Scott,

I do not particularly like many of the ideas that you presented in here and, in my view, some of your movements you are planning are faulty. Your dissatisfaction of the Edgarhorns upper-bass is too wide-ranging and not well-interpreted by you properly. You are trying to build a new system with “attention is focused on the region below 200hz” but you forget that sound below 200Hz is 50% of your room. Where are the assurances that your dissatisfaction is from the Edgarhorns midbass but not from the specifics of your room?  You said “I plan to get an RTA to help integrate the new horn.” Good but prevented you to get it 5 years back – I think it is how long you are being frustrated with new Edgarhorns upper-bass.

To replace two 80–500Hz and 500Hz -10k channel with 3 channels of 70 Hz -240Hz, 240Hz -1200Hz and 1200Hz -10K is a very good idea of cause. Do not be too bind to the specific crossover points you identified, there is many reasons why you might not be able to him them.

I do not know Scott – something does not feel to me in this idea as sensible. Too much project management and too little expression of the sonic specific. Anyhow, I wish you good luck…. Post your observations about the sound of your 'driver x', about the sound of the Faital M5N12-80   and about the sound of B&C 8PE21.

skushino wrote:

Edgarhorns weren't an obvious choice.  Many horns never worked for me.  The Avantgardes left me cold.  So did the single-driver crowd (I just don't get it....), Altec VOTs, PA systems, etc.  But there were some systems that made a good impression - one of Josh's Electronluv systems, my old Klipsch's driven with tubes, large vintage Tannoys, John Tucker's horns, and your Macondo.  Looking back, my expectations for the Edgarhorns were too high.

Scott, you are looking for a playback with “attention is focused on the region below 200hz” and mane as few playbacks that according to you left you with good impression. Interesting that all of the playback systems you liked use different topologies for the “region below 200Hz”.  The point that I made is very deep-seated. People hear somebody playback, like the result and they attribute the fact that they like it with whatever reason they would like it to attribute. So, I do not take the fact that you  had good impressions from above mentioned playbacks in association with the fact the they had proper “region below 200Hz”. 

skushino wrote:

I don't think it's the room.  I moved my other speakers and that damn sub-woofer all over the place before finding the locations that work.

I had corrected it: “sound below 200Hz is 50% of your room” but not the 5% as I initially typed. I have corrected it. I personally still feel that a lot of problem that you have are room related, not becomes your room is be but because you do not know your room and never invested efforts to get any objective idea about your room. A horn would give you 6dB gain. A room will override it with 10-15dB gain or lost, so what we are talking about?

skushino wrote:

This gave me experience to know the difference between wrong bass from the room and just wrong bass.  The bass I have isn't bad-room bass.  I know exactly how I want my bass, and I have heard it before in some other systems.  My Edgarhorn bass misses the mark on too many critical things.  The tone color is tepid and gray. The energy is sleepy.  Music notes are shapeless rather than round.  It is asleep in the upper bass part.  The bass doesn't match the MF.  It should be more stately and noble.  Slower.  Vibrant.  Engaging.  These aren't problems from bad-room bass.  This is the horn and driver.

OK, that was good. But what happen if place a regular sealed monitor in the location of your midbass horn. Did you try to load the amp that drives the midbass channel differently? I do not defend the new version of Edgar midbass. I do not like it and I do not like it just on specks – I do not need to listen nit to know that it shall not be good. However, if you take the same driver that Bruce used in his horn and use it as a direct radiator then what happen? I know that Horn in there is faulty but is it horn, driver or the way how the driver is loaded? Anyhow you set your hart to get rid of it and replace it with two new horns. This is fine. But there are two mains problem with it. First, you did not took advantage of the Edgar midbass and did not made it to sound proper. Second, with your new midbass and upperbass bass horn you will have the absolutely same problem but you did not address them with Edgar midbass and you most likely will not address it with new horns. I ma taking about the situation to make any configuration to sound as it shell sound, of to be able to get best out what is possible.

skushino wrote:

When I get my RTA I bet it shows the bass is 3 - 5dB lower compared to everything else - this is what I hear.  If that was the only thing wrong I could just pad the rest down.  But that only fixes the sound level and leaves all the other problems.  The horn is too short to properly load the lower bass.  There are better drivers than the 15" woofer for playing the lower mids.  I like the idea of using a small 5" or 8" driver properly horn-loaded instead.  Intellectually, the bass can be implemented better than it is now.  And I have high hopes (there I go again) for the x-driver in a proper mid-bass horn.  If it works, it would be phenomenal.

Come on, Scot if you did not use RTA in your room and generally not accustom to interpret result from response perspective  then who care what you would bet?  This exactly why I am so skeptical about your project as you do not use the methods of judgment the I agree to understand.

skushino wrote:

Nope not hung-up on specific crossover points.  These are just my conceptual idea for integrating the different parts - how they might fit together.  The real project begins with using the RTA and listening to each specific horn / driver combo and learning where they do well and how they play together. .

