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In the Forum: Horn-Loaded Speakers
In the Thread: Macondo’s Midbass Project – the grown up time.
Post Subject: A time to gather stones: listening and thinking about midbass horn.Posted by Romy the Cat on: 10/10/2010
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Listening my new midbass horn, just left channel for now, I would like to share my observation so far about sonic result of the project.  Generally the sonic result of the project have exceed my expectations, however not always in the directions what I expected. Some aspects of my midbass horn sound make me to look at some things from a slightly different angle, below I will explain it. Take under consideration that my midbass project is not completed. Some  things  in the midbass sound will be  changed, unquestionably improved – I still  am learning the character of sound in my new room and from my effectively new playback system.

Now about the midbass Sound. It is very difficult to talk about midbass sound without referencing it to the sound of the rest of the system. The sound of the entire system is not where I would like it to be for now but even in the context of current playback state I might confidently say that midbass is very fine.

All my fears about midbass that I accumulated over the years of listening of different midbass solutions did not realized in my horn. I have no idea what I did specifically right or if anything that I did in my projects is directly responsible for it the result I got in my view has no resemblance to midbass I hear so far.  A midbass horn always sounds impressive as midbass horn is. Good or bad but it always demonstrate it presence. The best midbass horns do it with superb softness of bass notes and with a very fine harmonic infliction of very fine honk. In this case “fine honk” I use very admirably as if it tactfully done then I very much appreciate it. If you read the beginning of this thread then you would see that the super softness was my one of the primary objective.  Well, this midbass horn taught me something else – something that I did not knew and did not experience before.

As today my midbass horn has no even signs of honk or softness. The tone from it so clean that it reminds me the cleanness that I had with my woofer towers in the old listening room. Also horn absolutely does not show itself off – with a proper fine calibration – thank God I have ears - it truly stays behind and plays only what is being called. There is not “in face” pushing with it dynamic or with it chromatic. There is absolutely no forwardness or aggressiveness. There is no midbass noise or tonal disorientation. It is so clean, so elegant and so inconspicuous   that it took for me for a while to get use to it sound at properly balance the midbass output to the rest system. The horn does not produce soft bass as I was striving but rather the “Critically Proper Bass”. It kind if tunes itself to the way how a given phrase need to be played it can play orgasmaticly soft and sometime it throw such a hard phrase as it is driver from 1000W SS amplifier with 180 out transistors. Stunningly the horn develops this hardness from nowhere, with no preamble. It is like most of the figure scatters before jump  they let themselves a few feet of preparation and then there are some that shot themselves  in air juts so suddenly and so without any “prelude”. This horn does the same. It might play overly soft and lash and out of the blue it developers a rough wave of super hard dynamic that shoot itself out of horn like from a canon.

All of it can’t be called “impressive” but in reality it is not. All those beautiful things the horn does somehow that it is become very organic part of general sound. I truly hate those moments when sound reproduction efforts do the job so well that it deliver to a listener a micro-pleasure in audio realm.  In new room I do fight in my calibration to get rid of this effect and the horn complies brilliantly. The back location of the horn is not a problem at all, contrary to my fear. It is a subject of sane calibration and appropriate use and from where I stay today it is not a subject at all.

Still, I did not mention the most important thing about my new midbass horn. This most important and the most astonishing   new characteristic of Sound I did not pursue and I got it purely accidently. I did not talk about it in this thread and it took for me two weeks to understand the effect. I never experience this effect in audio in this way before and it took for me while to think about it. I do not have time to write about it now as it might be a very deep-sited concept, larger in meaning then my projects, that in a way might alter a whole perspective how midbass horns design need to be approached. This coming week I’ll put some thoughts and observations together I will write about it, perhaps in a new thread.

Rgs, the Cat

PS:Anybody are willing to guess what the “most important and the most astonishing characteristic of Sound” from new horn is?

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