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Re: Eminence LAB 12 drivers

Hi

I am glad you are pleased with the driver, I think you will be more so when you finish the horn part of the project.
The driver is a good one, it does work well and I am sure it will be made for a while as I know Jerry at Eminence was building
the LAB horns too.
Part of the reason for my designing the LAB horn and specifying the driver parameters was to give the Pro-sound DIY'rs a
modern bass horn, so many people interested in horns still follow the old " folk lore ", like for example that a bass horn driver
should have low mass and small excursion capacity.
When a couple of people on the live audio board suggested using a JBL-K series driver I stepped in and said look, if your going
to all the trouble to build something like a horn, why not make it work as well as it can and not start life crippled.
In reality, the proper driver parameters will always be the best choice and not ones chosen by "thumb rule" so while this driver
seems very heavy to some, those who measure the box find a different story, it works exactly as intended.
At some point, the folks who did a shoot out in Michigan will have the measurements and listening results posted on the basslist
so more actual data will be available soon.

Anyway, I am pleased that some HIFI types have picked up on the design, Don B was one of the first I was aware of to use it in
a home. I was inspired myself, I have always had Servodrive subs around usually (often prototypes) so I am not often lacking in
bass extension, my in room listening position response is pretty flat to 10 Hz.
On the other hand, I have rarely had any of our big horns at home, they seemed "over kill" when a ContraBass or two can scare
strangers..

I had just designed a variation on the LAB sub horn and got it in my living room last weekend, a little smaller, only 42 by 42 by
18 inches which also uses a "trick" in its operation. In room, it is unusually smooth for a small horn + - 3 dB from 30 to 225 Hz
and with 10 dB of eq (no problem because of high sensitivity ~ 106 db 1w) the measured response is - 3 dB at 22 HZ.
Using the TEF machine to measure phase and the Omnidrive (BS366) to mate them, I got it aligned with the Unity horn system
on top.

Listening results:
Well, I am re-thinking my furniture arrangement in the living room to accommodate 2 LF horns (a right and left).
The "closer to zero" degree acoustic phase of the LF horn shows up sounding very "tight" compared to the direct radiator's ~-90
degree phase (which is in effect an increasing delay with decreasing F).
At the moment, the increased headroom and the fact that I can mate the acoustic phase with the Unity above (resulting in near
zero degree acoustic phase from about 50 Hz to 5 KHz) makes the horn woofer more desirable and eq buys back some of the
LF extension. At a loud listening level, the LF THD was 2% or less from 25 to 150 Hz so compared to a direct radiating cone
driver, the horn is also much lower in distortion.

No question, I think you will like those drivers in a horn.
Are you going to the horn fest in Lima?
Cheers,

Tom Danley


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