Hornloudspeaker Magazine

Friendly take-over

2011-12-27T16:41:00.001-08:00

Is anyone interested in taking over this blog? I find I have very little time to work on it. It's not that the interest is gone, there are simply many things asking attention. If anyone would like to take over and post on a more regular basis, I will hand it over. No further demands, just an interest in the subject matter and the intention to post something.

I will post something anyway if I find the time and inspiration.

I have been enjoying the Olson inspired Woden designs. I have always had an itch for a modified Klipschorn that would be far-far-far easier to assemble. Olson-style folding seemed the way to go, but a sensible internal lay-out was still a mystery. Look towards the Woden Maeshowe design for the direction my mind is taking. If someone feels like sketching, feel free.

Electrovoice domestic horns - the Klipsch relation

2011-06-02T17:57:00.000-07:00

I see the list of Klipsch Heritage plans is often used. I figured I'd post related Electrovoice designs.

Georgian
The Georgian is it, the direct link between Klipsch and Electrovoice. The Georgian is a Klipschorn with a different badge on it. There are constructional differences to be found in images and the plans, but I think they are not that big. The plans are also hard to find.

Patrician

A scaled up Georgian, made for an 18" driver, or is it? The brochure says it was separately designed, by someone other than PWK. In any case, it uses the folding geometry of a Klipschorn/Georgian and takes an 18". There was also a version for a 30" driver. To add to the confusion, there has also been a Patrician with a direct radiator low-end. Naturally, we focus on the horns! Highly revered and coveted, but obviously hard to get into a home ("Not in my living room!"). The plans linked to here are for 18" drivers, which seem to be better liked than the 30" driver version. The "smaller" drivers are also more readily available. Plans here, here, here, here, here and here.

Centurion

Marketed as a small Georgian, it is a hornspeaker with, clearly, a different lay-out and construction and slightly less extension. Interesting for DIY/modding, due to ease of construction. If a Klipschorn seems daunting to start with, this might be your first cornerhorn? Plans here.

Regency

Because it's a corner horn and the initial hornpath runs underneath and around the compression chamber, it looks a lot like a Klipsch design. People therefore suspect PWK had a hand in this horn himself. It's a backloaded horn with a large compression chamber, kind of Jensen Imperial-like. Plans here.

Aristocrat

The Aristocrat is either a backloaded cornerhorn or a cornerloaded bass reflex with a flared/horn port. Again, it has features of the Klipschorn and, again, it is thought PWK might have had a hand in this design. I think it looks a lot like the bottom half of a rearloaded Klipschorn. Plans here.

Baronet

This design is a lot smaller, but overall it's pretty much the same as the Aristocrat. Plans here.

Marquis

A bass reflex with a flared "horn" port. Perhaps beyond what I want to discuss here, although I might get back to horn reflex plans with the beautiful Gately corner enclosure. Plans for the Marquis are here.

A quick word

2010-11-07T16:16:00.000-08:00

Wow... I was distracted by life and was uninspired to post. I am getting that horn itch again, so checked back here. I found a number of comments to publish and I see from statistics that this blog is still visited regularly. I wasn't expecting that. It was inspiring, thanks.

So now I gotta think up some content...

Edgar and Danley: Where the military get their toys.

2009-11-25T17:03:00.000-08:00

Years ago, I saw this picture on AudioAsylym, at the High Efficiency section. What/who you see here, is Dr. Bruce Edgar looking happy with the modular subwoofer he has built for the military. I saved the picture, but am not so sure about specific details of the desgn. As I recall, it is several of his refridgerator-sized Seismic-subs together, each extended to give greater mouth area. The military wanted something to "make big booms" and I suspect this is for training situations, exposing the soldiers to near-realistic soundlevels.

Later on, we get this film, about the Matterhorn "device" by Tom Danley. Enjoy.

Weird... But interesting...

2009-09-30T15:23:00.001-07:00

There's more video's of similar horns for Andrew Bird, made by http://www.specimenproducts.com. I wasn't familiar with either of them and am glad I stumbled upon these. Enjoy.

PS: I have some corrections for the HM Moreart post, but more about that next time.

