Paul McGowan on Horn Loudspeakers

the sound of Tao

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Given that different typologies are chosen for various reasons, is it possible that each is the solution to a different question?

We discuss and argue their differences under the premise that they are various attempts to solve the same problem.
This is really it in a nutshell… then some just like to play the whole us and them thing right up and turn it into a victim/persecutor role play… 2023, would be a great year for us to finally get that we aren’t all here for exactly same things or asking the exact same questions.
 
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andromedaaudio

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This is really it in a nutshell… then some just like to play the whole us and them thing right up and turn it into a victim/persecutor role play… 2023, would be a great year for us to finally get that we aren’t all here for exactly same things or even asking the exact same questions

Lol , Okay then lets have another " fruitfull " year of Horn - Cone discussions .
 

PeterA

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I m simply suggesting a lot argue because they have nothing better to do lol.

Ps
Different product designers use different technologies but they all try to achieve accurate sound reproduction .
The goal is the same afaik .
The technique / execution is different but discussions as to which technologie/ execution is best go nowhere usually .

I agree with you that the discussions and arguments don’t get us anywhere, but that is because we are operating under the wrong premise.
 

andromedaaudio

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I agree with you that the discussions and arguments don’t get us anywhere, but that is because we are operating under the wrong premise.


Peter its already all been said /discussed many times over on this forum

Imo .
That one enjoys the music is all that matters .
Whether he / she listens to horns a planar a cone or a Transistor /car stereo or live concert .
 
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the sound of Tao

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Hear Here

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Horn or dynamic drive is mainly a preference, sometimes also supported by listener biases. They have different sound characteristics, we can compare them according to our taste, always remembering that in this hobby there are is best and fundamentalism does not lead anyway.
People thinking this are deluded. The TYPE of speaker the canny buyer will choose should be influenced more by their room's features than by "bias" or "taste".

My room is far better served by a horn speaker than other types, particularly electrostatics that are probably the least suitable - an unfortunate fact I discovered at my own significant cost!

Whether measurements are taken or not, the sound of a horn speaker will be influenced by its sensitivity - to its advantage.
 
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microstrip

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People thinking this are deluded. The TYPE of speaker the canny buyer will choose should be influenced more by their room's features than by "bias" or "taste".

My room is far better served by a horn speaker than other types, particularly electrostatics that are probably the least suitable - an unfortunate fact I discovered at my own significant cost!

Whether measurements are taken or not, the sound of a horn speaker will be influenced by its sensitivity - to its advantage.

Than I am a particular lucky audiophile - I have great sound in my room with some electrostatic and with many dynamic speakers. Surely not all of them, never tried horns. BTW, electrostatics can differ between themselves a lot.

But you probably have a point here - highly directional speakers will probably be a better choice in problematic rooms if we are not able to solve them. Did you ever fully measure your room?
 

the sound of Tao

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One of the advantages of ours being a hobby in senescence is that many here have been at it for a long time and have possibly largely answered for themselves (some exactly and for others in their essential directions) with the strategy of their preferred gear types.

The problem becomes when people get into active conversion mode trying to propagate their tailored solutions to others in other circumstances already largely convinced in their own preferences based on different needs and with different questions.

That idea that we are here looking for our own solutions to slightly varying (and possibly evolving) kinds of individual questions means we are actually just travelling in slightly parallel universes with just a bit too much spooky action perhaps still happening at a distance.
 
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Neilbo75

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One of the advantages of ours being a hobby in senescence is that many here have been at it for a long time and have possibly largely answered for themselves (some exactly and for others in their essential directions) with the strategy of their preferred gear types.

The problem becomes when people get into active conversion mode trying to propagate their tailored solutions to others in other circumstances already largely convinced in their own preferences based on different needs and with different questions.

That idea that we are here looking for our own solutions to slightly varying (and possibly evolving) kinds of individual questions means we are actually just travelling in slightly parallel universes with just a bit too much spooky action perhaps still happening at a distance.
Funny, Mr.Tao, that you should mention the words "spooky" and "parallel" in the same sentence. It made me think of Eggleston's speakers. They descrbe their parallel isobaric low frequency cone drivers as capable of "spooky" realism.

I started my quest for good speakers from a professional studio monitor perspective. PSI in Switzerland was the early favorite. They sell no nonsense active boxes at reasonable prices. Some 85% are sold to to pros. Each speaker is individually calibrated in an echo free chamber -- thus their accuracy is proven. That's key if you are a recording engineer. You sit in your chair and face the speaker -- it's your commanding officer.

Audiophiles, perhaps, are looking for something more. More fun. Perhaps more music. Call it "sound stage". Call it vivid.

