I would like to dedicate this thread to sharing views about a theoretically ideal, ultimate horn system. What would it be?

Am NOT talking about the typical wishful thinking when people publicly drooling what they would do it they have larger rooms or more money. I more interested in motivations, reasons, justification… and all of it bounded to conclusions and the reality of practical sound reproduction by the horn lorded loudspeakers.

So, if no compromises allow and we did build our virtual ideal horn system… then how far we are from the ideal horn system? Any brainstorming and any "obnoxious" ideas are welcome.

Rgs,
Romy the Cat

Romy the Cat wrote:

I would like to dedicate this thread to sharing views about a theoretically ideal, ultimate horn system. What would it be? Am NOT talking about the typical wishful thinking when people publicly drooling what they would do it they have larger rooms or more money. I more interested in motivations, reasons, justification… and all of it bounded to conclusions and the reality of practical sound reproduction by the horn lorded loudspeakers. So, if no compromises allow and we did build our virtual ideal horn system… then how far we are from the ideal horn system? Any brainstorming and any "obnoxious" ideas are welcome. Rgs, Romy the Cat

MochaMike wrote:

A stereo three way horn system with a dual concentric 15" woofers backloaded to 50 cycles and front loaded  with a  short round tractrix horn  200-800 cycles handed off to the  concentric  2"  compression driver loaded with it's own round short conical horn with a series network.  Below  50 cycles self driven 1/8th space horn subwoofers in mono with 18"  high BL drivers.   Surely you will find this barbarian and obnoxious but it does offer many attractive virtues over a four or five way array

I ask if anyone did it because there are some native problems entrench into this approach. The first would be throat of that direct 15 cone. If it were too large, for instance 12”-15” then the horn would not attenuate the lower knee, as it would be too undersized. If to drive the throat lower and to make the horn slightly longer then following problem would kick in:

1) Inside this horn would be small horn of the HF dual concentric and with the smaller throat of the outer horn it’s presents would be too tangible.
2) The longer horn would produce a higher throat reactance but since the drive is back-loaded into own horn it is unknown how it would behave without our ability to damp the cone with a back chamber.

Theoretically, if to tune the reactance of the direct horn and the back horn (by adjusting the throat diameters, I do not see any other ways to do in this setting) and make the driver to sound well under this condition then it would be possible to get a phenomenally interesting result. The problem is that by changing the throats we need to change the length of the horn… I really do not know how a person could research his subject and fine un optimal seating in this case. I know that if one would go over it and do tune this into something that perform well then it would be truly a peaces of loudspeakers art. The only question would remains: how optimum that optimum would be… :-) Still, This conceptual idea is very-very much worthy, from my point of view, to run for the ultimate horn setup.

The only point of objection that I would like to bring is your proposal for the bottom octave. The Audio propaganda conceived and convinced the audio people that bass is non-directorial and might be implemented as a mono solution. It is a very-very mistake vision! Bass MUST be completely separated by right and left channels ….all the way down. No mono bass must be used.  Yes, one more…defiantly bass should not be the “self driven”… :-)

Here is my proposal for an ideal horn system. The concept derives from the really of the horns as I know them, the available park of the drivers, the drivers’ real capacity and from… everything else that I might comment upon if you would not figure out where I was coming from…

110dB multi-channel installation, multi-amping with identical two-stages SET amplifiers, with each amp optimized for own channel. Here are the channel from top to bottom

1) HF channel. A120dB-sensitive hemispheric array of compression drivers, with a dispersion approximately 180° x 230°, sitting deep in the transition slop. First order high-pass.
2) Upper MF channel. A soft magnet compression driver with severely meticulous phase plug, taking out of the driver all that it’s 2’-4’ would be able to give. Response from 13K to 1.2K. First order high-pass. 550Hz spherical horn.
3) Lower MF channel. A soft magnet driver with no phase plug. Response from 150Hz to 1.2K. First order band-pass. 120 Hz spherical horn.
4) Upper bass channel.  A single driver of Fs 40Hz loaded into 45Hz horn. Response, floor coupled, - 45Hz to 150Hz. Diagonal horn spreading.
5) LF channel. A line array of the entire room height with individually sealed enclosures featuring 18” underhand with Fs of 11Hz. The array should be positioned outside the upper bass channel.

Interestingly that having a sufficient amount of space (many of lofts that I have seen or juts the homes/apartments with open floors layout) to position such an installation alight the horn naturally would not be a big deal.