Advanced new backloaded horn - RDH20

2009-08-20T14:15:00.000-07:00

Many posts ago, I announced that I would be featuring some input by Horst Möller, of the HM-Moreart website. Horst is the creator of a wide range of backloaded horn designs, which has earned him both fans and critics. He certainly has a respectable career, with several of his designs featured in the leading German DIY audio magazines and others interesting enough to manufacturer Visaton to test in their own facilities. The published designs are already somewhat older, but definitely worth checking out. One of them is for Jordan 92-sized drivers, the other for Manger or Seas coaxial-sized drivers. They can be used for other drivers, like perhaps Tang Band coaxials or Markaudio fullrange drivers. A range of Fostex fullrangers and whatever you can think will probably also work. Especially take note of the very extended range down below out of these modest driver sizes. Obviously, Horst was already a capable horn designer at the time.

Horst prepared a piece of text for me, about the use of different materials to construct horns from. Horst advocates the use of soft fiberboard, to make enclosures with excellent internal damping. This is a known use of material for horns and I used it myself in the bass horn described here. I asked Horst to write about it, because he is an experienced and accomplished designer and is a very passionate advocate of this material. A new thing he put forward, was that the material dampens most sound above 200 Hz, which ensures that few higher frequencies

travel down the horn. This creates a stronger crossover between the midrange (from the driver) and the bass (from the horn). Horst was pretty quick to deliver the text, but I lost it in a computer crash. Busy times started around that time for me, so I never really tried to resolve this. To my shame, I must point out. The basic points of the text delivered Horst are stated in this part of his website.

But Horst has done more than design relatively standard backloaded horns with soft fiberboard. Since the earlier published designs, he has started to use double driver configurations, dual horns, different pathlengths to achieve smooth response in small volumes, bipole/dipole configurations and creative space-using concepts (like horns incorporated in seats). Very neat stuff. You understand why he has fans by now. On the other hand, Horst releases half complete plans for "normal" DIY-ers and only supplies fully detailed copies in print and at payment. Some of his designs look less like a horn than most DIY-ers would expect and they clearly don't trust on the good results by looking at the pictures and diagrams. And, it must be said, discussions with Horst about his designs can carry on and on and on, with neither side moving much to either side. These are some of the possible reasons for criticism. Fortunately, this blog has an open and understanding mind for any possible position.

Some months ago, Horst released the first sketches of his latest design, which he calls the RDH20, or Rahmendopplhorn (double frame horn) for 20cm/8" drivers. Typically, the half (in)complete drawings were unclear to many and the predicted response was considered overly optimistic. Some discussion followed, but interest stayed low. I have no doubt that Horst was very disappointed. The past few weeks, looking for new copy and feeling like some modelbuilding, I considered building a Sketchup model of the RDH20. This could help visualize the horn. I just checked Horst's website and found that he now has pictures and measurements of the real thing online. It looks VERY exciting and, perhaps more importantly, VERY clear now, so I decided to fix the deleted text fiasco by publishing this post, about this very innovative design.

Some things to note about this design: There is a forward-firing and rear-firing driver. Depending on choices of the builder, the rear driver can be a woofer or a second fullrange driver. In principle, this design can be a dipole or bipole backloaded horn. The two drivers drive two different horns, of different length and expansion. The idea is that the horns have different peaks and dips and fill in each other's weak points. This principle was known before and is related to, for instance, tapped horns. The inside of the horn is largely made of soft fiberboard, to reduce enclosure sound. The inner horn rests on the outer section via a panel of soft fiberboard, which decouples it. Also notice how the horn mouth is wrapped around the entire enclosure. It is relatively large, yet the enclosure the driver sees is relatively small. Finally, I think it is a beatifully proportioned horn, which draws much less attention to itself than some of Horst's

other designs.

To his credit, and downfall, of most of his designs. He is criticized for strange and peaky/dippy response graphs, but I think they mostly show how tough it is to measure a smooth response in a room. He offers several measurements, from several drivers, measured in several positions. At the very least, the horn does bass. At best, it has response below 30 Hz. Also, he shows how the horns seems to dominate the response, not so much the driver parameters. This is something that people like Klinger also stated and Horst's measurements seem to support his.

On of the great things about Horst Möller, is his continuing drive to create, try, learn and improve. I expect the RDH20 to be just one step along the way and I am curious to see where he will go next.

Tapped LAB, or something like that...

2009-08-09T12:53:00.000-07:00

I have been aware of these tapped horn plans, but have been reluctant to post them. I would have expected Danley Sound Labs to be a bit edgy about these plans leaking out, but they don't seem to put much effort in having them taken off line. So hurray!

