GoodSoundClub - Romy the Cat's Audio Site

In the Forum: Horn-Loaded Speakers
In the Thread: Battling stupid Horn Criticism as a concept

Post Subject: Explaining is not meant to be criticismPosted by rowuk on: 11/23/2012

Paul,
I have been working with trumpets since 1966 and horn speakers since 1975. I have built both and am pretty familiar with what they are, the similarities and the differences.

If I had to pick THE major sin when thinking about all of the horns that I have ever heard, I think disregard for the lower cut off would be in first place. This also applies for most of the PA devices too. Most designers try and use the horn as low as it can go without regard for what happens to the sound when the horn no longer loads the driver in a reasonable way. If I think about the Klipsch LaScala, they pushed the midrange horn down to 400 Hz, that was an octave lower than it should have been, but the woofer sounded ratty up higher so it was less of a comprimise. I ended up with a much larger 200 Hz wooden radial horn that actually smoothed things out quite nicely. There was no real bass, but the rest was capable of very realistic reproduction of what I listened too back then, large orchestra and chamber music. The interesting thing was that big music sounded big and chamber music was intimate. Piano was phenomenally real, I was using a Quad II pre and poweramp and had a bunch of years of being able to come home after playing a symphony concert and not be disappointed. I built that radial horn several times, out of paper, pine, oak, cement, MDF, industrial ceramics and alternating layers of materials. At intimate room levels, there was no appreciable difference, but when cranking it up, the hardest materials had the least "artifacts" and seemed to keep the orchestral texture intact. A highly polished surface always presented the greatest amount of detail. In the following years I had exposure to quite a few metal horns but never was able to get the rest to work as I thought it should. I always imagined that there was some coloration although many of my musician friends thought they were fine.

Actually, horns behave reasonably predictably. Many of the awful PA combinations can be made reasonable by changing the crossover to one better suited to the horn. That also means that often a midrange driver has to be added as the woofers don't always go high enough. For little money though, acceptable results can be achieved.

For serious listening, the horn also is not that tough to manage because of its predictability. Currently I have a very small listening room and horn LF simply does not fit. I am experimenting with various 12" woofers and cabinets for everything under 800Hz. It is work in progress, but the horns are causing me no grief.

Rerurn to Romy the Cat's Site