As the shortcoming of this I can see only size and space. Also, it is not clear what amplification might be used for bass channel.  If it were a tube amp, then should be a SET and to use the same driver and the same linestage coupling principle as the rest amps but it might use a different output tube stage.  For instance some of those high voltages transmission tubes with 400-500W plate dissipation. With 2-4 drivers of 99dB sensitivity 200W of SET power should be enough to drive the LF channel in the room of that size.

Rgs,
Romy the Cat

Romy the Cat wrote:

1) HF channel. A120dB-sensitive hemispheric array of compression drivers, with a dispersion approximately 180° x 230°, sitting deep in the transition slop. First order high-pass.

CO wrote:

Why such a wide angle? To keep the highs evenly spread and match to the angles of other chanels ofcourse but this will call for much more attention to room setup/treatment. Wouldnt this also lose some of the horn magic by letting the playback room "mix" with the recording. Alot of the benifits i have attributed to horns is because of the narrow directivity they posess. At lower frequencies the directivity is always less ofcourse so i can understand why.Perhaps you see this wide angle setup only restricted to a large space?

I do not attribute to hors any specific “magic”, Horns have some advantages but it has nothing to do with “magic”. Also I do not attribute anything positively to narrow directivity of horns, quite opposite: the wider dissipation diagraph we have the more interesting result would be. Partially I do not like the narrow dissipation at HF. Those compression tweeters with ultra high directivity and phase plugs that terminated with a heddle point are particularly horrible. It is also difficult to build arrays with those drivers as with angle then we have all kind of phases problems (it is how some Japanese manufactures time-align them) That all boils down to what you want to make a source of your sound: your speakers of your room. In order to “turn a room on” you might need a defused and non-directional HF. There are many other aspects: wider dissipation = lower depth of hors, that it very beneficial (unnecessary) for HF; better MF-HF integration, wider listening space, more natural reverberation radiuses when listening is off the “sweet spots” and many other thighs…

Rgs,
Romy the Cat

slowmotion wrote:

But not everyone agree with you there, Romy. If I could make the directivity reasonable constant through the frequency range....all the way down.... An array of tweeters is the last thing I would do....

Rgs,
Romy

Dominic wrote:

….one would take full advantage of what can be done .. so that the horn mouths could be arranged, not for time but to clean up their other interactions.

Dominic, care to explain what would be and what would it mean?

I understand that this is just an excercise, but one thing I keep coming back to as I experiment with hi-fi is to try to minimize the number of changes I make at once so I can - hopefully - keep track of and sort out what each change brings to my system.  I am wondering how much of this conceptual venture has proven its worth, from the digital interfacing to the horns that are optimized for this.  The reason I gave up on horns so many years ago was because I "foresaw" that it would take a personally-developed 5-way system with dedicated amps not only to optimize this approach, but it would take about that just to overcome what I did/do not like about horns.  This makes me wonder how many people out there are really, actually, doing what Romy has done, or anything even approaching that level of relentless commitment, in order to get to "the good stuff" that horns would seem to be able to do, this without making "the horn sound" that always winds up spoiling it for me no matter the horn system I have heard to date.  Of course any system needs tuning; but, 5-way horns...  now THAT is a LOT of very complicated work!  Add digital and you are on a Life Quest.

So, I am wondering, is this just a ferocious brain storm, or has someone who reads along here actually gotten good results with anything touched on here, at least to his own satisfaction?  So far, the only digitally-controlled sound I have heard is "high-end" HT stuff, and, not surprizing perhaps, I heard nothing apart from the pure scale of it that would make me want to pursue this any further.  Not that I mind (appropriate) "Big Sound" for orchestral works...  But the overall quality of the reproduction has been another matter altogether, as you might imagine.  I should admit that I am not pre-disposed to insert digital this and that into a system, again, because the learning curve is so steep for me, and the audible promise of it has been so faint to this point that I simply have not bothered to learn it.

Although I realize that I have not heard everything, I am rarely pleasantly surprized by other systems I hear, and this seems only to reinforce my prejudices over time.  Oddly, putting ML2s in my system has opened the door to digital a crack, meaning I can now (finally) begin to hear some "possibilities" for digital that have eluded me for many years, up to now.

I also "understand" (read, believe) that for many if not most audio nuts digital is more a matter of expedience than an embracing of a "superior" format/delivery system.  I use CD mainly because I can ignore it if I want, while the TT needs constant/periodic attention.

Anyway, please join me in seeing the circularity of my "logic", and maybe someone can educate me on what I am missing, here.

Best regards,
Paul S

From the Lynn Olson’s site:

http://www.nutshellhifi.com/

The introduction to the “The Art of Speaker Design”:

Romy the Cat wrote:

I can talk and write about it for pages but this subject is not recognized as “audio” generally, unfortunately….