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08-02-2011 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
Jorge
Austin TX
Posts 141
Joined on 10-17-2010

Post #: 41
Post ID: 16764
Reply to: 16763
Horn color control
fiogf49gjkf0d


I think the usage of Romys Injection Channel has misguided you to think it was implemented because of a certian lack of tone or some sterile sound,  nothing of the sort,  I cannot blame you for not having listened to Romys system,  but theorizing around this sort of untrue assumptions is ridiculous.  I listened to Romys old system,  I am sure the new one sound better,  but let me assure you:  The sound comming from Romys system is packed full of information and tone, texture and color.  When I was at his place he disconected the injection channel for me to notice what it brought to the sound,  I could not really percieve any change in sound,  If anything it was ever so slight; at those levels, It would never be able to inject lacking tone into a system:  It is mainly the masteful adding of a specific spice into an already wonderful meal.  Romy explained: it adds certain notes of red color.

I studied painting for some years with a master, the use of black was forbidden;  you can get even deeper darks by using combinations of red, green and blue hues, the use of black gets color dirty.  Generally shadowing is done just using different shades of the same color: but when a painting comes to life is when hues of a diferent color spike the shades and make the image move.  I imagine Romy felt his systems color would appreciate some tones of red in order to spike the sound even more.  But trust me his sound is an explosion of color.

Most of us here are not newbies trying to get a good sound.  I have been into horns for the past 10 years,  before that I was using Lowthers on open baffle,  I was not a fad then like now.  I had DX3 on open baffle, running with its own amplifier with the xover placed at the coupling cap,  and another PLLXO at the input, under that there were a pair of Altec 416 on modfiied cabinets going from around 150 hz down to 35 hz run by its own EL34 PP amps with an active xover and EQ: Rel Stentor subwoofer under that, and supertweeters cut anywhere from 8 khz to 15 khz.  I played with a lot of old german alnico wide range drivers Saba green with the big magnets, Telefunken 10 incher but my favorite became the Oval telefunkens.  I played with different tweeters,  from paper ones Green Saba, Telefunken with the bolt in the center to Fostex, EV,JBL, Beyma... many others.  Open baffle helped me to learn a lot,  but IMHO they are far away from a horn system.   Now you can get a perfect resolution with that system,  I did  for a long time,  but soundstage is never where it should be,  and you cannot control the response of the speakers like you can with horns.

About horns,  when we choose a driver for its tone,  be certain it is not because it is the least compormised, but because the tone in that one is indeed better than in other ones,  is this hard to comprehend?   I took out Lowthers because I tried the Altec 802 with the 800 hz horns and it blew it away in every respect:  This was already a very good sounding system with the lowthers,  and the Altec 802 is not even one of the top compression drivers.

I agree with you that most of the horns systems around are lacking tone,  there is this generalized wrong usage of horns crossed over to a 15 inch driver at anywhere between 1.2 khz to 500 hz.  Now the tone of a 15 inch driver at 800 hz will never match or even compare to that of the compression driver and this makes for a terrible sound.  But please give us some credit here:  this is not the sound we have.  Without an upper bass horn all bets are off,  and this range is so important we all believe it to be the hardest working channel in a system.  Now the driver used inside this huge 120 hz horn is not a compression driver in my system and Romys,  it is a cone driver of specific qualities, that should match in tone and texture with the compression driver used on top of that.  This driver is used with a back chamber which reactance to the throat is vital for its work (check Romys Problems with horns upper bass),  so the volume of this sealed back chamber is extremely important to the sound.  What happens when a cone driver is placed inside a horn is explosive: its output is augmented by 6 or more db and the cone barely moves, this brings lower distortion with higher sensibility for softer tones, and great dyanimics.  One gets better detail at every level of listening and the real possibility of closer to life dynamics: Now we are always looking for a better driver to place inside a horn! it is some kind of vice we have,  either a compression driver that will go down to 50 hz or a huge magnet cone speaker... This is where I was drooling over a driver like the one you posted!!!

Once you get an upper bass channel; Horns are unbeatable, the tone is there, textures, detailing better that any cone driver plus dyanmics to die for:  Now if there was something better I would run for it,  and I have been looking for a long time.  Adding the Fundamentals Channel will bring in even more control over the color pallete, again; not that there is no color,  but the saturation of tone achievable with this is so incredible and even controlable to ones taste: I am already playing with an injection channel,  getting to know its tone, color, textures and extremes in order to build a perfect horn for it.  Still too far away from an injection channel.  And the sound I have is already very good if I might say so.

I believe we have not even grasped the extended abilities of this type of system and the pshycoacoustical effects achievable through sound:  This thread is an attempt to define what is beyond a Perfect Resolution of the recorded material. Now there are few systems capable of going there:  I know multiple horn systems can,  I hope other topologies could get there too,  but I still never heard them:  And believe me I listened to very well set up cone systems that do a wonderful job at presenting what is in the recording with exeptional soundstage:  I am looking for more input from  systems that can go beyond that.  Romys system is that far beyond,  and my first post was a blunt explanation of how far beyond that is, and an attemp to stat to trace a way of getting there.



08-02-2011 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
Paul S
San Diego, California, USA
Posts 2,673
Joined on 10-12-2006

Post #: 42
Post ID: 16765
Reply to: 16764
Defenders of The Faith, Safety First!
fiogf49gjkf0d
Of course we do not defend or support a given topology itself but we only wrestle with the results we are able to get from it.  Right?  But perhaps there are some basics we can agree on?  Basically, if it's Tone you are after, you are swimming upstream to go with horns.  Likewise, if you want "live orchestra" dynamics from Tone-rich direct drivers...  Surely we can all recognize our system weaknesses, even if we are too OCD to merely "accept" them.  I hope no one is over-invested in any topology to the extent that he is stuck there.

As for horns and upper bass, Jorge, I really want to hear Tone below 200 Hz from ANY system!  Good for you if you have a horn that "works" that low.  They must be as few and far between as "comparable" direct radiators, however, since I have never heard one.  It would well serve this discussion if you would go into specific detail as to how you get Tone like this from your upper bass horn.

Anyway, I think this is the proper forum to repeat the nostrum that speakers are just TOOLS!  And it is perfectly analogous to handing a Skilsaw to a "random" old lady.  Sure, her head is full of ideas...

