@49kasey Wow!!! making a bold statement for someone who has listened to a horn speaker just once - Still no one can deny your personal experience - good news is there are thousands of Klipsch horn & EV fans worldwide that would describe them as anything but compressed - in fact anyone who has had a chance to hear this type of speaker set up properly would argue that all other speaker design approaches sound compressed and lifeless in comparison - good luck with your opinion.
@49kasey For me it is not about brand names, but the most natural listening experience with all kinds of music, from A-Z. And, I do not believe that the most expensive speakers are necessarily the best, no matter what the company claims. But that is my personal opinion.
I built a pair of EV Patrician 800s with 30" woofer corner horns back in 1978 using E.V. blueprints. When I first powered them up for test they were actually scary sounding! I biamped them and found that only 2 watts RMS caused the house to shake! On a test sinewave you could hear no sound below 20HZ but the door leading to the basement was hammering out the frequency very convincingly!
The electro-voice 15WK looks like the same frame and magnet housing as my old electro-voice SRO 12" AlNico full-range speakers in my guitar amp cabinet..... am I correct? Are they the same basic frame/magnet housing? good video...thanx :)
I have the original plans for the Traditional Patrician 800s but they fell apart along the creases of the blueprints. There is at least one error in the interior measurements referencing the interior 2 cubic ft. cabinet which contains the 12" mid bass. Draftsmen used to use a "checker" (another individual) to ensure the sum of interior measurements added up to the exterior measurement. One 30w Electrovoice driver is equivalent to four 15" woofers in surface area.
@DeVizardofOZ The only horns I've ever heard that I'd describe as anything like sweet are the Motorola piezos and the old Dynaudio front horn-loaded soft domes from the 80's. And I don't think that true sonic evaluation is a matter of taste. Two people can agree on what is better because it is really not subjective. Superiority can be recognized by an educated ear.
The only time I ever heard full range horns was Klipschorns in the early 70's. It was in an audio shop in the Wash. DC area that had a big room with a low ceiling. They had them playing at a background level and I thought they sounded really compressed. I don't see how anyone could live with that.
@aidynphoenix - this is a early version of the klipsch designed corner horn - bass comes out the back and uses the corner you place the speaker in as a horn
Very nice and I would love to hear them. A bass player friend gave me an EV Regency III cabinet without the speakers or baffle. I mounted an 18" EV 100W speaker in it for my subwoofer and it was quite nice. The rest of my system was EV PI-153, 3 way, 15" bass, 6.5" VMR (vented midrange) and an ST350B tweeter and was tri-amped. That was one nice system! I also had a pair of Klipsch La Scalas which were great for PA, but you need to have a room big enough to appreciate their sound. Some distance from a horn loaded system is sometime needed.
@theaterboyeBay It's not so much an opinion as a strong impression. But I'll agree that most loudspeakers sound lifeless. Since the shop was a Klipsch dealer I would assume they would have gone to all ends to demonstrate them to their fullest. And it makes sense to me that a folded horn would be subject not only to compression, but many colorations as well. After all, the woofer is in a compression chamber and has a folded horn in front of it, all made of wood.
@DeVizardofOZ Well, I'm not an alien and my ears are set just like anyone else's lol. But you'd never want to put a Tannoy in a K-horn so I'm not sure what your point is. Not trying to be obnoxious but I know my way around loudspeakers.
@49kasey What I meant to say is, that perceiving sound is subjective (Maybe because I am not a native English speaker I did not appear clear). Otherwise why can so many manufacturers successfully sell their products, even though most are not horns?! To my hearing horns and maybe ELS's are the sweetest as they produce music effortless.
@49kasey Actually our hearing and the degree to which our ears are set on our head is influencing how we perceive sound. Secondly, most horns sound great if the equipment is good (not talking about power;-). Best is a dual concentric construction (like Tannoy uses). I have listened to some of the best and most expensive speakers but always come back to horns...
The quality of this video was pretty low resolution but the speaker is not closed off on the right side - the very back is wood but each side is speaker grill that lets the are pass through -
Awesome, data-rich video! I just acquired four CDP-848 horns, of which the reentrant tubes with 1828 drivers and small horns shown here are subsets... enough to make some Patricians if I wish! The lit you show confirms my measurements of the path length being just shy of 5 feet! These are gonna be a blast to play around with!
This is a very informative video. Thanks for putting it up. My earlier comment wasn't meant to disparage horns; upper range drivers sound very crisp and clean. It's just that the only time I ever heard K-horns I walked into the store and they were playing at a normal level and my immediate impression was that while they filled a huge room they sounded compressed. At the time I owned Celestion Ditton 10MKII's which was the mini version of the standard BBC monitor. A very exceptional loudspeaker.
It is very cool what these old horn enclosures can do to a whole house. They seem to sound good even in rooms other then were they are placed. Not sure we will every convince someone that spent 100K on a typical modern speaker - but these horn designs have such a high enjoyment factor I bet their owners play more hours of music per week then most
That's true. I built a pair of SpeakerLab K's from plans. Used EV TW-35 horn tweeters and K-55 mid drivers on Altec 511b's. Type A Klipsch crossover and Eminence woofer manufactured to Theile/Small parameters of pre 87 Klipschorn. I have them in a room 15 by 21 by 9. When I open the front door to that room and sit on my porch the music sounds just as good as inside the house. It also sounds good in the opposite end of the house.
these speakers NEVER distort as long as you have them powered right a buddy of my dads had a 9in horn in his station wagon in high school and it was LOUD
una tromba per alte frequenze montata su un basshorn..e tutta la gamma media da 300 a 5000 hz chi la riproduce?? a high frequency trumpet mounted on a basshorn..and the whole mid range from 300 to 5000 hz who plays it??
No - Paul Klipsch designed for other companies like Electro-Voice. So they have a similar corner loading approach to the Klipschorn. They are designed to sit in a corner but in the Cardinals design they do no seal to the corner perfectly.
I have heard a few versions of the Speakerlab K's and they sound good. Many prefer them to the Klipschorn but your statement is aimed at the wrong speaker design as this EV sounds quite a bit different the a K-horn - So unless you care to be more specific about the speakers you build now I will have to assume it is just builders pride allowing you to make a bold claim
theaterboyeBay I was merely pointing out that those old drivers don't hold a candle to modern drivers. It isn't a bold claim to say one can build a much simpler speaker these days and it will sound better than these ancient EV's. Even the Speakerlab K had better drivers. Moreover, the folded horns I design and build today are better than the Speakerlab K (a version of which I built in 1979). We didn't have horn design programs like hornresp back then. Combine a modern folded horn with an "econowave" speaker and that combo will utterly destroy those EV's.
firecloud77 I looked up some of the designs using the econowave and do agree there's potential there - I would also be very interested in your twist on modern folded horns - do you have any pictures of your designs up on the web or a website you can refer me to to gain more info