I think the make any conceptual ideas you will be able when you recognize what you room does. It is highly likely that you would need to use a huge overlap from you midbass and upperbass horn. You also need to reverse your trapped horn and make the hole at bottom not atop as your 240Hz crossover point ay will not vertically center the output of midbass and the trapped horn.

jessie.dazzle wrote:

If you're really expecting 75Hz, you'd be better off going with a horn that has a lower cutoff; the sort of standard "rule of thumb" is to dimension the horn such that its cutoff is one octave below the lowest frequency you plan to ask that horn to produce. This, in your case would call for a horn having a cutoff of 37.5Hz (call it 40Hz). Not allowing this margin may result in the dreaded honk, though many do push their bass horns well into this margin, it is, strictly speaking, not kosher...

Hm, I do not know if I agree with it. To have 40Hz cat off in order to get 75Hz? I think it is very questionable objectives. It shell be opposite, you shall have 75Hz and be able to get out of it let say 60Hz.  Then your horn is properly installed in a room.  The "rule of thumb" to have cutoff is one octave below the lowest frequency you plan to ask that horn to produce is applicable to MF and HF horns not to bass horns. In bass horn you have resonance frequency to play to deal with “dreaded honk” and it is very effective. Well I would agree that it is good to have opportunity to use the “octave below” rule but who can afford to make 37.5Hz horn and to high-pass it at 75Hz? If I have a 37.5Hz horn I would be driver it all the way down to the horn rate and would see how the horn handles it. Then with back chamber I would made it to sound as I would like to. You see at 40Hz the thing that would be getting from room would be way more important than any of my problem coming from the horn itself.  Do not forget that it is not upperbass horn but the midbass horn….

skushino wrote:

I think you are saying the effects of my room may be dominating any problems with the Edgarhorn bass, or at least I can't know since I don't have any objective data.  Is this correct? Maybe you're right.  But here is why I'm not convinced.  My room is kind of funny.  The floor is suspended wood over a crawlspace around 4' deep.  The right side wall is only one sheet of drywall backed by insulation.  Behind that wall is another void the size of a small room.  The physical dimensions of the room are around 15' x 18' x 8', but the acoustic dimensions at low frequencies are much larger, probably almost twice as large.  I'm surprised at the sound in my room.  When I set-up my system, I expected a sonic disaster due to room dimensions and LF nodes.  I do notice nodes at sub bass frequencies.  But I do not hear them at mid and upper bass.  This is with three different speakers through the years.  Yes, this is all based on listening rather than measuring.  Naturally when I get the RTA I'll learn to use it and take measurements.  I may need to eat my words later, but not yet... ...  The new mid-bass and upper bass horns are a step in the right direction with less compromise.  If the room is an issue, I'll work on it when I get the RTA.

Scott,

As you can sense I do have an attitude toward to your project and I think you know the reason.  You fashion an idea to build those horns, there is nothing wrong with it of course. Still, when I write what I write I do it not for sake of amusement but because I believe in it:

http://www.romythecat.com/Forums/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=863

http://www.romythecat.com/Forums/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=2553

http://www.goodsoundclub.com/Forums/ShowPost.aspx?postID=7213

The point that I am trying to make is that we do not build horn, fuck the horn, we built a sound of our objectives in our listening rooms. That Sound does not have a lot of relation to the topology of speakers you have, it is juts Sound. You decided to go with horn and you feel that horn has some advantaged. Perhaps, but the 50% of what you have under 200Hz is not the sound of your transducers but sound of you room, so why do you feel that you old or new horn had/will have any advantages if you by default have removed from sound 50% of what your channels do?

It is perfectly fine to discard rooms or anything but then you set yourself in methodologically experienced state where your results are not interpretable. You have absolutely random result but you are trying to attribute to it a universal ruling. I think it is incorrect. Why doesn’t you put your Edgarhorn underwater and then report that it does not process right sound. I ma sorry but it was exactly what you did – you have a superficial result with Edgarhorn upperbass horn, you did not go to the bottom of it and you very much might have a superficial result with two new channel.

Scott, good sound does not come from shallow-consumed better equipment but from an ability of a system owner to recognize problems and to react upon his recognition. The Edgarhorn setup with two Edgarhorn refrigerator subs is a very good playground to learn a lot about horns. I wish you was able to make the Edgarhorn setup to sound in the way you like and then, from there, go to more complex system. It is a good idea to open a huge bagel shop at 5th Avenue in Manhattan after you succeed with a small bagel shop in suburbs on Oklahoma…

Remember horns do not resolve problems – they crate them. You have to develop a pattern how you deal with those problems.