Eggelston has their roots in sound studios, but to chase more affluent buyers they have adjusted. At a recent show in Paris I heard them playing Karen Carpenter, the 1970s queen of easy listening. Maybe it was Karen's sad fate or the aforesaid "spooky" technology. Maybe the various other upscale advancements, including several Luxmans in the room. Her voice was oh so poignant. Like being touched by a ghost.

Nevertheless, I ended up buying horn speakers, a pair of Horning Eufrodites. These Danish hybrid speakers have a heavy magent horn driver, a dome tweeter, and an array of eight eight inch woofers in push pull isobaric. Dagogo published a review a few years ago. Unlike most reviews, the critic was not sure it was good product. His listening room was too small to judge. Nevertheless, the hybrid design he described turned me on. The horn fires front and back, the latter path blending with the woofer array. Push pull means excrusions of the woofers do not exceed 1 mm. Me thinks I need not worry too much about these cones' "thermal modulation", a problem discussed above in this thread. The designer, Tommy Horning, may or may not have hit the nail on the head. The speakers just arrived and are yet to be properly placed in my room. In the dealer's room, playing music through an MSB DAC and amp, the dynamics were impressive, the sound stage uncanny.

As others have stated, we will likely sit in our respective horn, cone and electrostatic camps.

Nevertheless, horns have several advantages. I wrote yesterday in the thread comparing Equi=Tech to PS powerplants about the advantages of horn efficiency. This point has been amplified (pardon the pun) in this thread. With efficiency comes better dynamics. A fifteen inch woofer in a Klipsch or Zingali has a lot of inertia. That would seem to make it hard to dance with a horn. Perhaps Tommy Horning has squared the circle.

One final note (ouch, another pun): horns bring soul to live classical and jazz music for a good reason.

Neil
 

Bill Hart

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The funny thing is, the WE snail type horn, which is considered a "grail" at least for collectability if not sound, was not well regarded by the motion picture companies at the time. (Remember this was in the days when the studios also owned theaters and WE leased their equipment to the theaters and provided maintenance). This led to a competing design, the Shearer Horn which eventually involved James Lansing to make the drivers, and ultimately after WE was forced to abandon the motion picture sound equipment market, to Altec.
David could probably supply more history on the Klangfilm/Siemens developments.
These were early days, and as noted above, these big unwieldy speakers were meant to fill large cinemas- something else that is now largely part of the past.
I love the innovations that have come back into vogue, like field coil speakers. A lot of the history of this gear is closely tied to motion picture sound, at least in the early days.
 

bonzo75

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The funny thing is, the WE snail type horn, which is considered a "grail" at least for collectability if not sound,

the Snail cuts out any discontinuity in the mids by going quite low for the crossover, to 100 - 200. There are 4m of horn to deal with and it is difficult to time align tweeter to it which is why modern designs avoid it and guys who build custom horns with it use digital correction. In Munich they don’t use digital correction in the WE systems though they add a tweeter and it sounds great
 

the sound of Tao

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Funny, Mr.Tao, that you should mention the words "spooky" and "parallel" in the same sentence. It made me think of Eggleston's speakers. They descrbe their parallel isobaric low frequency cone drivers as capable of "spooky" realism.

I started my quest for good speakers from a professional studio monitor perspective. PSI in Switzerland was the early favorite. They sell no nonsense active boxes at reasonable prices. Some 85% are sold to to pros. Each speaker is individually calibrated in an echo free chamber -- thus their accuracy is proven. That's key if you are a recording engineer. You sit in your chair and face the speaker -- it's your commanding officer.

Audiophiles, perhaps, are looking for something more. More fun. Perhaps more music. Call it "sound stage". Call it vivid.

Eggelston has their roots in sound studios, but to chase more affluent buyers they have adjusted. At a recent show in Paris I heard them playing Karen Carpenter, the 1970s queen of easy listening. Maybe it was Karen's sad fate or the aforesaid "spooky" technology. Maybe the various other upscale advancements, including several Luxmans in the room. Her voice was oh so poignant. Like being touched by a ghost.

Nevertheless, I ended up buying horn speakers, a pair of Horning Eufrodites. These Danish hybrid speakers have a heavy magent horn driver, a dome tweeter, and an array of eight eight inch woofers in push pull isobaric. Dagogo published a review a few years ago. Unlike most reviews, the critic was not sure it was good product. His listening room was too small to judge. Nevertheless, the hybrid design he described turned me on. The horn fires front and back, the latter path blending with the woofer array. Push pull means excrusions of the woofers do not exceed 1 mm. Me thinks I need not worry too much about these cones' "thermal modulation", a problem discussed above in this thread. The designer, Tommy Horning, may or may not have hit the nail on the head. The speakers just arrived and are yet to be properly placed in my room. In the dealer's room, playing music through an MSB DAC and amp, the dynamics were impressive, the sound stage uncanny.

