Horn based system from southern coast of Turkey

[kodomo]

This is the main room of the house. I am lucky to have a wife who enjoys listening music with me. We also watch movies here. The room is about 80m2 and the ceiling is 3m high. I have a direct line of electricity to my audio equipment from the pole via a silentwire fusebox.

The system is based on the horn system I have built. It is a 6 way passive system. The sub-bass duties are taken care by the tapped horn that you can see towering like a monolith on the left side. The dual tad woofer br boxes on each side take care of the bass. The mid-bass is the largest horn, midrange is the horn on the very top, below that one, the smaller black horn is for the upper midrange and last for the treble duties a pair fostex t500amkII tweeters.

The speakers with the room has a very even decay response and the spl response is within an 8db window fro 20hz to 20.000hz.

The horns are driven by modified Line Magnetic 503pa mono-block s.e.t. amps and the woofer boxes are driven by A.V.M. ma3.2s mono-block solid state amps. 90 percent of the listening is done on analog. I have Strain Gauge with sgs6 from Sound-Smith on a Kuzma 4-point arm, that is on a Kuzma Stabi M. For digital side of things, I use an Oppo 105D for transport and Bryston BDA-3 for converter duties. I use Shunyata sigma, alpha nr and hc cables for power and Cardas Clear XLR and RCA for interconnects. My speaker cables are custom made.

I got about 3000 records and 1500 cd's to listen to, as well as some dsd, and pcm recordings I bought over native dsd, bluecoastrecords, sound liaison... I have mostly Jazz, Classical and Electronic music, as well as some soul/funk and rock on vinyl, and mostly rock and electronic music on cd.

 

[bonzo75]

Nice. What happened to the cat?

 

[kodomo]

As the system was not on they are not in the picture. They always join me in while I am listening. When it is winter, they start their residence on top of ss amps next to the 845 tubes

 

[Folsom]

Interesting front wall absorber.

 

[jeff1225]

Beautiful system, I've seen some of your posts on Romy's website. Can you tell me what drivers you're using for the horns.

 

[steve williams]

Beautiful system and room

Can you tell us the room dimensions

 

[jackelsson]

Amazing system and a truly beautiful room that shows a lot of taste!
How long did it take you to build these horns and fine tune them to your satisfaction?

 

[zztop7]

Beautiful system.
zz.

 

[LL21]

absolutely stunning and made only more impressive by the fact that you designed this yourself. Amazing.

 

[Tango]

Seeing your room makes me feel ashame how messy my room turned into.
Very lovely room sir.

Kind regards,
Tang

 

[kodomo]

Thanks everyone, very encouraging to hear your good words. Everybody is welcome to a listen to music if ever you come down to sunny Antalya. I do not change my power cables, interconnects, speakers, turntable and arm anymore, I think I have found what I was looking for. I still look into tubes, cartridges with matching phono pres to further my enjoyment but my main area of spending is on vinyl records. Fine tuning the whole system took me further than getting supposedly better equipment. Changing the coupling caps with my amps yielded in a sound so fitting that I did not need to get the wavacs I was eyeing. It would have taken me some more time to get the balance with the wavacs. I instead, went to buy records and listen and enjoy them with that money and more importantly with that time. I do not make big changes. I make small changes, then try and tune everything. After finishing the room and having all the correct acoustic treatments, my pleasure has been doubled to say the least Now to answer your questions;

@folsom
The front wall diffuser that extends to sides is a binary diffuser on its front and there are 35cm's (14 inches) of absorbing mineral wool with varying densities behind them. The central living moss garden is good for diffusion and absorption too. The front wall has much less detrimental effect from the rooms I have been to. I am happy it worked as I spent about three days at the cnc workshop

@jeffrey_t
The bass drivers are TAD 1601b's for the br boxes.
I have modified supravox 285-2000's in the mid-bass. They do not have dust cap, and have been specifically modified for mid-bass horns by hornfabrik Germany. It is reactance annulled with its back chamber and the throat of the cf110hz tractrix mid bass horn so it can play down to 110hz.
The midrange is a Radian 850. I tried BMS, TAD, Atlas and actually decided 850's were the most fitting and best sounding ones with the whole system.
The upper midrange is Radian 475be, it is with beryllium diaphragm. I could have had TAD 2001, they were good but when I chose the Radians for the midrange I went ahead and got the 475be's.
The highs are taken care by Fostex t500amkII's.
The most important with a multi-way horn system is how it all works together with the crossover. You can not just chuck in high quality drivers, matching horns and expect good results. I had to experiment a lot for driver/horn combos and for the crossover I had to work with two wonderful German engineers who are working for big German horn companies. I went further than these big companies as I could spend more on the actual speakers than other costs and designed a much less compromised crossover with bypass vacuum caps and all.

@steve williams
The room is like a fat L shape. It is 11 metres (36ft) by 6 metres (20ft) where the speakers are, and at the back right after the tapped horn it extends from 6 metres to 10 metres (32ft). The ceiling is about 10ft high.

@jackelsson
It took me about 2 years from design to end of fine tuning of the speakers. However I have built a few different horns before and completely modified a klipschorn for learning. I looked at all the successful commercial examples and tried to find their shortages so as not to repeat them with my own system. I think I succeeded in a few of them. I am very happy with it now

@tango
Both me and my wife are generally sensitive to messy rooms and we feel better, less worked up in tidy rooms. I love your system by the way and remember it being tidy with all those source components

 

[christoph]

I absolutely love your room and system

 

[bonzo75]

I absolutely love your room and system

+1. Have to plan a trip once

 

[the sound of Tao]

Looks fantastic Kodomo, great to hear your approach with careful working through with system fine tuning and detailing to get the most out of what appears to be a deep investment of yourself into this project.

