It’s winter time once again, which means it’s getting snowy across much of the country. This can be impractical when your car ends up buried in the white stuff. You need to remove it before driving away, which means busting out scoops and shovels to shift it by hand. But what if there were an easier way to get a few hundred pounds of snow off your car?
As it turns out, there is a better way—but only if you happen to be a certain kind of car enthusiast. If you’ve got a set of massive subwoofers in your vehicle and the requisite amps to drive them hard, you can literally shake the snow loose just by turning up the volume on the right tunes.
It might sound ludicrous, but it’s actually true. It’s perhaps the one useful application for massive aftermarket car audio systems. Just watch how well this works in the video below—pounds of snow, removed in an instant!
It might seem like a silly party trick, but it’s also a huge time saver. Just think how much fuss it would be to scrape or scoop all that snow off the vehicle, and how wet you’d get. It compares pretty poorly to just shaking it off in a few seconds flat.
This concept is actually a bit of a meme in the car audio and “basshead” subcultures. All you need is big subs and some wub wubs and your car is (largely) snow free!
If you’re wondering if this will work with your standard Chevrolet Avalanche or other stock vehicle—it probably won’t work as well. The key to making this work is having really big subwoofers playing at extreme sound levels. They create powerful low-frequency sound waves which vibrate the entire vehicle, and hard. The more powerful your stock sound system, the better chance you have. Regardless, most of the people doing this have one or more large aftermarket subwoofers, and they’re driving them at insane volumes that probably aren’t safe for human hearing.
Compare the displacement on your factory subwoofer to an aftermarket 15″ sub and you’ll get the idea. The big aftermarket sub will move a lot further back and forth, creating more powerful sound waves that will shake the panels of the car a lot harder. The more the panels move, the better for shaking off the snow on top. You can see this in some of the videos, where the panels of the vehicle can be seen shaking and distorting while the subs are pumping.
You want one of those awful aftermarket sub installs that rattles the whole car to bits if you really want to do this well. You also want the sound cranked up to the point where it doesn’t even sound like music anymore. I’d start with something like Turn Down For What but anything with suitable low end should do fine though.
Alternatively, you could try some low frequency test tones. As in the video above, that big movement of the sub is what you’re going for here!
You’re going to want bass heavy music for this, with lots of content in the range of 100 Hz and below. This is because it’s much easier to create high displacements at low frequencies with a huge sub pumping back and forth. The same isn’t easily possible at high frequencies, as you just can’t accelerate the mass of a speaker back and forth that quickly. Long vibrating bass synths—think woobs and wubs—seem to do well at shaking off snowy desposits, though videos suggest it doesn’t hurt to break them up with the occasional thumping kick drum as well.
It’s probably also good if your sub enclosure is firmly mounted to the vehicle. That’s going to ensure the vibrations are well-coupled to the car body itself to really get those panels shaking. Letting the sound merely transfer through the air would be less effective. In fact, due to Newton’s laws, when you run a signal to your sub to move the speaker cone, the speaker body feels an equal and opposite force—which is transferred to the car it’s mounted in. When you drop the bass, you’re not really just playing a 100 Hz tone through your subwoofer—you’re exciting your whole car to that same frequency, especially if you’ve solid-mounted the sub instead of mounting it in some kind of vibration-isolating manner.
Should you go out and spend a great deal of money on a massive sub for clearing snow? Probably not. But, if you have one already, it could be a useful tool for clearing your car in the winter. Heck, maybe you can even park close to your buddy’s car and see if the sound is powerful enough to shake the snow off their car, too.
Image credits: via YouTube screenshot
This would be almost as effective at making friends with your neighbors as installing a go cart track.
Other options include putting two midgets in the back seat and asking them to rassle. If I know anything about the 808 kick drum, it’s what y’all wanted; and it tends to make the girlies get dumb.
(Yeah shut up I have no hip-hop references less than 20 years old and have never heard a single song by Kendrick Lamar or Drake.)
Not one of these videos playing L’Trimm, Tigra and Bunny would be disappointed.
Not enough steady bass in that song. For it’s time it seemed bass heavy, but it really isn’t with just a couple of low drops and a lot of roll bass that isn’t super low.
Or you could use a snow brush/ice scraper that you get from the store for $15.
Nothing bugs me more than the cars driving through the neighborhood with the deep base blasting.
(old man shouting at clouds)
Maybe it is just where I live but I’ve noticed a serious decline in that over the past 20 or so years. I was actually happy to see a kid with a grade 10 wood shop level home built enclosure in the back of his hatchback a year ago, somehow made me fell less old.
It’s coming back, and better! I was the kid that built boxes back in the day, and you’re right there was a period of time say 15 years or so ago where you didn’t see it as much. However, at my local university I’ve noticed a few cars with great sounding systems popping up, and they sound crystal clear and loud.
BOOOOM BOOOOOM BOOOOOOOOOM BOOM BOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!
Hey, that’s my favorite song!
” It’s perhaps the one useful application for massive aftermarket car audio systems. Just watch how well this works in the video below—pounds of snow, removed in an instant!”
WHAT?!
In the 90s my buddy had a 2 door 5 speed jeep cherokee with a rockford fosgate 500 amp and two 15″ subs in a box that took up the entire back of his rig.
It was ridiculous. Eventually he dialed it down because it kept blowing out the rear windows from their seals.
I can still hear it hit when the bass dropped on DJ magic mikes “do you like bass?”
I had a VW bug with 2 15’s that took the entire rear seat area, no problem with windows blowing out. However, I had to limit my amp size by the power the car could produce. I originally had the generator and the car would turn off at night on big bass notes due to the draw of the headlights and amp combined, it would turn back on in between beats. I upgraded to the newer alternator and the problem mostly went away.
WHAT?!?!
WHAT?!?!
You might as well just use test tones, because that is not music.