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In the Forum: Playback Listening
In the Thread: Basic guide to advanced audio
Post Subject: Horn color controlPosted by Jorge on: 8/2/2011
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I think the usage of Romys Injection Channel has misguided you to think it was implemented because of a certian lack of tone or some sterile sound,  nothing of the sort,  I cannot blame you for not having listened to Romys system,  but theorizing around this sort of untrue assumptions is ridiculous.  I listened to Romys old system,  I am sure the new one sound better,  but let me assure you:  The sound comming from Romys system is packed full of information and tone, texture and color.  When I was at his place he disconected the injection channel for me to notice what it brought to the sound,  I could not really percieve any change in sound,  If anything it was ever so slight; at those levels, It would never be able to inject lacking tone into a system:  It is mainly the masteful adding of a specific spice into an already wonderful meal.  Romy explained: it adds certain notes of red color.

I studied painting for some years with a master, the use of black was forbidden;  you can get even deeper darks by using combinations of red, green and blue hues, the use of black gets color dirty.  Generally shadowing is done just using different shades of the same color: but when a painting comes to life is when hues of a diferent color spike the shades and make the image move.  I imagine Romy felt his systems color would appreciate some tones of red in order to spike the sound even more.  But trust me his sound is an explosion of color.

Most of us here are not newbies trying to get a good sound.  I have been into horns for the past 10 years,  before that I was using Lowthers on open baffle,  I was not a fad then like now.  I had DX3 on open baffle, running with its own amplifier with the xover placed at the coupling cap,  and another PLLXO at the input, under that there were a pair of Altec 416 on modfiied cabinets going from around 150 hz down to 35 hz run by its own EL34 PP amps with an active xover and EQ: Rel Stentor subwoofer under that, and supertweeters cut anywhere from 8 khz to 15 khz.  I played with a lot of old german alnico wide range drivers Saba green with the big magnets, Telefunken 10 incher but my favorite became the Oval telefunkens.  I played with different tweeters,  from paper ones Green Saba, Telefunken with the bolt in the center to Fostex, EV,JBL, Beyma... many others.  Open baffle helped me to learn a lot,  but IMHO they are far away from a horn system.   Now you can get a perfect resolution with that system,  I did  for a long time,  but soundstage is never where it should be,  and you cannot control the response of the speakers like you can with horns.

About horns,  when we choose a driver for its tone,  be certain it is not because it is the least compormised, but because the tone in that one is indeed better than in other ones,  is this hard to comprehend?   I took out Lowthers because I tried the Altec 802 with the 800 hz horns and it blew it away in every respect:  This was already a very good sounding system with the lowthers,  and the Altec 802 is not even one of the top compression drivers.

I agree with you that most of the horns systems around are lacking tone,  there is this generalized wrong usage of horns crossed over to a 15 inch driver at anywhere between 1.2 khz to 500 hz.  Now the tone of a 15 inch driver at 800 hz will never match or even compare to that of the compression driver and this makes for a terrible sound.  But please give us some credit here:  this is not the sound we have.  Without an upper bass horn all bets are off,  and this range is so important we all believe it to be the hardest working channel in a system.  Now the driver used inside this huge 120 hz horn is not a compression driver in my system and Romys,  it is a cone driver of specific qualities, that should match in tone and texture with the compression driver used on top of that.  This driver is used with a back chamber which reactance to the throat is vital for its work (check Romys Problems with horns upper bass),  so the volume of this sealed back chamber is extremely important to the sound.  What happens when a cone driver is placed inside a horn is explosive: its output is augmented by 6 or more db and the cone barely moves, this brings lower distortion with higher sensibility for softer tones, and great dyanimics.  One gets better detail at every level of listening and the real possibility of closer to life dynamics: Now we are always looking for a better driver to place inside a horn! it is some kind of vice we have,  either a compression driver that will go down to 50 hz or a huge magnet cone speaker... This is where I was drooling over a driver like the one you posted!!!

Once you get an upper bass channel; Horns are unbeatable, the tone is there, textures, detailing better that any cone driver plus dyanmics to die for:  Now if there was something better I would run for it,  and I have been looking for a long time.  Adding the Fundamentals Channel will bring in even more control over the color pallete, again; not that there is no color,  but the saturation of tone achievable with this is so incredible and even controlable to ones taste: I am already playing with an injection channel,  getting to know its tone, color, textures and extremes in order to build a perfect horn for it.  Still too far away from an injection channel.  And the sound I have is already very good if I might say so.

I believe we have not even grasped the extended abilities of this type of system and the pshycoacoustical effects achievable through sound:  This thread is an attempt to define what is beyond a Perfect Resolution of the recorded material. Now there are few systems capable of going there:  I know multiple horn systems can,  I hope other topologies could get there too,  but I still never heard them:  And believe me I listened to very well set up cone systems that do a wonderful job at presenting what is in the recording with exeptional soundstage:  I am looking for more input from  systems that can go beyond that.  Romys system is that far beyond,  and my first post was a blunt explanation of how far beyond that is, and an attemp to stat to trace a way of getting there.



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