Khorns the floor or in nitches in the walls?

[ppf]

I am having a house designed and coincidently have bought a pair of Khorns. The house doesn't have enough corners for normal placement and the architect says he can put a shelf or nitch in the living room wall 5' tall 3'deep and 16'long about 1' higher than the floor to put the fireplace, Knorns and components. Will the Khorns work properly off of the floor in a cavity like this?

[lynnm]

Your Khorns may lose a significant portion of their bass potential in that setup as they will suffer a serious disruption of its horn flare.

Bear in mind that it is the Khorn's ability to provide the equivalent of a huge straight horn in a small space is one of the factors which make them truly exceptional. Their fundamental design requires that they have something in the order of 48" of relatively unobstucted flat surface available on both sides and at the floor in order that they may perform optimally. It has been said that a straight horn equivalent to the Khorn would feature a driver powering a horn 16' in length terminating in a mouth bell measuring approximately 64 cubic feet (4'X4'X4').

This is not an absolute and other posters have stated that 40" sidewalls ( in a false corner configuration ) yield entirely satisfactory results.My own subjective experiments tend to bear that out but given that I have one house and only one pair of horns and no test equipment - My opinion needs to be seen as nothing more than my opinion. Assuming that that is correct then a placement that provides a 40" leftside wall extension X 40" rightside wall extension X 40" floor horn mouth extension would be acceptable but even then those dimensions assume that the horn is fitted tightly to a corner and the floor. Put the bottom of the horn a foot above the floor and all bets are off because there would then be little if any top/bottom horn flare available. The relative nondirectivity of bass waves might obviate the need for a closely coupled top/bottom but needs to be considered in the design.

I wonder if the integrity of the horn flare is more important than the actual dimensions of the flare's walls.

I hope I am making sense. If at all possible present your concerns to an acoustics expert. Since you are having a home built it will be easier and less costly to institute design changes ( If required ) now as opposed to later.

[ppf]

Thankyou, I'll see if we can get them on the floor and get a little more depth.

[horonzak]

That would be a wise move to correct it now than to be sorry later.