Best regards,
Paul S
08-02-2011 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
haralanov


Bulgaria
Posts 130
Joined on 05-20-2008

Post #: 43
Post ID: 16766
Reply to: 16763
Looking deeper
fiogf49gjkf0d
First of all, I want to note that when somebody lives on the principle of denying everything, he risks to live in his own encapsulated world, build according to his own principles in order to feel comfortable there.
 
 Romy the Cat wrote:
Possible, but what is an alternative?

It is not only possible, it really happens!
 
 Romy the Cat wrote:
To use a good quality direct radiator that presumably gives all necessary colors? There are two problems with this approach. First, colors pallet is only one of the characteristic, there are many others.

And where did you see any problem with that? Of course there are many others, so what? All of the other characteristics are much easily manipulated by using drivers which don’t need any acoustic amplification at their lower working range. Acoustic amplification is a process, which always adds its own signature to the sound and nobody can do anything about that. If one does not want his reproduced sound to have any signature, the he must not use acoustic transformers. How much simple it could be!
 
 Romy the Cat wrote:
The second: how do you know that with your driver you might not be benefited by what I call "injection?"

I know, because when I listen carefully how it sounds, I do not feel any need to have more colors in its working range. Not to mention that I use wide frequency overlapping with the surrounding channels, so they further extend its color pallet. My tweeter adds the taste of honey and lemon at the top of its range, and my upper bass channels (I have two of them) add tonal fluffyness at the bottom of its range. All this is absolutely enough in order to mimic the original timbral structure of so many unique sounding music instruments.
 
 Romy the Cat wrote:
You might not know what kind result I get from my ejection and your assessment that your single driver gives a sufficient palette of colors might be inaccurate. It is very difficult, almost imposable to make those assessments without being familiar with the actual results.

I really predicted you will answer this way – what other option you have? :-)
OK, let suppose you are some kind of magician and you made your injection channel to be capable of changing its coloration algorithm according to the specific music material you play at a given moment. Then tell me how it is possible without using “magic”? You know I am very curious to know the answer of this question :-)
 
 Romy the Cat wrote:
One more thing. In my mind the injection that I use is more preferable solution then to use truly rich driver as you presumably use. The resosn is that using one good driver you have no control over it's color. The driver is what it is and you can't add or reduced colors. Using one driver you have no control over depth of colors, I do.

Hahahhahahha, how more silly this could be?  No, it’s not silly – it is ridiculous :-)) I have control over thousand parameters of my main driver (and not only my main driver, but also my tweeters, my upperbass/lower midrange drivers and my 23” bass drivers!) Choosing the type of magnet system, the geometry of the magnetic circuit, the hysteresis properties of the magnetic steel, the type of the voice coil, the material of the VC former, the INDUCTANCE of the voice coil, the type of the glue for the different joints, the way the sound energy coming from the VC is transferred to the cone, the type of the cone, the geometrical properties of the cone, the type of suspension, the combination of different materials for that suspension (for more complex tone) and literally zillion other variables – I am able to manipulate the tone to any degree I want – I have unlimited freedom to do so.
“The driver is what it is and you can't add or reduced colors” – this is valid in your case, but I really wish you to start research in the field of compression drivers and to invent your custom driver which is able to kick your Vitavox S2 right in the ass! I know it is not easy, but I also do not see any reason that stops you not to try it! Only then you will have the sound that you imagine in your mind – your type of sound. But still keep in mind we have already concluded that the less the compression, the better the sound :-)
 
 Romy the Cat wrote:
I am sorry, haralanov, but it absolute BS. To have a reflection as you depicted the wavelength shall be comparable with the radius of the throat.

Come on…. I really thought you, by having more than decade long experience in the field of horns, are going to make your comments to be more objective. My illustration will be incorrect ONLY WHEN the sound source at the entry point of the horn is entire diaphragm, but not compression driver emitting its sound through the tiny slits!!!! Where did you see that 1,5” cone/dome at my illustration?? Since the dispersion pattern is defined by the physical size of the object (and particularly by its smallest dimension in the cases where this object is not perfectly round) which radiates the sound, then reconsider very carefully how wide the slits of your compression driver are... They are only few millimeters wide and because of that, they emit the sound with very wide dispersion pattern. It is very simple to try this in reality. Just take your s2 driver (in the air, without the horn) and play some 10kHz sinusoidal signal. You will notice how its high frequency energy attenuates very little when being listened over 30 degrees off-axis. Now imagine what will happen when you add a horn in front of it. Well, there is no need to imagine – just look at the illustration at my previous post :-)) Now after it is clear there are reflections inside the horn, let continue with the comments:
 
 Romy the Cat wrote:
I see absolutely no problems with any other type of reflections. Reflections is it how all sound works, so what is the problem with it?

The problem is that I hear them as a specific type of sound signature that I associate with the mechanical device reproducing the signal coming from the amplifier. If I close my eyes and you play for me 20 different speakers, I will always tell you if there is horn type of speaker – my ear (actually brain) is very sensitive to that type of inherent sound signature. Maybe all the horn users have their brains wired differently and they are restricted by the Nature to recognize that type of specific signature. Who knows....
 
 Romy the Cat wrote:
Have you heard about the axis cancelations in direct radiators? Why do you feel that the axis cancelations in direct radiators are less damaging then alleged horn reflections?

You can think of direct radiators as a kind of very fast expanding horns. They have very slight horn effect for the frequencies radiated by the center of the cone, but the cancellations that you are talking about are order of magnitude less compared to let say tractrix type of horn profile. The cancellations that you are talking about exist mainly in the controllable zone of the cone, so one can almost entirely eliminate them if he knows how to do so.
 
 Romy the Cat wrote:
The point is that I do not feel that forward reflections in the horns are a subject at all - it just not exists in my estimations any meaningful way.

I’m OK with that and I’m OK with ALL of your other comments. If you are happy with the sound in your room, then everything is OK – this is the only important thing of all – to be satisfied by the sound you have in reality. All other things are much less important. I am also happy, I feel very good in my body, because I practice a lot of sports, and I feel a lot of pleasure when I’m listening my favorite music home. Actually the musical joy I have in home is greater than when listening live.
 
