Khorns Time Alignment

[jcmusic]

OK guys fwiw they are very close to being phase aligned in the xover area.

In fact they are aligned really nice at the acoustic cover area and they sound just spectacular. Of course I can not get them perfect but, they are so much better than stock or modded speakers without alignment.

Edited September 18, 2014 by canyonman

[mark1101]

Sorry guys. You are quite wrong.

 

While time alignment and phase are related (as is frequency), there are differences.

 

There is absolutely no way to make a large horn system like a Khorn or Jubilee phase coherent.

 

An example of a linear phase fully horn loaded speaker system is the Danley SH50. Some of the Frazier models are also linear phase. Even a single driver speaker system is not necessarily phase coherent, nor behave as a single point source.

 

http://www.danleysoundlabs.com/danley/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/line-array-paper.pdf

 

There is a difference. And it is audible. How audible depends on the program material, room acoustics and associated equipment used, AND your own personal experience.

 

Example: If you do what PWK did ~ take a single Heresy into a church and put it up on a stand and play a multi-miked recording to a couple hundred people who are not trained listeners & don't really care all that much about audio in the first place and none of them can hear any difference, what does that prove? It proves that a bunch of people who aren't familiar with the recording being played on a non-linear phase speaker in an extremely reverberant room (way more reflections than direct sound reaching their ears), can't hear the difference with nothing to compare it to. No Kidding. What a surprise.

 

FWIW (here comes my schpeel) I have dozens of original master recordings that I've made myself, most in the same church with the same singers and musicians several times a year over 25 years, not including the ones I've been involved with in my own bands the past 40+ years. Unless you have gone through that exercise, and done so many times, you don't (can't) have a known point of reference. Unfortunately most audio enthusiasts haven't had the same opportunity or ever been in a recording studio and heard the original master recording of anything much less have heard the original performance so that there's at least some point of reference.

 

On the other hand, if you're right, we need to see the combined radiation pattern of all drivers operating at the same time, not the impulse response(s) taken from the individual drivers one at a time as shown above. There should not be any lobbing error in the radiation pattern across the entire frequency range and especially at the crossover frequencies.

 

http://www.rane.com/note160.html

OK..........so I guess Klipsch sucks and you are going to sell all your Klipsch speakers now, and everyone here is wasting their time. 

 

I know what you are saying, but Danley is on another planet with his stuff, and it's pretty much cost prohibitive.  Many churches around our area use Danley and we have gone and "audited" a few of them due to their advanced music programs.  Honestly.........you can't tell his stuff from anyone else's that does it right.  At least I haven't heard any noticeable difference.  Plus, many comment that his tapped horns have a "characteristic sound".  The band PHISH dumped Danley's PA because Mike Gordon (bass player) could not get used to the sound of the big tapped horns.  Danley presents compelling engineering evidence but where are the customer testimonials as to the improvement in sound?  Where???  They are ALL Danley testimonials.  The stuff works great from an engineering perspective and is incredibly engineered.......but I believe it splits hairs that most normal humans can't even tell the difference.  I haven't been able to yet.

 

The Danley DTS-10s I heard at a forum member's house with and array of Jubs were slow and sloppy by his own admission and thought the system sounded better with them off.  Honestly, I couldn't really even tell.  They were no better or worse than other subs I heard.

 

Do you still think REALLY that time aligning a Khorn is a waste of time?  I think it would be a huge improvement.........never heard one.  But I used to run my MCM on passives at first and man that was a sloppy mess compared to the "processed" version.

[djk]

"At least I haven't heard any noticeable difference. "

 

Would be nice to not be able to hear detail, would save a lot of money too.

 

All food tastes the same(if you have a zinc deficency), all women kiss the same(if you're a eunuch), VHS and Beta look the same(to Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder), and all amplifers sound the same(to the deaf old men at Stereo Review).

 

WHO?

 

Tell the deaf/dumb/blind kid to go play pinball.

[jcmusic]

Some will say this and that, it doesn't matter to me I know what I am hearing now and I know what I was hearing before!!! The difference is huge like night and day, I can never go back now after hearing what I am hearing now. Get some acoustic treatment in your room, along with some EQ and time and phase alignment and enjoy the music!!!

[Chief bonehead]

The only problem is that even though you can get the drivers time-aligned, you still won't have a phase coherent (linear phase) system. Time alignment helps with better focus but the rasp & harshness will still be there albeit to a lesser extent. In the end I finally decided to can the idea. In the old days this probably didn't matter so much because other forms of distortion and distortion in other components masked it. This is one area where Klipsch has really missed the boat and unfortunately Paul Klipsch never quite got it either. However one has to keep in mind the era/generation PWK is from and what was known and available. I'm 62 and PWK graduated college years before my parents were even born. He worked at GE when Thomas Edison was CEO.