This thread is a building report of the TH-SPUD by Danley, a regular production model. I always think that DIY-ers can do very good designs by themselves, it is very interesting to see what practical design choices professional make and what the end result is. While I can produce any number of design variations with a linear simulated response graph, Tom Danley knows which variation will deliver in the situations his customers will use his product in. Before tapped horns, Danley gave the DIY horn community the LAB horn, a detailed and perfected design for a bass horn. It gave DIY-ers the chance to build and experience a state-of-the-art horn with predictable performance. "It still is a popular ultimate DIY horn project."

However, we're now in the age of tapped horns and while we have plenty of simulation abilities and there is considerable experience with the tapped horn principle, there has not been such a professionally designed reference tapped horn, such as the LAB is for the conventional horn principle. This is where the TH-SPUD comes in. I am not sure how these plans leaked out, perhaps they were sent to a potential customer to illustrate options and sizes. In any case, they ended up online, including several recommended drivers. Tom Danley even chimed in, in this thread and another, to offer background and advice! Apparently, DIY-builds have his blessing (quite possibly as an afterthought). I guess this is a similar gift as the LAB and I think DIYers will certainly enjoy this one!

I will it to the linked thread to give specifics, I just want to point out the following things:

- it is little deeper as an 8 inch driver (it uses two 8 inch drivers)

- it will work in many locations, but Danley's favorite placement for it is corner placement

- it has breathtakingly extended response

- it has very linear response (check the response graph underneath)

- your room will probably mess that up big time...

Jubilation, again!

2009-07-13T15:26:00.000-07:00

The wonderful Klipsch Jubilee build report is back! A new URL, though.

Klipsch Board

2009-07-06T13:17:00.000-07:00

It is hard to describe how proud this makes me feel: my list of Klipsch plans mentioned as a resource on the Klipsch board. Grin!

I found it through the referrals section of the hitcounter. The post is also mentioned in this simulation thread, where several woofers are considered in simulations of the Klipschorn, the LaScala and the Belle. It's good stuff. Maybe we can get them to model the Jubilee as well in that thread.

Fixing Bass

2009-07-05T08:50:00.000-07:00

I stumbled on to these two examples of multiple subwoofer use. One is the Geddes approach, basically limiting oneself to random placement and playing with cutoff, phase and volume on the submodules. The other, by BD-Design, is more specific, precisely selecting the issue to be dealt with and using a digital crossover and a sub to mirror and cancel the unwanted effect.

Both are effective and interesting.

Impulse resp in Hornresp

2009-04-25T16:06:00.000-07:00

A wonderful update of Hornresp. There has been a long list of updates in the tapped horn wizard, but this is (currently) only available for frontloaded horns and direct radiators: simulated impulse response.

Modern Vintage Build, the RT-2/Klason horn

2009-04-22T16:33:00.000-07:00

As I have shown, I have a love for vintage designs. I recently posted a link to a thread elsewhere, concerning the Swedish RT-2, otherwise also known Klasonhorn elsewhere. The reason for that thread, was the build by Elbert.

In all the commotion about peceived response etc., the practical and visual side of the project was somewhat neglected. Elbert opened another thread, showcasing his work. He took a very thorough approach to building this horn. Respect!

Geddes and Harman Kardon on subwoofers, bass response

2009-04-15T07:21:00.000-07:00

I am thinking hard about my system revision, and particularly the cornerhorn situation. I am reading a book by Floyd Toole, which I will be coming back to later. I have to finish reading it. :) The book is very interesting and is giving me quite a few concept changes about audio reproduction in the home. To paraphrase him shortly, you just have to do what you have to do to make it sound good and then it does sound good. There's a load of data and discussion to back it up, but that's not what I want to talk about. It just triggered me into realising that smooth bass response is a big issue for me (and music in general) and I need to adress it well.

With a single subwoofer or bass source, reflections and resonances in the room lead to peaks and dips in the frequency response, that also differ at varying listening positions. You can try to even them out with an EQ, but whatever is fixed in listening position A makes something else worse in listening position B. And you can take out a peak, but it's impossible to fully fill in the dips as they are cancellations. More power just means more cancellation.

