I'll settle for enough views to attract some people who are actually into the subject. Losing 100+ subs with every video I publish and no new blood coming in.
@@IBuildIt Yikes. Well, I guess Rome was not built in a day? Maybe some kind of collaboration with an actual audio channel would help. I am sure you have already thought of that, though.
I fully expected a period like this where I'd lose subs and the views wouldn't be stellar as the audience realigns to the new subject. I figure it'll take a few months at least to establish. I've not found collaborations to be particularly effective for this. The gain is minimal at best.
I personally really dig "horn" loaded drivers when listening to Jazz & Whiskey Blues since the horn can really amplify the frequency(s) in which it was designed for... Horn design is a very tricky thing..! The wrong angle & or radius will dictate the bandwidth in which the driver will produce predominantly... Baffle diffraction is another huge issue to over come..!
@@IBuildIt I’m a new subscriber, audio fan and fellow timber tickler! I’m late to the John Heisz party so going through a lot of your videos on both channels! Top job on both channels!
The more I learn about horn loading, the more I like it. There is just so many advantages. Better time alignment, lower distortion, better dispersion control to match woofers, fewer parts needed in the crossover. It's all pretty awesome.
Yes so much technically good about horns.... I personally just don't like the sound of them, but like so much in loudspeakers there's always compromise. John, love your channel the woodworking and the audio
I have a mentor who is in the high-end horn industry and the geometry of the horn can make quite a big difference. Some drivers are well-suited for other geometry‘s than other ones. I would also recommend rounding the edges at at the mouth. Reduces diffraction.
Especially given the inexpensive low power tube amp options out there now, I love to see people working in this area. I have done horn for many years now. I have a fairly big 3D printer that I have used for a couple year now. Fun stuff!
Horn throat diameter determines the higher frequency response. Hence, the lack of amplification after 15 kHz. Of you use a 1" compression driver, you can potentially extend the high end response
i LOVE your tools. the material of the horns might play a part it resonance within the horn. if you change the material, you might see a different curve pattern
This is interesting thanks. I'm far from an audiophile but I do plan to rebuild the housing for my speakers in the next year or two. I appreciate seeing the techniques you're using
These videos have been really interesting to me. I'm planning on a couple of speaker projects in the future. I'm planning on a set of monitors for my desktop computer and also following your design of the tv soundbar. Keep it up!
It’s strange how horns have come to mean mainly tweeters. Backloaded full range horns is what I think of, and what I consider taking the greatest benefit of the idea. Horns introduce directionality which is something that should be accounted for. With your build skills you should be able to do the holy grail of a Voigt Corner Horn. You needn’t stick religiously to the Lowther driver or the exact topology though. Plenty of modern tweaks to the idea.
i think the curve and the plastic surface bounces better than the wood which have more damping property ...leads to higher lower end freq output...but does doing this change the sound alot..like cupping or even conical amplified..
Thanks for another great video, John. I found it so interesting that you could demonstrate the effect of the horn shape with the SPL graphs. I’m looking forward to hearing more about your crossover designs and what you look for when integrating a mid or woofer with the tweeter. Hope your Christmas was full of happiness and cheer!
Hi! Great video! Is there a mathematical equational relationship between the area of a horn's mouth and its decibel output? Or an equational relationship between the length of a horn's throat and its decibel output? I need it for a project I am doing. Thanks!
I'd love to see you build a L.A.B. subwoofer, it was a project from the Live Audio Board several years ago. It's a large and complicated folded horn subwoofer that has two special twelves driving it. It would be an amazing woodworking project, and an amazing audio project. I'm sure someone would pay good money to own it after you were finished, so you could probably turn a nice profit on it.
I'll be building a new pair of speakers for my listening room, but nothing big enough to have a folded horn. I don't have the space for the big stuff :)
They are more efficient which is good for the environment. But I wonder about flatting the mid range with an equalizer until the volume becomes in balance with the high frequencies. Perhaps then you would get the same efficiency as with a normal speaker,?
