One of the coolest conversations I got into recently was with the person who designed the audio system on something called Kalliope (a GIANT, 75,000 watt sound

One of the coolest conversations I got into recently was with the person who designed the audio system on something called Kalliope (a GIANT, 75,000 watt sound system/art car). Audio is cool, and the rabbit hole on it goes really, really deep. For instance, I learned that Kalliope uses something called a cardioid array for its subwoofers, meaning that some of the speakers are pointed forwards (towards the crowd), and some are pointed backwards (away from the crowd). The result is that the pressure created by the subs pointed backwards is collapsed by the pressure wave created by the subs pointed forward. (Alex, the audio engineer calls this a warp drive). The amount of thought that goes into designing some of these things is astounding to me. Building PA systems is NOT a matter of plugging speakers into amps and pointing them where you want them, and making loud sound systems is NOT a matter of getting more speakers.