7 ms·

I'm perhaps dating myself a bit, but I remember being caught off guard the first time I walked onto the dancefloor at Fabric (a famous nightclub in London). The

I'm perhaps dating myself a bit, but I remember being caught off guard the first time I walked onto the dancefloor at Fabric (a famous nightclub in London). They'd put mechanical transducers under the floorboards and hooked them up to the audio feed, effectively turning the entire dancefloor into one giant subwoofer. [1] It was absolutely a gimmick, but a tremendously well-executed one. Being literally lifted a few millimeters into the air when the bass dropped was such a visceral experience that I'm still surprised it wasn't widely copied in other venues. [1] https://youtu.be/ijwxsIV8Iac?t=100 https://youtu.be/ijwxsIV8Iac?t=100

brigandish 4y ago
It wasn't so good for drum and bass, there's so much bass already that it used to turn the bass sound into a mushy mess, if you ask me.
crmd 4y ago
The first time I ever took MDMA was in Fabric many years ago. John Digweed was playing. I will never forget the sound and the feeling of that dance floor.
- contingencies 4y ago
  ~2010 worked in Farringdon and this was our local club. Went in Fridays after the pub. Once took a holiday to cycle tour Romania, ran in to Romania's most famous DJ in a ski resort, and he told me his dream was to play there. Almost choked on my beer...
  - tbalsam 4y ago
    Well? Did he? :D
pvarangot 4y ago
You can get a similar effect with a floating or semi-floating floor and a huge sub hanging from the ceiling. You have to tune it though. If you are on the Bay Area, The Great Northern had a setup like that on the hallway at the entrance before the main floor. They use VOID for their soundsystem but I don't think that particular part of the setup is COTS.
- bburrito 4y ago
  The Void gear is COTS including the Powersoft amps they use. You can set it up and it will work and it will sound amazing. But once you have Void’s guy out to tune it to your space? The sound blows you away. I think that guy has one of the most fun jobs I’ve ever seen.
  - pvarangot 4y ago
    I don't think the subs hanging from the ceiling on the hallway in front of the bar are COTS. If they are it's not on their websites or catalogues. Like it may be the same cone but it's not the same enclosure or anchoring.
- fragmede 4y ago
  they actually had to turn down that system for being too loud. but at that level, none of the stuff is really COTS because it requires a ton of tuning due to each particular venue's layout and acoustics
- austinprete 4y ago
  Damn. Consider myself pretty into sound but have never heard COTS and Googling was less than successful :(
  - paranoidrobot 4y ago
    Commercial Off-The-Shelf. As opposed to some custom solution.
  - kevinmchugh 4y ago
    Not audio specific, if that helps
bambataa 4y ago
Fabric is still going strong! I've never really noticed the effect of the floor that strongly though. Dance music is definitely a lot better when the music is loud enough for you to feel the beat on your face and clothes.
maxrev17 4y ago
Wow this brought back a memory of that place I'd completely forgotten! Thanks! Haha
Melting_Harps 4y ago
> I'm perhaps dating myself a bit, but I remember being caught off guard the first time I walked onto the dancefloor at Fabric (a famous nightclub in London). They'd put mechanical transducers under the floorboards and hooked them up to the audio feed, effectively turning the entire dancefloor into one giant subwoofer. [1] I'm dating myself too by saying I always wanted to go to Plastic people back in those days and hear Youngsta dropping dubplates on SLs on a Funktion one system in such a tight room(s), but I had to settle for blowing out subs at 96kbps on pirate Radio (RinseFM) for many years until I finally got to seem him in the US with a Funktion One at Servante's and then the Blackbox in Denver, and a few more times at other venues on subpar sound-systems which didn't have the same effect. Crazy stuff happened at Plastic People, so many crazy stories from residents to one-nighter bedroom DJ appearences made it sound like the holy grail of the Underground British Bass Music scene. That and I was still in my 20s, which will always add an extra glorified lens to anything. I will definitely say something takes over at those sub-bass frequencies (20hrtz) on a proper system, it goes through your body and makes people go crazy on the dancefloor. Pinch articulated it best in my opinion [0]. I met him at a small venue in Hollywood where no one but me knew at the that hour know who he was and we had a really interesting about his label and music in general before his set along the lines of that interview around the same time, he is an incredibly smart person: he even dropped a dubplate (DS - Memory loss VIP) for me and was even kind enough to rewind as it went off! 0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXZ1k3nreo0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXZ1k3nreo0
- lelandfe 4y ago
  I enjoy seeing some heads on HN :) Hello from NYC! Had dreams of going to Plastic, RIP: https://soundcloud.com/floatingpoints/floating-points-four-tet-final-plastic-people-2-1-2015 https://soundcloud.com/floatingpoints/floating-points-four-t... Tsunami is another good system in the US, unsure if they've been doing stuff since quarantine closed everything up. Analog in Brooklyn had a pretty wild SBS Slammer setup, but an ownership snafu caused that go away after only a couple years. Nowadays' indoors setup is the best in NYC for me – Randomer blows the lid off once or twice a year. This was him in 2019: https://imgur.com/a/ACocI87 https://imgur.com/a/ACocI87
  - 4y ago
MichaelZuo 4y ago
I wonder why this isn’t in every high end nightclub.
- timc3 4y ago
  Most club owners will not spend half to two thirds of their budget on room acoustics and speakers. They build an expensive looking bar and VIP room instead.
  - Melting_Harps 4y ago
    > Most club owners will not spend half to two thirds of their budget on room acoustics and speakers. They build an expensive looking bar and VIP room instead. It also is worth noting most people aren't really going to clubs just to listen to the music, so much as they are to socialize and drop money on booze. And I guess now to record themselves at an event for social media likes/marketing/influencer stuff. I've seen far too many people having full blown conversations for 20+ mins on the dance floor over the years in other genres and could over hear their conversations and it was so off putting, where as with bass music their was an etiquette of going outdoors in the smoking area if that is what you wanted to do as the dance floor was for just that. It's also worth noting when you step on to the dance floor with those heavy systems (Funktion One/RC1) and music optimized for those low sub-bass levels the whole place would shake [0] from the bass weight (bar included) so it was pointless to try and record anything worth showing if they all had these systems this way and only until recently have mics on phones been good enough to get anything but boomy noise. 0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_f-hKslYkA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_f-hKslYkA
  - MichaelZuo 4y ago
    It doesn’t seem clear that ‘an expensive looking bar and VIP room’ will always generate more profit then speaker floors.

