I half of my site dedicated to bitching about the problems with time alignment what it is imposable to do by pure real-estate efforts and a lack of clarity how it could be resolved properly. Sine this subject is the prominent for any horn user I decided to have a dedicated there where different time day methods might be under attention. Here is a brief summary of all know to me methods – I need you to invent better methods…
1) Pure analog Delay – work relatively OK narrow LF bandwidth and short delay time. To expensive and too sonically damaging for wide-range and for longer delay time. Implemented in a number of commercial speakers to fix baffle miss-alignment
2) Pure digital Delay - “clean” way to do it but it requires AD/DA processing – if you care. In case a playback uses ONLY digital sources then the delay memory might be implemented right in DAC level. This is a good solution (if you have only one CD player) but it unfortunately requires a crossovering at digital level…
3) FM analog Delay – modulation audio bandwidth into UHF, delaying in within classic analog delay lines and then demodulation it back to audio bandwidth. This is Dima’s “invention” and I feel that it is the most elegant idea among all. It is not implemented properly yet in order to validate it’s effectiveness.
4) Mechanical Delay – It is “kinky” way, I do not see a lot of people who have guts or stupidity to do it. Usually this type of delay implemented by old tape (or other) “echo” machines. I doubt that at relatively high level of playback demand the mechanical delay are implementable but it is an opportunity. In horn words we seldom, if ever delay LF but rather HF signal… so if anyone invent anything new or has to propose anything new then feel free to do so.
Rgs, Romy the Cat
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