Best regards,
P. Haralanov
 


"If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough." -A.E.
08-02-2011 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
haralanov


Bulgaria
Posts 130
Joined on 05-20-2008

Post #: 44
Post ID: 16767
Reply to: 16764
Yes, Jorge, what you say is true
fiogf49gjkf0d
Jorge, please do not get me wrong. I'm pretty sure Romy has one of the best sounding systems on this planet, and in the world of horns - maybe the best one! I have read the entire content of this site and I find it very valuable  - Romy perfectly describes in detail what should be done in order to avoid the problems associated with horn topolgy - he has my respect for that. The only problem is we all use our own methods of description of Sound and the demostration is the only way to be sure we all talk in the same language.



"If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough." -A.E.
08-02-2011 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
Romy the Cat


Boston, MA
Posts 10,184
Joined on 05-28-2004

Post #: 45
Post ID: 16768
Reply to: 16766
"Leave the gun, take the cannolis..."
fiogf49gjkf0d

 haralanov wrote:
First of all, I want to note that when somebody lives on the principle of denying everything, he risks to live in his own encapsulated world, build according to his own principles in order to feel comfortable there.  

It has nothing to do with fear or desire to live in “encapsulated” world. This exchange worth only as exchange of reasons, nothing else.  I do not see me “denying everything” but I only provide my reasons to agree or disagree.  I do not insist you or anyone else to subscribe my reasonings.

 haralanov wrote:
OK, let suppose you are some kind of magician and you made your injection channel to be capable of changing its coloration algorithm according to the specific music material you play at a given moment.

It is absolutely not how it works.
 

 haralanov wrote:
I have control over thousand parameters of my main driver (and not only my main driver, but also my tweeters, my upperbass/lower midrange drivers and my 23” bass drivers!) Choosing the type of magnet system, the geometry of the magnetic circuit, the hysteresis properties of the magnetic steel, the type of the voice coil, the material of the VC former, the INDUCTANCE of the voice coil, the type of the glue for the different joints, the way the sound energy coming from the VC is transferred to the cone, the type of the cone, the geometrical properties of the cone, the type of suspension, the combination of different materials for that suspension (for more complex tone) and literally zillion other variables – I am able to manipulate the tone to any degree I want – I have unlimited freedom to do so.

I have no control over all of those parameters and if I did I would not know how they might affect what I need to get in sound. You claim that you do? Good for you. If you share how they do then perhaps other would understand what you are taking about.

 haralanov wrote:
“The driver is what it is and you can't add or reduced colors” – this is valid in your case, but I really wish you to start research in the field of compression drivers and to invent your custom driver which is able to kick your Vitavox S2 right in the ass! I know it is not easy, but I also do not see any reason that stops you not to try it! Only then you will have the sound that you imagine in your mind – your type of sound. But still keep in mind we have already concluded that the less the compression, the better the sound

I do not see why making custom driver would be a difficult and I do not know why it has to be compared to Vitavox S2. I am not sure why you have interests in compression drivers if you did not hear good sounding horns and if you do not recognize horns-loading as advantageous topology. Sure you are free to do whatever you wish but as in anything else I am looking for reasoning…

 haralanov wrote:
The problem is that I hear them [reflections] as a specific type of sound signature that I associate with the mechanical device reproducing the signal coming from the amplifier. If I close my eyes and you play for me 20 different speakers, I will always tell you if there is horn type of speaker – my ear (actually brain) is very sensitive to that type of inherent sound signature. Maybe all the horn users have their brains wired differently and they are restricted by the Nature to recognize that type of specific signature. Who knows....

Can you describe more specifically what exactly you hear that indicate for you’re the “horn type of speaker”? What kind signature are you talking about? BTW, did you detect the very same signature in the sound of trained singer or in the sound of well tune symphonic orchestra?

 haralanov wrote:
You can think of direct radiators as a kind of very fast expanding horns. They have very slight horn effect for the frequencies radiated by the center of the cone, but the cancellations that you are talking about are order of magnitude less compared to let say tractrix type of horn profile. The cancellations that you are talking about exist mainly in the controllable zone of the cone, so one can almost entirely eliminate them if he knows how to do so.

I do not think about front reflections, neither in direct radiators nor in proper horns (means no step pressure transition). The whole story about reflections is the subject of your invention and I do not mind if you live in that “full of reflections encapsulated world”

 haralanov wrote:
If you are happy with the sound in your room, then everything is OK – this is the only important thing of all – to be satisfied by the sound you have in reality. 

… and it is not about being “happy with the sound in room”. I was trying to debate the reasoning, nothing else. Frankly I did not now hear anything stimulating regarding horns. Your objections against the horn loading were not noteworthy in my estimation.

The Cat


"I wish I could score everything for horns." - Richard Wagner. "Our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts." - Friedrich Nietzsche
08-03-2011 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
Jorge
Austin TX
Posts 141
Joined on 10-17-2010

Post #: 46
Post ID: 16774
Reply to: 16768
Back to the UBH
fiogf49gjkf0d
I guess you cannot say you listened to a horn system if you dont have an upper bass horn.

The upper bass horn has to fill in the response from the compression driver down. At this delicate range nothing will perfectly macth it but another front horn. Nothing comes close to the resolution, cleanness and transparency of a good compression driver.  The first problem is that they have such a low distortion that it is very easy to play them excessively loud; you won’t even realize it until your ears start bleeding.  If it had a matching bass output under it you would be bringing the house down.  I guess that is why they get such a bad reputation, but it would be like blaming an F1 race car for our inability to drive it.  Once you have an Upper Bass Horn working properly with a good driver inside it, and getting at least 6 db extra output out of the loading (I just wrote about 2 pages of technical difficulties on this but let’s just stick to the sound) what could be a mediocre driver in a box or a board will explode with dynamics and low distortion inside an UBH: then you can match it with your compression driver and pass judgment on it.  

Integration of sound between the compression driver and the UBH is wonderful, time alignment will clear the sound even further.  You will notice no steps or borders when crossing from one horn to the other, both volumes will be easily adjusted and you will notice very low distortion in the sound, just crisp, transparent, dynamic sound on a longer very listenable range, the tone of the drivers will be evident and nice color shifts are possible with certain tricks, amplifier selection cabling, volume, Xover frequencies, and going further changing horn geometrical parameters change tone and texture too.

