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Horn-Loaded Speakers
Topic: Building, Lurching and Leaps of Faith

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Posted by Romy the Cat on 06-06-2010
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The relationship between horn-loaded loudspeakers users and honk sound that some horns tend to produce migh be stratified by the following sequential categories.

1)      Ignorant hate
2)      Ignorant acceptance
3)      Dealing with it
4)      Mature dealing with it
5)      Mature hate
6)      Creative use.

I will briefly explain each category.

1)  The “Ignorant hate” covers 95% of all direct radiator users. They heard some ignorantly-made or crappie old horns, they heard the horrible honk and the caped sound. They hated it and they invented for themselves the term “horn sound”.  They are uninformed and not familiar with reasons, consequences or better results and they hate what they heard, not knowing that what they heard were not horns sound but the sound of badly designed or Ignorant implemented acoustic system.

2)  The Ignorant acceptance is a second step in the Honk Evolution. Some people are deaf, stupid or do not care and they get some of those “ignorantly-made or crappie old horns”. I would estimate that 30% of hors user in this stage. The worship their honky playback – there is nothing wrong with it. It is like living with ugly women: if you like her then she does not look ugly to you and this is all that counts. Despite that at this stage there is a perfect balance between owner requirement and the actual result the actual sounds of those people is still unnaturally honky and might not be considered as acceptable from perspective of “advanced audio and evolved music reproduction techniques”

3)  Next category is the people who “Dealing with it.”  They are probably 80% of all users from former “Ignorant acceptance” category. They head the hone from their playback, they do not like it and they are willing to “tweak” playback to minimize or to eliminate honk. To a degree they are more or less successful, the results are wary greatly.

4)  The most advanced people from the former “Dealing with it” group learned what is necessary to be done in order honk does not show and they form own group: “Mature dealing with it”. They no just tweak but drastically re-design or design  from scratch acoustic systems that are more or less free from honk. They are perhaps 5%-10% of the former category.

5)  The next group is “Mature hate” group and they are the most advanced groups of horn users. They hate honk distortions of any kind and the developed rules for own horns use that virtually made honk appearance imposable. They are literally a few people, I would personally name no more than a dozen of them and there is perhaps a 2-3 times as much out there all together.

6)  There is however another group or I would say not a group but a level of understanding. Most of musical instruments run very ugly Q hyperbolic curve and they are naturally honky. Some people understand that there is Bad honk and there is Good Honk and they know how tweak the rules from the previous level in order acoustic system to produce “good honk” – when it necessary, at proper dynamic level, at right time of pitch’s decay or rise …. It is very hard to estimate the amount of the people who are able to do it. You won’t read about it and you won’t get it from picture or system description. However, this is the most sophisticated level of horns using and no other topology is able to handle the effect.

Rgs, Romy the Cat

Posted by Paul S on 06-08-2010
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Interesting observations and categories. I propose a Bizarro/Direct Radiator mirror using negative numbers, except I have a hard time thinking of anything beyond -3.5, and (I have taken the liberty...) some fractional equivalents might be useful.

I began like a lot of guys did in those days, with Heathkit and Dynakit, old broadcasting stuff, etc., and we were as inquisitive (and as ignorant) as alchemists. We'd get a hold of something, take it apart, turn it inside out, mess it all up, and move on, almost randomly.

Then came Stereophile, in the early/mid 60s. We began to get the idea that there was some really great-sounding stuff out there, if one could afford it, and we also began to think in heirarchical terms that someone else was organizing.

Using the Bizarro numbers, I went from about a -1.5 to a +1.5 to a +2.5, back to +1, to maybe a -3.6

At this point, I would have to try DSET (or some near variant) and more channels to have even so much as a breath of hope for "mature direct radiator hate", which I yet see as a direction rather than a station.

Of people I have known with horns, the majority are +2, and those who are +3 are a good ways from either eliminating horn sound or making it work for the music they play. The most "successful" horns I remember were big Westlake monitors (SM???), but I mean this in terms of "targeted application", and I would not want them in my house.

I sometimes think, if I had the resources and the patience I would start over with multi-channel horns and DSET, except I would not at present waste time with horn LF. However, given my own (in)experience, such a change would be based only on what I can IMAGINE, based on my present listening and tuning skills rather than any direct, personal experience of non-horn-sounding horns. I know it sounds stupid, but I feel as though I have "heard the end of the road" for direct radiators without ever having gotten there.

I realize I will never get horn dynamics with direct radiators; and I still wonder - from a dearth of personal experience, along with the Presumption of Moronity - if anyone actually gets the Tone (without shaping) with horns.

Best regards,
Paul S

Posted by Romy the Cat on 06-08-2010
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 Paul S wrote:
I realize I will never get horn dynamics with direct radiators; and I still wonder … if anyone actually gets the Tone (without shaping) with horns.
I just do not know if “tone” has anything to do with anything. There is absolutely nothing in horns that make them more or less to be tone-enabled or tone-disabled.

The caT

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