Horn Speakers at Munich High End 2016

[DaveC]

What happened to the rest of the posts??

Rob

Yeah, this is completely unacceptable. Why were a bunch of posts deleted?

Myself and others took the time to post AND DELETING THEM IS NOT ACCEPTABLE. What I posted was the ******* answer to the OP's question.

 

[FrantzM]

Yeah, this is completely unacceptable. Why were a bunch of posts deleted?

Myself and others took the time to post AND DELETING THEM IS NOT ACCEPTABLE. What I posted was the ******* answer to the OP's question.

Did you take the time to read Steve Williams posts in which he explained that an update resulted in the erasure of some posts, that he has notified the host and that he will try to find ways to solve the issue, if possible?

 

[steve williams]

Yeah, this is completely unacceptable. Why were a bunch of posts deleted?

Myself and others took the time to post AND DELETING THEM IS NOT ACCEPTABLE. What I posted was the ******* answer to the OP's question.

Did you take the time to read Steve Williams posts in which he explained that an update resulted in the erasure of some posts, that he has notified the host and that he will try to find ways to solve the issue, if possible?

Hi Dave

Not always do things go right with an update and yesterday was not one of them. There were no posts deleted in anyone's account but rather as a result of this update and for that I am truly sorry. I lost almost 20 of mine as well as lost PM's and even 4 new members who had registered on or around the update were deleted as well.

Again my apologies. At a personal level I found this thread very informative. As it stands now it is unlikely to recover these so I can only ask members to share their thoughts again in the affected threads

 

[DaveC]

Did you take the time to read Steve Williams posts in which he explained that an update resulted in the erasure of some posts, that he has notified the host and that he will try to find ways to solve the issue, if possible?

I don't have time to read the entire forum, so no. I only read threads I have some interest in, which is only 10% or so, this takes enough time as it is...

Would have been really nice to know before I sent a PM to mgmt about it though, deleting posts really bothers me and obviously I wasn't happy about it....

 

[steve williams]

I don't have time to read the entire forum, so no. I only read threads I have some interest in, which is only 10% or so, this takes enough time as it is...

Would have been really nice to know before I sent a PM to mgmt about it though, deleting posts really bothers me and obviously I wasn't happy about it....

I posted a general announcement yesterday Dave....

http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showthread.php?20832-An-Update-Snafu&p=397188&viewfull=1#post397188

again my apologies

 

[Robh3606]

Hello Dave

I have to disagree with you on this Rob, if you compare the better and the best compression drivers from 40's to say the 60's no equivalent modern production can touch them sonically.

Lets try this again. So I understand where you are coming from what are some of your favorite vintage drivers?? I am a JBL head so all of my personal systems are JBL driver based. As I see it the newer drivers do indeed surpass the older heritage drivers. I use 2435/435Be in 2 systems my Arrays and HT. I have compared them to the LE-85/2420/2421/2425/2426 and they best any of them IMHO.

For a large format I have 476Mgs as compared to say 375/2440/376/2441 as examples of TOTL vintage large format drivers. The newer drivers are throat-less with much improved phase plug designs.

You also need horns and cone drivers to complete the system and that's a bigger problem today than ever, there's no real quality production of either. IMO even the modern ultra exotics of today like those made by Gotto and GIP aren't a match to the older cones.

As far as cone driver almost all of mine are drivers with roots going back to 50/60s except my 2216Nds and Neo subs I use in my HT. My E-145's Le14-3 2123 all have deep roots.

Rob

 

[microstrip]

(...) To focus on horns, there is something to horns. Their premises is that they are Acoustic transformers they couple the moving elements to air in a way direct-to-air drivers be these cones or panels don't and can't. New techniques of manufacturing as well as designing ( CAD, 3-D printing, CNC, powerful Workstations) has made these better. We should be respectful of the great designs past and learn from them. The potential of new horns being better than the old ones is there and perhaps the reality.
(...)

Frantz,

Unfortunately IMHO it is not only learning from the great designs from the past. We must learn from the sources of knowledge that were used by the great designers of the past - and here we have a problem, as most of it is not academic culture or industrial property and is not easily available in the internet. It is spread in old archives and libraries, most of it coming from form the first half of the XX century. Or even only in designers minds!

