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Active horn speaker from German Abacus

Sal1950

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Why are horn people so much into bright red horns? I can imagine what a psychologist might suggest it represents.
Red is a exciting color, horns tend to be exciting sounding speakers. they just go together like big horsepower and fat tires. :D

My experience is that horns do sound different. They can have a certain rawness, a certain grunt and dynamic punch, that is special. It sounds more live, in a way. Dynamic speakers usually sound "smooth" in comparison.
Agreed, I believe it has something to do with the large wavefront launched by the larger horn mouths and how they couple to the air. That combined with the usual high efficiency-lower distortion at any particular spl that often gives them a "live" presence factor. Good dsp might be just the thing to smooth out the coloration's that so often have come hand in hand. In this case I'd still prefer to see a large horn covering the bass range down to 50hz or so, though size then becomes a very real problem.
Could never afford these but I'd love to hear them.
 
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oivavoi

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Agreed, I believe it has something to do with the large wavefront launched by the larger horn mouths and how they couple to the air. That combined with the usual high efficiency-lower distortion at any particular spl that often gives them a "live" presence factor. Good dsp might be just the thing to smooth out the coloration's that so often have come hand in hand. In this case I'd still prefer to see a large horn covering the bass range down to 50hz or so, though size then becomes a very real problem.

Cool. You're the horn guy so I'll defer to your knowledge on these things! ;)

Are there commercially available bass horns with coverage that far down? Or at least down to, say, 100 hz?
 

Sal1950

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Cool. You're the horn guy so I'll defer to your knowledge on these things! ;)

Are there commercially available bass horns with coverage that far down? Or at least down to, say, 100 hz?
The only thing I'm expert at here is usually being wrong LOL
Off the top of my head there is always the famous (infamous) Klispchorn and La Scala's. I owned a pair of La Scalas for 32 years and only sold them as they'd never fit in my retirement digs.
Then there is the very interesting La Scala derivatives from Volti Audio that uses horns down to 50, then a dedicated sub for the very bottom. It's received some very impressive reviews in recent years
I wonder what could be accomplished with a active design applied to any of the above?
http://voltiaudio.com/vittora/
cherry-vittora.png
 

Frank Dernie

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oivavoi

oivavoi

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Off the top of my head there is always the famous (infamous) Klispchorn and La Scala's. I owned a pair of La Scalas for 32 years and only sold them as they'd never fit in my retirement digs.
Then there is the very interesting La Scala derivatives from Volti Audio that uses horns down to 50, then a dedicated sub for the very bottom. It's received some very impressive reviews in recent years
I wonder what could be accomplished with a active design applied to any of the above?

Right, had forgot about the Scalas! You also have the Jubilee bass bin, but it's not produced for the home market anymore. That Volti seems sweet. Prohibitively expensive, though. I also become slightly skeptical towards any manufacturer that touts specific kinds of cables...

I like my horns, and they are 109dB/watt!
OTOH the one thing that never measures well on horns is the waterfall plot, they may well start fast but they certainly don't stop fast.

For French speakers, a review

http://www.tuneaudio.com/wp-content...-in-French-Stereo-PRESTIGE-IMAGE-Magazine.pdf

I like them! And the French review is very positive.
 

Sal1950

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Frank Dernie

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Do I guess right that the woofer is on top down facing and the horn mouth is firing into the floor?
Yes.
The down side of the Animas is they are far from a point source so you need to sit well back for good integration. I sit about 15' from mine.
 

dallasjustice

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It’s about time Uli designed a speaker. I told him he should do it years ago. I bet it’s mega.
 

Frank Dernie

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Frank,

I dont think these qualify as having a bass Horn , same as the Klipsch LaScala ..


Regards
In what respect?
I think it would be hard to achieve 109dB/watt down to 40Hz without horn loading.
Unless there is another way to achieve this?
 

Sal1950

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Still waiting for an explanation of what you mean, or are you taking the mickey?
I agree to not seeing any problem here. The fact that the driver faces downward into a horn flare that ends in a 35 x 35 " mouth works for me. Not knowing anything about
speaker design, how the floor interface effects things I don't understand, but it may even act as a final fold of the mouth into the room along the lines of the classic K-Horn?
 

