SWL Posted October 31, 2015 Share Posted October 31, 2015 Got my feet wet with a Table Tuba Long Style that I bought from JasonSTR. I liked what I heard so he then built me a Tuba Home Theatre Low Profile (THTLP). These subs are so smooth and natural sounding.....tight and powerful. They ooze into the mains like no other sub I've had.....and I've had some pretty decent subs come through here in the past. By far the most musical subs I have ever owned. Placement/location is key just like any other sub but these definitely live up to the hype. Gotta sell some other audio stuff around here to fund another THTLP for Jason to build for me. His work is top notch and you really can't find too many better guys to do business with. If you're in the area, I highly recommend his work. These Tuba subs are big but if you go the 'Low Profile' route like I did....you can stand them up on end and they have a relatively small footprint. Mine is actually a 'slim' with dimensions of 18"x15"x72". Works GREAT in a corner (recommended). I can't see ever going back to a commercial direct radiating sub after experiencing this. I was a little concerned about integrating the horn loaded sub with the four 12" drivers in my KLF-30's. I had read that combining horn loaded and direct radiating subs was a 'no-no'. That must only be true with subs because as far as speakers go these have got to be the easiest subs I've ever had to blend into the mains. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YK Thom Posted November 2, 2015 Share Posted November 2, 2015 Do they work well with stand mounts? I would love a horn sub but don't want to be overpowered by it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jason str Posted November 2, 2015 Share Posted November 2, 2015 Not sure what you mean by stand mounts but these horns work best using a boundry such as a wall, floor or ceiling or even a solid piece of furniture. If clean low distortion bass is what you're looking for look no further, you can spend more but will not come close to the performance using direct radiators. Subs are only overpowering if you set them up that way. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YK Thom Posted November 2, 2015 Share Posted November 2, 2015 Bookshelf speakers. I currently use RB61 IIs with a down firing Klipsch sub I do have a sweet little corner jut out (about four feet), right in my main listening area which is right inline with my front mains. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jason str Posted November 2, 2015 Share Posted November 2, 2015 First thing i would check is if your current sub works good in that spot, if it does it sounds like it will be perfect. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YK Thom Posted November 2, 2015 Share Posted November 2, 2015 Good point, I don't currently haven't there - more of a sub cable issue than anything else. I have only been here a month and a half, still experimenting with the room. I'll try it out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moray james Posted November 2, 2015 Share Posted November 2, 2015 the simple way to discover where the good positions in your room for subs is to place one of your sugs exactly where you sit then you can move around the room and make note of there the bass sounds best those are your primary sub ;locations. This is fast and simple and requires the least amount of moving hardware about. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schu Posted November 2, 2015 Share Posted November 2, 2015 Got my feet wet with a Table Tuba Long Style that I bought from JasonSTR. I liked what I heard so he then built me a Tuba Home Theatre Low Profile (THTLP). These subs are so smooth and natural sounding.....tight and powerful. They ooze into the mains like no other sub I've had.....and I've had some pretty decent subs come through here in the past. By far the most musical subs I have ever owned. Placement/location is key just like any other sub but these definitely live up to the hype. Gotta sell some other audio stuff around here to fund another THTLP for Jason to build for me. His work is top notch and you really can't find too many better guys to do business with. If you're in the area, I highly recommend his work. These Tuba subs are big but if you go the 'Low Profile' route like I did....you can stand them up on end and they have a relatively small footprint. Mine is actually a 'slim' with dimensions of 18"x15"x72". Works GREAT in a corner (recommended). I can't see ever going back to a commercial direct radiating sub after experiencing this. I was a little concerned about integrating the horn loaded sub with the four 12" drivers in my KLF-30's. I had read that combining horn loaded and direct radiating subs was a 'no-no'. That must only be true with subs because as far as speakers go these have got to be the easiest subs I've ever had to blend into the mains. Picts or it didnt happen! love to see it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
