Horn Speakers - Is it me or.......

[oivavoi]

Damn that's some long ass thread in mate ... not going to read it all unfortunately

So in the first few pages, i've read quite a few times something like " colored " or " canned " sound

Could someone please explain how a Horn is supposed to be " coloring " the sound ?

Are there any measurements that proves this stuff ? Although i am very very limited in knowledge/experience here,
my logic red light goes on when i read that horns alther the timbre/colour or sounds like an old radio/grammophone.

Without measurements to correlate, how can one know it wasn't just off in some critical parts ?

Then, beaming "pencil " size at high frequencies, shouldn't that be an error of design and thus not a limitation of horns ?

thanks for the opportunity to learn mates

Do a search for horns and "higher-order modes" or HOMs, and you'll have reading material for a week! Basically: the shape of the horn can make the soundwaves crash and interfere with each other before they leave the horn, and thus change the sound. It is controversial how audible this is though, as there are not a lot of studies on this.

 

[Chromatischism]

Compression drivers frequently have uneven efficiency humps which need to be equalized down to achieve flat response. When this is not done they can exhibit the classic horn sound in the pejorative sense. Klipsch speakers tend to hold on to a lot of this typical horn sound and they sound bright and typically "horny" because of it.

It is totally possible to make compression driver horns sound as refined as any other driver but it takes a lot of work. But in the end it's worth it.

If you want a smoother response you can use a different kind of tweeter.

 

[Sal1950]

I might also be the reverse… where people with low powered tube amps look for speakers with 100 dB sensitivity ratings to get sound out the speakers… and naturally fall into horns.

Not reverse but definitely another side of the same coin.
As many here already know, I ran Klipsch La Scala's for 32 years, the last 20 of them with VTL 80 watt tube monoblocks. IMHO a marriage made in heaven.
Good horns can "make do" with underpowered SET's and other flea power amps.
But feed them with tube amps that have some balls and then the oceans really part.
Horn systems have been near or at the very top of the SOTA since audio day 1
Modern horn designs are incredible. JBL has some of the best with the M2 at the top of the list for home and studio use. Their only major drawback for home use is size, low bass requires a LARGE horn mouth, sometimes you just have to compromise with some type of high-bred, I love my JBL HDI-3600

 

[Snarfie]

I audition some time ago the Uno XD Acoustic avantgard horn speakers to hear the Horn magic. The sub woofer is powered by a 1000 watt Class D amp an the midrange horn you can choose your self when listening it was powered by a Tube amp. Price whole set around 30.000 Euro. No DSP was used.

The first tracks that where played were mostly small assemble like jazz trio ore 1 of 2 instruments well recorded combined sometimes with a voice piano. The sound is balanced and sometimes quite impressive but forward sounding less imaging. The exeption was (due too the woofer combined with the 1000 watt class D amp) The Eagles Hell Freezes Over - Hotel California a well recored live performance with an impressive bass drum (second 35) that must come close to the original SPL.

But when i ask for Steely Dan Aja an some similar music their was some reluctant reaction to put it up volume got down an the sound was quite average IMO. This is not the first time when i auditioning high end gear/ speakers always auditioned with quiet minimal complex music is presented. Probably to avoid the negative impression (due to room modes, bad recordings what have you) that could be around the corner an has to be avoided. When I brought up DSP/Room correction again he was quite reluctant to discuss DSP he practically (in a polite manner) avoided the question more or less. His short answer was it's up to the client to use DSP we can assist with that. I am tempted to give my subjective impression when i came back home an listen to exactly the same music on my 700,- second hand gear with room correction. Let i say this it is for me by far not worth spending 30.000 Euro but again that is a subjective opinion. Mabey when he treathed his room or used DSP i got another comperable impression.

 

[Holmz]

Yeah… I have some VTL 100 W/ch mopnoblocks, but theyore like a mono as one seems to have died.
I have it at a shop to rehabilitate it, so we’ll see.
The PrimaLuna is not overly forceful on my old speakers, but it sounds decent in UltraLinear mode… So that is what is behind things now.
(But I did like the VTLs between rebuilding sessions.)

Anyhow I did get a chance to hear the MA speakers a couple of weeks agp. It was sighted and I am biased… but there was nothing wrong with them, and the bass was surprisingly authoritative.

