The folks from lencoheaven.com have a thread where they as most of the people online stupidly damp pictures of different horns, supplementing them with howls “gorgeous” and “beautiful.” One of the installations picked my attention:

http://www.lencoheaven.net/forum/index.php?topic=586.30

I do not know who own it, it looks like somebody from Asia, so I call it the Bid Midbass Asian Horn Installations and I would like to share some thoughts about it.

The horns appear to me to be 30Hz horns. It looks like exponential but it also looks like it opens a bit too fast in the very beginning. It is very hard to judge as I see only external profile and no one know how thick the walls. I presume it has 2-4” compression driver entrance. I see a large single and dual 15” mounting plates sitting in there but I do not know if it goes to the back chamber.

 I presume it is plywood made. I like the construction and I lake that they have some baffles in front to mouth. I doubt that it will be effective at 30Hz but it will help a bit at 100Hz. I would like to see more braces in each section but it might be 2-3 layer design and if so then a single braces will be fine.

I would like to see a few hundred pounds of sands loaded atop of the horn, it is possible if the finish then they will do it. I would like to see another leg running from the virtual part of the horn neck to the floor – I do not like to see the tail of the horn suspended in air like this.

In the front, where they have 2x4 closing the mouth, I would like the 2x4 to be trapezoid shape, keep them as they are from mouth side and to have them much thinner from horn side. This way it will minimize the reflection back to the throat.

The mount for the tweeters that that the horns have in mouth shall be there under no circumstances.

In a larger scale, even if I do like those big Asian horns and I like the room very much but I do not like, at least so far the design idea around the intention. The art of building the midbass horns, at least in the way how I see it is not into constructing large wooden combination but to find the way to integrate the midbass horns into the room in order the horns, room and the rest of the channel to work as one single expressive entity. I do not see that these guys do it. They made the horns, which is all right but I do not see HOW they will add to it the rest of the channels.

I am also not wild about the idea of having stand along 30H horn. I do feel that at this frequency the horn mouth had to be hard-bout to some kind of solid surface. The fact that that horns shoot directly to the face of the lightener is also not so great. It will help with HF extension but this is not straight horn and HF are reflected HF – compromised anyway.

Anyhow, with the best intentions those Asians have I do not think that their midbass horn re-present any grand idea. Just horns do not address anything then need to be in context of graceful design of entire system. So far I do not see it from those Asian folks.