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Horn Lover? Maybe it's time to go straight...


Mallette

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Posted this in the the FUG thread, but perhaps of more general interest. It's noted in an article posted there that a straight horn is preferable to a folded horn. Got to reading that article and it suddenly hit me (OUCH, that
smarts...). If you are building a house, or very lucky in the one you
have, a straight 32' horn isn't a really big deal. Put a pair of these
with IB subwoofer and you'd be in serious trouble.

No real exponential horn design here, but the measurements are to scale with the opening 5' and the horn 32'. Room height is 14 in listening, 9 in the closet, 12 in the other room. Attic peak is about 14. Nothing all that unsual here. Anyone aware of this being done before?

Dave

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There is a guy in Russellville who built his own home his music room has large horns built into the wall. The grills are painted to match the wall so it blends in really well. The attic horns seems like a good idea. Although my attic gets so hot that I couldn't imagine the driver lasting long at all up there. I think it is a great idea.

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There is a guy in Russellville who built his own home his music room has large horns built into the wall. The grills are painted to match the wall so it blends in really well. The attic horns seems like a good idea. Although my attic gets so hot that I couldn't imagine the driver lasting long at all up there. I think it is a great idea.

I've had 4 18" drivers in my attic (SE TX) for several years. No problems so far. It's no worse than having a sub in the trunk of your car.

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There have been variations on this.

A long time ago I might have posted an article describing a similar very big horn in the acoustic Victrola days. It was in an English mansion. A servant had to run the Victrola. The mouth of the horn was the ceiling and listeners had to recline on couches. The horn was to some extent folded (curved tubes) because of the pick up from the record and setting up the big horn upstairs..

Also. At one time I had what was sort of Letters to Speakerlab. Some fellow made up straight bass horns in the attic space of the next room. The listening room had a higher ceiling than the next room so the mouths were somewhat toward the ceiling. The bass horns may have been longer than a K-Horn. He was using Speakerlab drivers. It seemed he got the bass horn bug really bad once SpeakerLab provided the inspiration.

There is an early horn publication by one of the Ancients showing a bass horn external to the room feeding a corner -- at least a sketch. It is interesting that the connection point and horn flare were selected so that the rate of horn expansion matched the rate of expansion of the horn. If you look at Don Keele's article on What's So Sacred ... . he sets the optimal transition point from an exponential (or hyperbolic) to a conical. This was based on some computer similations and reflection co-efficients. I looked at the rate of changes and it matches the theory of the Ancient. .

I had also posted an article about a horn system in a Planetarium There was some sort of re-entrant horn at the top of the dome. OT, but one of my memories of childhood was the Hayden Planetarium in NYC. The opening (seating) music was the second movement of Beethoven's Ninth. What an ex'cellent sound system. Probably all horns.

Wm McD

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I think the problem is that the very long horn length is going to cause delay issues. That is between the bass unit and a midrange. PWK, based on data, put the limit at 2 mS or so, maybe a bit more. we can find that.

Nonetheless, electronics these days with delay are relatively cheap.

Also, we might be able to use a very long and big horn as a true sub below 70 Hz. Then some LS could be used on the main floor.

Wm McD

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Gil:

You've lost me here. My understanding is that the Klipschorn is effectively a 32' horn when properly corner coupled. Why would a straight horn exhibit any issues that would be different? Mount the mid and tweet as per the K'horn and the result should be the same.

What am I missing here?

Dave

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Gil:

You've lost me here. My understanding is that the Klipschorn is effectively a 32' horn when properly corner coupled. Why would a straight horn exhibit any issues that would be different? Mount the mid and tweet as per the K'horn and the result should be the same.

What am I missing here?

Dave

Actually what Klipsch is saying is the effective mouth area of the Klipschorn when loaded into a room's corner has the low frequency response capability of an equilivant 32' long straight horn in a none corner. It's the room corner gain that allows the Klipschorn to approximately match a full length horns low frequency response.

It's best to think of how far each LF Horn's drivers are actually away from each other's respective mouth exit for an approximate idea of the difference in the time delays referenced to the MF/HF horn/drivers of the system. If you mount the mid-tweeters of the 32' Horn as per the Khorn the Straight Horn system would exhibit a much larger time delay between LF Horn/Driver and the MF/HF Horns of the Straight 32' long horn versus the Khorn's LF/Driver and it's MF/HF horns/drivers.

mike tn

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To answer Mallette,

The length of the K-Horn bass horn from throat to mouth is about 5 or 6 feet (we'll say 6 feet). The mid horn is about 2 feet long. So the offset between those two is 4 feet.

With the 32 foot horn you'd have to put the midrange very far into the bass-horn to get the same offset.

Wm McD

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