GoodSoundClub - Romy the Cat's Audio Site

In the Forum: Horn-Loaded Speakers
In the Thread: Yamamura's 6 ways

Post Subject: Roll off proximity does matter.Posted by Romy the Cat on: 8/8/2013

speedysteve wrote:
The systems I've heard with steep slopes (only 4th or 8th order) sound hard and unnatural to me.

Yes, the higher order crossovers do sound harder even if all time alignment measures are taken. Still, do not forget that time alignment measures with horns and high order crossovers are kind of tricky. We decay a channel and we understand that sometime the decay of the driver kick in at the bottom of the crossover. What we frequently forgets that the decay of the horn comes before it and the horn decays with good 2-4 order. So we have let say a MF driver with 1.2K second order crossover point sitting in 500Hz horn. Just a bit over octave from the crossover point the horn begin own 3 order slop, then the driver kick in with good 4-6 order. So, in phase domains we are very much screwed with horns. So, what I feel is important is not only the more or less consistency of the low orders complimentary slopes but also the proximity of the sloped to the drivers natural boundary. You do not want to minimize the situation when one driver operated at it’s bandwidth capacity and another complimentary driver is set at super comfortable 2-3 octaves from own natural roll off. Sure you not always can accommodate it but it need to taken under consideration.

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