Digging for information about horns I recently found in Audioheritage that Greg Timbers position at Harman was suddenly "eliminated" (just quoting his words) http://www.audioheritage.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?37395-End-of-an-Era-43-years-with-JBL-is-Over. Considering the great thinks I read and what people have referred in this forum about his designs I am not as optimist as you.

Also considering the small size market of horn speakers, I think we can always expect that the best designs will always be expensive.

 

[bonzo75]

One of my favorite horns is a DIY JBL with allnico 18 inch woofer, in Berlin, but I have heard the K2 66000 twice now and a 4350 and the m2 and don't like them. Am aware that there are tons of varieties of JBL

 

[steve williams]

One of my favorite horns is a DIY JBL with allnico 18 inch woofer, in Berlin, but I have heard the K2 66000 twice now and a 4350 and the m2 and don't like them. Am aware that there are tons of varieties of JBL

I have a good friend who is not only an audiophile but collects and restores vintage JBL speakers. The last time I was at his home he had over 500 pairs of fully functioning and totally different JBL speakers

 

[bonzo75]

I have a good friend who is not only an audiophile but collects and restores vintage JBL speakers. The last time I was at his home he had over 500 pairs of fully functioning and totally different JBL speakers

Is he willing to give away a few? Trickle down economics

 

[FrantzM]

Frantz,

Unfortunately IMHO it is not only learning from the great designs from the past. We must learn from the sources of knowledge that were used by the great designers of the past - and here we have a problem, as most of it is not academic culture or industrial property and is not easily available in the internet. It is spread in old archives and libraries, most of it coming from form the first half of the XX century. Or even only in designers minds!

Digging for information about horns I recently found in Audioheritage that Greg Timbers position at Harman was suddenly "eliminated" (just quoting his words) http://www.audioheritage.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?37395-End-of-an-Era-43-years-with-JBL-is-Over. Considering the great thinks I read and what people have referred in this forum about his designs I am not as optimist as you.

Also considering the small size market of horn speakers, I think we can always expect that the best designs will always be expensive.

Agree to some extent. Let's not be naive. The marketing to sell these expensive items is at play. I would not bet that the knowledge would come from freely available or public domains material, those who frequent DIY Horns boards would shed a light on that. IOW the body of knowledge is not lost or doesn't belong to a given person. However romantic the notion is of a person with a body of knowledge that he/she will take to the grave. There is a large body of research on horns and it seems that the math behind horns are more easily approached with new PCs and software, not counting CNC machines that may be able to produce shapes that would have cost a lot back in the days or simply be impossible.. there is even 3 D printing which I believe will make a serious impact in speaker building in the near future. So ...

The market is not so small. Audiophiles do not like a given speaker just "because" of the technology itself, although there is a part of the attraction that could be only for aesthetics reasons... personal example I wouldn't buy a Chord component .... I don't like their looks :b ... We buy products mostly because of the way they sound. The attraction of horns come from what they do, what we come to perceive they've been doing and the fact that new horns don't share many of the faults of some earlier horns ( the "honky" coloration for example) .. Horns offer many advantage not the least the ability to control directivity and usually their efficiency.. among many other. it could also be that more than most other driver/speaker technology they remain linear in the power domain: horns as a whole don't power-compress.. Once someone has experienced the lack of power compression there is no coming back... Some cones don't but it is (always) at the expense of efficiency (e.g Magico, among others) ...

As you can tell I am interested in horns, more than I ever been in my audiophile journey and the probability of my next speaker being horn is over 51% ... So this discussion is of interest to me.. Not the stratospherically priced models whose claim to fame is their price and the hype that they generate because they are so expensive thus they have to be good-kind of audiophile reflex,No! I am interested in the "regular" ones and I would not complete my search for my next system without a serious listens/auditions to some great horn-based systems. The JBL 4367 and M2 system, the Gedlee Suma 15 and perhaps other JBL, etc and of course those classic great horns of the past if possible

 

[LL21]

also fascinated by this thread...my sense is that horns (like every speaker) have their challenges and MUST be set up right to sound amazing. But it does now seem like maybe i need to spend a bit more time when i get the opportunity, to hear some of these extremely well executed horn setups. Setting aside 'honk', etc...I imagine with the apparent super-speed of the horn, you could go seriously wrong if the setup is not 'just so' relative to certain speakers which might be more forgiving.

