The idea
Sound systems – a crew with a big, custom-built mobile rig – become popular in Kingston in the 1940s.
a yard, a stack of boxes, a crowd
A sound system is a crew – selector, operator, deejay – with a big, home-built rig of amplifiers and speaker boxes. The idea took off in Kingston, Jamaica, in the 1940s and travelled the world. Here you learn where it comes from, how it works – and you get to run one.
from Kingston to the world
Flip through the crate. Filter by place – every record is one moment.
Sound systems – a crew with a big, custom-built mobile rig – become popular in Kingston in the 1940s.
The sound of Chinese-Jamaican businessman Tom Wong counts as the first commercially successful one. Count Machuki, often called Jamaica’s first superstar deejay, starts out here.
The radar-trained engineer builds amplifiers for sound systems from 1947 and handles lows, mids and highs as separate signals. Among his first clients: Tom the Great Sebastian and Duke Reid.
22 June 1948: the Empire Windrush reaches Tilbury. More than 800 passengers come from the Caribbean – the start of the “Windrush generation”.
The first reported sound clash: Tom the Great Sebastian against Count Nick.
Duke Reid’s sound, “The Trojan”, is crowned “King of Sounds and Blues” three years in a row. Clement “Coxsone” Dodd’s Downbeat is built on R&B 45s he brought back from farm work in the US. Rival sounds scratch the labels off their best US records – so nobody can find out what they are.
Duke Vin, once a selector for Tom the Great Sebastian, sets up the first Jamaican-style sound in the UK in Ladbroke Grove – with a second-hand turntable, a £15 speaker and a £4 home-made amp. Count Suckle runs the second.
Late 1957: Reid’s Trojan against Coxsone’s Downbeat. During the dance Prince Buster breaks Reid’s stylus.
Sound owners start recording local artists – first only for their own sounds, cut on soft acetate “dub plates”, then on vinyl from about 1959. Ska is born in this world.
Duke Vin against Count Suckle – the first sound clash in Britain.
Prince Buster, owner of the Voice of the People sound, produces the Folkes Brothers’ “Oh Carolina” – with Rastafari nyabinghi drummers.
Coxsone Dodd opens Studio One on Brentford Road, Kingston.
The first carnival on the streets of Notting Hill in August 1966; static sound systems arrive in 1973–75. Today about two million people come.
Electronics repairman King Tubby founds Hometown Hi-Fi – famous for top-quality gear and for echo and reverb that you otherwise only heard in studios. From 1968 he also cuts discs for Duke Reid: instrumental “versions” for the deejays to toast over.
U-Roy toasts over Tubby’s dub plates on Hometown Hi-Fi (1969). In 1970 his Duke Reid records hold the top three places in both Jamaican charts – the deejay becomes a recording star.
Killamanjaro starts in 1969, Stone Love in 1972 – two dancehall sounds that clash with each other in the 1990s. Killamanjaro wins World Clash twice.
Saxon Studio International starts in Lewisham. In the early 1980s its MCs – among them Tippa Irie, Smiley Culture and Papa Levi – develop the UK “fast chat”.
The brothers Mikey Dread and Jah T found Channel One (not the Jamaican studio of the same name). Since 1983 it has played Notting Hill Carnival – vinyl only.
Jah Shaka, the “Zulu Warrior”, founds his label Jah Shaka Music in 1980. In Brixton, Sister Culture runs as an all-female sound.
Founded in Yokohama in 1991. In 1999 in Brooklyn the first Japanese sound to win World Clash.
Founded in Italy in 1994, since 2010 in Benicàssim, Spain.
Aba Shanti-I takes over the Jah Tubby’s sound in 1990 and plays Carnival from 1993 – roots and dub with heavy live effects.
Irish & Chin launch World Clash. The final is “dub fi dub” – and a dubplate that doesn’t name the sound playing it can get you disqualified.
Outlook Festival starts in Petrčane near Zadar, Croatia, and later moves to Fort Punta Christo near Pula – sound systems in tunnels and the moat.
Dub Camp near Nantes, France, starts – by 2022 it has grown from 9,000 to 35,000 visitors.
“Reggae music of Jamaica” joins UNESCO’s list of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
who does what
Careful with the words: in Jamaica the “deejay” is the one on the microphone – the one who plays the records is the selector.
