GoodSoundClub - Romy the Cat's Audio Site

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

Post Subject: Havering on...Posted by jessie.dazzle on: 9/1/2009

Well, yes... I've not been to prison in over two years!

Apart from keeping me off the streets at night, the results when listening to one of the 40Hz horns were, dare I say, encouraging, though I do hesitate to say so, as the "evaluation" was carried out in very non-optimal conditions.

To this point, I've only listened to one of the two 40Hz horns, with it sitting in the middle of the floor, its small end about 15ft in front of the mouth of the upper-bass horns. When listening from a point out in front of the 40Hz horn, you'd of course get a lot more output from it than the rest of the system; not particularly pleasant. Sitting up closer to the rest of the horns (normal listening position) was better; from this listening point, output from the 40Hz horn was really not that perceptible (its lack of alignment being the most obvious clue), but then disconnecting it revealed just how much it really had been contributing. Normally I would take this as a positive sign, but given the context, I just repeat to myself, "shut up and get the other horn done!'

So to haver on a bit more!

Listening to the horn play solo was probably more informative than listening in the context of the entire system. With volume knobs set to my normal listening level, I'm not entirely satisfied that this single 40Hz horn was properly loading the room, which has a cubic volume not far from what I would consider ideal for such a system (though the floor plan is far from ideal; too long and narrow). However, the horn was sitting in the center of the room, not coupled with 3 walls as intended, and... I have, since that time added L-Pads to the lower-mid range horns (S2 into 180Hz); something I've been meaning to do since Romy wrote "...A good 16R L-Pad would help a lot..." (he was right). As a result, I now listen with the volume knobs set a bit higher; in this context, the 40Hz horn would be putting out a bit more. With a second 40Hz horn in place, loading will be better, but should it turn out to be inadequate, I suppose I could always add L-Pads to the upper-mids and tweeters (what's that you say? DSETs?).

For now, to say more than this would be ridiculous, as it is very difficult to ignore 15-20ft of misalignment (not quite as bad as when my ex wouldn't allow the upper-bass horns in the same room as the mid and HF horns!), and the fact that the rear of the cone was singing along right there next to me all the while (no rear chamber).

Btw, the 50 Watt L-Pads I got from Parts Express are straight from the time when people took pride in their work.
http://www.parts-express.com/pe/showdetl.cfm?Partnumber=260-254

jd*

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