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Danley Sound Labs SH50

mtg90

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Quote from Tom from a Q&A on Audio Express:
Sonically, Synergy horn’s success is simple but one has to hear it. It is a way to combine more than one driver in more than one frequency range into a single, constant directivity horn with the appropriate crossover. The outcome literally appears to be, measures like, and sounds like a single crossover-less driver.

That sounds simple, but it is surprisingly hard to do. An example of its effect is that you can walk up to the speaker, move around, literally even put your head deep into the horn mouth of a three-way Synergy horn, and never hear any clue there is more than one driver. Many of them can even reproduce a square wave over a broad band, even with a passive crossover. In large-scale sound, this sounds dramatically different than the concert-style arrays.
 

hardisj

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@hardisj can possibly say something about this. From what I gathered from Toms info, the coherent wavefront is already formed in the horn, so there would be no need for the separation.

Take two:

I addressed most of these comments in my writeup. Unfortunately, my site is blocked from being linked here (after Amir and I had our head-to-head last month) so you'll have to find my site manually and then read my comments.

Peace!

I state where the NFS' calculation of the NF/FF transition point occurs in the writeup. I can't access my site at work to copy/paste it. But the fact that I can't link it directly here because my site is blocked from ASR is out of my hands. IOW, don't get frustrated at me for continuing to reply with the same thing as I feel this is going to get old fast. ;)
 

voodooless

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I state where the NFS' calculation of the NF/FF transition point occurs in the writeup.

Ah, I missed that part of the text. I guess the graphs were too distracting ;).

Still interesting find. Can you elaborate on in what way the coherence was off close by?

I also wonder how much the filter has influence on this. I can imagine that with an active DSP solution, you can tweak this a bit as well.

Possibly @Tom Danley can elaborate on this?
 
OP
C

ctrl

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So, a few more comments regarding the horizontal directivity of the SH50 (vertical should be nearly identical).
I have taken the hor 0-90° frequency responses from Erin's website and simply mirrored them to +-90° (so they could deviate very slightly from Erin's complete measurements).

What everyone has already said, here again visually represented. Without EQ you should not use the speaker, because then the horizontal -6dB limit looks like this (-6dB limit is the black line):
1629309210942.png

However, if you look at the plot normalized to the axis frequency response +-90° (if the LS were equalized to a completely flat on-axis FR), the 6-dB limit runs fairly smoothly (-6dB limit is the black line):
1629309462904.png


Looking only at the -6dB contour, the SH50 could be said to have a coverage pattern close to 60°.
The directivity is controlled down to about 650Hz (which @voodooless had already mentioned):
1629309775574.png
 
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mtg90

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The nearfield/farfield transition point being 1.5 meters in front of the horn does not mean the wavefronts from the individual drivers have not already summed, it just means the radiation from the horn has not reached the point of a farfield response. I would expect a similar nearfield/farfield transition point from a similar sized and shaped horn even if it was loaded with only a single driver.

I've built a few sets of synergy clones, I can attest that the head in the horn statement is true, the response may shift when nearfield but the coherence between the drivers (sounds like one source) is still there, it does not devolve like a conventional multiway speaker as you get closer.
 

MarkS

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Somebody needs to explain to me why a speaker with this poor of FR is worthy of attention.
 

dshreter

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It’s also innovative and brings a different point of view on how to integrate drivers and control directivity simultaneously. I’m not saying you should go buy one, but it certainly warrants discussion and understanding of the potential of the method
 

HammerSandwich

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Because it's easier to EQ FR than directivity. And we haven't IDed a lot of narrow-pattern speakers with smooth directivity. And they have good sensitivity plus the ability to play quite loud with reasonable distortion. IOW, it's very different than most of what we've seen in NFS detail.
 

Promit

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Somebody needs to explain to me why a speaker with this poor of FR is worthy of attention.
This is a speaker for large and outdoor venues. It will create 100 dB at several hundred feet without breaking a sweat. That type of performance requires a little bit of compromise in other aspects and a non-perfect natural FR is one of those compromises. This would be run by a sound booth that is perfectly capable of applying some baseline EQ to smooth and balance the response as required.
 