A.wayne

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In what respect?
I think it would be hard to achieve 109dB/watt down to 40Hz without horn loading.
Unless there is another way to achieve this?


Well , the proximity to the floor changes the output pressure and IMO does not make it operate typically like a bass horn , not to mention, while the flare is long , the exit is pretty small for gain , the 40Hz maybe possible due to the long flare , but being sealed i Would love to see the 109 db @2.83 V , if it was only 3 db down at 40hz that would be great and being an unusual design , maybe I'm muffing this up , but typically for a bass horn you want to see a growth rate of about 30% per foot to see 30-40hz , i cant tell from the pic , but it looks smaller than that and i was not able to find any measurements on their website and what's there for info is Pretty Vague..

Any impedance Mag/phase graphs , are you able to do any measurements Frank ..?


Regards
 
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Frank Dernie

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Well , the proximity to the floor changes the output pressure and IMO does not make it operate typically like a bass horn , not to mention, while the flare is long , the exit is pretty small for gain , the 40Hz maybe possible due to the long flare , but being sealed i Would love to see the 109 db @2.83 V , if it was only 3 db down at 40hz that would be great and being an unusual design , maybe I'm muffing this up , but typically for a bass horn you want to see a growth rate of about 30% per foot to see 30-40hz , i cant tell from the pic , but it looks smaller than that and i was not able to find any measurements on their website and what's there for info is Pretty Vague..

Any impedance Mag/phase graphs , are you able to do any measurements Frank ..?


Regards
There are measurements on the review (in French) that I posted earlier. I don't think you need to be fluent to be able to understand the graphs.

http://www.tuneaudio.com/wp-content...-in-French-Stereo-PRESTIGE-IMAGE-Magazine.pdf

This shows the in room frequency response to be non-boomy but respectably extended in the bass, and the efficiency to be near enough the specified 109dB/(8 ohm watt) though the impedance is fairly well over 8 ohms.
 

A.wayne

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There are measurements on the review (in French) that I posted earlier. I don't think you need to be fluent to be able to understand the graphs.

http://www.tuneaudio.com/wp-content...-in-French-Stereo-PRESTIGE-IMAGE-Magazine.pdf

This shows the in room frequency response to be non-boomy but respectably extended in the bass, and the efficiency to be near enough the specified 109dB/(8 ohm watt) though the impedance is fairly well over 8 ohms.


Hello Frank ,
Thanks for the link and this is what i gathered from their measurements,

*The Anima is 9db down at 40hz @3M
*Sensitivity is close enuff to the rated 109 @1K with 2.83V, but not sure if it's 8 ohm at 1K could not read numbers listed
* Bass driver FB resonance is 50 hz
*Xover freq to mid is 100 Hz
*Waterfall plot initial decay is very good and clean , then a bit hashy
* +/- 3db is 80-12K


The other stuff will require Prost to take a look .... :)


Regards ..
 
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fas42

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Furthermore, on horns: I'm not 100% sure what to think. My experience is that horns do sound different. They can have a certain rawness, a certain grunt and dynamic punch, that is special. It sounds more live, in a way. Dynamic speakers usually sound "smooth" in comparison. I'm not sure whether horn speakers are more faithful to the signal, with the implication that dynamic speakers smooth over something which is there, or whether horn speakers actually introduce small types of distortion that can be difficult to measure, and that this mini-distortion makes them feel more raw and immediate. Maybe both things are true.

But I do think that eq and DSP is absolutely necessary with horns. Out of the four horn setups I've heard, two have been very colored, while two have been amazing. The two good ones were run digitally with DSP.
What I call competent sound is simply the combination of those two factors: live, natural sound has "grunt and dynamic punch", in spades; "smooth" is also an attribute of the "real thing", except it can be very 'intense', a powerful, emotional experience.

Yes, distortion is the problem; when a system can go loud, effortlessly, every tiny defect still infecting the playback chain is ruthlessly revealed - some solutions are: to attempt to mask the objectionable artifacts; or, as an alternative, to locate and eliminate all audible weakness. The latter I have found is vastly superior as a technique ...
 
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