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In the Forum: Horn-Loaded Speakers
In the Thread: Bill Gaw: over 50 years of high-end audio experience and time aligned horns.
Post Subject: My system changePosted by Bill on: 10/30/2025
Have been experimenting with audio systems since 1963, and finally obtained what I consider to be nirvana (so far of course) about two weeks ago. Since then I’ve been afraid to touch anything on my system for fear of loss of what I’m hearing.
To begin, my system consists of a Trinnov altitude 16 pre pro using 8 of its channels to act as fourth order crossovers and driver volume balancers and time alignment for my main speakers. The other 12 channels are used for the Auro derived surround channels. The main left, right channels consist of JL Aufio 13 inch class d driven sobwoofers, self built Edgar designed five foot woofers with two EV12 drivers each, Edgar 14 inch round horns with Vitavox S3 drivers and Tannoy red tweeters from Tannoy 12 inch drivers. These are driven by Romy,s Amp X amplifiers. Crossovers are set at 50, 400 and 10,000 Hz. And I am using the altitude's type five frequency curve with 20-80 volume at +5 dB, 0 dB 80 to 1000 Hz. - 4 dB up. I will leave the surround speakers out as Romy prefers stereo and his observations derive from that.
The room walls are 16 front to 17 ft. Back, 27 to 28 feet long and 14 ft. tall, with 1 inch thick fiber board walls with 12 inches of paper type insulation. The walls have 8 diffusion grates at various points, and absorption panels at the first reflection points of main speakers. Three of the corners have 8 foot piles of 18 x 18 inch triangles of fiberglass insulation for bass standing wave control.
Electricity noise is controlled by several units in tandem giving almost dead silence from the 105 dB horns.
This was my room until the final change which gave the difference. Sound was very good from 80 Hz. Up but the bass was ok with Romy always commenting that “there's something wrong with it. I could never obtain what he had in his room. He did love the way the room gave an enveloping sound effect with stereo recordings, but agreed there was something missing in the bass and blamed it on my non Vitavox subwoofers. But bore blame on them I guess after the below revelation.
That was until I looked at what the Trinnov company had developed with their software allowing rear room subwoofers to negatively time align with the bass waves bouncing off the back wall, negating them and stopping muddying of the bass and low frequency standing waves. As I didn't have enough channels of pre amplification to run heir system I tried to figure out a way to obtain this effect. After watching some YouTube info on sound absorption of bass, I got the idea of using fiberglass batts. I chose
AFB Acoustical Fire Batts, Mineral Wool Insulation, Sound Deadening, Heat Resistant, 2-inch, Case of 6 from Amazon.com as that would give 12 inches of sound absorption and theoretically 24 inches when placed 12 inches from rear wall. That gives a pretty good absorption down to 40 Hz. And lower plus being in cardboard boxes would be less harmful to the rooms air and ambiance. I did cut out the cardboard fronts to absorb all frequencies.
That was the room difference that made all the difference in the sound. Just six boxes of the absorption covering about half of the back wall.All for a total of $600 delivered free by Amazon. On first listen, all became well with the world and my sound room. I do prefer listening in Auro 3d surround to both stereo and sacd 6 channel and Auro 7.1.4 surround, while Romy prefers stereo, but in both cases I,ve finally obtained bass that sounds real concert hall from great recordings. Romy seems to agree.Anthony, I would recommend trying the trinnov crossovers on your main speakers and experimenting with their four different frequency curves to see what can be obtained compared to diddling with passive crossovers.
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