Harman Kardon has a whitepaper about the use of multiple subwoofers and pre-determined, regularly spaced, placement in rooms, which leads to a similar frequency response in the bass range, for all listening seats. This response may be irregular, but it can be equalized flat and the result will be similar and linear bass response throughout the room. The strategy relies on a rectangular room and processing to get the final result right.

Earl Geddes suggests that listening rooms rarely are as predictable in their lay-out and characteristics as the testroom used by Harman Kardon and that this randomness will reduce the positive effects. He also points out that subwoofers placed in regular locations means they will have to be in sight and be very conspicuous. He suggests that randomizing subwoofer placement will work better in the random environment of the listening room, producing a better frequency response in all locations. Randomization basically means put the subwoofers where you think they are convenient. Also, this apparently gives a smoother frequency response even before final EQ and it seems people are getting by without final EQ.

Geddes has a simple approach to get started with placement and to work from there. There is a thread on diyaudio that describes the methodology and Earl Geddes participates in the discussion. There's also some measurements of results. I refer to thread that for the full background. One thing that I do want to mention here, is that Geddes advises to have one main subwoofer, that plays loudest and becomes the source, or the reference subwoofer. Other subwoofers are only there to break up roommodes etcetera, so are all adjusted to disappear into the main response. It is pointed out in the thread that dissimilar subs add to the randomization.

I want to employ this. A big hornsub in the corner and some frequency response smoothing via smaller subs here and there.

About LeCleach horns

2009-04-10T16:19:00.000-07:00

There's an interesting thread on diyaudio, where Jean-Michel Le Cléac'h himself is answering questions about his very own horn expansion. The different horn expansion types are based on/follow different assumptions about how sound waves form and travel through air. "Jmmlc" developed one himself. Azurahorns and Musique Concrete horns are LeCleach horns, for instance. It's a very good thread, lots of theory in digestible chunks. Enjoy!

Linked

2009-03-08T07:02:00.000-07:00

I am also quite pleased to see this blog is linked to from the Klang & Ton blog. Klang & Ton is a German DIY HiFi magazine, that I actually read. They are bold and creative and not over-analytical of their designs. They also just posted a little review of a horn home project, so we know they have "horn affinity". Welcome to Klang & Ton readers, and feel free to come back.

Been awhile

2009-03-07T17:19:00.000-08:00

While this is not a personal blog, and while I don't intend to post a lot about myself, I would like to mention that I started a new job, a long term commitment for a reliable organisation. I am happy to have accomplished this, especially now! New jobs take up extra energy though, so it is hard to do something else. Hence the silence. But let's get on with it!

Big Bertha

2009-02-09T08:54:00.001-08:00

Here's a fun horn. GRIN!

Precise details are unknown to me. More pics here.

Note that this thread is in Romy the Cat's domain and he's a... free thinker. There is lots of interesting hornstuff to read there, but keep in mind he is the only one that understands his own line of thought and agrees with it. He may be a genious, he may be a bit... free.

Visitors

2009-01-19T05:24:00.000-08:00

Just a quick note, this blog has passed 20,000 visits and 60,000 page views. Thanks everybody.

RT horns, Klason horns

2009-01-16T07:56:00.000-08:00

I've been sitting on some stuff about the RT horns, otherwise known as Klason. I was holding back because I've been on about vintage so much already and thought I'd do some new development instead.

In the meantime, a poster over at diyaudio has built one of the later models and is trying to come to grips with it. You can find his thread here.

I just LOVE the Klason/RT horns. Very convenient, very well conceived.

Determining range and crossover

2009-01-13T12:35:00.000-08:00

Nice to get some responses to my last post. I notice some heads go up when there is new horn matter created!

I have been playing with the crossover function of Foobar (it's a third party plugin) to investigate how much range I would like and what a 100 Hz crossover sounds like. I have added a screenshot, because it shows sooo much.

What you are looking at, is a two-way setup, crossed at 100 Hz at 24 dB/octave. The top two tracks of the oscilloscope are below 100 Hz, the two lower tracks are above 100Hz. This is with reggae music (bass heavy). Visually, it already indicates the difference in frequency and amplitude. The difference in amplitude is less pronounced with acoustic classical/orchestral music, but the overall impression remains. This is why basshorns must be large.

