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General speaker questions for audio and home theater.

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RE: Planars vs. Horns Discussion

Posted by CarlEber on June 23, 2012 at 12:14:47:
Horns will always add an element of distortion. It's just physics. That is what you are hearing (as you likely already know). I'm surprised you would compare horn speakers with ESL's...horns are employed for their sensitivity. ESL's are for people who don't need the sensitivity, and who also don't mind dipolar radiation. Frankly, ESL's always sound like plastic rattling in the wind, to me...but are superb for very quiet listening.

I've not heard the ESL63's, but I have heard the modern version, at a dealer in SF back in 2005 (the only time I have yet ventured to the west coast!)

Horns seem to vary wildly in their quality and design...By the way, recently I googled DIY midrange horns, and found the guy who makes "tractrix" flares for compression drivers...out of, get this...papier mache! He sells them for only $1000 each...

Interesting you mention Photoshop. There are many ways to sharpen in Photoshop. Depending on the type of file and type of camera (and how clean the file is)...I've found I like to employ the "detail" slider in Camera Raw as much as I can (even if it's only a little bit...sometimes it can be a lot).

It's really not all that difficult to determine the radius, and how much sharpening the file can get away with. Just make sure you always view the file at the final size it will be used for.

If it's just meant to be viewed online at computer monitor sizes...then view it that way as you edit. If you're going to produce a print, it's best to just view the file full size, pixel for pixel.

As for applying sharpening in the full Photoshop (as a TIFF file or whatever), this is always more destructive than the sharpening performed on the RAW file (even though it appears to be able to be more tweakable).

Carl