 

[KeithR]

The market is not so small. Audiophiles do not like a given speaker just "because" of the technology itself, although there is a part of the attraction that could be only for aesthetics reasons... personal example I wouldn't buy a Chord component .... I don't like their looks :b ... We buy products mostly because of the way they sound. The attraction of horns come from what they do, what we come to perceive they've been doing and the fact that new horns don't share many of the faults of some earlier horns ( the "honky" coloration for example) .. Horns offer many advantage not the least the ability to control directivity and usually their efficiency.. among many other. it could also be that more than most other driver/speaker technology they remain linear in the power domain: horns as a whole don't power-compress.. Once someone has experienced the lack of power compression there is no coming back... Some cones don't but it is (always) at the expense of efficiency (e.g Magico, among others) ...

As I've said before, the biggest problem with horns is WAF. It's pretty much zilch. Panels too for that matter. Both will always be niche because of it.

 

[FrantzM]

One thing I tend to notice with some horns (for the purpose of this discussion I am putting together horns and waveguide speakers we can debate about the differences of these later ) is the real estate needed. Most of those multi-horns need some room so that the drivers coalesce. Else you hear individual drivers, IOW too close to some horns and much is lost especially imaging and some sense of correct soundstaging. I would tend to think that this is a problem in a relatively small hotel room. The other thing is the de rigeur flea-powered tube amplifiers which forces them to play the quasi-anthem of high end audio show : small jazz ensemble with a female voice and limited dynamics. It doesn't hep that many horns go for over the top audiophile-approved aesthetics which often conflict with performance imperatives. so you have widely separated horns modules that requires people to be sitting a few thousands feet from the speakers to sound like one source ( I am an audiophile so I should be allowed some hyperbolic license )

 

[ddk]

Hi Rob,

We're approaching this from different angles, you're coming at it from a DIY standpoint and I'm mostly looking at factory speakers. Sticking with JBL, personally I prefer some of the earlier drivers you mention over the later ones, again based on JBL speakers I've owned or heard. I don't care for beryllium or titanium anything specially in diaphragms, definitely prefer aluminum ones. Also IMO the S9800, where they used the 435Be, is the worst K2. I have no idea what you do with that driver in your system, I'm just going by that speaker. I would say the same for the 476, there might be some technical advantage in a throat less design but I haven't heard it sonically, in fact the 4365 is another that left me cold, very cold. There's also question of efficiency or lack of when looking at newer design, most, all? have taken a nose dive in that department since the 80's, a major negative for me.

As much as I like JBL speakers but there are others that I prefer, but I don't see any point in getting into them here. I still like to know what current production horn speakers have you heard that you find generally superior to some of the vintage classic designs?

david

Hello Dave

Lets try this again. So I understand where you are coming from what are some of your favorite vintage drivers?? I am a JBL head so all of my personal systems are JBL driver based. As I see it the newer drivers do indeed surpass the older heritage drivers. I use 2435/435Be in 2 systems my Arrays and HT. I have compared them to the LE-85/2420/2421/2425/2426 and they best any of them IMHO.

For a large format I have 476Mgs as compared to say 375/2440/376/2441 as examples of TOTL vintage large format drivers. The newer drivers are throat-less with much improved phase plug designs.

As far as cone driver almost all of mine are drivers with roots going back to 50/60s except my 2216Nds and Neo subs I use in my HT. My E-145's Le14-3 2123 all have deep roots.

Rob

 

[DaveC]

Frantz,

Unfortunately IMHO it is not only learning from the great designs from the past. We must learn from the sources of knowledge that were used by the great designers of the past - and here we have a problem, as most of it is not academic culture or industrial property and is not easily available in the internet. It is spread in old archives and libraries, most of it coming from form the first half of the XX century. Or even only in designers minds!

Digging for information about horns I recently found in Audioheritage that Greg Timbers position at Harman was suddenly "eliminated" (just quoting his words) http://www.audioheritage.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?37395-End-of-an-Era-43-years-with-JBL-is-Over. Considering the great thinks I read and what people have referred in this forum about his designs I am not as optimist as you.

Also considering the small size market of horn speakers, I think we can always expect that the best designs will always be expensive.