You can listen to just the two horns by themselves and it will be almost a pity to try to add a woofer under them, or a tweeter on top of it.  Adding more channels do bring in a fuller response, and better tonal qualities, but beware, if it is not perfectly time aligned it will smear the sound of the two horns immediately and will do more damage than good, highs will sound hissy and distorted and you can easily hear when you slide the tweeter just a 1/8th of an inch in the right direction, the difference it makes in the sound.  Adding bass under it is a big problem; you will need very clean drivers and a lot of them, or a very big horn for mid bass. But when you have a full horn system sounding properly…well all this thread is about how it sounds and how far it will take you.
08-03-2011 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
Romy the Cat


Boston, MA
Posts 10,184
Joined on 05-28-2004

Post #: 47
Post ID: 16775
Reply to: 16774
Do not glue Sound to the walls.
fiogf49gjkf0d
 Jorge wrote:
I guess you cannot say you listened to a horn system if you dont have an upper bass horn.
Yes, I can very much concur with it. The upperbass and MF horns set the frame of the sound, sort of sonic skeleton upon which everything is built up upon. Unfortunately the upperbass and MF channel them are never enough and it much be the very critical third ingredient in this recipe: the room and the proper positioning of the upperbass + MF tandem in the room.

I need to say that a typical upperbass horn of 100Hz-125Hz in open air is a bit shallow. To make the upperbass horn to get that “ringing” tone it has to be in the room and in the very right place in the room. If the upperbass horn in the right place of the room it turns up the whole room on, making the whole room to sing. The positioning of the upperbass horn is super critical and people do not “get” it, even though the reasons are understandable why.

The sound of upperbass horn in the wrong location does not acknowledged by the room and it all makes upperbass to sound dull and non-expressive. If you would like to hear he example of it then listen the sound of Lynn Harrell’s cello. He plays Montagnana and Strad and he is a phenomenal cellist. Still, he always gets dull sound out of his play. I have no idea why. Then listen somebody like Alisa Weilerstein who has much less sophisticated instrument but her sound is some much vibrant and “active” and so much better talks with the space of performing location. 

So, the upperbass horn positioning is very the same. If the upperbass is position in the wrong location then Sound what I call “glue itself to the walls”. In contrary, being placed in the right “active” locations the upperbass horns begin to blossom and it feel as their sound is gliding in the room – a very different feeling…. I had a article “About speakers Imbedded Macro-Positioning” that talks more about it:

http://www.goodsoundclub.com/Forums/ShowPost.aspx?postID=4421

Rgs, Romy the Cat


"I wish I could score everything for horns." - Richard Wagner. "Our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts." - Friedrich Nietzsche
08-03-2011 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
Paul S
San Diego, California, USA
Posts 2,673
Joined on 10-12-2006

Post #: 48
Post ID: 16776
Reply to: 16775
The *---* Levels of Audio Awareness
fiogf49gjkf0d
If to compose oneself, the Reality is a restless, moving awareness that does not stay satisfied.  How much is "improvement" and how much is change-for-itself is not so easy to judge at any given time.  Horns or direct drivers, we want to create and re-create to enrapture ourselves with Music, although the truth is that we might just as well work on our minds.

The current drive for me is to use what I perceive as the path of least resistance to tap yet another sort of "realistic presentation" of the Sound (and so, the Music). Only time (plenty of time...), great expense and plenty of targeted effort will make my ideas "converge".  I think it is too late in the game for me to simply declare "success" proportional to the cost at some arbitrary "threshhold"; but I know for certain that I do not give a tinker's damn about topology, itself, or topological fraternity, for anything but "practical" reasons.

I have friends (don't we all...) that have worked with sound professionlally for 30, 40 and almost 50 years.  Is it really so strange that I regard their demands and results from their own systems as uninteresting?  Still, now that I want to mix and split stereo signals for my next "ultimate system", who else should I talk to?

This site is a wonderful opportunity for learning at all different "levels".

Thanks, Jorge, for what has turned out to be a very nice thread!

(...*---* being the "Number"...)

Best regards,
Paul S
08-03-2011 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
Romy the Cat


Boston, MA
Posts 10,184
Joined on 05-28-2004

Post #: 49
Post ID: 16781
Reply to: 16774
Care to share?
fiogf49gjkf0d
 Jorge wrote:
Once you have an Upper Bass Horn working properly with a good driver inside it, and getting at least 6 db extra output out of the loading (I just wrote about 2 pages of technical difficulties on this but let’s just stick to the sound) …
Jorge, do you care to post your 2 pages of Upperbass Horn setup? If you do then I can share some of my own “gloves methodology” of making Upperbass Horn to sound properly. It might be an interesting new thread. In addition there is nowhere in audio internet beside this site any meaningful commentaries about upperbass sound.

Haralanov, it would be interesting to hear from you also how you moderate the quality of Upperbass in your direct radiator. I am not taking about softening suspension and dropping Fs but rather what techniques you use to shape upperbass sound in the way how you feel it shall be.

The Cat


"I wish I could score everything for horns." - Richard Wagner. "Our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts." - Friedrich Nietzsche
08-04-2011 Post mapped to 2 branches of Knowledge Tree
Jorge
Austin TX
Posts 141
Joined on 10-17-2010

Post #: 50
Post ID: 16786
Reply to: 16781
Upper Bass Horn Setup
fiogf49gjkf0d

The best midrange comes from compression drivers, it has that minuteness, transparency and dynamics that no other topology can offer; the main problem with them is that they only cover a very specific mid frequency range.  Their sound is so distinctive that it is very hard to mix it with other speaker topologies.  They have been mistakenly used above a 15” driver with the terrible results by which we judge horns badly.

The only way to fill in the frequencies below the compression driver is with a bigger horn; the Upper Bass Horn.

Compression drivers work well from around 15 khz on the upper range to 800 hz on the lower rage.  Most are specified for 500 hz and recommended at 1,200 hz.  So let’s use this range as our upper range target.  About how low they should go, well; as low as physically possible!

