How musical fountains work

Musical fountains work in a variety of ways.

For example It is possible to have a "keyboard" controlling pumps and or valves, with the operator "playing along" switching them  on / off, but this means you need an operator in order for the fountains to work, allegedly the late Liberace had someone doing just this for the fountains he had as a backdrop.

With the advent of  computers it is totally different. The basic way is to split a sound input (music) into several "ranges" for example bass, middle and treble, and then have these "outputs" turn on / off but this is some what limited because there are only two states, on or off. 

It is possible to make a bigger version of above, splitting the sound into more "channels" But where would you connect the lights to? There are some fountain companies that do do this or variants of it.

We use our custom written ACCESS software.

Access uses standard DMX  (Being as its DMX all our pumps are single phase 230v ac, and the lights are  fed from transformers) All channels are independent of each other. It does need to be choreographed, but only once. (Since you "save it" once you are happy) When it is in operation, not only can it switch a pump on or off, it can also vary how much "on" the pump or light is, anywhere from 0% to 100% That is some thing you can not do with a valve. By being able to change the output value from 0 -100% it gives you more scope with a smaller number of pumps, which in turn will save you money.

For example:

If you have a musical high then you would want some / all the pumps at 90-100% but if it is a musical low, then you could have a few (or even one) pump at say 20% The pumps we supply have asynchronous motors which means they can run from 0-100%, not all pumps can do this. Similarly with the lights by varying the intensity you can change not only the colour but the hue.

DMX find out more

Here is the musical fountain home page