Can Some Top Amplifiers Hide or Exacerbate Horn Colorations? Or Are Such Claims about Preference?
- Thread starter caesar
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In a sense, they can. While not changing the horn sound, their character might make the horn's behaviour more or less noticeable. A darker sounding amplifier might benefit a horn more, than a brighter, more forward-sounding one.
No.
FWIW the design of the horn can say a lot about its distortion. These days there are a lot of horns that employ computer optimization in their throat design and tapers in order to avoid artifacts. Put another way a properly designed horn can be quite neutral!
Its usually a bad idea to try to compensate something bright with something dark in an attempt to arrive at a synergy. Inevitably it leads to either frequency response errors and/or more distortion.
Better to have everything in the system stand on their merits rather than their weaknesses. This isn't about cost either, FWIW.
I think that many (?most) modern costly commercial horn systems produce far less "distortion" than most people associate with horns. In decades past, horn design was pretty-much essential for high efficiency, or where speakers had to deliver sound to large audiences. Low powered valve amps necessitated these horn designs.
We used to associate horns with old gramophones and public address systems. Often horns were built with flat material or material crudely bent in a single curve, eg steel sheet in PA systems or wood in home horn systems. More recently computer design and modern mouldable materials have allowed designs to offer high efficiency with little of the previously virtually inevitable distortion. The big advantage from the driver's point of view is that it can work well without exerting itself - cone movements are small and the coil remains in the optimal magnetic field that is often not possible in low efficiency speakers where hugely greater cone movement are required for the same volume at the listening position.
This means that well-designed horns can deliver the detail and excitement factor one normally only hears at a live performance. The downside is the relatively small sweet spot, but horn users have to accept this.
In my view there is little point in going for horn speakers with their lively, lifelike sound, only to dull the sound with an amp that doesn't similarly offer the lively and exciting sound in sympathy with the horns.
In moving from valve / tube amps 3 years ago to solid state, I wanted to retain the complimentary features offered by valves so that the excitement factor wasn't dulled. I bought or borrowed a dozen amps of Class A, AB or D and it was enlightening to see (hear) what huge differences there were. Some amps that are raved about in reviews were as dull as ditch-water when powering my horns, to the degree I was left with little better elevator music - Benchmark AHB2 and a Quad amp being the worst. I was expecting Class A to win me over, but not so. The Sugden Masterclass amp was a serious disappointment and the Accuphase, although the nicest in many ways, lacked a bit to the exuberance I was looking for. In the end I chose a Class D amp that uses the Purifi Eigentakt technology. It offers as good or better sound than any of the other SS amps I tried, or the SETs I'd previously been using. It was far from the most costly, it offered much greater flexibility and features than most of the others and I'd be hard pressed to better it for less than 3 or 4 times its price.
We used to associate horns with old gramophones and public address systems. Often horns were built with flat material or material crudely bent in a single curve, eg steel sheet in PA systems or wood in home horn systems. More recently computer design and modern mouldable materials have allowed designs to offer high efficiency with little of the previously virtually inevitable distortion. The big advantage from the driver's point of view is that it can work well without exerting itself - cone movements are small and the coil remains in the optimal magnetic field that is often not possible in low efficiency speakers where hugely greater cone movement are required for the same volume at the listening position.
This means that well-designed horns can deliver the detail and excitement factor one normally only hears at a live performance. The downside is the relatively small sweet spot, but horn users have to accept this.
In my view there is little point in going for horn speakers with their lively, lifelike sound, only to dull the sound with an amp that doesn't similarly offer the lively and exciting sound in sympathy with the horns.
In moving from valve / tube amps 3 years ago to solid state, I wanted to retain the complimentary features offered by valves so that the excitement factor wasn't dulled. I bought or borrowed a dozen amps of Class A, AB or D and it was enlightening to see (hear) what huge differences there were. Some amps that are raved about in reviews were as dull as ditch-water when powering my horns, to the degree I was left with little better elevator music - Benchmark AHB2 and a Quad amp being the worst. I was expecting Class A to win me over, but not so. The Sugden Masterclass amp was a serious disappointment and the Accuphase, although the nicest in many ways, lacked a bit to the exuberance I was looking for. In the end I chose a Class D amp that uses the Purifi Eigentakt technology. It offers as good or better sound than any of the other SS amps I tried, or the SETs I'd previously been using. It was far from the most costly, it offered much greater flexibility and features than most of the others and I'd be hard pressed to better it for less than 3 or 4 times its price.
