TRW-17 Thigpen Rotary Subwoofers at Trinity Church

Filed under: Home Audio > Subwoofers


- Images: Bruce Thigpen of Eminent Technology

If you haven't already seen the Thigpen Rotary Woofer TRW-17, you're missing out on one of the most interesting (and expensive at over $20,000) infra-sonic subwoofers available. The TRW-17 has a published frequency response of 1 Hz to 30 Hz, +/- 4dB, and a pair of them were featured in a recording session at the Trinity Church famous for their digital organ.


- Image: Trinity Church via DK Images

Cameron Carpenter, a rather well known organist, just finished recording a new album on the digital organ at Trinity Wall Street. But this wasn't your typical recording... to supplement low frequency performance, the church had two TRW-17's temporarily installed, bringing low frequency extension to 110dB at just 6 Hz! Equally cool, the album is being produced by Bob Woods who is the President of Telarc, a major high-fidelity recording company.





- Image: Trinity's Organ

The digital organ used is quite different in many ways. For this recording session, the organ was programmed with 64' and 128' stops, providing meaningful response down to 4 Hz. This is achieved by using samples of real pipes, then controlled by 9 Unix computers that function as the organ's brains.


- Image: Cameron Carpenter

Here we see (L to R): Bob Woods (President of Telarc and producer of the
album); Bruce Thigpen (inventor of the Thigpen Rotary Woofer), Susan
Slaymaker, Richard Torrence