Justin, Bill's horns seemed to me to have greater harmonic richness and texture than the Pnoes. Granted we're talking different room (4-6x larger at The General), and a moderately different source, no hard and fast conclusions. But I would say Bill's 100% hardwood Mahogany horn is contributing a lot here. The sound was more palpable and fleshy at Bill, maybe I'm aware of Pnoe non-wood construction, as I am now ABS horns in Barry's Duos. I certainly am aware of my Zu cabinet choices/compromises.
Visit to Audiophile Bill to hear his horns project
- Thread starter spiritofmusic
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Hi Justin,
Yes that is correct - the front loaded BD4 in my horn loads well to 170hz and begins its natural and decline below that point. I run without crossover but the horn fc behaves like a natural crossover in that way.
In terms of the bass. The approach is very different indeed to normal cone bass. The central premise without giving a lot away is dramatic reduction in the amount of xmax needed with very high efficiency woofers producing extreme velocity of bass signal. Velocity of the wave is the key to the integrated approach. Driven actively helps this too.
We are one and the same. Just created two opposite personalities. Me Jekyll you Hyde
I think I´d enjoy listening to Bills system
seems to be up my alley
btw welcome to the DaVa club
seems to be up my alley
btw welcome to the DaVa club
Thanks Leif and for your recommendation on the DaVa - so pleased with it!
Have you experimented with a crossover to augment the "mechanical crossover" the horn provides?
IMO, it can be done without any major downsides. I use a Clarity CSA cap combined with a Jupiter copper foil cap, and a foil inductor in parallel to make for a 12 dB electrical slope. With my setup the mechanical slope is pretty pronounced as I use a 4.5" driver... the horn has much more of an effect as far as boosting efficiency vs an 8" driver... so I end up with a pretty steep slope overall, which works very well with a 24 dB slope on the woofer. The downside of the 4.5" driver is it's not as good at producing lows vs an 8" so the xo is needed more, but I have found some major improvements in playing complex music via the crossover. On the high end too, I now have a 1st order low-pass at 12 kHz so there's less overlap with the Fostex T500 tweeter, this has done a lot to clean up the highs and again the result is better performance on complex music, violins and female vocals are far clearer as well, at this point I'm very close to the TAD coax w/ Be tweeter in portraying female vocals by implementing the crossover.
I know AER and other single driver manufacturers continue to toe the line that xo's are all bad, but if you use good parts and implementation, I think this is not the case. There is simply no possible way a single driver can handle the frequency extremes as well as dedicated units. To be fair, it wasn't that long ago where it was difficult to find conventional speakers with properly implemented xo's that didn't cause problems, so it's not all BS, but otoh I do think a system with a well designed woofer, tweeter and crossover is going to surpass any single driver.
Dave, when I first listened to Bill's horns a few weeks back, I was a tiny bit distracted by some hint of euphonic warmth and lack of punch. These have now been fully addressed by his new sub drivers and amps, and a better front end with the DaVa cart, plus whatever secretive finagling he's always doing. Hence my report yesterday highlighting what I consider to be top class transparency, layering/depth and texture.
So, these two times I've played music that you'd expect the horns to sound great with, smaller scale classical and jazz, vocal, acoustic guitar duets, some country, next time I visit, will endeavour to play music more out of horns usual comfort zone ie prog electronica like Darkroom, prog metal like Voivod, Bartok-inspired Zeul like Magma, plus swing by larger scale orchestral and avant-garde (sorry Bill Lol)
This will give me over three visits a real overview to their dynamic capabilities, and ability to scale the spectrum. And maybe anecdotal info for me that single range drivers don't have to be compromised as you contend.
So, these two times I've played music that you'd expect the horns to sound great with, smaller scale classical and jazz, vocal, acoustic guitar duets, some country, next time I visit, will endeavour to play music more out of horns usual comfort zone ie prog electronica like Darkroom, prog metal like Voivod, Bartok-inspired Zeul like Magma, plus swing by larger scale orchestral and avant-garde (sorry Bill Lol)
This will give me over three visits a real overview to their dynamic capabilities, and ability to scale the spectrum. And maybe anecdotal info for me that single range drivers don't have to be compromised as you contend.
Hi Dave,
Thanks for following my progress here and apologies for the brevity of my reply. I am just cooking a traditional English roast chicken with all the trimmings.
In short, I tried various networks on the AER including 1st-4th orders using a variety of components from Audyn, Mudorf etc. I also tried a couple of passive line level networks. Unfortunately in every case, I lost some of the magic. In the end, I just returned to my purist approach as that was the most consistently satisfying and engaging. It kept me smiling and listening for longer.
Best.
Now I know why Bill has a limitless supply of cold draught beer on tap. To dull the pain of trials, and celebrate the triumphs. I can imagine he gets very drunk indeed Lol.
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