I wonder if the plastic horn is more prone to got into resonance with the signal due to being lighter weight, which might explain why the curve is higher but also it had wider swings as the frequency changed. I wonder if the outer edges of the plastic horn were held in a stiffer frame, would thr curve be lower but perhaps more stable
Can we get higher resoult above 15K if we use a crossing between a phase plug and a small horn? I have amt4 pro and i think they are fast enought but the size or whatever make a poor resoult on the upper end above 10K. I WNAT TO FIX IT. I will have a 3d printer here next week
John, are you doing anything to compensate for time alignment based on the distance from the driver to a theoretical zero timeline? That was one item we worked on a lot in the electronic crossover programs for our horn loaded arrays (JBL HLA) back in my big rock days... I'm wondering if the difference in depth in your speakers is negligible in comparison or if it could benefit from compensation.
Adding the horn to my office speaker physically improved time alignment, since it pushed the tweeter back and closer to where the woofer coil coil is. And I think for a a pair of small bookshelf speakers listening in the nearfield, any time alignment mismatch is not going to be great enough to make an audible difference.
With Tannoy Dual Concentric full range speakers, the tweeter and the bass cones both shared the same magnet. The tweeter used the bass cone as a horn. Their adverts use the term "Single Point Source" as the origin of the sound waves, this in turn gives a more cohesive sound stage. The Tannoy Monitor Golds were extremly popular with recording studios during the 60's and 70's.
I think it's more correct to say that the horn changes the output energy of the speaker to be more directive, and less isotropic, thereby causing more gain directly in front of the speaker and less off to the sides. It does this by physically impeding the sound waves (via the wood structure of the horn) and forcing them out forward. The total output energy is the same in both cases, it is just being redistributed. In your images for your explanation, the dome actually has the same amount of air contacting its front surface, and therefore the force needed to move the dome is the same in both cases as F = PA where P is pressure and A is area. P in this case being the only variable which could change the force required to move the dome, which should be the same in both cases. Great video though!
Directivity is just part of it. Impedance matching is the main mechanism that boost efficiency and in this video I tried to describe that impedance match improvement in a way that most could understand.
One thing of note is that you still have to take care not to lower x-over point too low. Don’t forget that the cut off limit for crossover is about one point five octaves above tweeter resonance to avoid significant and very audible odd order distortion which rises as you approach resonance.
I haven't tested myself but the say is that you need hard diaphragms since softer ones start to wobble at higher frequency thus not being able to produce higher notes especially under horn load. Sounds plausible since I haven't seen compression drivers with soft diaphragms. Anyway, excellent video. Appreciate it! =)
Very interesting stuff! How are you accounting for your room reflections in the measurements? I know you’ve got treatment on the ceiling, are you doing anything for the walls?
There seems to be renewed interest in horn speakers. Horns have had a reputation ad sounding very bad, but new ( old) designs have solved a lot of those problems.
Instead of freehand, cut a hole in scrap big enough for router to ride inside. Use double sided tape to stick it down. Perfect circles everytime. Save templates
OMA SPEAKERS is the company he is referencing. I make conical wave guides for my pro speakers. A wave guide works by trapping and directing the sound into a narrower range- it's sort of an acoustic lens. They sound more natural than a full blown horn which also does the same, but compressed the sound even more leading to greater coloration of the sound. I use aluminum sheet metal to form the wave guide. Also, the conical shape sounds much more natural than other shapes. I TYPICALLY GAIN BETWEEN 4 AND 5 D.B. OF OUTPUT.
About the horn reducing the mass of air directly in front of the driver causing increased output, that could be a good way to put it for that kind of horn, which is one having a constant slope to the sides. If the horn's flare varies with the distance from the driver in a way such that the diameter does not vary linearly with the distance from the driver then the horn can have the opposite effect of holding in the sound. This is what trumpets and other such wind instruments are all about. The non-linear flare makes in effect for a more defined endpoint for the column of air vibrating inside. Trumpets have purer pitch than coronets or bugles because the shape of the bell stops more sound from coming out, and that is how those instruments are defined, by the shapes of their bells (and not by whether or not the instrument has valves... bugles can have valves). While you don't have a long column of air to vibrate inside the speaker, the curvature of the horn would still greatly influence output.
I was wondering if the effect of the plastic horn was due to a smoother transition to the external air which provides for a better impedance match than the relative sudden transition offered by the wooden horn John made?
I have a question for you sir! Based on the theory that the sound level increases by placing a horn in front of the tweeter, would this also work when using a horn in front of a midrange or a subwoofer? The car audio enthusiast in me has some ideas spinning...
Awesome. Thanks for the reminder of the significance of horns. Does it matter as much as it becomes more distant i.e. less focused/bigger area to cover e.g. outside venue?
