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In the Forum: Horn-Loaded Speakers
In the Thread: Why I do not like La-horns. The tomatoes…

Post Subject: The stupidity of JMLC profile: not a problem with horns but with the people who use them.Posted by Romy the Cat on: 1/22/2016

Jean-Michel Le Cléac'h is RIP and it is not a good idea to talk bad about dead people. However, it is not a personal commentary against Jean-Michel but rather my attempt to point out a huge harm that he did with his idea of what I call La-horns or the Jean-Michel profile. The irony is that Jean-Michel was not wrong advocating negative opening of La-horns. However, his teaching land on the shoulder of many foolish audio morons who read silent white papers and converted everything, even own toilets into La-profiles. The last was the retard From Moscow who insist that even his stupid midbass horns has to be Le Cléac'h

http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/multi-way/282736-goto-6-way-timealigned-horn-system.html

The reality is very different. Jean-Michel was a wonderful and dedicated to horn subject man and he was what I call theoretic. He did not build any practical installations and according to the people who knew him personally he did not particularly care or like to listen the things. So, conceptually, Le Cléac'h horn are the best possible horns and all empirical data clearly proves it. Then we enter a more murky territory. Get two identical 500-7000 drivers and load them in identical Tratrix and La-horns. I would estimate that no more than 1 % of listeners would recognize any practical difference. If we are taking about 2000-12000 range then the percentage people who would prefer La-horns would grow to 30-40%. However, there is a “kink” in that. Take 4 horns: 2 Tratrix and two La-horns, lower and upper MF and do the same experiment. Now the advantages of La-horns will be gone, moreover anybody with brain and ear would prefer Tratrix and it will be not because Tratrix are better profile but because in case of multichannel and time aligned systems they are better integrateable. Take a look at the image below and pretend that we are losing the integration waste with each of 4-5 channels and end up not with acoustic system of 6 feet but rather 8 feet. Further drivers more lobbing, more intermodulations problems, more comb filtration, more narrow listening position, more timing problem. All of it very much offsets the general advantage of Le Cléac'h profile, the advantage that is very questionably practically benefit you… even with one horn. There is many way to deal with edge of Tratrix profile and do not give up to the unpractical French theories.

BTW, here is good example of very smart and thoughtful use of Tratrix. “Komodo” employed within playback the La-Horn.

http://www.goodsoundclub.com/Forums/ShowPost.aspx?PageIndex=2&postID=22406#22406

The large horn are Tratrix, then his has upper MF horn, 4500hz to 9000hz, the horn where excessive Le Cléac'h opening would not affect anything negatively as he “lost” probably no more than 1”. I am not a big advocate to use upper and lower MF driver, I prefer the whole MF to be cared by one driver but for what Komodo wanted the use of LaHorn at upper MF is perfectly justifiable.

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