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In the Forum: Audio For Dummies ™
In the Thread: Do not pursue full-range without being ready.
Post Subject: Sure, it is okay to experiment.Posted by Romy the Cat on: 3/11/2007
 drdna wrote:
I find the sound of my horn loudspeakers very satisfying, and by the way I have the EdgarHorn Titans, which may make you chuckle if you are a horn snob, but I think they do a very good job, one of the best commercially available horn system out there in my opinion.  I am not educated enough to know how to build my own horns, but I like the sound of the Edgar horn quite a bit. 

Anyway, I found that when I turn on the subwoofer for the Titans, which as you know is a giant refrigerator sized downward pointing horn, the music just becomes more "real."  The best way I can describe this is that whenever I am listening to music on the stereo, there is a little bit of tension because it is not the same as being at a live concert.  With the lower frequencies added by the subwoofer, there is a relaxation of the music and the presentation goes away from the unnatural soundstage of being able to pinpoint the location of the violin player more to the way you see the violin player shifting in her seat when you are at a live concert.

In fact I think the soundstage effect is an example of what happens when your stereo is missing something.  As I modify and improve (?) my stereo, the soundstage is less dominant, and the feeling of listening to live music becomes more prominent.

Lately, Romy, you have been saying again how people should not try to expans certain aspects of their stereo until they have become comfortable with what they have, but my question is still how do you know when you are comfortable, and shouldn't we look at the deficiencies in the stereo and see if modifications can improve things? 

For me, I think it is okay to experiment, because I never know what will make a difference in my system, and I think you can never know really where the deficiencies are (although you can have strong suspicions!) so I try it and see.  Sometimes, it is a flop, but it always is an educational experience.
Adrian,

I do not think that YOUR example with EdgarHorn might be illustrative as Titans are not self-contained loudspeakers that by design must be used with externals a complimentary LF sections. Not to mention that the Edgar’s refrigerator horns are far from worst and that the Titans (the “ordinals” with smaller upperbass driver and bend horn, not the newest “straight” version) were OK performers. I think your question “When to try full range?” is not exactly accurate. It is always a good idea to try full range. The point that I was making is that extend HF and LF response very frequently masks out a poor performance in “simple” 60Hz and 12KHz range. Also, the point was that BADLY implemented frequency extensions very frequently, if not always, make the enter playback to sound worst. Let me give me an example what I meant about your LF section. Unplug your Edgar’s refrigerator and forget about it for a while. Bring home any typical well-regarded by the Morons-reviewers subwoofers: for instance the top of the line Kharmas, mid-line REL or the similar. Listen your “naked” Titans, without any extra LF and get accustomed to it. Then compliment the sound with a subwoofer. Sure you will have more… whatever you descried but at the same time you will loose some “interesting” things in the sound of your Titans upper bass. It will not be necessary because your poor integrations practice but because the crap-sound from that Kharmas Ceramic will screw up everything and you will be able to do NOTHING. You will learn eventually that you prefer to stay with LF-underdeveloped sound of the originals Titans then to contaminate them with poison sound of the wrong LF solutions. So, it is not a surprise that most of hi-fi speakers do sound better when they high-passed with a large coil….

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