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

[Audionaut]

The majority of audio enthusiasts will never install acoustic treatments

Yes, of course they do, but usually without intending to. A large wool rug or curtains and drapes work wonders.

I've often wondered about people who've renovated and made everything pretty clean designed and wondered why it suddenly sounds so bad - when nothing has been changed to the equipment.

What I always ask myself in this thread, although it rarely deals with the actual topic, is whether full-range horns are meant, or those that use conventional woofer in the bass and horns in the treble and midrange.
A big difference.

 

[HiMu]

Thanks for the measurement data. I think it confirms that some of the claims are exaggerated. His real goal seems to be at all costs to avoid having a crossover in the vocal range of 250-2000 Hz. But the resultant response and beam width control in that range is somewhat ragged and could probably be surpassed with an elegant crossover-based design. Personally I think that this idea, that desperately avoiding a crossover in the main vocal region is bound to improve sound quality, is an audiophile myth and leads to certain designs being overrated.

cheers

The revised version has crossover points: 120Hz & 1.2kHz.
In the first video he speaks about the issues of that design and plans on trying different drivers in the future iterations etc. I'm not picking up any of the audiophile myths that you refer to, I think he is just the opposite. He has quite a bit of blog posts on the designs if you're interested https://josephcrowe.com/blogs/news

And no, I'm not a fanboy or owner of any of his designs, way out of my price bracket.

 

[Arindal]

large wool rug or curtains and drapes work wonders.

Negative wonders in case of horn speakers in many cases. All sorts of thick fabric commonly found in living rooms tend to overdampen treble and leave (lower) midrange untouched. Many non-constant directivity horn speakers have a similar problem with narrowing radiation pattern towards higher frequencies and very directional treble. The two phenomena add up, leading to some kind of midrange-heavy, muddled reverb, like everything comes through a, well, horn (the brass instrument).

His real goal seems to be at all costs to avoid having a crossover in the vocal range of 250-2000 Hz.

I don´t see any dogmatic choice of crossover frequencies at play at the prototype. Surely, an ´avoid vocal range rule´ would be nonsense, but with such a combination of horns and drivers there can be numerous reasons to choose a higher x-over frequency. The final concept, as @HiMu has remarked, crosses at 1.2K which is kind of in the middle of that vocal/formant region.

 

[Bjorn]

That's another dicussion point from Toole's book. Unlike he says, felt and a carpet doesn't absorb well. It doesn't absorp particular even or well in the higher frequencies and doesn't go low enough.

I'm a big fan of low crossover. Even with an active design, the difference is easy to hear. Also when there's no lobing. Driver interference is real and audible IMO.

 

[Arindal]

I'm a big fan of low crossover. Even with an active design, the difference is easy to hear.

Easy to hear as you alter the directivity and frequency range of lobing?

Would say, it very much depends on the drivers in question and how they perform around potential crossover freq. I would personally leave some reserve and adjust the crossover according to polar plots and listening test results.

 

[Bjorn]

Easy to hear as you alter the directivity and frequency range of lobing?

Would say, it very much depends on the drivers in question and how they perform around potential crossover freq. I would personally leave some reserve and adjust the crossover according to polar plots and listening test results.

Easy to hear when directivity doesn't change either, and there's no lobing as I already mentioned.

 

[Newman]

Thanks for the measurement data. I think it confirms that some of the claims are exaggerated. His real goal seems to be at all costs to avoid having a crossover in the vocal range of 250-2000 Hz. But the resultant response and beam width control in that range is somewhat ragged and could probably be surpassed with an elegant crossover-based design. Personally I think that this idea, that desperately avoiding a crossover in the main vocal region is bound to improve sound quality, is an audiophile myth and leads to certain designs being overrated.

cheers

The revised version has crossover points: 120Hz & 1.2kHz.
In the first video he speaks about the issues of that design and plans on trying different drivers in the future iterations etc. I'm not picking up any of the audiophile myths that you refer to, I think he is just the opposite.

I was picking up on the linked video with measurements, where he says at 11:44 "...we're trying to get maximum bandwidth through that critical midrange, that vocal range where we want everything to be done by the same driver, and so what I am trying to achieve here is 200/300 Hz starting point covered all the way up to 5 kHz with one driver solution..."

cheers

 

[Bjorn]

A crossover at 5 KHz isn't better IMO at one around 1.5-2.5 KHz.

When we get above 10 KHz we're a lot more sensitive but in this region it's very difficult to avoid some nasty lobing.

 

[babadono]

What I always ask myself in this thread, although it rarely deals with the actual topic, is whether full-range horns are meant, or those that use conventional woofer in the bass and horns in the treble and midrange.
A big difference.

Yes Sir...horn loaded bass is sublime. The dynamics and relative freedom from IM distortion. And effortless realistic SPL. Ain't no going back for me.