As others have stated, we will likely sit in our respective horn, cone and electrostatic camps.

Nevertheless, horns have several advantages. I wrote yesterday in the thread comparing Equi=Tech to PS powerplants about the advantages of horn efficiency. This point has been amplified (pardon the pun) in this thread. With efficiency comes better dynamics. A fifteen inch woofer in a Klipsch or Zingali has a lot of inertia. That would seem to make it hard to dance with a horn. Perhaps Tommy Horning has squared the circle.

One final note (ouch, another pun): horns bring soul to live classical and jazz music for a good reason.

Neil
I have all the parts to make up a pair of clamshell isobaric OB subs using the same 15 inch woofers already in my OB horns. I got inspired when I added larger baffles to the Pureaudioproject Trios (before going up to the larger Quintet horns with four 15 inch woofers per side). With the added baffle area the Trio horns got a great additional sense of energy, authority and extension (they already had two 15 inch woofers per side) and they reminded me when playing electronic dance music of the drive, verve and energy of the w bin based PA system my brothers had at their nightclub back in the day.

The modified Trio OB horns also did great things on rock and were the closest thing I’ve heard to a high end PA system. I grew up in the rave and pub band scene so it’s good to have something to play The Cure and The Smiths on occasionally as well.

I have two of the Line Magnetic 48 watt 300B driving 805 SET amps so I can use the same SET amp for the subs… I’ll have to buy another pair of the WE 300Bs if I want to go fully OCD on it :eek: though that said it’d be good to have a back up pair of the WE 300Bs in play for the main system anyway… audiophiles… how easy to spin up audiophile logic into reasons to be getting some more big bottle glow into the rig :rolleyes: lol
 
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bonzo75

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the Snail cuts out any discontinuity in the mids by going quite low for the crossover, to 100 - 200. There are 4m of horn to deal with and it is difficult to time align tweeter to it which is why modern designs avoid it and guys who build custom horns with it use digital correction. In Munich they don’t use digital correction in the WE systems though they add a tweeter and it sounds great

This is a snail replica placed on its side


C6C139D0-7432-4E42-B871-F1EEECC21998.jpeg
 

Hear Here

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I have great sound in my room with some electrostatic and with many dynamic speakers. Surely not all of them, never tried horns. BTW, electrostatics can differ between themselves a lot. But you probably have a point here - highly directional speakers will probably be a better choice in problematic rooms if we are not able to solve them.
Yes. I had cpnvinced myself that a move to electrostatics would be good 3 years ago. Lots of research, questions on owners' forum,, showroom demo, etc hadn't warned me about a particular problem with my particular room. Electrostatics cannot be placed mid-room, particularly hybrids that include back-firing bass drivers. Even with Anthem room correction, these brand new Martin Logans fell well short of expectations and in fact way behind the sound quality of my 2002-vintage AG Unos.

Lesson learned - never buy new before a home demo! In fact my QUAD 2905s fared rather better as they exceded my expectations, but these were bought to assess the benefits of electrostatics and never as a permanent solution - I didn't want barn doors blocking my views!

I found an excellent pair of AG Duos (2006-vintage) but them moved to the latest Duo XDs. Listening room features in my view are the prime reason for choosing a particular type of speaker, though many rooms may be content with a number of types. My room best with horns, or maybe omnis if I was prepared to sacrafice the amazing imaging abilities of horns.
 

Holmz

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In addition to what Jägerst mentioned above, namely the thermal effects of high current delivery to the drivers, there is also the issue of diaphragm excursion and moving mass. Horn drivers typically have a moving mass and a diaphragm excursion an order of magnitude lower than that of dynamic drivers, and therefore the distortion is also an order of magnitude lower, and the speed an order of magnitude higher. These are parameters that dynamic drivers will never be able to approach. Try using a compression driver with beryllium diaphragm such as the TAD, and add a field coil such as those from Classic Audio, and you have drivers with distortion figures and dynamic response that no dynamic driver will ever come close to. With sophisticated computer aided design, 3D printing and other advanced manufacturing technologies, most if not all the problems associated with horn coloration can be overcome. Moreover, being able to control the dispersion is always an asset, not a liability. To say that having high efficiency is only necessary when amplifiers have limited power misses the point completely. Low efficiency is a design flaw in and of itself, since there is no sonic advantage and many disadvantages.

In the first underlined part… is it possible that the distoprtion might be a consequence of the 10x lower excursion?
And then it implies that the distortion is a consequence of the mass AND the excursion?
(I can believe exursion a bit easier than the ,mass part, as being a causal mechanism.)

