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Jeffrey Jackson wrote:

I feel that the first decision when designing a horn speaker is to decide how many horns and the corresponding crossover points.. then pray that suitable drivers exist.. if not, then make them...

I’m religiously against this approach. Most of the bad thongs people do with drivers, crossovers and channels utilization is because exactly this vision. To intellectualize the crossover points, to project a desired amount of channels and then search for the driver is VERY absurd way to go.  Everything starts from an observation of performance of a specific driver when you recognize what the driver needs and detect at which frequencies and under witch loading the driver does what you need, then, only then (!) the ideas how this driver might be used (including it’s conjunction with others channels). There is NO other ways to go!

Jeffrey Jackson wrote:

Personally, I think that 3-way is possible…

I do not. Horns produce very different and kind of “dry” upper midrange.  There is a secret how to use that upper midrange. I learned over my experiments and auditioning many different horns that in order to soften out this upper midrange and balance it subjectively a horn installation MUST have LF section that goes all the way down to sub 25-30Hz. The LF needed not for sake of sound but for the sake of “compiling” the “strange” radiation patterns, to hydrate the horn’s upper midrange and for few other things. Many folks use horns upper midrange within their systems that can handle properly no lower then 40-50Hz and consequentially they end up with typical “bad horn sound”…. So, no horn channel can do 20Hz, unless you live in angar for Boeing 727.  In addition I have Real Estate like this then not exactly believe conceptually into the lower bass horns. Therefore, I do not feel that a properly performing 3-way system is possible. When a channel take care about 20-30Hz then the demands for those drivers, those enclosures and the entire ways of LF producing is totally different then with other channels, so it would still require as dedicated channel. Yes, the 3-way is possible…. with a complimentary extra LF channel. Certainly it feasible to get good sound with 3 channels but, come on! If I am being a snob then I should be a compulsive snob and go all the way down….

rdrysdale wrote:

When we crossover down to 200hz everything starts sounding terrible, just starts sounding right at a little over 250hz. We never crossed over above 300, we need to do this.

And when you cross your driver it at 600Hz the MF will sound way even better then it sounds now.

rdrysdale wrote:

I need a fast way to prototype horns, since I can't go down to K-Mart and get one.

You might try what I did: make them form paper. Regular thick paper, in my part I got a large roll from a client of mine that “went to dark” and I made many horn form that paper. You should not make good horns to try but the “10-minutes horns”. They all will be conical and they all will have huge paper coloration, not to mention the huge throat distortions. After listing a few of them you will be able to tune- off you listening consciousness from those coloration and listen ONLY what you intend to listen. I still have in my storage some experimental horns of mine; the paper horns coated with rubber glue and spread with lead shots while the glue was fresh… Certainly the paper horns are very rough approximation but they is juts prototypes… it is nice to change the horn cut-off by re-applying Scotch in a new location…

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