When I say nothing wrong with them, it is a compliment as usually wrong is easy to find.
I could gush on about the strings and piano in some unobtainable vinyl etc…
So… basically they sounded pretty good.
But I do not fully trust my ears, and await them to show up in Alabama for some objective data.

 

[Newman]

Could someone please explain how a Horn is supposed to be "coloring" the sound ?

Basically because it is impossible for a horn to be so perfect that no waves reflect back from the end of the horn and cancel some of the subsequent sound, with a delay and a dip in the frequency response, at several frequencies (at least). The lumpy FR and the delay combine to make the sound coloured.

This happens at (a) in-band frequencies (in the range that the horn is meant to work in) and especially for (b) out-of-band low frequencies below the design range of the horn. The latter could be prevented by an infinitely steep crossover, but that is also impossible and in fact many traditional horn speakers have quite low-order crossovers.

Then, beaming "pencil " size at high frequencies, shouldn't that be an error of design and thus not a limitation of horns ?

No it is not an error of design.

The traditional purpose of a horn is to maximise the efficiency of a driver, plus deliver a flat FR to the extent possible. The horn that does this perfectly will by design narrow its beam as the frequency goes up.

However, the modern purpose of a horn-like attachment to a driver is to keep the beam width constant, without special regard to efficiency or flatness of FR, because high efficiency is less critical with modern high-power affordable amps, and the FR can be returned to flat with digital EQ (and even more amp power). These modern devices are usually called waveguides, since their purpose is to guide the wave to a specified goal. They are actually quite a different thing to a traditional horn, despite similar appearance.

Cheers

 

[Bjorn]

The combination of a horn with constant directivity and narrow dispersion actually leads to a frequency response in the listening position which is much more even compared to most speaker designs.

As example below with a 2-way horn design meausured in the listening position. 1/12 Oct. smoothing and we see very little comb filtering here. Apologies for somewhat low resolution on the y-axis, but response is within 2.5 dB if we look away from the increasing level towards the lows. This horn requires a subwoofer by the way.

Horns become large though to achieve a uniform directivity down to the schroeder frequency. And even bigger if the beamwidth is low. A horn like JBL M2 would be considered very small and even JBLs 2384 cinema horn is also small for a horn. The directivity collapses high in frequency.

Obviously the frequency response in the room we listen to is most important. However, a well designed horn can also measures very even on-axis anechoic, and it doesn't have to be a waveguide to achieve that. Active crossover does help for sure.

 

[Tom Danley]

Damn that's some long ass thread in mate ... not going to read it all unfortunately

So in the first few pages, i've read quite a few times something like " colored " or " canned " sound

Could someone please explain how a Horn is supposed to be " coloring " the sound ?

Are there any measurements that proves this stuff ? Although i am very very limited in knowledge/experience here,
my logic red light goes on when i read that horns alther the timbre/colour or sounds like an old radio/grammophone.

Without measurements to correlate, how can one know it wasn't just off in some critical parts ?

Then, beaming "pencil " size at high frequencies, shouldn't that be an error of design and thus not a limitation of horns ?

thanks for the opportunity to learn mates

Hi
Horns are like all acoustic devices, they have strengths and weaknesses and these are both inherent and dependent on the execution.
A couple things, if your outside, the only sound you hear from the loudspeaker is the sound from the loudspeaker, you do not hear sound projected to either side of your head. For that one spot, directivity doesn't matter and for a single acoustic source, mag and phase are tied together and so EQ corrects both.

All that changes in a room where you do also hear the sound projected to the sides and these arrivals arrive behind the direct sound and interferes with the solidity of the phantom effect in the stereo image. While many focus on the loudspeaker at 1 meter, an advantage horns have is that with increasing directivity, more of the signal arrives "intact" at the listening position so in that regard measurements don't reveal what you get on the couch unless you measure and compare at the couch..

In both situations the loudspeaker can also radiate "late" information which harms the phantom image and makes it easy to located the loudspeaker's depth location with ones eyes closed, and so also stand out as part of the stereo image instead of disappearing in it.

Early horn systems often had "horn honk" and in the cases i have looked at and designed, this was often the effect of the impedance peaks in the driver effecting the crossover's combined response. Often where the peak in the response was, there was a peak in the impedance. Understand that the idea of using the loudspeaker's impedance curve as the load in a Pspice like model is a fairly new thing. Unless your load is a resistor, you can't use crossover formula's out of a cookbook haha. If you need a passive crossover with a non-traditional slope/shape, connected to a real driver, your only option is a computer.
Hope that helps
Tom Danley

 

[dasdoing]

The combination of a horn with constant directivity and narrow dispersion actually leads to a frequency response in the listening position which is much more even compared to most speaker designs.

