Loudest Sound Ever?

The Krakatoa explosion was heard 3000 miles away. It ruptured eardrums 100 miles away.

Krakatoa

STS-107 Space Shuttle launch from astronaut family viewing stands approximately 3 miles from launch pad. The low frequency sound waves were so powerful, you could feel your internal organs vibrate and the higher frequencies sounded like a loud crackle.  

....back in my Oaktown Era, spouse, self, and an old fm/GF jumped on our m/c's  and caught the takeoff of the Concorde doing it's 'Round The Globe' Very exclusive flight from OAK.

End of the runway, close as poss.....

!?*!!!!......"Uh, wow....." (followed by expletives....)

Not only LOUDER THAN (*).....FAST 
...you're going somewhere

In '69 I worked the summer for Marriott Corp, on one of those trucks that rises up to the plane to swap out food service stuff. We spent 1/2 the time just sitting near the runway, waiting for the plane. We weren't issued ear protectors so really got a close up experience of jet noise.

The 2 loudest were the Boeing 707s (various configs had been in use for years by then); and the then-brand new 747. The 707s had sharper, more painful sound (extremely loud engines) and the 747s had deeper, more menancing bass sound (bigger planes & engines).

Many times we sat in that truck buffeted by sound that felt like a storm (the truck shook like it was). No doubt helps explain my constant tinnitus...

Me. After reading the prices of high end gear…

P-51 race plane!

Second loudest: 10 Billion Butterfly Sneezes...

Bassnectar show at Red Rocks 2017.. peaks at 110 dbs.. Made Red Rocks change their rules on volume and Bassnectar was banned for life.. 

F22 Raptor sitting in place like helicopter, nose pointed straight up, wow!
Long term loud would have been Mitch Ryder & Detroit Wheels, standing directly in front of speaker stack, stoned and drunk.

I was sitting one time in the front row at a Robin Tower concert ,I could hear after the concert....When I was young we would go to a concert and then take the NYC subway home both are really loud.Another time we were having lunch at my grandmother's house it was a ranch and the house next door blew ,and man that was loud.Gas explosion...

        "Technically the conditions prior to the Big Bang are undefined."

                  Factually: no one knows the Big Bang happened.

                         That's why it's referred to as a, "theory".
 
              ie: Hawkings works = Theoretical Cosmology/Physics.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2053929-a-brief-history-of-stephen-hawking-a-legacy-of-paradox/ (RIP)

Black holes do not burp. You are maybe thinking of Hawking radiation? 
http://scholarpedia.org/article/Hawking_radiation

As I have gotten older, I have less tolerance for very loud music.  At a rock concert, I have been known to pack my ears with cotton so that I can enjoy the music without grimacing in pain.  At home, my listening level is low-to-medium — definitely lower than probably a lot of other members here.  Only occasionally will I listen at louder levels, and usually that is when driving in my car. 

Black holes may burp, perhaps that is what was heard….

BTW I think our avatars are good company..............

Regards,
barts

@millercarbon But what about Supertramp "loud".  Must be near the envelope to crush matter into a singularity, yes?  And, as an aside, I particularly like the Hawking theory that black holes evaporate!  Wowzers that some critical listening/thinking.  No snark.

Regards,
barts

Technically the conditions prior to the Big Bang are undefined. Math lingo for "we don't know". Anyone wanting to understand the subject, Hawking's A Brief History of Time is the one to read.

 It's funny how everyone assumes they know what environment existed prior to the birth of the Universe. You're smarter than I am.

dweller3,137 post The Big Bang...

 no sound in a vacuum. ;-(  

Concert - The Allman Brothers at Cincinnati Gardens. Greg said they were going to play their entire catalogue and he wasn't kidding. Our ears were exhausted and we left after 3 hours.

Plane - A B1 or B2 (the non flying wing one) doing a flyover at Kentucky Speedway. Over the speedway the pilot pulled the nose up and hit the afterburners.

Cars - Top Fuel or Funny car. They used to do exhibitions at Edgewater Park down the street. You could stand 10 feet away from where they did the burnouts and launches.

Most Eerie - My old sponsors turbo, 3-stage nitrous Funny Bike. The exhaust wasn't loud with the turbos so you could hear the slick clawing the pavement for traction as he launched and hit the first stage of nitrous.  A Suzuki 500 cc two stroke GP bike at Road America. Coming down the back straight at 180/185+ MPH you couldn't hear the exhaust, all you could hear was the air ripping apart at the front of the bike.

Blue Cheer, Jimi H.

Dynamite used to break loose slag in a boiler.  Only half a stck.  Had on ear protection good for 25 dB reduction and it was still very loud and concussive.

The Ramones at The Santa Monica Civic Auditorium in the 1980’s. The Civic is a horrendously bad sounding room, a large cement bunker.

Prior to that, it was the night I did an 8-hr audition for a really good San Jose band, from 9 PM until the Sun came up. One of the two guitarists had placed his Fender Twin Reverb amp (fed the signal from a Guild Starfire guitar) facing right at me, about ten feet away. After the last song of the evening ended, a couple of the guys starting talking, and though their lips was flappin’, I couldn’t hear a word they was sayin’. Frightening! By the way, I passed the audition ;-) . That guitarist is very Jazz influenced, and now makes his living accompanying a female singer, performing standards from The Great American Songbook in supper clubs around the Monterey Bay area.

@reubent   The Southern Nationals at Atlanta Dragway raced for the last time earlier this year and Houston Raceway Park in Baytown is closing up shop for good following the running of the Springnationals a few weeks ago. We had just crossed the state line into Florida on the way to the Gators in Gainesville in 2019 when we heard that they'd pulled the plug due to CV.