Great to see some fantastic horn systems being well represented here on the forum. Nice work.

 

[christoph]

Kodomo,

Could you please elaborate on the tapped horn subwoofer?

What are the dimensions, what Chassis (one?) do you use?

Is one of those monsters enough? Doesn't the single subwoofer challenge the perfect left-righ balance?

How (and at what frequency) do you cross over the subwoofer? How do you time-(and phase-)align the subwoofer with the rest of your horn system?

You say your subwoofer goes all the way down to 20Hz, do you use any EQ-ing with the subwoofer?

And last but not least, I assume you think that the tapped horn subwoofer does your extreme system justice sonically?
I have never heard a tapped horn subwoofer myself but given your extreme high effort and demand, I'm quite certain the tapped subwoofer wouldn't be in your system if you didn't feel it competent enough

Sorry for the many questions, but this topic is VERY interesting for me.

 

[kodomo]

Great questions about the tapped horn, let me answer them as much as I can. This is the design on volvotrer for a full size 20hz tapped horn. I attach the drawing with dimensions.

One of them is enough if you are using it like I do. Two would be better and four in every corner would be the best providing the flattest response with the least distortion. At the same time 4 tapped horns would mean 4 amps and many more meters of cables which can cause a lot of other audible problems on a 109db efficient system.

Keep in mind, with most of the music it is working very minimally. The way I use it is between 18hz and 40hz. Most visitors can not hear it working even when they are standing right in front of it! I built it out of 30mm mdf, it is rock solid with no resonance at all but is very very heavy.

It does not effect the r-l balance. However, when you start crossing higher, problems start appearing one by one. For me, the limit is around 60hz and even with that, there has been some detrimental effects. At 60hz the sound can not match the rest of my system, still it does not tip the balance. Localization starts either when you go over 80hz or with too much volume, so much so that it overwhelms the rest of the system.

I have a hypex amp and crossover with it. The crossover has a phase rotary knob. I took about 20 different measurements to find out what is close to best and then I minimally adjusted it from my hearing spot.

 

[christensenleif@msn.com]

congrats on very classy, nice room
what crossoverfreq and slopes do you have between different drivers?
did you ever consider TAD TD 4003?
best
Leif
Drøbak
Norway

 

[kodomo]

congrats on very classy, nice room
what crossoverfreq do you have between different drivers?
did you ever consider TAD TD 4003?

I did not like the TAD 4001, but my friends who had experience with both told me the 4003 was much better. So, I did consider the 4003 but they are 1,5" whereas my horns are 2" throat (need adapters) and I preferred 2" for I am pushing them low to 500Hz territory. I also got content with Radian so I did not want to loose more time trying. I am planning on building a new horn system for a friend and plan on trying the td-4003 with its relevant th-4003 horn.

I will share the crossover frequencies but do not forget that there is impedance correction along the crossover

Tad Bass Reflex - dual TAD 1601b - adjustable 100Hz-110Hz-125Hz-135Hz - 12 dB
cf110hz tractrix - supravox 285-2000 modified - 100Hz (effective 150Hz) - 600Hz (effective 500Hz) - 6 dB
cf200hz tractrix - radian 850 - 500Hz - 5000Hz - 6 dB
cf1400 JMLC - radian 475be - 4500Hz - 12000Hz (effective 8000Hz) 6 dB
fostex t500amkII 9000 Hz (effective 7000Hz) 6 dB

Here is the summed response with 5db scale and 1/6 smoothing and rt60 (I think you did not consider these useful for small rooms) I can have more linear response below 70hz playing with the phase of tapped horn and crossing it higher, but spl alone does not mean anything and I know this from experience. This is the setting that sounds so much better than the flat spl response below 70hz.

 

[christensenleif@msn.com]

ok thxs
we tried loads of compression drivers/horn combos in 3 year long project to find best combos
4003 stood out with respect to low distortion, harmonics and perceived dynamic contrasts
4001 was slightly edgy metallic in comparison....difference possibly due to softer suspension and slightly different diaphragm, new phase plug and direct connect to diaphragm terminals.
did you ever try JMLC for Radian 850....
btw is the black nextel paint?
best
Leif

 

[kodomo]

ok thxs
we tried loads of compression drivers/horn combos in 3 year long project to find best combos
4003 stood out with respect to low distortion, harmonics and perceived dynamic contrasts
4001 was slightly edgy metallic in comparison....difference possibly due to softer suspension and slightly different diaphragm, new phase plug and direct connect to diaphragm terminals.
did you ever try JMLC for Radian 850....
btw is the black nextel paint?
best
Leif

I tried different compression drivers and different horn profiles along them.

A JMLC horn with 250hz cutoff could have replaced my tractrix 200 but then the acoustic centre rises further and that is not something I wanted. I could have something like a JMLC 350, it would have the same outside diameter and acoustic centre with faster opening and shallower profile but then 500hz xo does not work properly...

I also tried tractrix 1000 and JMLC 1000 before settling on the JMLC 1400.

Yes, it is matte black nextel paint.