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In the Forum: Horn-Loaded Speakers
In the Thread: Macondo's Axioms: Horn-loaded acoustic systems
Post Subject: Click zone & Cring factorPosted by jessie.dazzle on: 4/4/2008

Romy wrote :

"...do not forget also while you do your alignment experiments to listen the system from different distance. Get a reference whatever it is and then make a step back and a step forward... You might eventually found a distance from where the "angled sound" will suddenly "click"..."

To help establish the best listening point in the new place, I decided to use an office type chair with wheels (its also nice to slide up to the equipment rack without having to get up!). When doing the tilted horn experiment I did try moving toward and away from the horns.

"...Try to discard the upperbass changes and pay attention only to the frequencies that you are trying to align..."

Yes, I started off listening to music with a lot of violin and cello for exactly that reason, but then realized that because my fundamentals channel goes quite low (700 Hz 1st order), is not attenuated, and was the most steeply tilted, I was curious to know what was going on around the crossover point between this horn and the upper bass... So I started paying attention to that crossover point as well; though I realize that it is less critical.

"...With the parallel horn’s axises the "click zone" will be way larger. I personally tend to recognize that with parallel horns the imaging still better then with the tilted horns and a listener located in the "click zone"..."

Loss of imaging was by far the most noticeable effect with horns tilted. This loss may be more pronounced in my case because I started off with such strong imaging. This capacity for imaging (with horns parallel) may be due to the fact that the top of the upper horn is positioned about 2 ft below the ceiling, which is higher than normal and opens toward the listener (not parallel to the floor). So the stack of horns, with the upper bass horn on the floor and MF + HF in between, is sort of like a line array.

be wrote :

"...I think that Romys preference for non tilting lies in, that by not tilting the horns, the directivity, beaming or on axsis frequency iregularities are avoided, simply by pointing them where they dont do so much harm, below or above the ears..."

A lot of horn users seem to have these issues. I have not heard any other systems using Vitavox S2 drivers, but I know it is possible to get the S2 to generate on-axis unpleasentries. In the case of the system I am building, one can happily sit straight in the firing axis of any of the horns without experiencing the above-mentioned unpleasantries... No cringing. The reason for this I believe is directly related to the fact that I'm not asking each horn to cover such a wide frequency range. In other words, there is a lot of "horn margin" on either side of the frequency range being produced... Which probably looks like a high percentage of wasted horn to some.

jd*

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