brigandish 4y ago

It wasn't so good for drum and bass, there's so much bass already that it used to turn the bass sound into a mushy mess, if you ask me.

crmd 4y ago

The first time I ever took MDMA was in Fabric many years ago. John Digweed was playing. I will never forget the sound and the feeling of that dance floor.

contingencies 4y ago
~2010 worked in Farringdon and this was our local club. Went in Fridays after the pub. Once took a holiday to cycle tour Romania, ran in to Romania's most famous DJ in a ski resort, and he told me his dream was to play there. Almost choked on my beer...
- tbalsam 4y ago
  Well? Did he? :D

pvarangot 4y ago

You can get a similar effect with a floating or semi-floating floor and a huge sub hanging from the ceiling. You have to tune it though. If you are on the Bay Area, The Great Northern had a setup like that on the hallway at the entrance before the main floor. They use VOID for their soundsystem but I don't think that particular part of the setup is COTS.

bburrito 4y ago
The Void gear is COTS including the Powersoft amps they use. You can set it up and it will work and it will sound amazing. But once you have Void’s guy out to tune it to your space? The sound blows you away. I think that guy has one of the most fun jobs I’ve ever seen.
- pvarangot 4y ago
  I don't think the subs hanging from the ceiling on the hallway in front of the bar are COTS. If they are it's not on their websites or catalogues. Like it may be the same cone but it's not the same enclosure or anchoring.
fragmede 4y ago
they actually had to turn down that system for being too loud. but at that level, none of the stuff is really COTS because it requires a ton of tuning due to each particular venue's layout and acoustics
austinprete 4y ago
Damn. Consider myself pretty into sound but have never heard COTS and Googling was less than successful :(
- paranoidrobot 4y ago
  Commercial Off-The-Shelf. As opposed to some custom solution.
- kevinmchugh 4y ago
  Not audio specific, if that helps

bambataa 4y ago

Fabric is still going strong! I've never really noticed the effect of the floor that strongly though. Dance music is definitely a lot better when the music is loud enough for you to feel the beat on your face and clothes.