derrickdj1 Posted November 2, 2015 Share Posted November 2, 2015 Jason does excellent work. It is great to hear that the sub is a nice addition. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SWL Posted November 2, 2015 Author Share Posted November 2, 2015 Had the day off today so I thought I'd break the THTLP in a little.....put in some bass heavy music (and I mean heavy)....turned the mains off so only the sub was pounding away and well....break the sub in my ***....ALMOST BROKE THE HOUSE. Just had an older couple buy the house next door. They're in their 70's. They moved in this weekend so the guy comes over today while I'm mowing the lawn to introduce himself and he's interested in my shed. So we go around the side of the house checking out the shed, I'm telling him it's a really nice neighborhood except for the constant car stereos bumping up and down our street is really annoying at night. All the while the siding on my house is vibrating, buzzing and banging away from every thump of the bass. LOL. He kept looking over his shoulder but didn't say nothing about it. Yeah Shu....I gotta get a camera one of these days. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rowan611 Posted November 11, 2015 Share Posted November 11, 2015 (edited) Congrats!! I love my THT. If everything goes as planned I'll be building THT#2 this spring! What are you using to power it? Edited November 11, 2015 by Rowan611 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
twk123 Posted November 11, 2015 Share Posted November 11, 2015 Good point, I don't currently haven't there - more of a sub cable issue than anything else. I have only been here a month and a half, still experimenting with the room. I'll try it out. Here is a really good video on speaker and sub placement if you have time. I watch this whenever I am setting up a new system or moving anything: 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
twistedcrankcammer Posted November 11, 2015 Share Posted November 11, 2015 (edited) This is going to piss some people off here, but that is not a new thing for me and the following is a true FACT! Do horn subs have less distortion than a direct radiator sub? Answer: YES, but there is a catch! If we were to build a compression type driver sub like that of the Klipschorn or La Scala that is long enough to reproduce the frequencies down to say 15 Hz and produce a lot of output, then these are the qualities I am looking for! But........... A lot of people on this forum are pushing Tapped subs without thinking about or realizing that there is a trade off! Look at it like this please? We have recently had a very ugly thread about Passive Cross overs haven't we? But anyone who has ever had the chance to actually simultaneously do a cross over switch with a passive cross over vs: an active multi amped cross over with time delays gas experienced something amazing. At one time, I didn't think it could ever get any better than a pair of passive crossover Klipschorns with a really good amp, but when I got to A/B the two different solutions, I realized that there was something in what I was hearing that I had never noticed without doing the A/B comparison and never thought of before! The problem comes into play because of our beloved Horn speakers! When listening to the A/B comparison, I was able to distinguish a slight slurring of the speakers with passive cross overs that was not there with the multi amped active cross over setup with time delay functions. Why was this? Well, in a direct radiator speaker system, all the drivers are flush mounted, but in a horn loaded speaker system, the drivers are the length of the horn from being flush to the front of the cabinet. Electrons travel near the speed of light, but unfortunately sound is much slower. Have you ever been to a county fair, a racing event, or a fishing derby where you have a speaker mounted close to you and another one farther away and you heard every word repeated with a slight delay? This is because the speed of sound is relatively slow by comparison. This is also why the midrange sound gets to your listening position a minute amount of time after the tweeter, and the sound from the Bass Horn arrives a minute amount of time to the ear after the midrange sounds, think in milli-seconds here. Now remember that the midrange horn on a Klipschorn does not just start at 400 Hz, nor does the Woofer section just end at 400 Hz, that is just the cross over point where the one starts to do most of the work and the other starts to taper off, the two are blended as well as the midrange to the tweeter horn. When getting to A/B these two in person, you get to experience that smearing of the frequencies where they over lap and you get to realize that with the proper settings on time delay to adjust for the length of the horn, this smearing goes away Thus my realization that for me at least, fancy Passive Cross overs are a waste of time and money. At some point I intend to let go of my precious Nakamichi amps and Tri-Amp my TSCMs. What has all of this got to do with building or purchasing horn subs for my home setup? Let's think about it in the terms of what we have just gone over shall we? The Tapped horn has several advantages: It is highly efficient. It is relatively small for a horn sub. They have tremendous output for their size, and horns produce less distortion...... BUT!!! Think about it, the driver in a tapped horn is usually right in or right near the mouth of the sub and not enclosed... We are getting the frequency from one side of the driver almost immediately like a direct radiator and without much of the horns benefits, while at the same time, that same note is playing at the beginning of that horn and is delayed by the length of the horn. I contend that due to the same frequency arriving at two different times that ALL Tapped