Chooses and plays the records – and reads the crowd. Cutting, mixing, repeating: the selector builds the vibes, pulls a tune up when the crowd asks for it and juggles tunes on the same riddim.
Sets up and tunes the set for every dance. “I put balance between the bass, the mid and the top,” says Stone Love engineer Denton Henry. The craft is passed on by apprenticeship.
In Jamaica the deejay chats or toasts on the microphone – over the instrumental “versions”. U-Roy is the classic example. In the UK you also hear “MC”.
boxes, amps & physics
A sound system is not one loudspeaker but a whole chain – and every dance it gets set up and tuned again.
Amplifiers, pre-amps, effects, equalisers, crossovers, mixers, microphones, cables, drivers, speaker boxes and record decks – all of it is the “set”. It is put together and fine-tuned again for every dance.
Hedley Jones already treated lows, mids and highs as separate signals in the late 1940s. Today the pre-amp’s crossover splits the music into bands and every band gets its own amplifier and boxes. Mikey Dread describes Channel One’s bands as “your bottom, your high bass, low mids, high mids and right up to the tops”.
Roughly 20 to 70 Hz – felt more than heard. In live sound, subwoofers usually play below about 100 Hz. Jamaican builders tuned their own heavily customised sub cabinets to get rich, articulate bass down there.
Bass drivers are usually 10, 12, 15 or 18 inches. Boxes can be closed, ported (a port uses Helmholtz resonance) or horn-loaded – a horn makes the speaker more efficient. Mikey Dread built boxes with four 18-inch drivers for Channel One – they called them “quads”.
Cabinets are built from wood or wood composite; bracing and damping keep the panels from singing along.
Coupling: two equal boxes side by side, same distance to you: about +6 dB. One at 1 m, one at 2 m: only about +1 dB.
Walls: against a wall a box gains about +6 dB in the lows, in a corner about +12 dB – in theory; measured gains depend on frequency.
Cardioid / end-fire: spacing, delay and polarity push the bass forward and cut it behind the stack – good for neighbours.
Try all three in “Stack the boxes”.
Ears: the NIOSH recommended limit is 85 dBA for 8 hours – every +3 dB halves the time, so 100 dBA allows about 15 minutes. The WHO standard for safe listening venues sets 100 dB (LAeq) over 15 minutes as the maximum and asks for live monitoring, earplugs for the audience and quiet zones. Bring earplugs – the bass still hits your chest.
Electricity: big valve amps work with dangerously high voltages – building amplifiers is a job for people who really know what they are doing.
We call the pre-amp and amp stack the “control tower” in this room – that’s our name for it, not a standard term.
saw, glue, plans
How people really build the boxes – from published plans, in plywood, glued and screwed. With blueprints (schematic) and links to the real plans.
Bass boxes only work as designed – so builders work from published plans. Two classic one-18" scoop plans, the Hog Scoop and the Super Scooper, are shared on plan sites such as Speakerplans.com, builders report; on diyAudio a builder sums it up: the classic scoop delivers “the typical dubsound if build exactly to plan”. Drivers that come up again and again there are 18-inch models such as the Peerless PD1850.
A scoop is a rear-loaded horn: the front of the cone plays straight into the room, the back of the cone drives the horn.
The French shop Tout le Haut-Parleur sells a SCOOP-18 flat-pack kit: outer size 1220 × 636 × 760 mm (H × W × D), about 82 kg without driver, cut from 18 mm Finnish birch plywood (BB/BB), for a PD.1850 or Oberton 18XB1500, screwed and glued. That is the size of a wardrobe – which is exactly how people describe the bass boxes at the bottom of a stack.
Higher up, many DIY sounds use horn-loaded mid/top boxes. One free design – used for example by Faited Systems – is Art Welter’s SynTripP: two 10-inch drivers plus a compression driver, crossover around 800–950 Hz, about 26.5 × 11.25 × 15 inches and under 34 lb. The plans are posted free on diyAudio; selling boxes built from them needs the designer’s licence.
The Dem Deya system uses copies of the classic Altec 1505 multicell horn for its tops.