Bruce Edgar designed his first Upper Bass Horn to go down to 80 hz, it was a square horn with a 12” cone driver.  I am very familiar with the sound of the latest more conical version.   It does have some horn gain but it gets down to 80 hz with almost no compression and dead sound.  Bert Doppenberg made a nice 150 hz Oris horn for Lowther drivers,  but with no compression,  the horn works mainly as an equalizer, I heard them a lot of times and built a few,  lowther drivers can cover a very long range inside a horn but their sound becomes very soft,  very listenable; but no match for compression drivers.  Adding compression to a Lowther driver will spike the sound but they will hardly go below 200 hz, and since we only need them up to 500 hz, they become redundant,  there are more powerful pro drivers that will cover lower frequencies with much more elegance and transparency than Lowthers will.

Of course the best thing to do is a Round horn that will cover as much range as logically possible.  80 hz will need a mouth size of ¼ of its wave length: That is about 110 cm, now the ear of a human being sitting down on a comfortable position is at 90 cm.  For good soundstage the compression driver playing the higher frequencies must be at ear level.  The normal horn size for a compression driver with a tactrix profile is around 28 cm.  If we smack it in the middle of our ear it will leave 76 cm under it, this is the maximum size our Upper bass Horn can have in order to allow the compression driver to play at ear level.  A mouth of 80 cm at ¼ wave length is about 110- 120 hz. My UBH is 82 cm high.

Now in order to make a cone driver work inside a horn and match perfectly with a  compression driver it should work with compression in order to have a sensibility gain from 6 to 9 db, making a readily available 8”, 10” or 12” driver with a sensitivity of 100 db go up to 108 db.  It is not so much as to match level, but manly to match output, speed and dynamics.  The properties for this driver may vary, but certainly you will need an FS close to the horn mouths cut off,  high sensibility, very light cone for faster transients, etc.

This all sounds very easy and logical; so you have to make your round horn of 76 cm in diameter with a cone driver inside it, add some compression, basically choking it with a throat around 50% smaller than its cone diameter, and hope it will get up to 500 hz and as low as we can get away without honk.  The driver you choose will have to go inside a “box” otherwise there will not be any pressure build up.  The size and volume of this box has to be specifically calculated for throat reactance, whatever the size will be, adjustments will have to be done when changing to another driver, so the best thing to do is leave it “movable”, either you can make it big in order to open it and add something inside it that will take up volume, or you can make it adjustable with a sliding wall.  I made the last and let me tell you ¼ of the turn of a bolt will make a big difference in sound.

Of course making the horn is no easy task,  and I wont even go there. Let’s say you already have the horn, picking the right driver and getting to the perfect back chamber volume will take you a long time and extended listening tests, I have literally chased a resonance on the horn from its lower range to its higher range, only to bring it back down again and eventually out of the horns cut off in order to get rid of it.  Once it is almost out of your horn; if you turn the back chamber volume bolt half a turn more the sound of your horn will die, put it back closer and it will just jump out of the horn with the most transparent and clean sound you ever listened this frequency at.

I have made several UBH, from 180 hz down to 120 hz, with exponential and Tactrix profiles.  The 140 hz horn will do most things nice but the cut off is still at a very sensible frequency.  140 hz will most probably bring you in room anywhere from 160 hz to 130 hz depending on the position in your room.  Once you get the sensibility to hear the resonances of the horn down low and where it dies out, you will notice this is a very bad range to let it die, a lot of fundamental frequencies of the voice and several instruments are still going strong, so a performance “step” will appear between your UBH and the channel below it, mainly if it is the same 15 inch woofer!  These were very time consuming an expensive tests to fail, 120 hz will get you just out of that range and still into the range a woofer that can go under 30 hz will cover.   Make it 140 hz and you will need two separate bass solutions, one that goes from 140 hz down to 40 hz and a subwoofer.

You want aggravations; let your woofers start a fight between them, when you can get a higher bass output by lowering the volume level on one woofer amp,  something is not right!

Once your UBH is running you have to listen to it by itself and make sure all the resonances are out and you still have the great dynamic sound.  Now get your RTA out and measure what you got.  Be sure to place a high pass xover below the natural cutoff of the horn, if you leave lower frequencies to be played by the horn they will mess up the sound, so unload the extra bass out of your horn. You will most probably be able to mix in your compression driver very naturally; the point where the UBH will be dying on the upper range will most probably be well within the range of your compression driver.  You can play around with low pass cuts on your UBH and high pass cuts on your CD in order to get the tone and timbre you like, make it sound a little fuller with more overlap or cleaner and drier with more separation between the drivers:  since both drivers are at the end of their natural frequency ranges you will be able to mold their sound properly with a first order xover.

If the sensibility of your UBH does not match the compression drivers one perfectly, you will need to use a separate amplifier for each horn, resistors at speaker level or Lpads here will kill a lot of harmonics and tone.  IF you need more sensibility, you can add compression to the horn or change the driver inside it.  Some drivers won’t be able to get a nice full tone and explosive dynamics once inside the horn with compression, lowther drivers don’t do very well, Fostex wont either, but even some drivers that develop nicely inside a horn can give way to a driver that will work wonderfully inside a horn.

In order to change the tone of both drivers, horn size changing is a very strong tool, drivers will most likely do what the horn demands of them, but they will pay little attention to crossover changes.

Mixing in the two horns, the UBH and the Compression driver is a lot of fun,  if you never listened to an UBH and CD playing together you will be so impressed,  you will probably just leave it on the most comfortable position and enjoy the sound as is!  Don’t, time alignments will bring the sound even closer together, and careful volume match will be the easier way to make those wonderful microscopic tonal adjustments that will make your system explode with color!

Jorge

08-04-2011 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
Paul S
San Diego, California, USA
Posts 2,673
Joined on 10-12-2006

Post #: 51
Post ID: 16787
Reply to: 16786
OK, Much Clearer Now...
fiogf49gjkf0d
Jorge, thank you for taking the time to share your experience and your approach to UBH set-up, etc.  I don't know about others, but this was very helpful to me to put your previous remarks into context.

Best regards,
Paul S
08-04-2011 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
Romy the Cat


Boston, MA
Posts 10,184
Joined on 05-28-2004

Post #: 52
Post ID: 16788
Reply to: 16786
A good guide. A few things I would like to expend on.
fiogf49gjkf0d

The “best midrange comes from compression drivers”. I see somebody like Haralanov would be very much opposed to this comment. The irony is that I would be opposed as well to this comment.  I would say that the best midrange at over 107dB sensitively is the simplest to get from compression drivers. I did heard very good non compression driver but they were good 10-20 less sensitivity then good compression drivers, not to mention that non compression driver will have a lot of difficulty to work with a good upperbass horn, and this is not a laughing matter as a proper upperbass horn with a right compression driver is the winning tandem, not the MF compression driver itself.