Next, I kept lowering the crossover point, to where I wasn't hearing much. Although reggae and other music with electric bass guitar isn't supposed to go below around 40 Hz (38 Hz, or 38.8 Hz or whatever according to whoever you are speaking to), I was suprised to learn that I still have all kinds of musical sensations even when crossed around 35 Hz. Even at extremely steep crossover slopes. I could follow the bass lines, both rhythmically as pitch-wise. Reggae is extreme in this area, with strongly accentuated low bass, and I listen to a lot of reggae. It seems it makes sense going for quite a low cut off.

I think I will aim for around 30 Hz lower extension, or lower. I'll compile a shortlist of ready designs next time, or maybe come up with some new design sketches.

Development Project

2008-12-28T15:54:00.000-08:00

There are many things to consider when working on your dream loudspeaker system. Physics, technology, the cool factor. Another one is living around the thing. In my case, after moving to a new house, the system is proving too large to be practical. I am using LaScala bass horns (filtered to have flat response to 40 Hz) and horns with fullrange drivers for midrange and (some) treble. Due to the layout of the room, we have to sit pretty close and the integration between bass and the rest is hard. It also looks imposing and my girlfriend and I keep bumping into the things.

I have come to the conclusion that it's better to change my approach and my system. I'm looking towards cutting edge and vintage answers to this problem. Some of the legendary hornsystems were cornerhorns and some of the arguments for using corners were that they provide opportunities for excellent bass response and are convenient use of space. (See Klipsch for reasoning.) In my personal case, I only have one corner available and I am not about to go mono. Luckily, there's plenty of material that suggests that at a cutoff of 100Hz or below, it's impossible or at least very hard to locate a sound source, so going with something other than stereo below 100 Hz is OK.

Based on this, I have decided to take a new approach to my system. I will build a horn, to be placed in a corner, for frequencies below 100Hz and will have to stretch the mid/high sections' response down to that point. Exactly how, I don't know yet.

Now, a horn in a corner is still a wide concept. I can go for a frontloaded cornerhorn (Klipschorn, Jubilee, Hartsfield), a rearloaded cornerhorn (Jensen, Tannoy, Schmacks), I can stuff a tapped horn in a corner, I can design a frontloaded, rearloaded or tapped horn myself for in a corner. The DIY (do-it-yourself) and DIY (design-it-yourself) options sound good, so I hereby announce my horn design project.

I will have to work out parameters to work with. I need to decide on desired cutoff and acceptable size. We may simply end up with the conventional tapped horn coffin, but we might end up with something very different. Of course I have ideas cooking. One hint: think Olson...

Thread on Klipschorn center channel

2008-11-20T15:07:00.000-08:00

By coincidence, the Klipsch approach to a fill-in center channel has led to a sub-thread on Audio Asylum. I seems my memory was all wrong, there is no subtraction of the two channels to produce a center channel, the two are simply added and reduced in level.

I think I mixed up the Klipsch center channel with a Dolby Pro-Logic decoder matrix...

Chance find, vented frontloaded horn

2008-11-15T03:04:00.000-08:00

I was looking for something completely different, but came across this article of the German loudspeaker DIY magazine Klang&Ton. It showcases four horndesigns, including some measurements and the construction plans. I was particularly interested by the page shown here, mainly because of the unusual and pleasing shape of the design. When I dug in deeper, I found that the basshorn is quite short, basically LaScala-like and the rest of the bass cabinet is a vented rear chamber. Very similar to what I showed earlier, in a very different form. Cool!

Scans of the full article are in this thread.

Comprehensive list of Klipsch plans, vintage/heritage line

2008-11-08T07:53:00.000-08:00

I see there are a lot of people looking for construction drawings of all the vintage Klipsch horn systems. I list plans for all of them here. Note that various versions of each model are in circulation, as are various derived designs. If you are serious about making an elaborate Klipsch design, you should really take some time to research the various available versions. There are differences (panel thickness for instance) and they might matter in your situation.

Original vintage Klipsch:

Klipschorn
The Klipschorn is the big one, the design that PWK first released and that formed the Klipsch reputation. Other all-horn systems by PWK were conceived to offer Klipschorn technology in smaller or less placement-dependend packages (LaScala/Belle) or technological refinements (Jubilee). It is one of the most copied and home-built horns around. Obviously, with its long lifespan and many occasions of publication, there are bound to be many versions out there. They are all basically the same, although there seems to be a preference for older versions. The plans available online are often tied to a 1949 version of the Khorn. Due to the massive amount of plans and the apparently limited amount of differences, I list two: a full version and only the bass section.

