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Why horns.


jason str

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You Texans and all your big trucks....do you ever put them to use? P I've carried more system in my old FRS (a small sports car), and certainly more in my Subaru wagons over the years. Hurd came down one year from Canada with a sub that required removing the car doors to get in and out. Now that's dedication, haha.

 

Never had the big truck nor any use for one. As to car audio, no interest.  They can sound very, very good...but I have a listening room for that.  I'd be safer driving drunk than listening to the stuff I love on a top notch car system.  Talk about intoxicating and absolutely demanding one's total focus...that's what music does to me. 

 

Therefore, I'd need a designated driver if I had a first class car system.  Actually, one of our vehicles has a Fosgate system with sub that just happened to be in a used vehicle I caught a good deal on.  However, I listen to NPR pretty much exclusively for the reasons stated above. 

 

Dave

 

 

Just to clarify, I wasn't talk about car audio.....I was talking about the relatively smaller cars I've used for hauling bigger speakers around.

 

My version of car audio is the sound of the engine and wheels. I never have music in the car....unless I have passengers and then it's just a social expectation at that point.

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Yes!

 

Getting my waterfall plot to look like this hands down was worth every hour and every penny spent.  Yes, I went to great extremes to get this performance and dozens and dozens of iterations of measurements (including replacing my chairs), but it really made my bass feel and sound very very accurate.  I would put my dual SVS PB13 ultra subs against anyone's system whether it's a horn loaded sub or not.  

 

I don't care if a sub can go below 10 Hz or for a horn sub that it has less IMD.  For me, and I suspect most folks if they heard it, acoustics matter far more.  I went through many nice setups (RF-83, La Scala II's, and Palladium system) and never achieved what I wanted until my ETC/impulse response and the water fall plot below looked close to ideal.

 

My current Palladium setup sounds many times better than what I had previously, but I have to honestly say that 50% or more of the improvement is due to all the hours I spent listening and studying what Dr. Who and ChrisA had told me to study wrt room acoustics.  For the low freq, it could be argued that 80% is room treatments, but I do agree you need the output available to pressurize whatever size room you are in.  My room is on the small side, so dual SVS subs work great for me.  I also get single digit THD if you believe REW's THD measurement (I tried two calibrated USB mics so far).  If my room was larger, I might look into these horn loaded subs or 18" direct radiators, but the reality is, it would cost a lot of money and time to treat a bigger room.

 

No doubt if I remove my bass traps and treatments, horn loaded subs would sound like crap to me as any DR sub did before.  Just being honest here.  I'll take my treated room any day over some of the rooms I see with little to no bass traps and a single horn loaded sub (yes I'm a firm believer in having at least two subs also).  Horn loaded subs would require a bigger room for me so I'd have to buy more bass traps, plus I'd need two to be happy with room modes, etc...

 

IMG_20151127_204008.jpg

4 chairs waterfall.jpg

4 chairs FR and Phase.jpg

4 chairs impulse.jpg

 

 

 

 

 

There is no direct radiator subwoofer composed of a single driver cabinet that can beat one good horn loaded sub cabinet with the same size driver. Multiple DR cabinets can approach the performance of horns at the expense of more amplification. Still won't equal the horn in impulse response or modulation distortion (or lack thereof).
 

 

Impulse response is generally better with the direct radiating systems - especially sealed cabinets. This is because the frequency response is flatter (freuqency response and impulse response are really two views of the same thing). With enough radiating surface area you can achieve the same (or better) modulation distortion with a direct radiator. It's really hard to get a horn to have the same transparency at low levels (with all the folds and reflections and resonances along the way).

 

I'd suggest the hardest part about low frequency performance in a small room is the room acoustics. The dual zoned bass array is not only the best performing solution to that problem, but it's also the least invasive. Acoustic treatment takes up way more space and costs a lot more.

 

What you're gaining with direct radiating drivers is that the cabinet can be way smaller for the same low frequency extension. Sure, you gotta throw some power at it, but amplifier power is cheap and is not a directly audible parameter. You need several acoustic sources to achieve the results of a dual zoned bass array anyway. It's simply easier to accomplish with several smaller cabinets. No way I'm going to fit 8 bass horns in one small room - let alone have the flexibility to place them in the ideal location. Small cabinets are easy to place properly, and then there's the benefit of each one increasing the total radiating area. Eight 15" drivers is equivalent to a single 15" horn with an 8:1 compression ratio....and that 8:1 compression ratio horn is gonna need to be really long to reach down to 20Hz.

 

The numbers over at data-bass.com indicate that the direct radiating systems can certainly keep up with the horns....especially if you keep the total solution size as the constant variable.

 

Edited by etc6849
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Just to clarify, I wasn't talk about car audio.....I was talking about the relatively smaller cars I've used for hauling bigger speakers around.

 

My bad.  I see that.  I see so many cars pulsing in Houston and sometimes wonder how they avoid blowing the windows out. 

 

Nasty sound.  Musha musha musaha whump thump...

 

Dave

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  • 3 weeks later...

1a2b8642101ae3fb058d1c1a076fd0ee.jpg

Got another 18x15x72 built by JasonSTR and have it co-located in the corner with the other one. Now, these suckers can really hammer. Thought the glass doors on the fireplace were gonna break today.

Sent from my SM-G920R4 using Tapatalk

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The mains were off.....just doing some 'breaking in'......which by the way, has become very clear now that these subs (and others) do need break-in time.