 

I guess what I'm saying is the time alignment exercise with Klipschorns is interesting, and while not without benefit, is of limited usefulness in that it still doesn't solve the problem. Not to name names, today there are other products which have. And I'll bet my booty that PWK or Roy Delgado wished that they had thought of it first.

And what is it exactly tha paul wished he had thought of?

[Chief bonehead]

Time alignment issues and the benefits thereof, are what makes a good single driver appealing. A single driver is time aligned. The cohesiveness, imaging, soundstage, etc. are excellent. Horns, female vocals, etc. sound very good. The problem is it all comes at the sacrifice of extreme high and low frequencies.

After listening to an excellent single driver, one is compelled to achieve similar results through alignment of tweeters, squawkers and woofers. That is the way to get the imaging of a single driver with the dynamics and frequency range of a 3-way system. Physically aligning a horn loaded woofer is impractical, leaving the electronic solution.

Or . . . . you could always use headphones.

Or go with Synergy Horns from Danley. Seriously.[/quote

Seriously? How many acoustic sources are in that speaker?

[Chief bonehead]

Sorry guys. You are quite wrong.

 

While time alignment and phase are related (as is frequency), there are differences.

 

There is absolutely no way to make a large horn system like a Khorn or Jubilee phase coherent.

 

An example of a linear phase fully horn loaded speaker system is the Danley SH50. Some of the Frazier models are also linear phase. Even a single driver speaker system is not necessarily phase coherent, nor behave as a single point source.

 

http://www.danleysoundlabs.com/danley/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/line-array-paper.pdf

 

There is a difference. And it is audible. How audible depends on the program material, room acoustics and associated equipment used, AND your own personal experience.

 

Example: If you do what PWK did ~ take a single Heresy into a church and put it up on a stand and play a multi-miked recording to a couple hundred people who are not trained listeners & don't really care all that much about audio in the first place and none of them can hear any difference, what does that prove? It proves that a bunch of people who aren't familiar with the recording being played on a non-linear phase speaker in an extremely reverberant room (way more reflections than direct sound reaching their ears), can't hear the difference with nothing to compare it to. No Kidding. What a surprise.

 

FWIW (here comes my schpeel) I have dozens of original master recordings that I've made myself, most in the same church with the same singers and musicians several times a year over 25 years, not including the ones I've been involved with in my own bands the past 40+ years. Unless you have gone through that exercise, and done so many times, you don't (can't) have a known point of reference. Unfortunately most audio enthusiasts haven't had the same opportunity or ever been in a recording studio and heard the original master recording of anything much less have heard the original performance so that there's at least some point of reference.

 

On the other hand, if you're right, we need to see the combined radiation pattern of all drivers operating at the same time, not the impulse response(s) taken from the individual drivers one at a time as shown above. There should not be any lobbing error in the radiation pattern across the entire frequency range and especially at the crossover frequencies.

 

http://www.rane.com/note160.html

I will ask you the same question. With some many acoustic sources, the Darnley is phase coherent? And it is absolutely possible to get two acoustic sources operating in different bandwidth to be phase coherent. And time alignment is only part of the solution. A single driver will absolutely have a phase response that changes.

[Chris A]

I've always been interested in the other effects that may arise like higher-order modes (HOMs or evanescent modes) affecting the multiple-entry input impedance that may be due to coupling between the compression drivers or cone drivers of this type of design (Danley and Renkus-Heinz multiple-entry horns).

 

To assume that these drivers will not be significantly affected in their output by nearby drivers in more complex ways than a single driver on a single horn seems to be the question that no one seems eager to answer.  I wish that I had one unit in hand to test.

 

Chris

Edited September 20, 2014 by Chris A

[Chief bonehead]

What would be interesting to measure is turn one driver on. Then another and then another......and see what the resultant curve does. Is the acoustic summation coherent or incoherent?

Edited September 20, 2014 by Chief bonehead

[Chief bonehead]

"At least I haven't heard any noticeable difference. "

Would be nice to not be able to hear detail, would save a lot of money too.

All food tastes the same(if you have a zinc deficency), all women kiss the same(if you're a eunuch), VHS and Beta look the same(to Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder), and all amplifers sound the same(to the deaf old men at Stereo Review).

WHO?

Tell the deaf/dumb/blind kid to go play pinball.

He never tilts at all.....

[artto]

 

 

Time alignment issues and the benefits thereof, are what makes a good single driver appealing. A single driver is time aligned. The cohesiveness, imaging, soundstage, etc. are excellent. Horns, female vocals, etc. sound very good. The problem is it all comes at the sacrifice of extreme high and low frequencies.