Horns have a slurring of the Bass that cannot be corrected for electronically. I subsequently contend that if you were to do a direct A/B comparison of a Tapped Horn and a very similarly designed fully horn loaded sub that it also would become clearly apparent. The problem is that just like listening to a Klipschorn with a passive cross over for so many years, ignorance is bliss, and you are not realizing that it is there in the Tapped Horn as well. I feel in our quest to better our systems that this is very valid and important information to consider. Roger Edited November 11, 2015 by twistedcrankcammer Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CECAA850 Posted November 11, 2015 Share Posted November 11, 2015 Think about it, the driver in a tapped horn is usually right in or right near the mouth of the sub and not enclosed...We are getting the frequency from one side of the driver almost immediately like a direct radiator and without much of the horns benefits, while at the same time, that same note is playing at the beginning of that horn and is delayed by the length of the horn.I contend that due to the same frequency arriving at two different times that ALL Tapped Horns have a slurring of the Bass that cannot be corrected for electronically. I subsequently contend that if you were to do a direct A/B comparison of a Tapped Horn and a very similarly designed fully horn loaded sub that it also would become clearly apparent. The problem is that just like listening to a Klipschorn with a passive cross over for so many years, ignorance is bliss, and you are not realizing that it is there in the Tapped Horn as well. If a tapped horn is designed correctly, the wave coming from the horn and the sound produced by the driver are in perfect phase with each other. That's why it's critical to get driver placement as close to perfect as possible when building one. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CECAA850 Posted November 11, 2015 Share Posted November 11, 2015 It would take .015 seconds for sound to get to the mouth of a 17' horn if I figured correctly. At the length of the waves we're talking about, I don't see how you'd hear that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CECAA850 Posted November 11, 2015 Share Posted November 11, 2015 If we were to build a compression type driver sub like that of the Klipschorn or La Scala that is long enough to reproduce the frequencies down to say 15 Hz and produce a lot of output, then these are the qualities I am looking for! The Cinema F-20 is a front loaded horn (non tapped if you will) that will reproduce bass down to 22 Hz. It's not 15 Hz as you've cited wanting but it's pretty darn good. You could build a 15 Hz FLH but it'd be a big boy for sure. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jason str Posted November 11, 2015 Share Posted November 11, 2015 (edited) THT is not a tapped horn and your post Roger i feel may not be in the right place. No delay is needed in the subwoofer passband (unless were talking like 20 feet or more and these are nowhere near that length). You could use delay but its not really needed unless its crossed very high (140 Hz or higher). The higher the crossover point the worse it gets but for 99% of us who cross over under 100 Hz its nothing to worry about. Edited November 12, 2015 by jason str Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CECAA850 Posted November 11, 2015 Share Posted November 11, 2015 THT is not a tapped horn and your post Roger i feel may not be in the right place. Agreed, it would have been better to start a separate FLH vs TH thread. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
babadono Posted November 11, 2015 Share Posted November 11, 2015 Think about it, the driver in a tapped horn is usually right in or right near the mouth of the sub and not enclosed...We are getting the frequency from one side of the driver almost immediately like a direct radiator and without much of the horns benefits, while at the same time, that same note is playing at the beginning of that horn and is delayed by the length of the horn.I contend that due to the same frequency arriving at two different times that ALL Tapped Horns have a slurring of the Bass that cannot be corrected for electronically. I subsequently contend that if you were to do a direct A/B comparison of a Tapped Horn and a very similarly designed fully horn loaded sub that it also would become clearly apparent. The problem is that just like listening to a Klipschorn with a passive cross over for so many years, ignorance is bliss, and you are not realizing that it is there in the Tapped Horn as well. If a tapped horn is designed correctly, the wave coming from the horn and the sound produced by the driver are in perfect phase with each other. That's why it's critical to get driver placement as close to perfect as possible when building one. I know nothing about this subject but I'll go out on and a limb and ask, isn't this true only at 1 frequency? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CECAA850 Posted November 11, 2015 Share Posted November 11, 2015 I know nothing about this subject but I'll go out on and a limb and ask, isn't this true only at 1 frequency? NO. The front and rear of the driver are making sound simultaneously whenever the sub is playing. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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