How musical fountains work

It is true there are several ways to control a musical fountain.

It is possible to have a "keyboard" operating pumps or valves, with the operator "playing along" switching the pumps or valves 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 electronics and 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 electric valves. But this method is limited because there are only 3 channels and no lighting.

It is possible to use an electronic "V.U" meter and use this to trigger valves, this does give more channels but again no lighting, you could connect lights to the same output but that then means that if valve "A" is on so is light "A"

You could also consider running a pump from the output, but again there is no lighting and the pump is either on or off.

We prefer to use our custom written ACCESS software.

What Access basically does is to give you as many channels as you require, not only that, it gives you lighting channels. All channels are independent of each other. It does need to be choreographed, but only once. (since the computer will remember how it was set up) 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% (pictures soon)

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.

Musical fountain index click here