There are horns, and then there are horns. The higher sensitivity types, say 109dB/w/m like mine, do most of their work with that first fraction of a watt the amplifiers provide, so the amp has to perform brilliantly with milliwatts rather than watts, which is not so easy.
SET amps will have distortion that rises with output level, so the first milliwatts can be very low distortion indeed, certainly below audibility, but for best results we need to make sure that amp operates ideally no more than at one-third capacity. So a 1w amplifier should be doing no more than 330mW at peak SPL, a 15w amp 5w and so on.
Other amps of different topologies (some that employ global negative feedback) will have distortion that falls with output level, so the performance focus is not necessarily what is happening at milliwatts, rather at the watts and many-watts level. What is happening in the milliwatts range often is not as tidy as the humble, flawed SET amp, but this does not have to be so. Some Class D behave very well at milliwatts (as @Hear Here has found), as do some Class A.
SET amps will have distortion that rises with output level, so the first milliwatts can be very low distortion indeed, certainly below audibility, but for best results we need to make sure that amp operates ideally no more than at one-third capacity. So a 1w amplifier should be doing no more than 330mW at peak SPL, a 15w amp 5w and so on.
Other amps of different topologies (some that employ global negative feedback) will have distortion that falls with output level, so the performance focus is not necessarily what is happening at milliwatts, rather at the watts and many-watts level. What is happening in the milliwatts range often is not as tidy as the humble, flawed SET amp, but this does not have to be so. Some Class D behave very well at milliwatts (as @Hear Here has found), as do some Class A.
My experience is similar to yours except this bit- my recommendation is to not exceed -6dB of full power (about 25%) as the amp will start to sound 'dynamic' due to the extra distortion generated on transients. Of course none of that has anything to do with horns- except that with most SETs that is what you need to really hear what they can do.
Hi Sbnx,
I have several systems - omni, electrostats, high-efficiency 2-way Zu audio - a real emotion machine ... I find different technologies bring a different emotional interpretation of the music and I enjoy switching things up.
I currently don't have horns. Yet my top system is a bi-amped MBL system with Symphonic Line and CAT preamp, has near horn dynamics but much more 3D than any horn I have heard.
My 945 sq ft difficult room lends itself to omnis, particularly as the speakers are placed mid-room with dining and kitchen areas behind the speakers.
After enjoying horns for many years before moving from a more conventional room, I recently visited showrooms to listen to MBL and German Physics speakers. I liked their wide sweet spot and the fact that good sound was available at any place in the room, but there was one big feature that was poor compared with horns. Imaging was not good. Even sitting in the best position, neither of the omnis could deliver the feeling whereby (with eyes closed) one could point unambiguously and precisely to each instrument or singer. Sadly this meant I decided to stick with the horns despite their small but very sweet sweet spot.
I‘m considering adding non-bass omni drivers (probably GP’s DDD units) for the top end as alternatives to the horns (but retaining the Avantgarde bass units) for listening from behind the speakers. How I adjust the subs volume when switching from 107 to mid-80 dB top end drivers I’ve not thought much about! Peter
Unfortunately, there is and never was this kind of "neutral" sounding gear that sounds like a straight piece of wire.
It could never be, because every component in an audio chain is build using physical parts and every part has its own sound signature.
There is no neutral sounding capacitor, no neutral sounding electron tube or transistor, no resistor or everything else. Even every cinch connector do have a sound signature. Try to listen to different ones and you will learn this. Listen to different resistors in the same circuit and it could be auditioned. For people, who haven't made this experience on the level of each and every single parts of an amp, this is hard to understand.
So the summary of all those parts in an amp, maybe hundreds or more, are summing up to the non neutral sound this amp makes.
And even if we had a short piece of wire that could be used as an amp, this would have its own sound signature, too.
Because every different wire material sounds different. Thats physics, it has nothing to do with audio in that special case. The physics laws determinate the sound.
All that can be done is to compose a system that, in the end, tries to sound subjective neutral for this special listener. Any other person can have different views on this exact same systems sound, as sound observations are highly subjective.
So we all have to compensate on each part of our audio systems, mixing the sounds of each component to match with the others.
A system of perfect, non sounding components, which should that be? It doesn't exist and have never been.
They do get good enough that they can fool the most jaundiced of audiophiles on occasion. So there's that...
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