After listening to an excellent single driver, one is compelled to achieve similar results through alignment of tweeters, squawkers and woofers. That is the way to get the imaging of a single driver with the dynamics and frequency range of a 3-way system. Physically aligning a horn loaded woofer is impractical, leaving the electronic solution.

Or . . . . you could always use headphones.

Or go with Synergy Horns from Danley. Seriously.[/quote

Seriously? How many acoustic sources are in that speaker?

 

"Seriously? How many acoustic sources are in that speaker?"

 

Read the patent.

 

Provided one is capable of understanding it (yes, it's really "out there". How many patent applications are 30 pages?), you will  quickly realize that the answer is "one".

 

That (multiple drivers operating in multiple frequency ranges acting as a single acoustic [point] source), after all, is the "breakthrough", just like a Klipschorn was, in its own way, 75 years ago.

 

I'm not downing Klipsch. I've used Klipsch for 40+ years. I still have my Klipschorns & Belle Klipsch. I have Klipsch Chorus & Reference in the HT. And Pro Media One desptops.

 

The fact of the matter is Tom Danley figured out how to make a fully horn-loaded full range linear phase speaker system that appears as a single acoustic point source while at the same time maintaining broadband directivity that qualifies it as a true acoustic "waveguide". Since I'm the loyal type, sure I wish Klipsch had invented it first. But they didn't. Like it or not, Tom Danley is pretty much the new PWK of our generation. He figured out how to solve a long standing problem inherent in all large horn-loaded systems, indeed, in all other types of speaker systems. FWIW his background as an aerospace engineer having many prior patents with acoustical levitation devices provided him with insight that the rest of us simply don't have. Reading the patent application for the Synergy Horn was a revelation.

 

One more comment. Visiting Danley's headquarters and auditioning their products there will give you little insight as to what the speakers are capable of or sound like for home use. The setup there is to show how the speakers perform and their array-ability under difficult large room acoustical conditions where there is a lot of reverberation to interfere with the direct sound. If you really want to hear what they sound like for "audiophile" conditions, its kind of the same as for the Klipschorn or Jubilee. You'll have to find someone with a dedicated room and a properly set up system and associated equipment to hear what they're really capable of. So yes, time aligning Khorn's or Jubliee's can and do make a difference which IMO is for the better. A speaker that has all their great qualities but takes it a step further, acting as one full range single point source that is phase coherent takes everything to the next level. As always, your mileage may vary.

Edited September 20, 2014 by artto

[Chief bonehead]

Actually I have read the patent. So all the acoustic sources are placed in a "blender" and comes out coherent. Linear phase is a misnomer. A consistent phase curve that "goes down" is the best can do. Just measure acoustic phase of a single driver.

So I guess the manifolds that klipsch and ev did and whoever else did them were also "linear phase"?

Edited September 20, 2014 by Chief bonehead

[mark1101]

The Danley stuff is brilliant.........my contention is that it is not about fidelity or better sound quality.  It's about efficiency and getting more output out of smaller boxes with his tapped subs and solving coverage issues better than everyone else with Synergy horns.  Because he deals in horns......of course its very clean, clear and efficient.  So are other manufacturer's........just not as efficient, small, or as even coverage.

 

I have heard his stuff several times in the Atlanta churches as I mention.......in Club Lavela in Panama city me and another guy walked around for no less than 30 minutes looking for the subs.  It was incredible.....when we found them they were in a wall and there was like 25 of the 115s and it was blowing the building apart.  But you couldn't tell where it was coming from.  Incredible output from such small boxes.

 

I agree Danley is the PWK of our generation.......well put!!

 

But I think his stuff doesn't have a sound quality that stands out from other well done pro systems very much if at all.  It's his engineering that gets the last 10% no one could get......and it just doesn't sound significantly better from a fidelity standpoint.

[kg4guy]

I have both Klipsch and Danley and there are things I love about the sound of the Klipsch and things I love about the Danley's sound it's all a matter of taste. In fact I have Altec A6's and I really like there sound also they are all unique.

[mikebse2a3]

Actually I have read the patent. So all the acoustic sources are placed in a "blender" and comes out coherent. Linear phase is a misnomer. A consistent phase curve that "goes down" is the best can do. Just measure acoustic phase of a single driver.

 

 

Looking at the design I would have to be concerned that over such a wide frequency bandwidth design that at some frequencies there will be destructive interference based on spacing of the various acoustic sources. I don't believe there is a free lunch here but I would love to hear these systems for myself.

 

 

miketn  

Edited September 21, 2014 by mikebse2a3

[Chris A]

If there were an application of using a concrete-wall horn (to avoid structure-borne-induced modulation distortion) from the wide bandwidth, the Synergy horn is that application, in spades...I would think.

