MusicLover wrote:

1. In room flat response at the listening positions

Sure, this is very essential it it done proporly. 

MusicLover wrote:

equal decay at al lfrequencies off axis

This is mostly a properly of horn bit the driver. With none-spherical horn there is no even need to consider it as everything off axis is severalty screwed with a rectangular horn.

MusicLover wrote:

Adequate delay between direct & first order reflections.

Once again, the reverberation radius is mostly not aproperty of a driver but rather the arrangement of the entire installation, the driver, the proximities, the horns rate, the natural driver's EQ, the type of the profiles and so on…

MusicLover wrote:

Lack of distortion, or suitable 2-level distortion

Perhaps, however how to estimate and to interpret them? If we are talking about the compression driver then they all made very crappy and each driver might sound very differently because the alignment, centering and many other reasons. In past I was trying to select better performing drivers using a good microphone and a distortion analyzer but I was not able to interpret what I measured and there was no relations between the measurable and auditable. I was able to say by measurements is the driver was completely screwed but the minute nuanced  of tone and contrast were completely not related to the distortion pattern

MusicLover wrote:

Decay characterisitics of the driver material (how does a pulse in an anechoic chamber decay?)

I really do not know what it would be and how it would relates to anything. Certainly the driver material is superbly important but how the anechoic chamber decay would manifest itself with tonal and contrast qualities of the driver in the real world it would be completely unknown to me. I know John Dunlavy told me that he recorded string quartets in his large anechoic chamber and was trying playing those recordings to make some further conclusions. When he told me that I almost fall asleep…

MusicLover wrote:

ANd the biggest thing: Recording quality

It is something that I completely ignore when I think about the drivers quality.

MusicLover wrote:

I like ALtec & klipsch horns. Both are very nice.

I’m not a big fan of Altecs. Their MF drivers are mostly very slow and very gray tonally. Their bass drivers better but unfortunately they never had serious enclosures to make Altec to sound responsibly good for the high demands home installations. Klipsch kind of in the same domain with Altecs only the Klipsch horns were even more disgusting then the Altecs. Ironically, although they both, Altec and Klipsch are conceded the primary US horn companies from past, but they did nothing else then applying the principles of high acoustic pressure generation and presumed that it would be good enough for Sound.. They did "survivable"  PA systems, letting the Jews to dance Hava Nagila during thier wedding ceremonies but THAT Sound has no relation to a high fidelity of Musuc reproduction. In fact, they did quite a lot of harm convincing many people (including you, MusicLover) that horns have some indispensable and non-resolvable negative characteristics.

MusicLover wrote:

I am relatively indifferent to the effects of amps & digital sources, to me they add or take away almost nothing. Comments?

My comment would be that if you resolve the problems with your loudspeakers and make them do not mask out the misery of your SS amplification then you might discover that not all amplifiers were born equal.

Perhaps, however how to estimate and to interpret them? If we are talking about the compression driver then they all made very crappy and each driver might sound very differently because the alignment, centering and many other reasons. In past I was trying to select better performing drivers using a good microphone and a distortion analyzer but I was not able to interpret what I measured and there was no relations between the measurable and auditable. I was able to say by measurements is the driver was completely screwed but the minute nuanced  of tone and contrast were completely not related to the distortion pattern

----Higher even order distortion sounds richer and makes the sound "more live" to most people. YOu can get that anywhere in the signal chain.

MusicLover wrote:

Decay characterisitics of the driver material (how does a pulse in an anechoic chamber decay?)

I really do not know what it would be and how it would relates to anything. Certainly the driver material is superbly important but how the anechoic chamber decay would manifest itself with tonal and contrast qualities of the driver in the real world it would be completely unknown to me. I know John Dunlavy told me that he recorded string quartets in his large anechoic chamber and was trying playing those recordings to make some further conclusions. When he told me that I almost fall asleep…

---If I play a note in a trumpet, just one note, and stop, the mouth of the trumpet (also a horn, yes?) leads to a certain decay of that note.
SAme with a piano. different decay.

Now, how should a speaker driver material behave? Should it behave like hte piano or the trumpet. Or should it not have any decay at all?
I personally like paper cone drivers, and older horns.

MusicLover wrote:

ANd the biggest thing: Recording quality

It is something that I completely ignore when I think about the drivers quality.

--Of course. But I hope you will agree it drives sound quality a LOT.

MusicLover wrote:

I like ALtec & klipsch horns. Both are very nice.

I’m not a big fan of Altecs. Their MF drivers are mostly very slow and very gray tonally. Their bass drivers better but unfortunately they never had serious enclosures to make Altec to sound responsibly good for the high demands home installations. Klipsch kind of in the same domain with Altecs only the Klipsch horns were even more disgusting then the Altecs. Ironically, although they both, Altec and Klipsch are conceded the primary US horn companies from past, but they did nothing else then applying the principles of high acoustic pressure generation and presumed that it would be good enough for Sound.. They did "survivable"  PA systems, letting the Jews to dance Hava Nagila during thier wedding ceremonies but THAT Sound has no relation to a high fidelity of Musuc reproduction. In fact, they did quite a lot of harm convincing many people (including you, MusicLover) that horns have some indispensable and non-resolvable negative characteristics.