maxrev17 4y ago

Wow this brought back a memory of that place I'd completely forgotten! Thanks! Haha

Melting_Harps 4y ago

> I'm perhaps dating myself a bit, but I remember being caught off guard the first time I walked onto the dancefloor at Fabric (a famous nightclub in London). They'd put mechanical transducers under the floorboards and hooked them up to the audio feed, effectively turning the entire dancefloor into one giant subwoofer. [1] I'm dating myself too by saying I always wanted to go to Plastic people back in those days and hear Youngsta dropping dubplates on SLs on a Funktion one system in such a tight room(s), but I had to settle for blowing out subs at 96kbps on pirate Radio (RinseFM) for many years until I finally got to seem him in the US with a Funktion One at Servante's and then the Blackbox in Denver, and a few more times at other venues on subpar sound-systems which didn't have the same effect. Crazy stuff happened at Plastic People, so many crazy stories from residents to one-nighter bedroom DJ appearences made it sound like the holy grail of the Underground British Bass Music scene. That and I was still in my 20s, which will always add an extra glorified lens to anything. I will definitely say something takes over at those sub-bass frequencies (20hrtz) on a proper system, it goes through your body and makes people go crazy on the dancefloor. Pinch articulated it best in my opinion [0]. I met him at a small venue in Hollywood where no one but me knew at the that hour know who he was and we had a really interesting about his label and music in general before his set along the lines of that interview around the same time, he is an incredibly smart person: he even dropped a dubplate (DS - Memory loss VIP) for me and was even kind enough to rewind as it went off! 0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXZ1k3nreo0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXZ1k3nreo0

lelandfe 4y ago
I enjoy seeing some heads on HN :) Hello from NYC! Had dreams of going to Plastic, RIP: https://soundcloud.com/floatingpoints/floating-points-four-tet-final-plastic-people-2-1-2015 https://soundcloud.com/floatingpoints/floating-points-four-t... Tsunami is another good system in the US, unsure if they've been doing stuff since quarantine closed everything up. Analog in Brooklyn had a pretty wild SBS Slammer setup, but an ownership snafu caused that go away after only a couple years. Nowadays' indoors setup is the best in NYC for me – Randomer blows the lid off once or twice a year. This was him in 2019: https://imgur.com/a/ACocI87 https://imgur.com/a/ACocI87
- 4y ago

MichaelZuo 4y ago

I wonder why this isn’t in every high end nightclub.

timc3 4y ago
Most club owners will not spend half to two thirds of their budget on room acoustics and speakers. They build an expensive looking bar and VIP room instead.
- Melting_Harps 4y ago
  > Most club owners will not spend half to two thirds of their budget on room acoustics and speakers. They build an expensive looking bar and VIP room instead. It also is worth noting most people aren't really going to clubs just to listen to the music, so much as they are to socialize and drop money on booze. And I guess now to record themselves at an event for social media likes/marketing/influencer stuff. I've seen far too many people having full blown conversations for 20+ mins on the dance floor over the years in other genres and could over hear their conversations and it was so off putting, where as with bass music their was an etiquette of going outdoors in the smoking area if that is what you wanted to do as the dance floor was for just that. It's also worth noting when you step on to the dance floor with those heavy systems (Funktion One/RC1) and music optimized for those low sub-bass levels the whole place would shake [0] from the bass weight (bar included) so it was pointless to try and record anything worth showing if they all had these systems this way and only until recently have mics on phones been good enough to get anything but boomy noise. 0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_f-hKslYkA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_f-hKslYkA
- MichaelZuo 4y ago
  It doesn’t seem clear that ‘an expensive looking bar and VIP room’ will always generate more profit then speaker floors.