 

After hooking up the new one yesterday it was 100% clear that the new one sounded just like the first one when I originally brought it home. Now, I can switch from one to the other and hear the difference so clearly. The new one sounds stiff, a little boomy and has no 'bounce' or 'cushion' to the bass. The first sub I put on some heavy bass tracks for 1-3 hours at a time while away on the weekends and I'd say that a total of approx. 5 hours of this did the trick. It's easy to hear the improvement....no psyco-acoustics going on here. I've done this with all my new subs but these Tuba subs have had the biggest change in sound (for the better) from being brand new to having a few hours on them. Don't know why, I mean you ran test tones through them, sine waves etc.....but whatever, it is what it is and the results are awesome sounding bass.

 

I haven't had multiple subs in a while and I'm once again reminded of the benefits of having some serious headroom. Bass is so much more effortless and clean. :emotion-21:

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The mains were off.....just doing some 'breaking in'......which by the way, has become very clear now that these subs (and others) do need break-in time.

 

After hooking up the new one yesterday it was 100% clear that the new one sounded just like the first one when I originally brought it home. Now, I can switch from one to the other and hear the difference so clearly. The new one sounds stiff, a little boomy and has no 'bounce' or 'cushion' to the bass. The first sub I put on some heavy bass tracks for 1-3 hours at a time while away on the weekends and I'd say that a total of approx. 5 hours of this did the trick. It's easy to hear the improvement....no psyco-acoustics going on here. I've done this with all my new subs but these Tuba subs have had the biggest change in sound (for the better) from being brand new to having a few hours on them. Don't know why, I mean you ran test tones through them, sine waves etc.....but whatever, it is what it is and the results are awesome sounding bass.

 

I haven't had multiple subs in a while and I'm once again reminded of the benefits of having some serious headroom. Bass is so much more effortless and clean. :emotion-21:

Any reason why you co-located vs separating? I have two THTs also, and I've attached my measurement of the front, rear and both.

Blue is front, red is rear and green is both. Hard to argue the benefits of front and rear.

post-57667-0-02380000-1453303284_thumb.j

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The mains were off.....just doing some 'breaking in'......which by the way, has become very clear now that these subs (and others) do need break-in time.

 

After hooking up the new one yesterday it was 100% clear that the new one sounded just like the first one when I originally brought it home. Now, I can switch from one to the other and hear the difference so clearly. The new one sounds stiff, a little boomy and has no 'bounce' or 'cushion' to the bass. The first sub I put on some heavy bass tracks for 1-3 hours at a time while away on the weekends and I'd say that a total of approx. 5 hours of this did the trick. It's easy to hear the improvement....no psyco-acoustics going on here. I've done this with all my new subs but these Tuba subs have had the biggest change in sound (for the better) from being brand new to having a few hours on them. Don't know why, I mean you ran test tones through them, sine waves etc.....but whatever, it is what it is and the results are awesome sounding bass.

 

I haven't had multiple subs in a while and I'm once again reminded of the benefits of having some serious headroom. Bass is so much more effortless and clean. :emotion-21:

 

Normally i run a 15-20 Hz sweep for a minimum of 24 hours and that is about what i ran through your Dayton Reference 12, plus i had it running listening to music while i was building your horn out of the box of course.

 

I find at least a few weeks are needed listening every day to fully break in,

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Any reason why you co-located vs separating?

 

I wish I could experiment with one sub behind me but my sweet spot is right up against the back wall. Putting subs laterally on either side of the listening position fails miserably in this room but the good news is that the whole front soundstage works well for the subs and the front right corner clearly gets the bests results.....and works very, very well I might add.

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Any reason why you co-located vs separating?

I wish I could experiment with one sub behind me but my sweet spot is right up against the back wall. Putting subs laterally on either side of the listening position fails miserably in this room but the good news is that the whole front soundstage works well for the subs and the front right corner clearly gets the bests results.....and works very, very well I might add.

That's a perfect reason. [emoji2]

Typed on a tiny keyboard, excuse any grammatical errors.

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I find at least a few weeks are needed listening every day to fully break in,

 

I think you're right but I also think that getting that thing pounding a little helps speed up the process. The proof is in the pudding (as far as break in goes) as I have done this with every new sub I've ever had.

 

The other thing I've noticed about these Tubas is that you can't judge them by a first impression when brand new. More so than with the direct radiating subs I've had. Break-in seems to be critical before evaluating them....from my experience.

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SWL is right. I'd describe the difference between run-in and not, as akin to tube bloom. It's not subtle either. After run-in, or after playing something at ridiculous levels, it's obvious that the horns develop a distinct finesse back at lower volume.

 

I've used the track below with good results on my sub. All it takes is two passes running this song at sufficient volume to hear the second lowest bass drop at the LP, and THT will be all warmed up, without pissing off the neighbors:

 

 

I've also found that the La Scala behave exactly the same. If I know I want to critically listening to something, I'll either set the mains to large and re-run the doctored Enya track or just play Strauss's Also sprach Zarathustra at volume 11 before hand. :emotion-21:

 

The THT subs are just animals. It's hard to keep the pictures in the living room straight. Movie night always knocks them out of whack. At 20 Hz, the interior wall next to the sub simply flexes like a sheet in the wind. Those two 12's side-by-side are a helluva lot of sub. :emotion-14:

Edited by Quiet_Hollow
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