 The whole business of having something “best” is a bit tricky and it has to be understood properly. The best is not an absolute criterion but rather the best balanced criteria. The best compression driver is like a woman. Women know own best and worse properties of appearance and they use different tools of dressing, make up, behavior and etc… to hide the less attractive element of own appearance  and to highline on the most reactive properties. Would we consider that a women that does it most successfully might be considered the “best woman”? I do not think so but the compression driver it appears to me works in the very same way. It looks like it is very easy to capitalize on the best what a compression driver doe the best and it looks like it is relatively easy to deal very effectively with problems of compression drivers. So, I would not call that the best midrange comes from compression drivers but I would say that as a ready to go package the compression drivers are more optimized to get the best MF as they are.

Another subject that I would like to point out that in upperbass horns there are very narrow margin what would be the best size of upperbass horn.  Your MF mush be fast opening horn, this is not arguable and if you are in MF with exponential horn then you are ether deaf of a Moron. Either Tratrix or La-horn are fine, or it might be any other fast opening profile.  If you go for 120Hz upperbass then you most likely would like to stay with fast opening, it looks better and it has some sonic advantages, the sonic advantages are arguable however for 120Hz horn.  Still, 120Hz horn is 36”, and then we have let say 12” of MF horn. A half of 12” is 6” and we do not want the upperbass and MF overlap. So, 36” of upperbass and half of MF horn make 42” of the MF driver height. Jorge said that MF driver has to be at hears level, which is about 42”. So, we just concluder a proof that that 115-120Hz is the maximum possible size for upperbass horn. Sure you might put your upperbass above your MF but then you need to paint your horns in red, green, yellow and blue stripes in order everyone see that you are a Moron. Now let to see what happened with the upperbass length.  If you have 35”-36” diameter then the length will be dictated by the diameter of your throat. If you go for 1.5” as WE and the imitator do then your horn will be an ugly snake that you will never time-align with MF driver. If you go for 6”-8” throat that Bruce so like to make for his mostly idiotic customers then your upperbass will act mostly as a direct radiator and will not have the necessary equalization. If you sit with a 3D modeling software and begin to slide the throat up and down and to preview the desirable upperbass length in order to have the sufficient horn EQ, the easy of time aliment and the proper esthetic appearance foe your acoustic system in your frame then you very fast discover that 34”-37” is the very optimum length that makes upperbass to have 4” throat. A simple calculation will inform you that with 4” throat Tratrix blowing into 35” mouth will yeald for you +6 dB gain at the horn lover cut off. Congratulation, you just reinvented the basic Macondo geometry! Another 10 years of experience on the subject and you will reinvent what I leaned – a design of proper horn installation must start from design of horn supporting frame, but this is whole another subject…

A few words about a subject that Jorge missed. The loading of the amp or amps that drive MF and upperbass is super important. If you use tubes then more loading of output stage gives you more gain, more power, more harmonics, better diaphragm damping. Letting the output tube to run more idle give you faster transient response, less distortion, shorter decays. It is not necessary to multi-amp your MF and upperbass if you would like to mitigate the individual loading between the channels, you can do it with a single amp as well. Still, loading is VERY powerful tool, in many cased more powerful then a change of the drivers.

About the upperbass horn, upperbass horns are not panacea in my view. There are other topologies that can deliver very good upperbass results. The infinite baffle or VERY large open baffles in my estimation do very well. The problem with large open baffles is that they do not accept any channels under bottom, nothing will work with them. There are other problems with large open baffles, like large vertical surfaces destroy imaging and many others problems.  The upperbass horns in contrary not only sound well but as they do not deal with acoustic shorting as the result they accommodate proper bass support.

Rgs,
Romy the Cat


"I wish I could score everything for horns." - Richard Wagner. "Our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts." - Friedrich Nietzsche
08-05-2011 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
unicon


Posts 74
Joined on 10-14-2009

Post #: 53
Post ID: 16789
Reply to: 16766
Single driver and color
fiogf49gjkf0d
 haralanov wrote:
 Romy the Cat wrote:
One more thing. In my mind the injection that I use is more preferable solution then to use truly rich driver as you presumably use. The resosn is that using one good driver you have no control over it's color. The driver is what it is and you can't add or reduced colors. Using one driver you have no control over depth of colors, I do.

 I have control over thousand parameters of my main driver (and not only my main driver, but also my tweeters, my upperbass/lower midrange drivers and my 23” bass drivers!) Choosing the type of magnet system, the geometry of the magnetic circuit, the hysteresis properties of the magnetic steel, the type of the voice coil, the material of the VC former, the INDUCTANCE of the voice coil, the type of the glue for the different joints, the way the sound energy coming from the VC is transferred to the cone, the type of the cone, the geometrical properties of the cone, the type of suspension, the combination of different materials for that suspension (for more complex tone) and literally zillion other variables – I am able to manipulate the tone to any degree I want – I have unlimited freedom to do so.


 

Romy Besides that how I try to avoid any acoustic compression in drivers I'm using in my playback (upper bass , bass, mids , highs etc.)   and how I think we should only use them in outdoor alarm sound enforcement systems
 you are absolutely wrong about  "The resosn is that using one good driver you have no control over it's color. The driver is what it is and you can't add or reduced colors. Using one driver you have no control over depth of colors".
I recently have tried many mounting methods  and can say that for sure it changed many parameters such as colors and tones of drivers ...

unicon
08-05-2011 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
Jorge
Austin TX
Posts 141
Joined on 10-17-2010

Post #: 54
Post ID: 16790
Reply to: 16789
Meat in the bones
fiogf49gjkf0d
Sometimes it is not so much as adding color, but taking it away.  Most cheap cone drivers will exhibit a loose sound,  so if you want to get the cellos more clearly, you need to get some meat off the bones or they wil get lost in the mess.

Having a thin, detailed structure helps when adding weight and color in the sense that you can add just as much as needed.  It would be more difficult to get a clear sound out of a chubbby driver.