As example below with a 2-way horn design meausured in the listening position. 1/12 Oct. smoothing and we see very little comb filtering here. Apologies for somewhat low resolution on the y-axis, but response is within 2.5 dB if we look away from the increasing level towards the lows. This horn requires a subwoofer by the way.
View attachment 168557



Horns become large though to achieve a uniform directivity down to the schroeder frequency. And even bigger if the beamwidth is low. A horn like JBL M2 would be considered very small and even JBLs 2384 cinema horn is also small for a horn. The directivity collapses high in frequency.

Obviously the frequency response in the room we listen to is most important. However, a well designed horn can also measures very even on-axis anechoic, and it doesn't have to be a waveguide to achieve that. Active crossover does help for sure.

How does the D&D 8c do it though without horn?

 

[Bjorn]

How does the D&D 8c do it though without horn?

It's a cardioid speaker which can yield a very uniform directivity.

A cardioid speaker has a horizontal directivity of 120°. Large horns usually have narrower horizontal dispersion, most in the area of 80-90° but his can vary. The wider directivity of the cardioid means the room will influence more and cause more comb filtering. But the biggest difference would be vertically where large horns are much narrower (often around 50° beamwidth), hence avoiding floor and ceiling reflections to a larger degree.
Large horns can also avoid the floor bounce.

So cardioids seldom measure as flat as large horn speakers when placed in small rooms. The cardioide pattern also come with a drawback, that is higher distortion. While the drivers in a horn are simply cruising with very low modulation distortion. Perhaps the latter is the major reason why such speakers can sound so realistic.

 

[Da cynics]

Basically: the shape of the horn can make the soundwaves crash and interfere with each other before they leave the horn, and thus change the sound.

Basically because it is impossible for a horn to be so perfect that no waves reflect back from the end of the horn and cancel some of the subsequent sound, with a delay and a dip in the frequency response, at several frequencies (at least). The lumpy FR and the delay combine to make the sound coloured.

I think it's a reasonable suspicion
hit the horn before hitting the wall of the room ...

 

[dasdoing]

It's a cardioid speaker which can yield a very uniform directivity.

A cardioid speaker has a horizontal directivity of 120°. Large horns usually have narrower horizontal dispersion, most in the area of 80-90° but his can vary. The wider directivity of the cardioid means the room will influence more and cause more comb filtering. But the biggest difference would be vertically where large horns are much narrower (often around 50° beamwidth), hence avoiding floor and ceiling reflections to a larger degree.
Large horns can also avoid the floor bounce.

So cardioids seldom measure as flat as large horn speakers when placed in small rooms. The cardioide pattern also come with a drawback, that is higher distortion. While the drivers in a horn are simply cruising with very low modulation distortion. Perhaps the latter is the major reason why such speakers can sound so realistic.

the horizontal looks pretty similar to a constant directivity horn. but yea, the wide vertical, though controled, is probably less optimal....at least for a fixed listening position.
I am allready flirting with a horn speaker, but a PA one, since it is the cheapest option to enter here in Brazil: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...e-array-speakers-can-do-it.28431/#post-986434

 

[Bjorn]

the horizontal looks pretty similar to a constant directivity horn. but yea, the wide vertical, though controled, is probably less optimal....at least for a fixed listening position.
I am allready flirting with a horn speaker, but a PA one, since it is the cheapest option to enter here in Brazil: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...e-array-speakers-can-do-it.28431/#post-986434

That's not a speaker that will not work well in a home due to serious vertical combing and lobing. It needs a huge distance to the listeners for the drivers to sum properly.

 

[Kvalsvoll]

Radiation control using acoustic ports is possible as an alternative to horn - you get the sound character with impact and realism and clarity, but in a much smaller size.

One important difference between a large horn with pattern control down in the 100-200hz range compared to the usual hifi-speaker is the immediacy and impact on transients. But this virtue is not a result of principle, it is a result of radiation pattern. So if something similar can be achieved using a different approach, it should also present a similar sound. And it does.

Having actually compared with and without port radiation control on the same speaker, it is evident that it makes a difference, and the difference is towards more impact, less blur, more clarity, more solid and defined rendering of images, with ports in function.

