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In Reply to: RE: 105db/meter NON horn loaded speakers posted by used-hifi on April 21, 2017 at 18:37:54
Why not horns?, they are the obvious way to get that sensitivity level, can produce more sound and can produce a larger near field.
Follow Ups:
Some folks just can't tolerate the HONK HONK SQUAWK of horns.
I've tried SO hard. I LOVE so much of what some of those super-efficient designs can do.
NO horn design that I have actually heard, from ANY form of Klipsch, to CAR (Classic Audio Reproductions), to Avantgarde Acoustics has been acceptable to me. MANY of them get the dynamics right, but every damn one has me running from the room post haste. :(
p.s.? A heavily modified CAR T1 was the closest I ever got to a sound I could live with...
Hard to imagine anyone liking horn honk but generally this "sound" is not the fault of the horn but rather the crossover.
Well a better description is that in the old days, there was no way to design a crossover other than to look up values on a table or calculation.
While the calculations are correct, they are only correct IF one has a resistor as the termination and loudspeakers, especially compression drivers are not much like a resistor.
Usually one finds that there is a peak in the response related to the impedance peak at least on older horn systems and to me, it doesn't look like there is a lot going on now scientifically with horns except for some proponents like myself.
If the problem is indeed the crossover, how about going to multiple amps and a Line Level crossover like MiniDSP?
You can impliment nearly anything you can think of AND if you are willing to wade thru the math, even an FIR filter which has NO phase shift thru the passband. That's gotta sound interesting?
Depending on the crossover removed, you might even ADD a db or so to the overall sensitivity of the system.
Too much is never enough
My thought about "why" is this: Most horns with a single source at the apex are just too damn small. The bigger the horn, the better the horn. Unless you are Tom Danley and know hot to miniaturize them properly with multiple holes in the right places NOT in the apex.
"in the old days,"Ha!
"in the old days,", horns were often horrible. That's what I said. Don't blame it on the crossover, although, they were often iffy, too.
:)
Edits: 05/02/17
This is exactly 100% correct. I know, I have been through it !
Edits: 05/02/17
Tried a good amplifier yet?My experience nearly always traces those "honks" and "shouts"
to amplifiers, not something else.Some listeners also dismiss silver wire for the same reasons.
Just like the horn-loaded speakers, the superior silver wiring is
trying it's darndest to tell you something.....Ever used a Spectral solid-state amp? No?
Quit blaming horns! Start looking for the source of
the troubles, nearly all amplifiers.-Dennis-
Edits: 04/26/17
My IN-HOME experiences?
Solid state? Yep - Spectral DMA-50 (didn't own it)
Tube? VTL Deluxe 120 (DO still own it).
Horn speakers in question? My Ex's Klipsch KG5.5s (which I "rope caulked" the horn drivers). Still honking.
NO, not the best example of horns, but what I had at home.
Other examples are what I heard at dealers and/or shows - and I'm pretty sure the dealers and/or manufacturers thought those amp/speaker pairings were at least "reasonable" matches.
Hi Dennis, good name BTW my fathers name :)Anyways it is of my years of knowledge that IMO and amplifier cannot fix a bad nasty shouting speaker, nor would i want too this tells me it is somehow covering up its inhearent problems (horns speakers)
now I wont re-write everything here but I will provide a link that will show exactly what i really think about horn speakers and why they are NO GOOD for audio IN THE HOME.
I am shuffleskater
Edits: 04/28/17
Hi
Don't get me wrong, horns are very hard to implement let alone design from the driver up and that is why much of the home and DIY area consists of horns and drivers developed by engineer artisan's long before good measurements and computer modeling and design existed, proven designs (and often available used).
A creative and observant person can go a very long way without the technical help available now but it makes more sense to me to use every tool and aid you can get your hands on and to build on the library of understanding by doing tests on your own where there are a lot of blank pages.
supposed to explain what is about horn speakers you don't like? The posts I read - before the thread repeated itself ad nauseam and the generalisations, personal insults, and general willy waving became tedious - was that horns don't resemble live music because they distort and present music in an upfront way.
You are not really explicit enough in your descriptions for people to help... though if you are seeking help, you approach is counter-productive. I could be wrong, but your approach resembles trolling, though that may not be your motivation.
91.
