GoodSoundClub - Romy the Cat's Audio Site

In the Forum: Horn-Loaded Speakers
In the Thread: Macondo’s Midbass Project – the grown up time.

Post Subject: Lofty ideas and heavenly bass?Posted by oxric on: 6/15/2010

Romy:

I hope you go ahead with your project of installing the horns in your attic as you are probably the only person who might pull it off, but if my opinion was solicited, I think you would be very ill-advised to do so.

Firstly, the costs involved and the real chance that this project might not work make this project statistically a horrible waste of money, time and resources which could be better spent in pursuing other solutions which are more likely to end in success. Your assessment of the cost of the materials must surely be either incorrect or grossly distorts the real financial costs of this project.

In addition, regarding the localisation of some of the upper frequencies where your mid-bass horns are likely to be operating. I doubt one could redress problems with the localisation of these low frequencies, especially if they cause vibrations and localised air ripples in the space above your head. Instead of the vibrations that move across the floor from a not properly isolated subwoofer, you would think that Zeus in the skies is taking care of the lowest notes. I imagine your answer would be that your Fane 8M upper-bass horns and low frequency subs would anchor the low frequencies in question, but that takes away so much flexibility in how you use the mid-bass channels that I firmly believe that it runs counter to your ethos which is to fine-tune everything to its absolute optimised best.

Thirdly, I cannot see from a purist perspective how you will get around the time delay problems (a point that MSaudio does not make forcefully enough) without resorting to equalisation in the digital domain, an area that I thought you considered a definite 'no-go area.' This should I think be used as a last resort but I do not think you have quite reached that point yet, unless you have carried out further research or experimentation which are not apparent in this thread.

Fourthly, I think you have given insufficient weight to the very psychological effect of investing such an arduous amount of time and funds in such a project, irrespective of how successful you are at integrating the mid-bass. Your mind, even your 'bones' will know where the bass is coming from and you will never be able to forget that when you are listening to music I daresay. The last thing you would want is to put yourself in a situation where you are constantly on edge, asking questions about the quality and localisation or time delay issues rather than simply relaxing and enjoying your system after a very tiring and stressful house move.

Lastly and most damning of all, in my humble opinion, you do not know what life has in reserve for you and you may meet the woman or cat of your dreams tomorrow, change jobs, or for any other reason, have to move home. I doubt that moving the rafters will be to the liking of the moving professionals you employ.

So, no, I would not do it. And I think the consensus here would be that most visitors on your site would not. But then again, how many of those readers would have come up with the system that you have presently? Very few I imagine. So as I said at the beginning, I hope you do go ahead and prove all the doubters such as myself, wrong.

Good luck.

Regards
Rakesh

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