[Chris A]

Chris, are you aware of any suggested reading for this issue?

I'd start with Linkwitz: http://www.linkwitzlab.com/crossovers.htm and http://www.rane.com/note160.html and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linkwitz%E2%80%93Riley_filter

 

Note that I'm using an ElectroVoice Dx38 digital crossover for my Jubs and another one for my center Belle, and in particular, the Linkwitz-Riley 24dB/octave digital filter options for the crossovers filters, so my experience using passive filters of any order isn't recent.  I'm reporting on my own listening tests using these hardware items that I listed above (tweeters, crossover, and stock Belle midrange/driver), not a third-party opinion.

 

EDIT: If you look at the CP25 tweeter data sheet you'll see that the FR at 2.5 Khz is good to even as low as an octave below, i.e., 1.25 KHz and at least -24 dB from its 2.5 KHz level if using a 24 dB L-R crossover filter.

 

Chris

 

I just stumbled across another reference article on this subject that I'd seen before, but failed to bookmark--this time from Nelson Pass on the subject of crossovers.  You may like this one even more than the references above: http://www.firstwatt.com/pdf/art_coherent_xvr.pdf

[ClaudeJ1]

 

 

Time alignment issues and the benefits thereof, are what makes a good single driver appealing. A single driver is time aligned. The cohesiveness, imaging, soundstage, etc. are excellent. Horns, female vocals, etc. sound very good. The problem is it all comes at the sacrifice of extreme high and low frequencies.

After listening to an excellent single driver, one is compelled to achieve similar results through alignment of tweeters, squawkers and woofers. That is the way to get the imaging of a single driver with the dynamics and frequency range of a 3-way system. Physically aligning a horn loaded woofer is impractical, leaving the electronic solution.

Or . . . . you could always use headphones.

Or go with Synergy Horns from Danley. Seriously.[/quote

Seriously? How many acoustic sources are in that speaker?

Several lumped quotes here not originating from me, but mine is the last one so I will respond. Of course, Mr. Chief B. the SH-50/SH-46 is 7 drivers and lots of holes, so lots of sources. Since it radiates from the same horn, the best way to describe the sound is "homogenized cohesive". It's a very nice imaging presentation that is on par, but that is different from what I had in my Avatar, featuring the K-402/K1133 with a good tweeter, but I do miss the sound of my Quarter Pies. the Synergy Horn certainly CD and sounds very good in the midrange, treble and upper bass down to 150 Hz. but needs some EQ to get it down to 60 Hz. With twin 12" low Qes drivers with enough Sd to equal an 18" woofer, I suspect that with the EQ it has no more distortion than EQing an Jubilee, since we are an octave higher before we hand off to a subwoofer. I'm amazed that such a small horn gets as low as it does but it ain't no Khorn, Jubillee, MWM, or Quarter Pie!

I had to downsize to much smaller "headquarters" by a factor of 2.5X less square footage, so this was an affordable solution that gets to 60 Hz. and sounds better than a LaScala/K-402 in a much smaller package.

Edited September 23, 2014 by ClaudeJ1

[Fjd]

 

Chris, are you aware of any suggested reading for this issue?

I'd start with Linkwitz: http://www.linkwitzlab.com/crossovers.htm and http://www.rane.com/note160.html and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linkwitz%E2%80%93Riley_filter

 

Note that I'm using an ElectroVoice Dx38 digital crossover for my Jubs and another one for my center Belle, and in particular, the Linkwitz-Riley 24dB/octave digital filter options for the crossovers filters, so my experience using passive filters of any order isn't recent.  I'm reporting on my own listening tests using these hardware items that I listed above (tweeters, crossover, and stock Belle midrange/driver), not a third-party opinion.

 

EDIT: If you look at the CP25 tweeter data sheet you'll see that the FR at 2.5 Khz is good to even as low as an octave below, i.e., 1.25 KHz and at least -24 dB from its 2.5 KHz level if using a 24 dB L-R crossover filter.

 

Chris

 

I just stumbled across another reference article on this subject that I'd seen before, but failed to bookmark--this time from Nelson Pass on the subject of crossovers.  You may like this one even more than the references above: http://www.firstwatt.com/pdf/art_coherent_xvr.pdf

 

 

Thanks for the links. 

[ClaudeJ1]

Actually I have read the patent. So all the acoustic sources are placed in a "blender" and comes out coherent. Linear phase is a misnomer. A consistent phase curve that "goes down" is the best can do. Just measure acoustic phase of a single driver.

So I guess the manifolds that klipsch and ev did and whoever else did them were also "linear phase"?

I believe this to be true in both cases, yes.