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In the Forum: Horn-Loaded Speakers
In the Thread: Midbass Horns and Real Estate.

Post Subject: More ideas and drawbacksPosted by Saturntube on: 8/10/2009

Just to answer a couple of question and post some more...

The Mouth changing sectors in the horn, according to the preliminary data posted here, would be as follow:
For the 40 hz horn: 4¨ Throat to 6¨ = 53 cm 6¨ Throat to 8¨= 40 cm 8¨ Throat to 10¨= 30 cm
Yes big!
I doubt we can find a good 10" midbass driver that will go nicely down to 40 hz but if we try a Goto compresion driver we will need the 4¨ throat.
Now for 12" and 15" drivers; 8" and 10" throats would be a good testing ground. Of course once it is properly tested and set, there should be no changes. I though tests could take place without the other channels just with the one huge horn laying on the floor and and me running back and forth 4 meters to readjust the back chamber! And yes testing all the drivers I could get my hands on, maybe even fill with sand the chambers of the one test subject, and drain the sand out before moving it to its final location. About time alignment, in this case with a straight horn the final location would be predetermined and macro-imbedding it would be left to chance. This would go on the top room of the house looking downwards into the listening room, time aligned according to the diagram previously posted, or side firing headphone style, with the ends "hanging" on top of the garden or inside the next room.
On a concrete house with concrete roof the weight should be no problem, with a wooden roof, other methods for damping should be used in order to keep it light. Maybe sheet metal construction should only be used for round horns and, Wood, a more self damped lighter material is better for a square horn hanging from a wooden structure roof.

The drawback of a straight midbass horn would be the positioning, with the J horn we can indeed move it around in a little cart, but we do have the one bend drawback. I have been going around on trying to use the same listening room area for the midbass horn, but having the 3-4 mts lengh of the horn and the 2m height of the mouth fit in one room is difficult geometrically, unless we do add the bend. Now, dont these look like the huge ventilation horns used on old boats?
A beautiful solution are the unluckily now extinct Carfrae horns, either the little horn which is a snail design, or the big horn which has one 180 degree bend and shoots into the corners of the room. These were back horns designed for a lowther driver, but a modification could be done simply enough to make a similar design for a front horn...

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