 cubic meters of supposedly contaminated mining waste in the waters near the otherwise perfectly lovely village of Vevring. Yes, two hundred million is a rather large number but the power of three is also not to be under-estimated so to keep things in perspective, we are talking of a volume that would fit into a cube about half a km each side. Wait. That’s lots of toxic crap. It really is. And the plan is to dump that much in the water every year.
Supposedly after not feeling that much of their complaining was being heard in some town hall meetings, the good people of Vevring decided to get louder. A LOT louder.
In what became half art installation, half miner repellent, they first commissioned a piece of music with Norwegian vocalist and composer Maja Solveig Kjelstrup Ratkje with a primary goal in mind: To sound really loud on a really large horn loudspeaker.
And meanwhile as Maja thought about this, the village got to work and built that incredibly large loudspeaker. And then, for reasons that escape me, they built a second one right next to it. Each one weighs about 2 tons, stands nearly 4m tall, and is 10m long. They aptly named the installation the “Desibel” and it does crank out rather a lot of decibels. 130dB at a distance of 10m is really very, very loud and with a frequency range of 15Hz to 15kHz is enough for middle-aged miners to appreciate Maja’s composition in full range. Ear muffs or not.
The acoustic design can be credited to Bjørn Kolbrek and Geir Hjetland who developed the artistic concept.
Soon after completion these giant horns were pointed across the Fjord and reverberated back from the mountains. The music carried up the fjord and carried to a distance of 15km or so reports go.
Now, ‘’Did this work to restore peace in the valley?’’ I asked myself. What impact did this have on the mining project? Unfortunately not much. Just a few months ago and despite such vocal civil disobedience, the Norwegian government in April just this year granted permission for the company to mine for rutile, a titanium mineral used for pigments in paint, plastics and paper on the promise to create 500 jobs. The company committed to cover no more than 13% of the total depth of the 200 m Fjord with what are called tailings. Tailings are what is left when the valuable minerals are separated from the ore and the commitment by the company is to keep them free of harmful chemicals, heavy metals and radioactive elements.
Let’s hope everyone makes good on their promises, and I am entirely sure that at this point if there are any grievances, the people of Vevring will have the decibels they need to talk about it with confidence.
Arved Deecke is founder of the Danish / Mexican Loudspeaker company KVART & BØLGE that makes audiophile quarter wave loudspeakers and sound systems at a price anyone can afford. In his free time he blogs about all things related to sound, music and audio.