In the second underlined part, are you referring to the Hz or the diaphragm speed?
(I am assuming the later case.)
 

microstrip

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Yes. I had cpnvinced myself that a move to electrostatics would be good 3 years ago. Lots of research, questions on owners' forum,, showroom demo, etc hadn't warned me about a particular problem with my particular room. Electrostatics cannot be placed mid-room, particularly hybrids that include back-firing bass drivers. Even with Anthem room correction, these brand new Martin Logans fell well short of expectations and in fact way behind the sound quality of my 2002-vintage AG Unos.

Lesson learned - never buy new before a home demo! In fact my QUAD 2905s fared rather better as they exceded my expectations, but these were bought to assess the benefits of electrostatics and never as a permanent solution - I didn't want barn doors blocking my views!

I found an excellent pair of AG Duos (2006-vintage) but them moved to the latest Duo XDs. Listening room features in my view are the prime reason for choosing a particular type of speaker, though many rooms may be content with a number of types. My room best with horns, or maybe omnis if I was prepared to sacrafice the amazing imaging abilities of horns.

Well, you consulted the wrong people - Martin Logan hybrids can sound wonderful, but are known to be critical of placement, as should be expected considering their crossover points. A competent dealer should have warned you - for some reason Harman people picked a Martin Logan for their pseudo comparisons where all speakers were accurately placed in the same place in the room! Surely listeners did not like them ...

My SoundLabs are far less critical - they are full range 18 square feet each - but benefit from some care in positioning.
 

morricab

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I have all the parts to make up a pair of clamshell isobaric OB subs using the same 15 inch woofers already in my OB horns. I got inspired when I added larger baffles to the Pureaudioproject Trios (before going up to the larger Quintet horns with four 15 inch woofers per side). With the added baffle area the Trio horns got a great additional sense of energy, authority and extension (they already had two 15 inch woofers per side) and they reminded me when playing electronic dance music of the drive, verve and energy of the w bin based PA system my brothers had at their nightclub back in the day.

The modified Trio OB horns also did great things on rock and were the closest thing I’ve heard to a high end PA system. I grew up in the rave and pub band scene so it’s good to have something to play The Cure and The Smiths on occasionally as well.

I have two of the Line Magnetic 48 watt 300B driving 805 SET amps so I can use the same SET amp for the subs… I’ll have to buy another pair of the WE 300Bs if I want to go fully OCD on it :eek: though that said it’d be good to have a back up pair of the WE 300Bs in play for the main system anyway… audiophiles… how easy to spin up audiophile logic into reasons to be getting some more big bottle glow into the rig :rolleyes: lol
Did you upgrade the compression drivers?
 

Neilbo75

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I have all the parts to make up a pair of clamshell isobaric OB subs using the same 15 inch woofers already in my OB horns. I got inspired when I added larger baffles to the Pureaudioproject Trios (before going up to the larger Quintet horns with four 15 inch woofers per side). With the added baffle area the Trio horns got a great additional sense of energy, authority and extension (they already had two 15 inch woofers per side) and they reminded me when playing electronic dance music of the drive, verve and energy of the w bin based PA system my brothers had at their nightclub back in the day.

The modified Trio OB horns also did great things on rock and were the closest thing I’ve heard to a high end PA system. I grew up in the rave and pub band scene so it’s good to have something to play The Cure and The Smiths on occasionally as well.

I have two of the Line Magnetic 48 watt 300B driving 805 SET amps so I can use the same SET amp for the subs… I’ll have to buy another pair of the WE 300Bs if I want to go fully OCD on it :eek: though that said it’d be good to have a back up pair of the WE 300Bs in play for the main system anyway… audiophiles… how easy to spin up audiophile logic into reasons to be getting some more big bottle glow into the rig :rolleyes: lol
That's impressive DIY work, Mr. Tao. Sadly, I'm all thumbs doing anything beyond tying my shoes.

However, last summer I did acquire a used pair of DIY Jerico horn speakers. They stand about five feet tall and weigh about 200 pounds each with woven rosewood cabinets. To prove their fitness the seller played me some symphonic music. The sound was huge and very realistic. I have never had more of an impression of being at a concert instead of listening to a sound system. Other kinds of music might not work out so well, but for strings they ruled! The seller said each one took a hundred hours to build. I believe it. Yet they cost little compared to a commercial product.

For those of you who do not know, Jericos take their name from the Old Testament -- the miraculous horns that blew down the walls of the enemy fort. Typically, a single cone driver is used, firing conventionallly to the front and also to the rear as a horn through the folded cabinet, coming out a huge front port at the bottom. My driver is 10 inches. Someone, I suspect not the original builder, bolted a rather cheap looking midrange driver / tweeter combo to the tops of the cabinets. So there is room for improvement.

If only I could find my handman....

Even without him, I have a nice competiton going between Jerico and Eufrodite. It will some some weeks to test, but I will let you know.

Neil
 
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