Also to add, back in the day of my hi-fi retail and car audio, it was the in thing to have DB contests. Our shop ran one and  I had the setup to mic each car competing. Of course all these cars were insanely loud.

 I recall one kid (20 something) as I set up the microphone on the passenger seat and asked if he wanted to put on the industrial grade over the ear hearing protection. To which he looked at me and said NO. I thought he was nuts but so be it. I got out of the car and closed the door and off he went.

The booming bass notes from the audio he was playing was literally and visibly  shaking  the whole car, rattles and such abound. I looked inside and  figured this kid wants to be deaf before he was 25. I mean outside of the car it had to be well over 100db. I'm tying to remember  how  loud the decibel  meter was showing... I'm  sure it was like 135db. I COULDN'T  BELIEVE THIS GUY WAS INSIDE HIS CAR RUNNING THE AUDIO SYTEM!

For me the loudest sound I can recall, would be from a RAF Vulcan bomber displays at the Abbotsford Airshow back in the 1970's. Those Rolls Royce Olympus engines at full thrust howled and ripped the air. It was an impressive part of the demonstration. Honourable mention would be the SR-71 demo at the 1986 Abbotsford Airshow. With both engines in  afterburner  that aircraft roared to impressive levels, very exciting.

 

for all the service members - thank you for the sacrifice you made for our country.

My office in St Louis was at the door where every F4 ( etc ) rolled out. Certainly legendary loud and proud.

On top fuel, I grew up 10 miles from Norwalk Raceway Park on Ohio 13. And ran crew and drove a bracket 69 RT with Keith Black 440 Wedge. You guys are so right, that was tame compared to the chest impact noise of Top fuel……i gotta get to an event soon…

carry on !

@onhwy61-  Scientifically speaking: shockwaves and sound waves are two distinctly different phenomena.

    A shockwave resulting from an energetic enough explosion, can travel 100 times faster than the speed of sound.

    A shockwave's wave-form also differs from that of sound, as does how it affects the surrounding gas.

                    ie: https://fas.org/sgp/othergov/doe/lanl/pubs/00326956.pdf

    However one defines it: the sound of Krakatoa's eruptions were heard 3000 miles from the source, on Rodrigues Island.    

                                                        What a blast!

Led Zeppelin. Sam Houston Coliseum in Houston, TX. 1975.

@barts  - Sorry to hear that Englishtown is no longer. I think a lot of dragstrips are headed in that direction.

I haven't been in years. Need to take my 17 year old son. He loves all things automotive and I've been talking up the top-fuel experience for years..... 

@boxer12  - Who is your sister-in-law?

My son and I would go to Englishtown Raceway Park for the drags every year, we would go on Friday for qualifying, very few fans, drivers and mechs very accessible.

One our first trip we went directly to the pits and watched a top fuel team prep the car.  We were only 3 feet off the rear tires (no ropes on Friday)
and they started that bitch up, my 12 year old son is grinning ear to ear...then the mech nails the throttle and it knocked him to his knees.

We jumped back and got upwind because the nitro burns the crap out of you eyes and lungs.  Could barely see for a few minutes. 

Sadly Raceway Park is no longer.

Regards,
barts

Ditto on the top fuel dragsters

Words do not do this justice and is something that one must truly experience to comprehend the full impact

This is sound you can feel in your bones or on the soles of your feet coming up through the pavement when walking

If your seats are within 50 yards of the burnout area and start line, at the end of the day your skin and cloths will look like they've been sprinkled with fine pepper but it's just the accumulation of rubber from the tires throughout the day that you don't notice floating through the air

It's fun to watch someone's reaction when you know it's the first time they will experience two top fuelers step on the throttle at the same time

Colicky Baby @ 3.30 AM

The loudest possible sound in air is 194dB.  Anything more energetic stops producing sound and becomes a shockwave.

@rodman99999   I thought the same...how could there be a "bang" if there was no medium for the sound to travel through.

As well as the old saw "If a tree falls in the woods..........etcetera"

Regards,
barts 

      I'd have thought the Big Bang, but: how could there have been a big, "Bang" in a vacuum?

     The loudest sound in human History was (officially) the third Krakatoa explosion/eruption.

               https://allthatsinteresting.com/krakatoa-eruption

                                 Clocked in at 310 dB

                  Energy equivalent to 200 megatons of TNT.

+2 Reubent !!!

@tomic601 I was in the Marine Corps in the field in NC on a base that had a steam catapult for practicing prior to going hot on a boat.
We were carrier capable but not assigned to a carrier.

Me and couple of buddies are walking in an open space to get to the catapult and an F-4 comes up on us from behind at just over 100 ft and
lights the burners at the same time. Seriously knocked us to our knees.
That was probably the loudest thing I ever heard and I had "ears" on.

Regards,
barts

Hundreds? Thousands of miles away. At 160 miles away, you would have been left without hearing for the rest of your life. Anyhow, what an interesting way to advertise a Bluetooth speaker. We had a chuckle over that.

The guitar solo during Comfortably Numb on the Roger Waters The Wall tour. At the Boston Garden.

1969. South Vietnam. B52 strike about a mile too close to a F0 I happened to be occupying. "Shook me all night loooooong. "  Diz

Lumen Field (Centurylink Field), Seahawks home games: sustained SPLs 125+ dB. 
I’ll watch at home thank you. 
Once in my youth I fired a 357 Magnum, having forgotten to put on ear protection - took two days to hear correctly, and likely did some long-term damage. 

The Who
Carter Finley Stadium 1989

The explosion of the French munitions ship SS Mont Blanc in Halifax, Nova Scotia on Dec. 6, 1917. Over 2000 dead and 9000 injured. Blast equivalent to 2..9 kilo tons of TNT. This was the largest man-made explosion at that time!