During the time of iPhone 4, I found a purchase a silicone horn adapter for novelty's sake. Now I cup my hand around phone speaker areas in case I need to hear something better.
I ask because the ampI heard costed 15000 I guess maybe your opinion on a less expensive option if no I understand that your busy thanks again wood rocks
Well, the quickly put together wood horn is neither exponential nor parabolic, no wonder the plastic horn is louder! For anyone planning such a project, run a Roundover bit on the wood cones' outer edges. That way you get a slight output boost where it matters the most. For viewers not convinced about the whole horn thingy, think about it this way. Driving a typical 30% efficiency 10w speaker with a 10w amp produces the equivalent of only 3 watts in sound output. Horn loading a tweeter makes it way more efficient. That's like free MPG. Who doesn't want it? Unless you hate the shape of horns. Personally I love horns 😂
So the inventor in me wants to see a horn made from a centre rotated tesla valve... (so each valve curve forms concentric rings around the tweeter, moving out away from it) so that with each vibration it sucks air in from outside the horn, but won't let any back lash out. I think the design may work better for a subwoofer though. Likely a job for a 3D printer. I'm curious about this, but not enough to try it myself.
Before you said you were hotgluing the big horn to the twitter, i cringed because I thought you still had the pin nailer in your hand rather than the glue gun.
From my experience... horns distort the actual 3D image of the recorded music. They are good for concert and club speakers, to help amplify the volume levels and overall dispersion spread... But as for Crystal Clarity and Perfect Audiophile Accuracy.. they are Not good for that.
Im going to add, that Graph sweeps only tell part of the story. They show frequency output.. but they do not tell you how they will actually sound when playing actual music. A lot of audiophile headphones, for example, are specially tuned to enhance the experience: For example, to reduce harshness of the upper range, that certain other headphone drivers produce (making them painfully fatiguing, after only a short period of listening). They also dont, (as Ive posted above).. show the distortions of the intended 3d image / soundstage that occurs, due to the horns shape, and how the waves are altered when bouncing around the horns sides... and then beyond them.
Keep listening to horns... Eventually you will see... Also try $100 iem buds.... And high voltage headphones.... "Coloration" of music is not necessary evil..... Wine is all about coloration....I have heard zero distortion transducers and I can assure you.... me and everybody around said they musically sound like crap....Q = 0.7 is normal sounds in nature.... High Q > 1.3 and low Q >0.5 will musically sound unnatural....
If I was rich, I'd buy you a cnc ... I guess the sound bounces off the plastic more efficiently or not impacting the sound wave vs wood horn. Shape too as you mentioned.
Correction: Horn loading a dome tweeter (or any other) makes the driver work HARDER (yes) against the air. While a flush mount driver works into a LOW pressure open environment, horn loading it confines the air into a column of HIGH pressure air, which is then dispersed. Hence the descriptor "Impedance matching". Simply put, horn loading causes the driver to transfer more kinetic energy to the air. This in turn increases power, but even more importantly it significantly increases detail and conveys more information making the sound more life-like. Horn loading is more about sound quality, than power.
Acoustic impedance, like electrical impedance, is a tough concept for most people to grasp, so I simplified the explanation while sacrificing absolute accuracy. These days it's about perceived sound quality, but back when they were first being developed and used it was more for power. As in high powered amps were expensive, more expensive than bumping up the efficiency of the speakers.
@@IBuildIt No, it's not a tough concept to grasp, if you understand it and provide examples for the layman. If I blow into the mouthpiece of a trombone, the sound might travel across the room. If I connect that mouthpiece onto a "Ricola" horn (Mountain or Alpine horn) and blow with the same pressure, the sound will travel across the valley. That's impedance matching. The more "easing" the high-pressure, low-volume of the mouthpiece into the low-pressure, high volume of the surrounding air, the more efficiency.
That's probably why when we go to concerts the sound guy is unaware that the sound coming out of those big stage speakers with horns needs to be adjusted for a higher than expected output on the higher end frequency. Not always but a few times I thought my ears were going to split. Dam drunk and uneducated soundguys...lmao
Just after 6:26, I started hearing a song in my head: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-cJadVfzmOn0.html That's the CD version of Games Without Frontiers by Peter Gabriel. Other versions don't seem to have the sweep.
Almost them all use metric system, but to migrate everything these are trillions of dollars. Nobody wants to pay for already working things. At the same time their losses are about 300 bln annually because of imperial system.