Newman

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A lot of those DIY Unity/Synergy horns are going to have a response no better than this, possibly a lot worse:
1629348988725.png


…and they are being used exclusively for home audio.

cheers
 

Stu Pidasso

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I addressed most of these comments in my writeup. Unfortunately, my site is blocked from being linked here (after Amir and I had our head-to-head last month) so you'll have to find my site manually and then read my comments.

Peace!

Erins Audio Corner SH-50
 

Stu Pidasso

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I am curious what the results would look like if the metal grill was in place. It seems to me they sound overly bright without the metal grill in place but I have no measurements to prove otherwise. I like to turn my music up quite a bit, and will admit that my high frequency sensitivity has been damaged to some extent (that's what happens when you're a smidge over 50 years old and toured with rock n' roll bands pre ear monitor days.)

I've been running SH-50's in numerous installs, live sound, and as my home monitors for many years and never do I recall applying EQ beyond a basic HF shelf until a room fills up with patrons. Compared to anything else available in the professional sound reinforcement world - there just is no substitute. The only other alternative would be perhaps Funktion One in terms of directivity.
 

tomtoo

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Somebody needs to explain to me why a speaker with this poor of FR is worthy of attention.

There are many reasons.
This speaker have a very uniform directivity and with that they are easy to eq. We live in the year 2021 where dsp eq is standard and cheap.
The unity horn is a imo a outstandig way to bring multiple drivers into a compact form factor. Just try to puzzle this drivers in a more compact form? What leads us the way to smaller more powerfull speakers.
That makes them interesting for everyone that is interested in speaker design. The FR without EQ is only interesting to look for problems.

So it needs at least some great idears, knowledge and some courage to come up with a design like this. And there you see, why its worth attention.
 
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abdo123

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Somebody needs to explain to me why a speaker with this poor of FR is worthy of attention.

Where shall we start?

100 dB/2.83V sensitivity.

136 peak dB output, 130 dB continuous output.

oh and the sound comes out from one point in space, not from every driver like other multi-way speakers.

1629357222256.png
 

Newman

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This speaker have a very uniform directivity and with that they are easy to eq.

Not necessarily all that EQ-friendly. These sorts of peaks and dips could be due to resonances and cancellations. You don’t really want resonances in the first place, because they are prone to being audible of themselves: you could knock 5 dB off them but they are still not the music. Similarly, it is not advisable to boost cancellations, as a deficiency in the gear is being boosted and made more audible.

EQ is always something that needs to be done with intelligent diagnosis (and, incidentally, is why auto EQ is fraught).
 

abdo123

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Not necessarily all that EQ-friendly. These sorts of peaks and dips could be due to resonances and cancellations. You don’t really want resonances in the first place, because they are prone to being audible of themselves: you could knock 5 dB off them but they are still not the music. Similarly, it is not advisable to boost cancellations, as a deficiency in the gear is being boosted and made more audible.

EQ is always something that needs to be done with intelligent diagnosis (and is why auto EQ is fraught).

a Speaker with this much dynamic range would not even feel a 5 dB boost. yet alone breaking up or not handling it.

the worst thing that might happen with EQ is a slight loss of sensitivity.
 

tomtoo

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Not necessarily all that EQ-friendly. These sorts of peaks and dips could be due to resonances and cancellations. You don’t really want resonances in the first place, because they are prone to being audible of themselves: you could knock 5 dB off them but they are still not the music. Similarly, it is not advisable to boost cancellations, as a deficiency in the gear is being boosted and made more audible.

EQ is always something that needs to be done with intelligent diagnosis (and is why auto EQ is fraught).

Absolutly. But resonances you can have with other designs too and ununiform directivity makes the live harder. Thats why i said the natural FR is a indicator for problems.
 
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