Donkeys and Elephants and Delegates,oh my!
Check out the most popular
20,000 Watt Mega speakers made of Snow
gizmodo.com — As part of a statewide snow sculpture competition, some Michigan Technological University students have added balance to the millennia of snow angel production–through the evils of rock.
Brajeshwar- 855 diggs
- digg it
- Alexx3k, on 10/12/2007, -4/+32"it's getting hot in here so take off all your... oh *****"
- DeathBorn, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2What happens when the speakers get wet from the melting snow?
- Quake120, on 10/12/2007, -2/+13The people dancing will take on some very different dance moves as electricity flows through their bodies.
- CraigB12, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Nothing would happen really, as long as the power wires are covered nothing could really happen because the rest of the speaker is sheilded and it doesn't matter if the cone gets wet.
- dantidote, on 10/12/2007, -1/+15This is where I'm headed for college in the fall. Oh, god what have I done.
- cankillar, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1Avalanche warning?
- aakrzemi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6@ DeathBorn
Don't worry, the snow never melts up here... - bonyicecream, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6I totally misread the title as Mega Watts.... boy was I disappointed when that site loaded...
then again, I think that might destroy half of the continental US... so those were some pretty irrational hopes... - nikebud, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4yup, we might get up to 20 degrees by the end of next week, and has been in the single digits during carnival. I was wondering where that bass was coming from, I live about 1/4 mile away and could feel the bass in the house. Congrats huskies, we made it to the digg front page!!
- marcduke, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@danitdote
"Oh, god what have I done."
Picked one hell of an engineering/drinking school - sorry about the lack of women though. Make a some friends down at NMU and have them ship in the ladies for free beer!
- supermike35, on 10/12/2007, -11/+0Since when can college kids afford this?
- danakin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8The Audio Engineering Society of MTU created these, and they have a fair amount of funds to throw around.
- joltjake, on 10/12/2007, -6/+7yea, it's made out of snow dumb ass, last time I checked, it's free.
- SpikeX, on 10/12/2007, -24/+2Yes, but will it blend?
Careful... 20,000 watt mega speaker dust. :D- Quake120, on 10/12/2007, -0/+15They've already proven snow will blend on the Will It Blend series, so yes it will blend. Also, the line he says is "speaker smoke! Don't breathe this" ...
Thirdly, please stop with the 'will it blend' comments. They are becoming very cliche. - celerityfm, on 10/12/2007, -5/+3quake120 - "Thirdly, please stop with the 'will it blend' comments" -- ok, but what if you had a beowulf clust... oh.. nevermind :(
- Quake120, on 10/12/2007, -0/+15They've already proven snow will blend on the Will It Blend series, so yes it will blend. Also, the line he says is "speaker smoke! Don't breathe this" ...
- Lumbeekid06, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1that doesn't sound too safe, the should chisel in a sign saying you may be shocked at any time
- Durrok, on 10/12/2007, -0/+14I think "Speaker cabinet surround by snow" is a bit more accurate... I thought maybe he had done something cool with harmonics and turned some ice/snow into speakers.
- CraigB12, on 10/12/2007, -8/+2"But yeah, that low-wattage Bose system you just bought is still really nice."
Not that i'm defending Bose because they're a huge ripoff, but these are probably no name ***** speakers that sound like crap. You can't just throw a crappy system together in what you think is a cool way, and act like its better than crisp tight sound from a high end system. They should know this, sinse i mean they are from the 1337 h4x0r Tech University of Mich lol - onlyclave, on 10/12/2007, -4/+3@craigb
If you only knew who made driver elements for whoever's high-end speakers and what they really cost. $10,000 speaker systems have a cost of manufacturing of around $300. The rest? Profit.
Step 1: Collect underpants
Step 2:
Step 3: Profit - cliffzdude, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Durrok is spot on, these aren't "snow speakers, rather speaker cabinets made of snow. Now if the drivers were made of snow, or at least the driver's cone material were snow, then we could talk.
craigb12,
This is a PA system, they probably do sound a bit rough but for a band to play through they'd be great, so long as the snow isn't causing artifacts that I can't even imagine.
onlyclave,
A high end speaker's raw materials cost is far greater than that of a nice $2,000 pair of home speakers. A real wood finish alone can cost more in raw materials than the manufacturer's cost of said $2,000 speakers. Add into that low voume produced drivers made with exoctic materials, and THEN add to that the engineering cost of a low volume speaker and you have a profit pig. An Infinity or Polk audio will make esoteric high end speakers now and again, and they are not very profitable. But the engineering exercise is very vaulable in knowledge gained, and the marketing folks LOVE some good high end reviews to sprinkle the marketing materials of a $999 5.1 speaker system. High end only speaker makers go under more often than somebody on Digg says "In Soviet Russia". Why? It is damn difficult to make a great pair of speakers and have the margin left to support the back end, read engineering effort required.
- CraigB12, on 10/12/2007, -8/+2"But yeah, that low-wattage Bose system you just bought is still really nice."
- blynder, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3The cosmetics could use a little work and it's not like this is revolutionary. I mean all they did was pile snow around a bunch or speakers, watch out for these guys.
- danakin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7My favorite sculpture from Winter Carnival (the event these speakers were featured at) is http://www.mtu.edu/carnival/2007/photos/DeltaSigmaPhi.JPG
If you want to see other pictures from the event, check out http://www.mtu.edu/carnival/- kevinmtu, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Carnival is the best time of year, two days off from classes to umm yeah.