"Confusion of goals and perfection of means seems to characterise our age." Albert Einstein
"Ever used a Spectral solid-state amp?"When I was in Beserkeley a few months ago, my friend and I went to Music Lovers Audio (again), where we heard a Spectral CD player with a Spectral preamp and Spectral monoblocks driving a pair of Wilson Alexia speakers (which, btw, I liked more than the Alexandria's). We put on a couple of recordings which I made many years ago, and, seriously, they sounded great (and I was quite pleased with myself). My friend commented that he has a lot of respect for Keith Johnson, saying (paraphrasing here) that he's one of the few guys who really does work at trying to "get it right".
:)
Edits: 04/27/17
I sure love my Berkeley Dacs!
-Dennis-
Seems to me that I saw one of their products at Music Lovers - I vaguely remember a component that had their logo on the top of the case, I think. I'll check them out next time I'm in town.Anyway, my experience with horns is that, at least in the past (say, the 1940's to 1970's designs), manufacturers tried to squeeze too much performance out of a horn. Throat size (air distortion), mouth-to-world interface (impedance matching), metal horn ringing, internal reflections, were some of the problems. The first horns which I heard that actually sounded pretty decent were the Electro-Voice CD horns - the white horns, in about '73 or '74. They blew the Altecs and JBLs away. When I was doing the sound for a little rock band in '75/'76, we had some JBL radial exponential horns which were awful, and one of my first goals was to replace them with the new E-V horns. The band was ecstatic.
Somewhere around that time period, John Meyer decided to go one step farther, and built electronics to "pre-distort" the input signal, so that the horn distortion itself would actually compliment the pre-distorted signal and result in a cleaner output. I don't remember offhand if John Curl was involved in that research or design, and I don't know what the current status of the concept is.
Anyway, horn design has come a long way since the legacy days of "traditional" exponential horns, thank goodness!
:)
Edits: 04/28/17
David S., I feel your pain! You need to try some generously sized conical flare (straight sided) horns, which as Bill Woods has long asserted, sound "the least like horns." I ignored his wise counsel for several years, much to my detriment. Honk be gone!
I have heard something similar. Those horns which are designed more for pattern control (i.e, waveguides) as opposed to high efficiency seem to have less of that "honk."
There was a peer review study conducted for different speakers such as conventional monkey coffins and different horns. The shorter horns (less than 1 foot deep if I remember right) had a sound characteristic very similar to conventional monkey coffins.
Maybe the cause, or a contributing cause, are the HOMs which horns can produce. You can read all about HOMs elsewhere (I even forgot what the acronym stands for - ask Earle Geddes).
Retsel
Not all who wander are lost.
Not all who are horny honk.
Just sayin'.
all the best,
mrh
Just looking at the picture of the JBL driver. I'm sure you know, but I would point out that the poles on the JBL drivers are reversed, and red is negative.
I have a pair of 2482s with the paint knocked off the back just like yours. Did you ever try to remove the bug screen? I know people hate that subject, but man that screen is like a sieve from the 1940s. It looks like it would require a big spanner key to unscrew the phase plug.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Big speakers and little amps blew my mind!
and the phase was indeed reversed when that photo was taken, I am chagrined to admit.
Long story -- bottom line: at the advice of a hifi sage of my ken, I bought myself a Cricket. It's an invaluable tool for all issues of phase!
all the best,
mrh
Oh I know. I did the same thing myself.
-----------------------------------------------------------
Big speakers and little amps blew my mind!
I can only comment on those horn systems that I have been exposed to.
I would CERTAINLY hope there is a horn speaker system I could live with. I'd just love to hear such a thing.
David S, if you ever get the chance to hear TomServo's (a.k.a. Tom Danley) synergy horn designs, take it. Unfortunately Danley Labs doesn't design for or market to the consumer market, so it would likely have to be a DIY design based on the idea or someone (not many out there) who is using the huge pro audio horns in a house. Doesn't sound like a horn, or like a speaker much either.
_
Make easy high performance diffusors:-->http://www.libinst.com/diffusers/Depot_Diffuser.html
Horn Design Spreadsheet:--> http://libinst.com/SynergyCalc/
SmallSyns:-->http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/multi-way/292379-s
and I do ;-)
De gustibus non est disputandum, of course.
all the best,
mrh
~!
The Mind has No Firewall~ U.S. Army War College.
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