The usual material is 18 mm plywood – Finnish birch (tougher) or okoumé (lighter). Panels are glued and screwed; internal bracing is “very important” in a bass box. The cabinet has to be airtight: sealing tape and foam, drivers fixed with bolts and T-nuts. Then a tough paint – special textured speaker paint exists – or simply bare wood, re-finished every year.
Several drivers in one box are wired in series (impedances add: 8 + 8 = 16 Ω) or in parallel (two equal drivers: half – 2 × 8 Ω = 4 Ω). The amp has to be able to drive what comes out. Boxes connect with Speakon plugs.
Mikey Dread (Channel One): the pre-amp builders “know the frequencies we want to crossover, and everything is in the preamp”. Most systems are 3- or 4-way – tops, mids, kicks and subs – with one amplifier per band. The split points are each sound’s own choice: the Dem Deya system splits the sub at 86 Hz and runs a crossover at 250 Hz.
It started with home builders: Hedley Jones built his first amplifier in 1947 and treated lows, mids and highs separately; King Tubby repaired radios and built amplifiers for local sounds. Jah Shaka played with one turntable, one microphone and a homemade siren box.
Builders plan for transport: Faited Systems keep every box light enough for one or two people – under about 180 lb – with handles. Iration Steppas built wheeled carts, “boogies”, because their boxes were so heavy. Some stacks have wheels on the scoops.
The UK noise rules for workplaces: action values at 80 and 85 dB(A), exposure limit 87 dB(A); HSE has its own guide for music and entertainment (HSG260). Earplugs belong in every record box.
We don’t redraw cutting plans – they belong to their designers. Follow the links, build exactly to plan, and ask in the forums before you change anything.
the operator’s seat
Your own little home sound system. The pre-amp splits the tune into four bands, each one drives its own boxes. Solo the bands, drop the bass, wheel it up, fire the siren.
The split points here (80 Hz, 250 Hz, 3 kHz) are example values for this simulator – every sound tunes its own set. Phones and laptops can’t play real sub-bass; headphones help.
All done – you can run a dance. Now try the speaker game.
where do the boxes go?
Two games: first build your own wall of boxes – then find out where the bass goes.
Put your own sound system together: pick a box, choose upright or lying, and drop it into a column. Then hear what your wall sounds like.
Your wall is ready – hear it!
Lying or upright? Same box, different footprint: lying boxes are lower and wider and stand more steadily, upright boxes need less floor space. The boxes get smaller from bass to treble: sub, kick, mid, top. The tops are square – they look the same both ways.
A top-down view of a yard. Drag the bass boxes. The colours show how loud the bass is everywhere – a simple model: every box is a point source, sound fades with distance, waves add up or cancel each other.
One sub is set. Put the second one so the whole dancefloor gets about +5 to +6 dB more bass than with one box.
Frequency: 50 Hz
Simplified model: point sources in free field, one hard wall in level 2, no air absorption. Real boxes, grass and bodies change the picture – but the effects you see here are real.
around the world
From Kingston to London, Yokohama, Benicàssim and the dub festivals of France.
Sounds like Jah Shaka, Channel One and Aba Shanti-I made the roots and dub session a UK institution – heavy bass, live effects, words you can hear. Saxon, Sir Coxsone Outernational and Wassifa were big UK sounds of the 1980s, and sound system culture fed into jungle, drum & bass, UK garage, grime and dubstep.
In Jamaica and beyond, clash sounds like Stone Love, Killamanjaro, Mighty Crown (Japan) and Black Chiney (Miami) battle with dubplates – exclusive specials that name the sound. World Clash was launched in 1998 by Irish & Chin.
Dub Camp near Nantes (since 2014) also books sounds from abroad – from Italy, Germany (Lion’s Den, Berlin) or the Basque Country. Rototom Sunsplash (since 1994, now in Benicàssim) and Outlook in Croatia (since 2008) carry the culture to festival size.
Sister Nancy deejayed as a teenager and is called the first female dancehall deejay – “Bam Bam” came out in 1982. Around 1980, Sister Culture ran as an all-female sound in Brixton. In recent years April Grant (Rebel Rock, Birmingham) and Thali Lotus (CAYA, Bedford) have run their own sounds.
At a session there is generally no line between audience and performer. Julian Henriques takes the “vibes” literally – as vibration you feel with your whole body.
test yourself
15 questions, three levels. Every answer comes with the story behind it.