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I need to say that with all huge advantages I have in my room with my midbass horns there is something that lost. I lost a great impulse response that I use to have on my old room with my direct radiating bass array covering up to 70Hz. I did not measure the Impulse response then and I did not measure it in the new room but I know how it sounds without any measurements.

The said truth is that as lower bass horn is the more ugly it reacts to short burst of signal. The legato expressions the properly midbass horns handle with untouchable grace. The short and ultra short expression the bass horns tend to possess “longer” then it needed.

If we are taking about 100Hz or even about 80Hz horns then the effect is more or less negligible but with midbass horns of 35-65Hz it is quite tot able. I do not believe in bass lower horns as I told before and I do not want even to look discuss their performance.

I do not have a solution of how to deal with it. Partially I mask the effect using the direct radiating bass channel. What I discover is that mitigation of volume greatly helps to minimize the effect. The key is to let the legato expression to be played by midbass horn at reference volume but the staccato expression to be played at lower volume. Dropping 1-2db at high-speed expression helps a horn to maintain the right auditable pulse response. Of cause I do not do it in real time there is no ways to do it. I set my midbass horn to sound properly all around but it is not perfect setting from impulse response perspective but rather a very well-groomed optimization of compromises.

 Here is what I would like to propose to deal with the problem. In my view to drive a midbass horn and to mediate the problem I described a special type of amplification need to be invented. It is sort of a compressor but the compressor that acts differently for fast and long signals. The long signal it bypassed but the short bursts it slightly attenuate. It is very important that it shall not act as a dynamic compressor and shall not react based upon volume of signal but rather duration of signal. Something similar to what Ed Methner did in his Bidat 20 years ago. In Bidat he had basically two types of processing – one of them used for conversion of short signal another for long signals. So, if to have something like this on analog level then it would be possible to deal with the limitation that I describe.

There is absolutely no thinking about it out there but I very much assure you that ALL with no exception bass horn suffer from this problem. I do not insist that my idea of Horn Timing Compressor will work, it rather patch the problem if such a devise were made. Still I feel that the notion of midbass horn under-performance at short signals has to be made known. I

I think that the ultimate solution would be not the Horn Timing Compressor but rather asymmetrical amplification.   The midbass horns dodo fine attack of the short notes but they all delay with decay. If to make an amp that would shorten decay of the fast notes then it would be a phenomenal solution. How to make an amp with “intelligent” decay that would be variable and self-moderated by a duration of notes I do not know yet, but this is what I am thinking about lately.

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