Another important point to make is:  Color must be added quirurgically,  the wood on the violin needs a little more red: Having multiple channels allows you to get a more detailed point of application of tone and color,  as oposed to painting the whole orchestra green!

I do not want this to become a Horns vs box speaker contest.  Lets just say if any topology of speakers can achieve the effects wanted and described,  it would be great to share some input.




PS:
Saying something is the Best shows a lack of taste and a little ignorance,  I rarely do,  somehow that one sliped among the excitement.
08-05-2011 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
Paul S
San Diego, California, USA
Posts 2,673
Joined on 10-12-2006

Post #: 55
Post ID: 16791
Reply to: 16790
Color Range and One Trick Ponies
fiogf49gjkf0d

"Given" correct pitch, timbre, weight and scale, the crux seems to be balancing available color saturation, color range, articulation and "force".  Getting this "right" is what I have referred to as the "matrix", and when the "critical mass" is achieved, the results are literally startling.  I don't know why, but all by itself it has an uncanny effect on "image" and "soundstage", rendering the presentation as "real" (ok, "more real"...) in a way that I am very eager to explore.  Even in mono...  It is only fairly recently that I started listening to it this way, during trials of my new "stack" of tone-rich drivers.  I could not sustain it with the rough stack, but I believe I got enough information to press on.

Jorge, you are spot on about the "turgid" quality of "chubby" drivers, although a lot more than is generally supposed might be gotten from more "delicate" drivers, without cutting meat off the bones.  Of course we are not talking 6" FR...  While any signature sound might be a problem, the S2 as you all describe it is an example of a very "rough" driver that might be tweaked to "outperform" a typically-smooth driver.  Like I said before, today I would try to "use" the 808's "faults" to sonic advantage rather than trying to make it sound like a 375...  Likewise, all a driver's strengths might be used more wisely.

We probably all hate the One Trick Pony, and once a specific trait becomes obvious and then relentless as such, how long is it tolerable?

Best regards,
Paul S

08-05-2011 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
Romy the Cat


Boston, MA
Posts 10,184
Joined on 05-28-2004

Post #: 56
Post ID: 16792
Reply to: 16789
I do not know how serious all of those claims
fiogf49gjkf0d
 unicon wrote:
I recently have tried many mounting methods  and can say that for sure it changed many parameters such as colors and tones of drivers ...
Possible, I personally have no experience with it and I commented only about I know. I heard numerous report about soaking cones with some obscure things, elimination of driver suspension and many other recipes. I have no down that it all work I one way or another but I purposely have no judgment how serious all of those claims.
 
The Cat


"I wish I could score everything for horns." - Richard Wagner. "Our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts." - Friedrich Nietzsche
08-06-2011 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
Romy the Cat


Boston, MA
Posts 10,184
Joined on 05-28-2004

Post #: 57
Post ID: 16793
Reply to: 16790
The way how I see it, perhaps mistakably.
fiogf49gjkf0d

 Jorge wrote:
Sometimes it is not so much as adding color, but taking it away.  Most cheap cone drivers will exhibit a loose sound,  so if you want to get the cellos more clearly, you need to get some meat off the bones or they wil get lost in the mess.

Having a thin, detailed structure helps when adding weight and color in the sense that you can add just as much as needed.  It would be more difficult to get a clear sound out of a chubbby driver.

Another important point to make is:  Color must be added quirurgically,  the wood on the violin needs a little more red: Having multiple channels allows you to get a more detailed point of application of tone and color,  as oposed to painting the whole orchestra green!

I do not want this to become a Horns vs box speaker contest.  Lets just say if any topology of speakers can achieve the effects wanted and described,  it would be great to share some input.

As I said, there is no doubt that desirable combination of color density, color contrast and color discrimination at different dynamic levels might be accomplished by a single direct radiator driver.  The compression drivers have no advantage in this department with exception that they might or might not do it at 10-20dB higher dynamic level.

However, we do not have an ability to correlate the actual Sound and we are driven only by claims that people make on-line. It would be nice to have some kind of tone/color pissing context where people could come to together and to compare noted about the actual results. Unfortunately this is not always possible or even imposable.   BTW, I did proposed an idea of Foundation Standarts for Exposed Evaluation:

http://www.goodsoundclub.com/Forums/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=16355

Someone might look into this.

So, we all understand that we do not deal with the actual results but with different people, including myself, running mouths on line. So the value of those claims is very questionable. However, as far as I am familiar with what people only say of claim my site is THE only one location where the subject of moderation of color density, temperance with color discrimination, the employment of color contrast at low dynamic levels, deliberate management the entire warmth of tone and many other factors are even mentioned and even designated as playback design objective. No one there talks about, at least I did not see, read or was exposed to it in any other ways. So, I do not see this tendency in other and since I know that to accomplish all those things is possible only if one clearly identify what she/he would like to accomplish I do not know how valid all those claims.

I do not claim that what people lie when they say about their ability to moderate anything they want by changing suspensions, materials or injection of some kind of tone-shaping ingredients into the direct radiator’s cellulose diaphragm pulp. This is very good direction to go and to this and many private parties and commercial companies do experiments with it. I do not use this approach and I do not know the rule and the result of the engagement. If somebody claim they use leather out suspension then I can concur with it as I heard the leather-suspended driver as I know the results. If someone claim the they use paper for cones with variable thickness and let the paper be eaten by female orangutan and then to be passed by orangutan digestive system as according to them the orangutan’s stomach acids are able uniquely impact the molecular structure of cone then I do accept it respectfully but if people never ever talk about their objective about Sound then I do not know if all of it has any Sonic merit.

This is what I stay with my position regarding the “achievements of others” in audio coloring.

Rgs, Romy the Cat


"I wish I could score everything for horns." - Richard Wagner. "Our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts." - Friedrich Nietzsche
08-06-2011 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
Paul S
San Diego, California, USA
Posts 2,673
Joined on 10-12-2006

Post #: 58
Post ID: 16794
Reply to: 16793
Causes, Effects, and Degrees of Separation
fiogf49gjkf0d
Perhaps to bring some perspective: As Romy obviously suspects, the stock drivers I have been experimenting with are in the low-mid 90s, in terms of efficiency, although alterations include raising efficiency - somewhat.  And yes, this introduces its own set of problems.  As ever.  No Free Lunch.  As for the particular Lunches we do settle (and pay) for...