- danakin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4...drink.
- joltjake, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5wo *****, my sister goes to MTU, I'm going to have to go up and check that out.
- TheSolomon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Wow. Good for... your sister, I guess?
- pixelrunner, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3You can follow the trail of links back to the forum that shows the making of these. I have been there for the winter carnival at MTU its always a blast. Link to the forum with about 10 pictures of the construction : http://hondaswap.com/computers-games-electronics-etc/thread-can-cause-hearing-loss-56k-may-crap-itself-82599/
- Stokely, on 10/12/2007, -5/+0My Boyfreind goes to Mech Tech, says "they've had that same design for 3 years now".
- danakin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6They changed their setup this year. This year they went from 12,000 watts to 20,000 watts, and they added a horn for the sub. Pretty different from last year.
- antdude, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Does it play music? :P
- kevinmtu, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Yes and very loudly....
- MadScientist420, on 10/12/2007, -7/+3Why would any guy to an university with a 7:1 guy:girl ratio? /shutters
- NBABUCKS1, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Because Houghton/Hancock and the Keweenaw is a pretty amazing place.
Glad to see this front paged! - NBABUCKS1, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Oh and oh yeah I had a buddy who went to the all nighter. He said that they played a GREAT selection of music and everyone LOVED it.
- cypherz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3shutters != shudders
- fitchmicah, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2he's right though. I went there last year and the lack of girls made it horrible. a lot of the girls there are boring and they get to be full of themselves. plus the school's greek life is too large and gross. I went to their parties and some were fun but I did not appreciate the lack of cultural diversity and the lack of things to do and the fact that nobody liked to dance.
the speaker is cool but from my experience at the winter carnival in 2006 I find it hard to believe that they played good dancing music, but it doesn't matter cause nobody really dances anyway, at least not any girls.
I hope I'm wrong about this, but I haven't seen anything that would make me believe otherwise... - marcduke, on 10/12/2007, -0/+37:1? Damn, that's a lot better then the 11:1 it was in the early 90's. Winter Carnival was a blast then as I'm sure it still is. While the women are hard to find - per capita, the drinking scene is second to none. This school has been retired to Playboy's Hall of Fame for drinking schools - they no longer rank Professionals in their yearly Top 5.
- NBABUCKS1, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Because Houghton/Hancock and the Keweenaw is a pretty amazing place.
- nakeddave, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2i give those guys mad props for making that,
all that raw POWER!!! - fAkeality, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I was there dancing to the music during the all-nighter. It's not quite 7:1, it's probably about 4:1. :P There's worse ratios...
...anyways, despite any sort of construction discussion, this is always one of the most fun statues on campus, always has tons of people jumping around crushing beer cans under their feet. - epalla, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6I go to Tech and I had the privilege of seeing this system perform this year.
Maybe it is just snow piled around speakers (I'm pretty sure they just use a mounting plate for most of the drivers, the rest is snow) but it does end up sounding pretty excellent - though at the kind of volume these guys play the system at people tend not to question the sound quality so much. Still, the point is to make it loud and they do a good job.
The design is not at all the same as the last few years. This year they added the rear channels (not really, it's all stereo, but you get the idea) and they went to a horn-loaded enclosure. Last year they had several 18" and 15" drivers kicked out after Carnival so the Horn does a lot to protect the drivers and just happens to add quite a bit of volume too. Last year there were people dancing on top of the statue though, which was pretty neat.
Anyone who hasn't managed to visit the Keweenaw or MTU in general for a carnival doesn't know what they're missing. - tysonkad, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3Cool, but can it play the brown note?
- mscman, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Brown note doesn't even work. It's been disproven many times.
- epalla, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5btw, you can see pictures from previous carnival AES statues at the AES website:
http://audio.students.mtu.edu/events.html - afreakinninja, on 10/12/2007, -5/+1Buried.
***** retarded. But also inaccurate. - Illuminati, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Yup, I'm actually a student at MTU. They aren't kidding, it was loud as hell. No joke. I'm actually kind of surprised people were able to stand in the middle of the speaker setup and not bleed from their ears.
- acidkore, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1The cabinets in fact were entirely snow except for the wooden mounting plates. They used to do an entire a/v setup with a giant ice screen (think decibel-appropriate ACDC concert), but this year I'm pleased that they funneled all their resources into raw loudness.
- ryderstep, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I am a Michigan Tech Student, and I have experienced the AES snow statue first hand. It's REALLY loud. Last year was far louder, and the sound was cleaner than this year's statue. They usually run 20,000 watts (RMS) through it about 40,000 peak to peak. They played AC/DC's Thunderstruck, and standing about 20 feet in front of the statue, it was ridiculously loud. They got a noise complaint from 2 miles away.
- ryderstep, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2@marcduke
Playboy no longer ranks Michigan Tech in their list of 'Top Drinking Schools' because they said they "Don't rank professionals"
Come drink with us... You'll find out why. - ryderstep, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2@marcduke
The current enrollment as of Fall 2006 is 4974 men to 1576 women about 3.16:1
And, I hope we still drink as hard as you guys did back in the 90's
Browsing Digg on your phone just got easier with our enhancements to the 
© Digg Inc. 2008 —
Content posted by
