Plexi-glass K-Horn pics on the site

[ricktate]

Did anyone see the pics of the Plexi-glass construction yet. Pretty cool......I made a woofer door out of plexi glass to see the movment of woofer....does not move much. Rick

[WTF]

Did anyone see the pics of the Plexi-glass construction yet. Pretty cool......I made a woofer door out of plexi glass to see the movment of woofer....does not move much. Rick

God yes, it's been around for years.

Cone forward motion at low frequencies is working against a mass (the so called "air load") on the forward side so it's displacement limited (not that you'd see it moving much anyway). It doesn't mean the distortion is lower because it's moving less. That's a misconception. There's all sorts of distortions associated with air loading, reflections due to the "contraption" called the folded horn and non-linear properties of air compression dealt with, to some limited extent, by the design of the rear chamber of the horn.

Mid and HF horns have come a long way from the bent plywood configurations used by the DIYer crowd. Geometries are complex and are manufactured from polymerics and structural foams. Coupled with good crossover designing, strong motors, Be-diaphragms, and so on they make good sound.

[Budman]

here

http://itishifi.blogspot.com/2009/03/plexiglass-klipschorn-and-pwk.html

http://www.klipsch.com/plexiglas-khorn

[tigerwoodKhorns]

Did anyone see the pics of the Plexi-glass construction yet. Pretty cool......I made a woofer door out of plexi glass to see the movment of woofer....does not move much. Rick

God yes, it's been around for years.

Cone forward motion at low frequencies is working against a mass (the so called "air load") on the forward side so it's displacement limited (not that you'd see it moving much anyway). It doesn't mean the distortion is lower because it's moving less. That's a misconception. There's all sorts of distortions associated with air loading, reflections due to the "contraption" called the folded horn and non-linear properties of air compression dealt with, to some limited extent, by the design of the rear chamber of the horn.

Mid and HF horns have come a long way from the bent plywood configurations used by the DIYer crowd. Geometries are complex and are manufactured from polymerics and structural foams. Coupled with good crossover designing, strong motors, Be-diaphragms, and so on they make good sound.

How does this with with non-horn speakers? I have "other" brands that are not horns and you cannot see the woofers move (same as the cornwall and heresy I guess).

[Islander]

It doesn't mean the distortion is lower because it's moving less. That's a misconception. There's all sorts of distortions associated with air loading, reflections due to the "contraption" called the folded horn and non-linear properties of air compression dealt with, to some limited extent, by the design of the rear chamber of the horn. Mid and HF horns have come a long way from the bent plywood configurations used by the DIYer crowd. Geometries are complex and are manufactured from polymerics and structural foams. Coupled with good crossover designing, strong motors, Be-diaphragms, and so on they make good sound.

Really? If "less movement equals less distortion" is a misconception, it's one that appears to be true, according to sound engineers and happy Klipsch owners. You'd think the truth would eventually come out, but after more than sixty years, the horns (we don't call them "contraptions" around here) do still seem to allow speakers to produce undistorted sound while using very little power to do it.

Your final conclusion is correct, though. When combined with quality design and hardware, horns do make good sound.

[WTF]

Really?.........according to sound engineers....

In virtually EVER mastering studio on the planet, with budget's that allow for the finest loudspeakers on Earth to be purchased, direct radiators are found.

Let's play find the folded bass horn....

[WTF]

here?

[WTF]

What about here? (Tannoy)

[WTF]

Ummm, no...(Tannoy again, btw)

[WTF]

No, no, no....

[WTF]

Abby Road Studios?....NO! (B&W btw)

[WTF]

If folded bass horns were really, really better than direct radiators, they'd be in the photos.

Genelec shown below btw

[WTF]

TAD

[WTF]

More TAD

[WTF]

Platinum Sound recording Studios, $2M studio.....used 2x15 TAD (still no bass horns!)

[WTF]

Genelec

[JJkizak]

Now I know why they make such bad recordings. Thanks for letting the cat out of the bag.

JJK

[Don Richard]

Studios today use near field monitors for most of their recording and mixdown, primarily for acoustic related reasons. It is not generally possible to get the drivers in a horn close enough together to integrate well for near field use. The situation is different in the sound reinforcement world where horns are widely used, especially for mid range and high frequencies.

[LarryC]

Cone forward motion at low frequencies is working against a mass (the so called "air load") on the forward side so it's displacement limited (not that you'd see it moving much anyway). It doesn't mean the distortion is lower because it's moving less. That's a misconception. There's all sorts of distortions associated with air loading, reflections due to the "contraption" called the folded horn and non-linear properties of air compression dealt with, to some limited extent, by the design of the rear chamber of the horn.

Well, now, what happened to the "acoustic transformer" concept, where the horn changes the wave characteristic from high pressure and low displacement at the throat, to low pressure and greater displacement at the mouth. I thought that was supposed to work into lower distortion and a very large-scale window of propagation into the room.

From Wiki: "Acoustic horns convert large pressure variations with a small displacement area into a low pressure variation with a large displacement area and vice versa. It does this through the gradual, often exponential increase of the cross sectional area of the horn. The small cross-sectional area of the throat restricts the passage of air thus presenting a high acoustic impedance to the driver. This allows the driver to develop a high pressure for a given displacement. Therefore the sound waves at the throat are of high pressure and low displacement. The tapered shape of the horn allows the sound waves to gradually decompress and increase in displacement until they reach the mouth where they are of a low pressure but large displacement."

There were plenty of mid and tweeter horns in the studios in your pictures. You asked only about the absence of bass horns, but it seems to me there are several apparent reasons for that, including the size needed for deep bass repro and the difficulty of time-aligning the reproduced signal, neither of which was fully solved by even the Klipschorn, no doubt in addition to all the other wave issues you mention.

My $0.02.

[Islander]

Really?.........according to sound engineers....

In virtually EVER mastering studio on the planet, with budget's that allow for the finest loudspeakers on Earth to be purchased, direct radiators are found. Let's play find the folded bass horn....

Perhaps I should have said "speaker engineers". That would have saved you a lot of work. Recording studios are a specialized application, so what works well there is not the same as what works well in most homes.

Also, we all know that bass horns have to be very large, so they're not commonly used. That said, there are several forum members who have horn subs and are very happy with them.