---WEll, I haven;t heard all horns, mainly from Klipsch & altec, and also quite a few horns that wer edesigned using hornrep and other software.
I have no idea what you mean by slow & gray. I assume you are trying to convey some sort of emotion you feel when you listen to these horns, but I honestly don;t feel that. I like them!

ANyway, to each his own.
ML

MusicLover wrote:

Higher even order distortion sounds richer and makes the sound "more live" to most people. YOu can get that anywhere in the signal chain.

I know about it but it is NOT a reverse statement. It is very frequently that people do feel that reproduced sounds are “richer” and the entire sound "more live” when the even order distortions, and predominantly the second harmonics dominate.  However, when the second harmonic take over then it is not necessary and not enough for Sound to become richer or "more live". In fact if to looks at it deeper then the dominion of even harmonics do not make sound “richer” but rather “fatter”. It requires some other things to be taken care at the same time in order to get the real benefits of the puffy lower even harmonics.

MusicLover wrote:

If I play a note in a trumpet, just one note, and stop, the mouth of the trumpet (also a horn, yes?) leads to a certain decay of that note. SAme with a piano. different decay. Now, how should a speaker driver material behave? Should it behave like hte piano or the trumpet. Or should it not have any decay at all?

It is very incorrect vision form my point of view. You should not confuse decay characteristic of trumpet or piano with decay characteristic of driver. In driver the decay pattern from impulse would be described by array of the very different parameters: the frequency of the test, the dynamic characteristic of amplification, the amplifier driver interface, the topology and type of the driver, the topology and the type driver of a baffle, the decay factors of the testing room, the type of electrical, mechanism or any another suspension was used with the driver, the day how the driver damped, the proximity of the test tone to the driver frequency boundaries, the relationship between the amplitude of the test signal and flex modulation within the driver magnetic structure and so on and so on. A driver should not behave like piano or trumpet, it juts physically will not do so and even presuming that driver has any resemblance with acoustic instruments lead nowhere else then into the jangles of audio demagogy.

MusicLover wrote:

WEll, I haven;t heard all horns, mainly from Klipsch & Altec, and also quite a few horns that wer edesigned using hornrep and other software. I have no idea what you mean by slow & gray. I assume you are trying to convey some sort of emotion you feel when you listen to these horns, but I honestly don;t feel that. I like them!

This is the problems in your views: the Klipsch & Altec are juts very poor horn of from my point of view then are not horns at all but rather the pile drivers with some kind of shutters attached to them. Also those Hornrep guys, as I have seen and heard them, are completely clueless what they do. I do not try to convey any emotions. I juts saying that a serious professional boxer who know what to do during a fight would make one hit to send appoint in knockdown. However, a street’s teenager who is familiar about art of fist-fighting only from watching it on TV would wave his hands in air imitating the externally observable movements of the martial art specialists. The point of it is that what you heard what you call horns, experiencing the Klipsch, Altec and the Hornrep’s “intelligence”, was not the real horns but juts the audio teenagers who are making the big spins with this hands and the ridiculously freighting faces….

Also, MusicLover, I get quite strong feeling that you kind of mocking and humoring this site and me with you comments. You really could not be serious with what you are saying. Well, consider that you have succeeded.

Rgs,
Romy the caT

It is very incorrect vision form my point of view. You should not confuse decay characteristic of trumpet or piano with decay characteristic of driver. In driver the decay pattern from impulse would be described by array of the very different parameters: the frequency of the test, the dynamic characteristic of amplification, the amplifier driver interface, the topology and type of the driver, the topology and the type driver of a baffle, the decay factors of the testing room, the type of electrical, mechanism or any another suspension was used with the driver, the day how the driver damped, the proximity of the test tone to the driver frequency boundaries, the relationship between the amplitude of the test signal and flex modulation within the driver magnetic structure and so on and so on. A driver should not behave like piano or trumpet, it juts physically will not do so and even presuming that driver has any resemblance with acoustic instruments lead nowhere else then into the jangles of audio demagogy.


---OK let's take this one step further. Suppose I took a trumpet and put it in my room. One note was reproduced. The decay was measured.
Now, the same trumpet note was recorded and played through my playbakc system. WOuld it decay the same?
OF course you are right, it;s not just the driver that influences the decay, it's a bunch of other things. THe point is, this decay pattern is very imoprtant.
I think horns have a better decay pattern in general than cones.

