Building a world-class Horn system for Small Rooms

After nearly 7 years, I think it's time to create a thread for my journey, in the hopes that it may inspire or help others with their own audiophile ambitions. My hypothesis was that world-class reproduction could be achieved in a small (~11'5" x 12'8" x 7'8) room. I think I have achieved it. I will post more photos and videos of playback over the next few months.

While my audiophile journey started many years before, the desire to create a world-class (almost) no holes barred system for my media room started with a visit to Oswald's Mill Audio (OMA) in Brooklyn and reading their (now removed) DIY meet summaries ("OMA Tastings"). If you have never heard a well-designed horn system close this window and go and find one, then come back. OMA has a beautiful showroom in Brooklyn. You should also listen to the Klipsch Jubilee at HiFi Loft in NYC (I have no affiliation and have never been). Be careful with horns from other manufacturers - not saying there aren't others, but it's more hit than miss.

 

Do you know what the silver binding post-like connectors are on the crossover? I'm looking for a way to incorporate mid and tweeter resistors on a crossover and these might work for me.

you can use theese

AN-STR-10-TE Silver Plated Tellurium Copper Speaker Terminals 10mm | HIFICollective

AN-STR-10-TE Silver Plated Tellurium Copper Speaker Terminals 10mm

www.hificollective.co.uk

 

you can use theese

AN-STR-10-TE Silver Plated Tellurium Copper Speaker Terminals 10mm | HIFICollective

AN-STR-10-TE Silver Plated Tellurium Copper Speaker Terminals 10mm

www.hificollective.co.uk

These are silver plated copper with really stiff springs. They also have rubber covers which I left on in my crossovers.

This is one of my charge-coupled networks in my system

 

Russian PIOs

 

Zeotrope, if at sometime in the future you are blessed with a more commodious listening room I suggest that you acquire horn loaded subwoofers to complement your beautiful horns. Nothing blends more seamlessly with horns than other horns.

Just seeing this now… there is a transmission line active sub which (to my ears) blends very well. You can’t hear any of the drivers.

 

More

Beautiful!
Do you know where the turnbuckles that connect the bass horns to the metal frame were sourced from?

 

Beautiful!
Do you know where the turnbuckles that connect the bass horns to the metal frame were sourced from?

I built them using Stainless pushrod ends, left and right handed stainless all thread, stainless lock nuts and stainless turnbuckle bodies from Johnson Marine.

eso

 

Quantity of these were purchased by Cogent many years ago. Not sure if they are available anywhere.

I have a small quantity of them. How many are you looking for? I might be able to part with a couple.

eso

Thanks so much for the kind offer. I was mainly interested in knowing what kind they were because I've been researching binding post options lately. I feel like I've seen every type ever made (hundreds?) but I didn't recognize those. I'll let you know if they might work for me when I get a little closer to putting mine together. At this point I'm not even sure how many I'll need. I'd say anywhere between 4 and 10.

 

I started my horn journey with a diy conical ATH 450s with 1.5" JBL2436be drivers on Tannoy GRFs (used as mid bass & down).
This grew adding 12 sided conical mid horns, then to conical mid bass horns, then Tapped horn subs. Raal Lazy ribbon tweeters for the full 5 way.
I started out passive X/Os then passive 5 amping, then DSP for the X/Os and room mode control at 30Hz only.

I evolved it to Tractric profiles on the Upper mid (replacing the ATH-450s) with Vitavox S2 drivers and T200 horns on mids , either JBL2482 or BMS 2" drivers.
The large conical mid bass were replaced by longer exponential profiles.
I then got further refinement from Le Cléach profiles for the upper mid or lower HF.
Room size 7m X 3.7m

I refined the time alignment and phase alignment and thought I'd really got as far as could be taken..

I then built a pair of Danley SH50 (4 sided conical Multi Entry Horns) replicas.

Once I sorted the X/Os and phase linearity out and put HF drivers on I really liked there really was no going back.
The tapped horn subs have remained the whole time.

These perform in normal sized room far better than a bunch of greater than 1/4 wavelength distance horns can.
The bass from 55Hz up has impressive kick. Had 2 X 12" drivers with both horn and reflex loading - neat trick Tom Danley.
The kick bass is something you'll struggle with unless you can get over 4m away from front loaded mid bass horns. Not so with the Danley reps.
The tapped horns only have to do 55hz to 20Hz, something they cover really well.

If I had to have an even smaller room I'd do for SM60 replicas. These are even more compact.
I'd still have at least I've tapped horn for the deep stuff.

Big horn systems are great in larger rooms.
For smaller and larger rooms, a hifi oriented Multi Entry Horn really does have advantages I can hear.

The return to conical profile really highlighed the room interference you get with rolled over horn mouths.

My early 45deg conicals were a bit too direct.
The 50 SH profile I have no issues with.
They image very well too, 55Hz and up is all single point source.

Huge respect and props to Tom Danley for the design.