What are the Top Horn Speakers in the World Today? Vox Olympian vs Avantgarde Trio vs ???
- Thread starter caesar
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Smoked wood apparently sounds the best .
Chain smokers have the advantage here.
I think its all personal just like Cone LS housings , some prefer wood some aluminium some MDF some HDF some HPL there are so many options available " luckily " .
Just pick / buy what you think sounds good
That’s true, but speakers have to reproduce the sound of more instruments than just other horns.
So the system sounded great at first exposure even though the feet which he claimed lifted the sound to another level were not in when you listened. Funny how he tried without. Good curiosity he has.
I’ve always just thought that all gear has a summative sonic signature set by the outcome of the cocktail of synergistic characteristics of all the components electrical and mechanical qualities as well as a function of the traits of a design topology… so a mechanical resonance may just as easily contribute to a component sounding more real or instead sounding more artificial.
In the end it is about sum rightness of the final mix of all the interactive electrical and mechanical parts and the characteristics of topology in design.
Horn design is probably as much art and an experiential alchemy as it is about science and engineering in many ways. Either way for whatever reason I’ve also traditionally favoured wood horns and also not always paired well with composites in general as used in sound components. Just observing that correlation is valuable (to me) even if I don’t understand the why of it. But I guess final judgement for what works is in our own end review and reflections found in living with gear and opening ourselves to the music and discovering where the experience of the effect of something takes you. It’s not just about the context of a thing, sometimes the spirit of a thing is also important. There is something extraordinary and artisanal in a big wood horn either way.
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I’d love to be able to craft a large wood horn… turning wood at that scale must be very fulfilling Bill. Even CNC looks amazing. There is an emotional connection in the crafting of something so fluidly out of matter. Very cool.
Will - I spent the last 3 years being trained in this lost art form - my teacher is 90, which says a lot about the “lost” but boy does he know the art. I make a lot of conventional bowls, pens, platters, vases, hollow forms as well as horns. I was trained using original tools / chisels rather than the poor carbide scraping substitutes that produce a poor finish. I do segmented turning as well as from solid blanks like your lovely horns. My latest project also uses solid blanks.
Maintaining the integrity of a turning is very much part of the skills in construction especially for segmentation. However if one uses very stable kiln dried blanks rather than green wood, stability is extremely high especially if it is jointed to another substrate in a manner that prevents movement.
But to get to the heart of the question. There are ancient wood turnings that still have their full structural integrity so I wouldn’t be concerned about your lovely asset.
Finally there are modern means such as torrefying wood to improve stability as employed by OMA. Also the types of finishing used.
Never did any wood turning…only metal, Aluminum and Stainless Steel. A lot of it throughout my PhD as we were building scientific instruments. I always preferred the CNC mill though…the lathe made me nervous.
Hi Graham,
It is an incredibly wonderful process. You feel connected with your work in a deep way absolutely not akin to how you connect with how you would connect with your email or laptop lol.
I find it incredibly cathartic albeit actually quite physically exhausting. Your mind can somehow defragment whilst your hands almost autopilot what you are doing - kind of strange really. That only happened after a year or so because at first safety occupies your mind a fair bit together with deep concentration about your chisel and hand position.
Best wishes for the weekend. I am French polishing today - this is another relatively lost form, which is fairly physically demanding but hugely rewarding.
Haha. I don’t blame you, Brad! Back in the 60s, “lathe” was a school curriculum activity in UK can you believe. Many children of that era got the “fear” from that and a tool we use that is called the skew.
To be fair, some caution and nerves is most definitely normal and warranted - not using a helmet and understanding very clearly what you are doing can result in death or very nasty injuries.
Part - maybe a small part, maybe not - of the summative sonic signature of a component is a function of what it sits on. And that could be anything. When X component sits on Y the resonant frequency of X will be different than when X sits on Z. (Even Wilson's X-material!) Sometimes manufacturers will sell or include a stand or platform for their thing to sit on; I think Brinkman may offer such. In any event it is typically nigh impossible for one to know or predict the influence of a rack or stand on something, same for flooring, until you try it. Some platform manufacturers try to move the resonant frequency of a component to one that has less influence on the bits and parts of the component. Everything vibrates.
I would suspect similar occurs with wood and other horns - they need to attach to something, including a driver.
There is no Zen and the art of Laptopping.
Exactly - only misery, eye ache, back ache, and head aches.
Sanding the first 1/3 section of Aurora, fulfilling yes. Looking for more craftsmen to join us
Bill there is something about working with wood that is so connective. I did just a year of industrial arts at high school but spent as much time as I was allowed on the lathe… the sculptural qualities of shaping hardwood with a chisel and the physical feel and sounds and the smell of turned wood is something that still stays with me and provided some of my most zen school moments.
In landscape design appreciating the marvel that are trees and working with their structure and nature and their essential meaning provides some of the most deeply soulful elements of working with a landscape. Turning their fruits and then their wood into a container for providing nourishment is also one of the most essential and earliest cultural moves we make. Trees are just extraordinary things and when that act and intense energy of working with their timber is done with whole appreciation it can have that very fundamental zen quality. That’s coming through your work here… a moment where art meets craft and form grows from function. Underpinning this for me in all this is involvement with an organic material that has shaped our life across the planet. Turning wood into sound and conveying music is something also that can be very essential and beautifully rich in nature and in spirit. It is deeply rooted in our earliest civilisation.
In some ways appreciating that materials have nature and what materials sound like is a fundament of any later appreciation of systems then portraying sounds naturally.
Recognising the nature of things is also in the Taoist spirit of then seeing past all the short seemingly separate moments and that there is greater flow in this and that we can also see past assumed boundaries in things as energy and nature changes and moves from one state to another and perhaps (going full tilt here lol) sometimes we’re all just along for the big energetic ride
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Bill there is something about working with wood that is so connective. I did just a year of industrial arts at high school but spent as much time as I was allowed on the lathe… the sculptural qualities of shaping hardwood with a chisel and the physical feel and sounds and the smell of turned wood is something that still stays with me and provided some of my most zen school moments.
In landscape design appreciating the marvel that are trees and working with their structure and nature and their essential meaning provides some of the most deeply soulful elements of working with a landscape. Turning their fruits and then their wood into a container for providing nourishment is also one of the most essential and earliest cultural moves we make. Trees are just extraordinary things and when that act and intense energy of working with their timber is done with whole appreciation it can have that very fundamental zen quality. That’s coming through your work here… a moment where art meets craft and form grows from function. Underpinning this for me in all this is involvement with an organic material that has shaped our life across the planet. Turning wood into sound and conveying music is something also that can be very essential and beautifully rich in nature and in spirit. It is deeply rooted in our earliest civilisation.
In some ways appreciating that materials have nature and what materials sound like is a fundament of any later appreciation of systems then portraying sounds naturally.
Recognising the nature of things is also in the Taoist spirit of then seeing past all the short seemingly separate moments and that there is greater flow in this and that we can also see past assumed boundaries in things as energy and nature changes and moves from one state to another and perhaps (going full tilt here lol) sometimes we’re all just along for the big energetic ride
Thank you, Graham, for leaving any baggage at the door and getting deeply into this subject. I agree entirely with what you have written, indeed it make me realise I need to delve much deeper into the spiritual side of these things. I think I am beginning to connect and understand some of the philosophy you are communicating.
Any advice for me in terms of reading, studying or practice tbat you think relevant?
It's so refreshing for men to speak openly about their love of wood. The world is a more peaceful place lol.
You really are on a roll today Marc. How charming.
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