Sorry about not having heard the horns you like (vitavox?), I have only heard what I have heard.
IF you think I am mocking you , then I will stop posting. I thought I'd try your website since you seem to at least be doing the right thngs, which is building your own system. But if your ego is going ot get in the way of a good discussion, then i'l lleave you and the few others on this site.
Let me know.
 ML

MusicLover wrote:

OK let's take this one step further. Suppose I took a trumpet and put it in my room. One note was reproduced. The decay was measured. Now, the same trumpet note was recorded and played through my playbakc system. WOuld it decay the same?

Why you think it should be the same? Are you looking for the identical reproduction of the identical influence? Also, why do you feel that measured decay would inform about anything else besides juts being just  a measured decay?

MusicLover wrote:

THe point is, this decay pattern is very imoprtant.

Actually in the way in which you appear look at the decay I do not think it is important. The static decay without consideration of dynamic level, frequency range and few other parameter form my point of view completely irrelevant. Also, I do not know why we even mention decay whale we are talking about the characteristics that are responsible for the quality of the drivers.

MusicLover wrote:

I think horns have a better decay pattern in general than cones.

Sorry, I still do not know what would it mean. Is any objective parameter as “better decay pattern”?  Decay patters is “better” only in its relation to other things and does not exist as a stand-alone better or worst category.

MusicLover wrote:

Sorry about not having heard the horns you like (vitavox?), I have only heard what I have heard.

ML, it is a very big misconception.  It is not about that you heard and did not heard “horns like my” but about the fact that you familiar with horns ONLY in context of improperly implemented horns. Would you make a conclusion about the racing capacity of an automobile if it has only 4 out of 2 cylinders operational and rectangular wheels? You probably would declare that this car was juts sub-qualified and would not think about it again. It is exactly what you experience with the Klipsch. My point is that you do not need to hear good horns to recognize that bed horns are just bad, disqualifying bed! You guys create a fictional idea about some mystical “horns that you like” but it is not about better horns but about the horn that do not implement the fundamental blindness that many (most) of the horn installations do. You attributed to John Hasquin, to me or to any other people where horns perform fine me some kind of Masonic calculation and some secret knowledge about the mysteriously made horns but the realty it very simple: no secrecy, no subscription to the artificial shortcuts, honesty with what you do, honesty with what you hear, better drivers used naturally with any artificial help, massively, none-economically made spherical horns, sever time aliment, the best available amplification and the proper result evaluation techniques. It is it; there are no further secrets. You do not need to hear “better” set up but you have to have your own reference how Music should sound. As I told you before: we all bult in our listening rooms juts the sonic reflections of how music of our mind should sound.  If you give my entire installation into the hands of a some kind of Stereophile idiot reviewer (John Marks for instance or to any similar trash) then next week he will end up with his own sonic imitation of Krell electronics driving Dynaudio loudspeakers.

MusicLover wrote:

IF you think I am mocking you , then I will stop posting. I thought I'd try your website since you seem to at least be doing the right thngs, which is building your own system. But if your ego is going ot get in the way of a good discussion, then i'l lleave you and the few others on this site.

We all build out own sustains, even if we but then off the shelf. Regarding my ego, yes it was me, and I am comfortable with in the given context. I did have a feeling that you might not be frank in your comments, my apologies if I was wrong. Your dissatisfaction by a results you got form a SS far-machine driving the PS horns while blaming John Hasquin that he was apparently “not familiar with sound reproduction” was too ridicules to accept it sincerely. I hope you understand where I am coming from.

We all build out own sustains, even if we but then off the shelf. Regarding my ego, yes it was me, and I am comfortable with in the given context. I did have a feeling that you might not be frank in your comments, my apologies if I was wrong. Your dissatisfaction by a results you got form a SS far-machine driving the PS horns while blaming John Hasquin that he was apparently “not familiar with sound reproduction” was too ridicules to accept it sincerely. I hope you understand where I am coming from.

---OK I guess I was a bit harsh too. My apologies to JOhn also. I assure you I am quite frank in my comments. Nothing but hard scientific testing is going to convince me that something "sounds" better. IF we can;t measure it, then, in my world, it;s subjective, and anoyone can have an opinion.

The whole point iof decay is: it should soundlike the real instrument.
Now, the recording will capture the natural decay of all the recorded instruments in the room where the music wa made.
What should the speaker do? It shold have the detail resolution necessary to reproduce this decay, without adding any decay of its own.
I find that horns do it better than any other type of system. The horns I have heard let me hear teh decay better than any other system I own or have heard.

I have never heard the round horns that you have ( i took a look at your system) , so I can't comment on the sound. All my horns are the exponential flare types. I am not sure why a round mouth will have better wound 2quality than some of the other mouths, but I don't have any data on the subject. Certainly, none of the horn modeling equations use mouth shape as a parameter.

Yeah, I use drivers I can afford: the klipsch drivers were cheap EV drivers, but they sound fine to me.
MY altec drivers are considered by many to be quite good (they are alnico and sound quite mellow). But, a I said, I haven;t heard all the drivers out there, certainly not the ones you use, nor the horns you use.

ML