Tear Apart Your House For $200 With This Rotary Subwoofer

A rotary subwoofer made out of a speaker coil, a medium-size fan an a grey wooden box to stand on.

Many movies and songs use a lot of of bass to make it feel more real to the viewer or listener. Because of this, subwoofers are common in high-quality audio setups, often costing a substantial part of the budget. [Daniel Fajkis] takes the subwoofer to it’s logical extreme by building a rotary subwoofer on a $200 budget.

The principle of a rotary subwoofer is that a normal subwoofer physically moves the air, and so does a fan. If you could make a fan oscillate the air instead of only pushing it, you could turn it into such a subwoofer, which is exactly what [Daniel] did. [Daniel] mounts a large electric motor on the case of an ex-subwoofer to spin the fan. Then, he uses the rotor linkage of a model helicopter and a modified subwoofer speaker to pitch the fan blades, spinning around to create a truly impressive gust of air oscillating at as low as 1 Hz.

The video, after the break, is well made with some good humor, including the legendary quote: “It’s gonna tear apart my household, there’s no way we’re surviving this one.”

If that isn’t enough force from a subwoofer for you, maybe this subwoofer vortex cannon is.

43 thoughts on “Tear Apart Your House For $200 With This Rotary Subwoofer

  1. I love these dang things—one of the most hilariously absurd machines ever conceived in the neverending quest for bass that will melt your face. One would definitely want to put a baffle on it, and probably move it down into the basement and turn the basement into a huge tuned resonator.

        1. You could look for an old Phoenix Gold Cyclone. Those were insane. 12″ rotary woofer built for automotive applications. Sold back in the 90’s and maybe the early 2000’s.

  2. I had a buddy back in the day that got tired of his vehicle-installed sub rotting from the wild vehicular environment of heat and humidity and made one from a solenoid and stainless colander. It worked surprisingly well! I believe the driver was DC-out and there was a 555(or the dual 556) involved with some hefty caps from an old Lambda PS.

    1. At a minimum he should have demonstrated it at 25 Hz, then 20 Hz, then 15 Hz, then 10 Hz.

      Because demonstrating 10 Hz via cellphone camera microphone -> YouTube encoding -> viewer’s audio system is expecting way more than the signal chain can handle.

      1. Totally agree. 1 hz – 10 hz is not really a sound, more of a respiration. All the doors in the house moving back and forth once a second is not going to improve your music listening experience, IMHO…

    1. That’s it everyone! Someone did something before, we need to shut the entire Internet down!

      This is a place for NEW IDEAS ONLY!

      THAT’S WHY THE WEBSITE CLEARLY READS “BRANDNEWHACKS.COM”

  3. A 5 bladed rotor head, swashplate and all!
    Would a flybar stabilize it?
    Naw, but why not one that flies?!
    💡!
    Modulate an existing helicopter design, retaining the collective and cyclic control for flight…
    Then scale it up to size needed.
    Need to scare the Americans for spooking your Vietcong with that Huey that had all the speakers mounted on it?
    An Mi-8 transport helicopter rigged for this would scare them crapless.

    h̥͇͕̻o͖̯͓͓̊̆ͫ̿̓ͦl̴̦̲̈́ͩÿ̮̬̞̭́͑̀ͨ͘s͔͓̥̮̭̈ͣ̔̂ͣ̽̊͠ͅh̖̬̹̭̭ͪ͊̀ͅi͎̯̖̦̘͇̫ͬ̃̄ͬt̵̖͔ͬ̇

    My next 700 size chopper will incorporate this idea. Patent pending as of this posting.

      1. Very good point. Extra safety wire would be mandatory for flight safety reasons.
        Also the gaps between inspection intervals for critical components would need to be shortened considerably.

  4. Does it need to be placed in the window. If I built this into a normal sub woofer box and then put a few large duct pipes from the sub out the window.. not sealed.. would it still work the same?

    1. A swashplate assembly from any large RC helicopter, of appropriate specs. (Blade count).
      The $200 would just about be cashed with this purchase alone. Not counting even the pushrods or bellcranks.
      Unless you just happened to have a retired five bladed RC helicopter laying around… Then the cost estimate would fit more inline.

  5. I don’t know how old this is or really any other information except what and that some1 is interested understands how this is not a toy and deserves a no corners cut approach I would gladly support an honest effort in any way I can help with I personally think the applications are far more than just music or sounds anyway please if u would like to explore this further let me know i don’t have much at all really but I really do believe in this platform plus a couple tesla things like his turban or his valve its beautiful thank u I’m Brian

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