Around here, we often bandy the term "psycho-acoustic", and I think it is valid to understand the effects of sound as existing largely in the mind.  In fact, to read certain descriptions and correlations drawn between aural cause and effect, one could not be blamed for suspecting imagination at work.  While this is not "a bad thing", it can make practical understanding more complicated than the usual prima facie "exchange of ideas", aka, BS session.

There is no question that the various components of a given driver, and their realtionships, affect the sound from the driver.  So what?  The idea is not to recognize and exploit the mere fact but rather to codify and get control over this, for predictable, repeatable resuts.  Still, any "results" will NEVER be beyond one's abilty to understand and "further" exploit them for mining Music.  And, obviously, one's capacity as a miner factors large at GSC, where there are at least bases for "judging" results.

God bless everyone who is happy with any or every "aspect" of any or every part of his system.  If someone finds delight in the color rendered by compression drivers and horns, why try to take it away?  As for finding significant cause and effect relationships between drivers, their parts, and the sounds they render, I have taken the long road to gain some practical working knowledge of this, and Haralanov is certainly my senior in these matters, as I have easily determined, practically speaking.  I can say at the start (I have already said it...) that I am  not predisposed to make anything more complicated, mystical, or fraternal than need be.  However, this does not mean it is "simple".  If the "best" cone for my purposes happens to be part of a driver that is rare and expensive, I will not on acquiring it join The Order and fall to my knees to worship it or the "genius" who designed it.  Rather, it will be "developed" according to its aural merit in the context of the Music System.  Also, I do not see the value in trying to write up a shopping list as some kind of short cut for anyone who thinks there is or will be some sort of abbreviated version to follow.

Obviously, Romy has his doubts about the practical value of the home-brewed drivers he has seen.  And who can read without wondering about the practical significance of any number of "exotic", "natural" or any-type-of-formulaic-patent-medicinal curatives we see and hear about on the world wide web?  OTOH, one need not leave the safe confines of Home to find snake oil in situ.  Enthusiasm is not a crime; but taking it wrong can certainly result in "wasted" time.

On a lighter note, I have actually read some interesting - if relatively simplistic - commentary on Tone at guitar forums.  Too bad about their bases for the discussions, however, and I will close by saying it bodes well for anyone interested in the subject to be alert to context. 

Paul S
08-06-2011 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
Romy the Cat


Boston, MA
Posts 10,184
Joined on 05-28-2004

Post #: 59
Post ID: 16796
Reply to: 16794
Yes, but….
fiogf49gjkf0d
 Paul S wrote:
On a lighter note, I have actually read some interesting - if relatively simplistic - commentary on Tone at guitar forums.  Too bad about their bases for the discussions, however, and I will close by saying it bodes well for anyone interested in the subject to be alert to context.

Yes, I am well familiar with that, the folks who build electronics for guitar processors and guitar amplifiers are quite evolved in the subject of obtaining specific tone and specific harmonics from the sound they get. Many so called high-end manufactures might only envy to the know-how that guitar amp builder possess. Unfortunately the direction that guitar builders go is good but the result that they looking to get and getting are very m8ch not applicable in high-end audio. The guitar builders look for septic distortion patterns and specific coloration that are not useful in hi-fi. Also, guitar erumpent is very single-minded sort of speaking and it does not exposed to such a divert duty and devers set of objective as we can see in High-End Audio.

The Cat


"I wish I could score everything for horns." - Richard Wagner. "Our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts." - Friedrich Nietzsche
08-06-2011 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
Jorge
Austin TX
Posts 141
Joined on 10-17-2010

Post #: 60
Post ID: 16797
Reply to: 16796
Wrong Analogy
fiogf49gjkf0d
I think we have been using the wrong analogy here, trying to compare sound to painting in the sense that it is not about adding things to sound as much as taking off.

I believe the right analogy would be sculpting:  In order to get a good sound,  one must take off material from a piece of stone in order to bring the instruments to life.  As much as we take off, as much as we dig between the the strings of the guitar the better it will be able to come out.

Most bad systems are just big bunch of lard putting out something that resembles music,  now trying to get detail and tone and harmonics out of that piece of lard would make us to dig inside that thing with a spoon and when you think you are getting somewere a big chuck of material just bends over on top of that and messes things further.

Carrara Marble is famous for its strength and maneuverability, you can go into detail inside the stone taking piece by piece off and making a perfect hand, a perfect torso, once the figure is out of the marble, as Michael Angelo used to say,  the marble admits more work to be done to it,  detailing of the sculpture starts,  diggin in more between the arm and the body,  making the fingers of the hand a little more skinny, making the bones of the knuckles to show. even a vein sliding through, I put in my mind right now Rodin´s sculpture The Kiss,  and how the man´s hand is barely touching the women´s chubby thigh.

Bass is a big lard monster that will cover the beatiful shaping of sound, most systems, even very good ones,  are like sculptures covered with excessive bass, and highs:  This is what  I mean when I mention the Seamless Extended Midrange.   The fundamental tones of the instruments are more clear with a better tonal pallette and, belive it or not, with more dynamic bass undertones,  when the volume of the bass channles are not flooding sound.

Tweeters are as dangerous as woofers,  but I imagine high frequency flooding as extra spikes coming out of the sculpture,  imagine this great female lovely belly protruding between the hip bones, and then a big spike of salt coming out next to the belly button, or an invasion of little cristals covering the face of our scultpture in some sort of solid acne you can sand off by just lowering the volume on your tweeters.  This wont make your sound more dull, it will make the shapes and roundnesses of the muscles and the fatty deposits to show more clearly, letting you know where it is attached to the bone. 

Sound wise this would mean that the instruments, whose fundamental frequencies are clearly in the midrange,  will come out of your speakers as midrange sounding with the natural overtones of bass and highs,  and not some big injection of tonal saturation.

Funny but I keep coming back to full range drivers,  I think they are a great school of listening;  say a Saba Green cone,  it plays wonderful clean midrange frequencies with just enough bass overtones to make up the instrument, and just enough highs to bring it out; leaving the  instrument unharmed by higher tones,  so most instruments are played properly.   Just dont ask real life dynamics and a full orchestra out of them.
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