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HORNS THE ULTIMATE HIFI SPEAKERS ?

I’ve moved from highish end box speakers e.g. big B&W’s, Revels, Wilson’s etc and now have Living Voice horns. There isn’t a trace of honkiness or the telephone effect that I’ve heard with most horns. But I put some of that to the amps used with them….

Every speaker is a series of compromises but the Living Voices are in a different galaxy to anything I’ve owned before. Every conventional speaker sounds boxy, shut in and coloured in comparison.

My speakers sound much better with good solid state rather than valves IME. I use Boulder stuff…
 
Hi Thetiminator. Totally agree re compromises (see my earlier comments). Which LV horns have you got ? The Air Scouts?
 
Hi Ian. No they’re the Air Partner Statesman’s with made to measure Townsend seismic platforms.

The big compromise with horns is usually the bass. The bass on mine is pretty flat down to 45hz so I use two B&WDB1’s to fill in below that….but strictly below as the bass from the speakers is way, way better than that from the DB1’s. I have heard horns that do bugger all below 70-80hz which I think contributes massively to that telephone sound someone mentioned earlier.
The bass from 45hz up is truly stunning, so depending on your music tastes you might be happy with 45hz, I like more rock and pop so that bit of boost around the 30hz-40hz region is better.

So IME yes, a well designed horn (using SS amps) are easily the ultimate hifi speaker….
 
By the way, interestingly (and maybe Graham might chime in to explain) I’ve found horns to work very well with £1k Temple Audio amps…
 
If I had to guess I’d rank relative importance as: material 10% / horn design 90%. And I don’t think that’s a controversial view.

I am not sure I understand what you mean by horn design? One would hope that all horns are properly designed.
 
Hi Tim, sounds like a great system, would love to hear it. I think its the seemingly unconstrained dynamics of horns that makes them sound so “live”.
 
I am not sure I understand what you mean by horn design? One would hope that all horns are properly designed.
I’m talking about the shape and curvature of the horn - there are obviously many different “types” of horn. As for all being properly designed, you might equally expect all speakers to be designed “properly” but there is a lot of stuff for sale that quite frankly is no better than amateurish in design. That’s obvious even to me and I’m certainly no Andrew Jones!
 
By the way, interestingly (and maybe Graham might chime in to explain) I’ve found horns to work very well with £1k Temple Audio amps…

I only know people who use horns speakers with either good valve amplifiers, or good class A solid-state amplifiers like Pass Labs or some of Nelson's First Watt designs.

Most of the top horn manufacturers use active bass so anything going below 200Hz to 80Hz (depending on the design) is handled by the solid-state active part, so the lower mid, midrange and high frequencies can be handled by a high quality valve/tube or Class A solid-state amplifier. This is probably the best way to do it, allowing the different tech's to do what they are good at...
 
I’m talking about the shape and curvature of the horn - there are obviously many different “types” of horn. As for all being properly designed, you might equally expect all speakers to be designed “properly” but there is a lot of stuff for sale that quite frankly is no better than amateurish in design. That’s obvious even to me and I’m certainly no Andrew Jones!

I think you mean horn profiles:

KOCGpdM.jpg
 
I referenced Kolbrek early in the thread. He also works for Celestion and I think I’m right in saying that he is involved in the development of their compression drivers.
 
Here it is possible to visualise the relation between resonance frequency and diametre of a Tractrix horn:

W1sOGKg.jpg
 
Profiles is as good a word as any to describe the variations, but yes.

Then assuming the horn profile is followed as the theory dictates then the only difference in performance will be the choice of driver and the material used to make the horn.

If companies who made horns back in the day had the chance to use the tech and materials we have today, then no one back then would be using multicellular horns. Everyone would be using moulded spherical horns.
 
Then assuming the horn profile is followed as the theory dictates then the only difference in performance will be the choice of driver and the material used to make the horn.
Are you being deliberately provocative? You are implying that all those horn types perform exactly the same. Surely you know that’s far too simplistic.
 
Then assuming the horn profile is followed as the theory dictates then the only difference in performance will be the choice of driver and the material used to make the horn.

If companies who made horns back in the day had the chance to use the tech and materials we have today, then no one back then would be using multicellular horns. Everyone would be using moulded spherical horns.

Different profiles have different performance characteristics, and then there's the horn mouth termination.

If I'm not mistaken multicell horns were used as a means to compensate for the narrowing directivity with increasing frequency, a real problem if you have a large audience in a cinema.

For me the advantage of using multi-way quasi-fullrange horns is that with the right profile one can get constant narrow directivity and thus increase the direct/reflected sound ratio.
But if the number of ways is insuficient you get changes in directivity at the mid/treble crossover frequency:

10-UNO-hor.jpg
 
The problem with multi-way horns is that they tend to be a bit big...and very expensive.

cUqr7uf.jpg
 


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