Here, as always, it comes down to implementation in the specific design. you still need drivers with proper capacity, and the design of the pattern is important.

What you do not get, is the spl capacity to play loud in a ballroom. But that is not necessary, in a normal, small listening room.

 

[Bjorn]

Radiation control using acoustic ports is possible as an alternative to horn - you get the sound character with impact and realism and clarity, but in a much smaller size.

One important difference between a large horn with pattern control down in the 100-200hz range compared to the usual hifi-speaker is the immediacy and impact on transients. But this virtue is not a result of principle, it is a result of radiation pattern. So if something similar can be achieved using a different approach, it should also present a similar sound. And it does.

Having actually compared with and without port radiation control on the same speaker, it is evident that it makes a difference, and the difference is towards more impact, less blur, more clarity, more solid and defined rendering of images, with ports in function.

Here, as always, it comes down to implementation in the specific design. you still need drivers with proper capacity, and the design of the pattern is important.

What you do not get, is the spl capacity to play loud in a ballroom. But that is not necessary, in a normal, small listening room.

I don't agree that "horn sound" with it's ability to sound more realistic is a primary function of the radiation pattern. There are a good number of speakers out there with narrower dispersion pattern, similar to horn, but they still sound nothing like a large horn speaker IMO.

However, I do agree that better clarity and imaging is achieved when the directivity of the speaker minimizes early specular energy. Same is achievable with acoustic treatment.

 

[Bjorn]

How does the D&D 8c do it though without horn?

Take notice that the D&D vary quite considerably in horizontal directivity. Perhaps with as much as 70°. Difficult to say exact because the polar graph has such low resolution.


A well designed constant directivity horn can be within 5-10° from lows to highs. One of the neat things with such a design is that one move around in the room, and the response will be very similar as long you're inside the beamwith of the speaker.

 

[bigjacko]

Compression drivers frequently have uneven efficiency humps which need to be equalized down to achieve flat response. When this is not done they can exhibit the classic horn sound in the pejorative sense. Klipsch speakers tend to hold on to a lot of this typical horn sound and they sound bright and typically "horny" because of it.

It is totally possible to make compression driver horns sound as refined as any other driver but it takes a lot of work. But in the end it's worth it.

Thanks for sharing. So compression drivers have frequency response problems, I assume horns can have problems too. Which one will likely to have problem and cause worse problem? I don't have much knowledge on how the compression can affect the driver, do you have some good information on this? Thank you very much.

 

[MakeMineVinyl]

Thanks for sharing. So compression drivers have frequency response problems, I assume horns can have problems too. Which one will likely to have problem and cause worse problem? I don't have much knowledge on how the compression can affect the driver, do you have some good information on this? Thank you very much.

Compression drivers don't have 'problems' any more than any other type of driver. You will need to look at the compression driver manufacturer's data sheet to determine what if any equalization needs to take place. Then there's the room, which will almost always dictate some level of EQ, not to mention your listening preferences. Speaker manufacturers routinely voice (EQ) their speakers in the passive crossover networks to some degree depending on the sound signature they use as their identity.

 

[Kvalsvoll]

There are a good number of speakers out there with narrower dispersion pattern, similar to horn, but they still sound nothing like a large horn speaker IMO

They may not be quite so similar, if you look further into the data. And there are other reasons many speakers do not have this realism.

A horn would also be my choice, if it was not for the size. It is difficult to achieve the same pattern using other methods, a horn is just much easier to deal with. But considering size and appearance - if most of the same can be had in this much smaller package, it is a no-brainer. It does not need to be exactly equal, it does not need to be just as good, it just needs to be able to bring out this sense of liveliness and realism and presence, when listening to music.

And it is possible to achieve a sense of realism and impact and presence, using acoustic ports to control the pattern. Is it equally good, as a much larger horn - hard to say, without comparing directly. What I can say, is that all this collapses when disabling the port directivity control. And this difference is there even if the room has good acoustic absorption in the upper bass - low midrange. The speaker I am testing this with is very small, the difference may well be smaller if starting with something with a 15" or 12" direct radiating midrange.

With directivity control in function, something interesting happens to the presentation. Disabling the ports leaves a nice speaker with boring sound similar to most small speakers.

 

[JeanKazamer]

Thanks all for the superb info, learning and researching is so fun

Is there some kind of definition to seperate " horns " and " waveguides " ?
Some set values from which it transition perhaps? or are those interchangeable now