 

[dped90]

Imagine asking a group of people who’ve only eaten fast food their entire lives to rate different meals. If you gave them a choice between a gourmet, carefully prepared dish with subtle flavors and a greasy fast-food burger packed with salt, sugar, and fat, most of them would probably prefer the burger.


But that doesn’t mean the burger is a more "accurate" or "better" meal from a culinary standpoint. It just means people tend to prefer what they're accustomed to. Their taste buds are conditioned for strong, immediate flavors, not balance and nuance.

Again, I'm no expert but where I side with Newman is that with constant directivity horns-as opposed to exponential horns where dispersion narrow towards the the higher frequencies-while they may cause more late (sidewall) reflections this can (subjectively) enhance the sound by creating (however in artificially) spaciousness. And yes, if the listener finds that those reflections become excessive-with most of his music collection, then-and perhaps only then-should he be inclined to acoustically treat the room, and which I would think in most cases will hardly require tearing into sheet rock, much less "floating" the room-assuming they don't have a square or other badly shaped room of a given size.

As one who has designed both wide and narrow uniform directivity speakers, and have done AB comparisons many times in different rooms and with different acoustic treatment I find the Tool research on this not to be trusted much.

It's highly dependent on the dimension of the room, acoustic treatment, type of music material, time of span you listen to, and probably also the listener preference or mood of the day.

When did for example one of these researcher take proper diffusion into account? The Harman room for instance removes rear reflections, which is first of quite psychoacoustic detrimental (according to other and earlier studies), and will highly effect the result.

I think we need to stop looking at minor studies with mostly short listening tests conducted in a certain room with certain treatment (or no treatment) and try to make objective and general conclusions.

I fully agree, particularly given the fact that most of accessible absorbers are not showing an even absorption grade over different frequency bands, so in many cases contributing to even more colourated reverb.

But even if this is true why do most home users, whether they use REW or other room mode measuring software to acoustically treat the room and/or then use "convolving" (?)
software (e.g DIRAC Live) to fine tune the room/system, nearly always report greatly improved sound? And how likely would they say that sound improved as if they were now listening to a pair of highly directional JMLC horns more so than the spacious sound they were seeking? https://horns-diy.pl/horns/jmlc/jmlc-350/

Thus, with constant directivity horns, the user may or may not end up having to substantially tweak the acoustics of his room more so than with horns like these, at least for a two-way speaker system. https://josephcrowe.com/products/es-600-bi-radial-horn-3d-cad-file

3D CAD plans for ES-290 Biradial Horn -- Horn No.1670

By purchasing these plans you'll automatically receive the 3D CAD files for the ES-290 Biradial Horn No.1670 via email. Zipped Folder Includes: .STL files for 3D Printing (Assembly and part files) .STEP, .iges, & .x_t files for CNC Machine CAM programming Does not include CNC programming...

josephcrowe.com

However, in fairness it's evident from the sonograms of those horns that Troy Crowe seems to have intended to offer somewhat of a balance of direct sound with spacious sound.

 

[Flaesh]

Troy Crowe

Thank you. I thought Cowe's name was Joseph

 

[Da cynics]

This is also interesting


Danley Receives Provisional Patent For New Cohearix Lens Technology

Danley Receives Provisional Patent For New Cohearix Lens Technology

Danley Sound Labs announces the receipt of a provisional patent on a new acoustic lens technology. | Danley Sound Labs announces the receipt of a provisional patent on a new acoustic lens technology. Dubbed Cohearix Lens Technology, the technology will be used in development of new Danley...

www.livedesignonline.com

Discussion Thread.
Looks like some people are on the production side.

Danley Cohearix

Looks like it's That Time Again, where I make a semi-educated guess about a new Danley invention. Been at this for a while, here are my previous threads: 1) This one didn't get a lot of attention, but my thread on the Genesis horns provided a TON of information on the Jericho Horns, the...

www.diyaudio.com

 

[Sal1950]

New interesting $295 speaker from HSU Research, the MFL-6 with Don Keele-designed constant directivity horn.
It will be interesting to see some measurements of these since Dr Hsu's speakers seem to always measure decent and punch way
above there $/weight class.
I've owned a number of his products going back to his first subwoofer in 1990. Good solid reliable builds.
Amir measured one of his last small speakers of which I still have a 5 in the closet if anyones interested.

HSU HB-1 MK2 Review (Horn Speaker)

This is a review and detailed measurements of the HSU HB-1 MK 2 bookshelf speaker. It is on kind loan from a member and costs US $169 each as of this writing (normal price $199). I can't say I am a fan of the industrial looking horn but otherwise, the HB-1 looks fine: As you see, it uses a...

www.audiosciencereview.com