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The initial post of this thread  was posted in Melquiades forum, then I moved it to Playback Listening forum and I think now I need to move it to Horn Forum. Tax, I would like to rename the thread into something more characterizable, not the “OPT advice”, any proposal of the thread name?

There is a topic in this that I would like to develop, the topic that I find interesting – the cerebral and psychological processes that happen in the head of a audio user who find himself in the Tax’s shoe.

I do not know what direction tax would go from this, it is not in fact particularly important as I am not taking about Tax as a specific but rather about Tax as a typical hypothetical user. Most likely Tax will abandon his ideas of “improving” amplifier at this point and will think about improving of his acoustic system. In my view it would be a proper direction. I do feel that this is the direction where Tax the Person would go, we have a lot of common with him, we have also the same goals in audio – we both use audio only to learn if Romy the Cat is imbecile or not.

So, what Tax might be doing now is running across all horn makers and exploring opportunities to build for him his upperbass horn. His is reasonable thing to do but it also a bit slippery slope as the type and size of that upperbass horn will greatly affect all flooring development of the Tax acoustic system.

What tax do not know at this point is that by embarking on the upperbass horn path he have put his Avantgarde Duo for sale. In a few weeks/months/years what he bring his upperbass horn home he will ask himself how to use it. The Duo’s frame is not compatible with upperbass horn, so the woofers will go off the Avantgarde’s MF will be sitting above the new upperbass horn. Then Tax will realize that Avantgarde Duo’s he effectively use only MF and bass. At that time Tax will open the Avantgarde active woofers, disconnect the drivers from power amps and connect them in reconnect them passive way, driving it from external amp. He will hear the bass quality and bass texture that will be WAY beyond what Avantgarde default subs can do. So, Tax will be asking himself: I use only MF from essentially $40K speaker, does it worth it?

Tax will understand that 300HzHHfhf MF horns cost around $1K and pair of default JBK 2440 drivers perhaps another $1K. The Avantgarde Duo is well reviewed by idiots, backed up with all industry publicity and at the used market cost let say $20K.  So, if there is any economic sense in Tax (pun intended) then he clean up his Duo and will get rid of it.

So, in some future Tax will be left with upperbass horn, some kind of MF channel and some kind of temporary LF section.  Tax will be thinking HOW to organize them to make it to sound right in the room and at the same time to make it to look and feel pleasant. He will be thinking THEN about the amplification but it is too early to talk about it with Tax.

So, what is the objective of this post? The objective is to point out to tax and to anybody else who in the similar situation that when you will be thinking how to organize your new upperbass horns into an elegant domestic acoustic system then it might be a bit too late as your horns will be built. What I would encourage people to do, before talking with horn builders is to spend a LOT of time by sketching and  planning your hypothetic future acoustic system with your new  upperbass horns. This way you will not be feeling that: “if I know earlier then I would make my upperbass differently”. Your horn builders do not know your room, your décor preference, your sense of “prettiness” and your design ideas. You need to have very clear vision in your head what kind horn you would like to have. You might not know the sonic aspects; here are people who might help you with that but defining the furniture property of the upperbass horns appearance and assemblage with any other perspective channels is strictly your responsibility. It does not cost a lot of money to make upperbass horns in one way or another but it does cost a LOT of money to do it again.

So, measure before you cut and plan before you build or place an order to build. Not only plan but test your plan vigorously.

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