It's really not that complicated... speaker design is pretty straight forward... and there are quite a few designers who know the intricacies of horn speaker design. Speaker design is more about an overall system approach and juggling compromises than esoteric knowledge, it tends to be more of a personal creation vs many engineering projects. Also, much of the work done has been in the context of private companies who aren't likely to freely share their knowledge unless they feel it's in their financial advantage.

I too lament the loss of Greg but the M2 was a move in another direction. The new head of Harman is not taking a long term view, typical of most corps these days, fire the experienced talent once they've felt they got what they can out of them and hire much cheaper, newer blood. I've heard a lot of people say they like the Everest/K2 over the M2 but have rarely heard the opposite.

Also agree on costs, unless you DIY a horn speaker it'll be expensive, and DIY projects can reach astronomical costs too!

 

[ddk]

Unfortunately IMHO it is not only learning from the great designs from the past. We must learn from the sources of knowledge that were used by the great designers of the past - and here we have a problem, as most of it is not academic culture or industrial property and is not easily available in the internet. It is spread in old archives and libraries, most of it coming from form the first half of the XX century. Or even only in designers minds!

Agreed! The people and their knowledge along with the industry that supported them is long gone.

Digging for information about horns I recently found in Audioheritage that Greg Timbers position at Harman was suddenly "eliminated" (just quoting his words) http://www.audioheritage.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?37395-End-of-an-Era-43-years-with-JBL-is-Over. Considering the great thinks I read and what people have referred in this forum about his designs I am not as optimist as you. Also considering the small size market of horn speakers, I think we can always expect that the best designs will always be expensive.

Several years ago I had a fair bit of conversation with Mr. Timbers, there's more to it that what's in that post. Greg Timbers is the man behind many of the best and most desirable post Harmann JBL speakers but the company culture is such that its at odds with making of this type of product...

david

 

[LL21]

One thing I tend to notice with some horns (for the purpose of this discussion I am putting together horns and waveguide speakers we can debate about the differences of these later ) is the real estate needed... )

Agree...in fairness to the 'latest and greatest cones' which some people lament in favor of going 'back' to horns, i think that given today's obsessive focus on tolerances, damping, cone speed, that cone speakers really do deliver an incredible performance for the 'real estate' they occupy. i think of the big Wilsons...mine at 16 inches across and 24 inches deep as a footprint. And at 6 feet tall, they can work within any 8 foot ceiling and our old place actually dipped below this, and it still worked surprisingly well. And they deliver scale, 20hz-20khz and propulsive power...all in a much smaller package than many horns and panels, particularly when setup is considered and the big Wilsons are often placed in the corners.

Not saying Wilsons are 'the best' or anything silly like that...just simply making the observation that while i am fascinated to learn more about horns, when i think about how fat/wide and frankly still pretty tall the Trios are (not to mention the bass horns), there is probably no way to sandwich them in here. Even the Arrakis (24 inches by 36 inches footprint) would fit better in here.

And with cones, there is propulsive bass, etc

 

[FrantzM]

Hi Rob,

We're approaching this from different angles, you're coming at it from a DIY standpoint and I'm mostly looking at factory speakers. Sticking with JBL, personally I prefer some of the earlier drivers you mention over the later ones, again based on JBL speakers I've owned or heard. I don't care for beryllium or titanium anything specially in diaphragms, definitely prefer aluminum ones. Also IMO the S9800, where they used the 435Be, is the worst K2. I have no idea what you do with that driver in your system, I'm just going by that speaker. I would say the same for the 476, there might be some technical advantage in a throat less design but I haven't heard it sonically, in fact the 4365 is another that left me cold, very cold. There's also question of efficiency or lack of when looking at newer design, most, all? have taken a nose dive in that department since the 80's, a major negative for me.

As much as I like JBL speakers but there are others that I prefer, but I don't see any point in getting into them here. I still like to know what current production horn speakers have you heard that you find generally superior to some of the vintage classic designs?

david

David

Interested in your opinions on horns based speakers systems. it would be interesting to open a thread on the matter since this one was primarily concerned with the Munich show. Chime in people if you would like to see such a thread...

 

[ddk]

It's really not that complicated... speaker design is pretty straight forward... and there are quite a few designers who know the intricacies of horn speaker design.

Without any sarcasm who and where are these designers you're speaking Dave and what have they made?

david