LaScala
Interestingly enough, the LaScala started out as a PA-speaker, supposedly used to fire speeches off a campaign-truck in an election. It turned out to work well inside the home as well and was taken into production by Klipsch. I list two versions. One is Klipsch authorized. It was originally in metric and published in Germany, there is also an update in inches available here. The other is a later reconstruction by a member of the Klipsch forum. Plans are here. This has been reconstructed from measurements on real life LaScala's. I think they measured dimensions that they could reach, and deduced the others.

Belle Klipsch
Basically, the Belle is a LaScala in different aspect ratios. It is the same height, less deep but wider. Horn/expansionwise, it should be more or less the same. There are some differences to be found, but these are fairly minimal and uncritical. The Belle was designed as a third, center speaker, to go between two Klipsch horns. At the time it was intended to fill a sonic gap, if the two Klipschorns were placed too far apart. There was a filternetwork to go with it, which summed/detracted the left and right channels and filtered out the center channel information out of it. I don't know where that filter schematic is, it would be nice to add it here. I think it was in the Dope from Hope series. I'll look it up for you. In any case, the plans I found are recently inferred from an actual specimen, by a Klisch forums member.

Derivatives:

Jubilee
The Jubilee is either an update, or a replacement to the old familiar Klipschorn, it depends a bit on your perspective. PWK started the Khorn as a 2-way, but with increasing bandwidth of source material, stretching the midrange driver more into treble territory was unfeasible and the Khorn evolved into a 3-way loudspeaker. PWK was apparently unsatisfied with this and as his final act of speakerdevelopment designed the Jubilee, together with Roy Delgado. Under Related Material below, you can find the patent of the Jubilee, explaining the design considerations and strategy, I won't go into great detail here. Suffice to say it has equal or lower bass response and a significantly higher cutoff. The Jubilee is mostly found in DIY versions, since Klipsch is not selling a consumer edition. They will deliver the PA edition to private buyers. This is a fairly rough cabinet though and not livingroom friendly. There is an inferred set of plans online, which has been traced and reconstructed from the original patent.

Vented LaScala
I covered this area in an earlier post, which you can find here.

Related material:

Klipschorn paper, which is the patent paper in which the original Klipschorn was described.
Jubilee paper, featuring the design of the new cornerhorn, and a comparison to the old Klipschorn.
Dope from Hope, a periodical from the Klipsch company, in which PWK himself wrote about the things he thought were essential for high fidelity reproduction. Besides solid information from respected audio-engineer, it is also an amusing read. PWK was a unconventional thinker, and writer.

You will notice many of these files come from http://www.pirkensee.de/. The maker of that website has his own Klipschorn-based system and loads and loads of horn-related literature online. Well worth checking out. Most of the other stuff comes off the Klipsch forums. I think Klipsch is great to acknowledge their rich history by keeping the heritage line alive. They are also wonderful for providing the vintage fans with this much information about their "old stuff".

MIA- no more Jubilee build report

2008-11-08T07:39:00.000-08:00

I am doing maintenance and updating. I was checking some external links and read the link in this post:

"Deleted due to unethical people trying to use my work for profit!"

I'm not sure what happened. I certainly hope there isn't a misunderstanding involving myself. This blog is strictly non-profit and I hope the publication and use of these pictures wasn't the cause for taken the content down.

Again, it is a wonderful build report.

"An Almost Round Horn"

2008-08-21T15:46:00.000-07:00

Or, as the weblink is called in German, Ein fast rundes Horn (article in English, though). This is an oldie, it must have been pre-2000 when I read first read this. There is some really good practical stuff in here. It leads to a highly specific way of building a horn, that I never copied exactly nor directly. At the same time, every step and procedure gives lots of ideas for my own DIY-projects. I think you should read it and at the very least appreciate creative engineering. I bet some readers will get some ideas for their own projects.

The basic idea behind the article is that a round horn is good and a square horn is bad. But to make round horns requires a lot of effort and materials (moulds or lathes). Curved panel horns on the other hand are somewhat easier to make with more conventional home tools, like saws and the like. The further away your design is from square and the closer it gets to round, the better it is. The solution that this artical offers, is to use more than four curved panels.

Basically, you are making your own version of the classic petal horns of early grammophones. Of course, by choosing your own design parameters and materials/drivers, it will turn out rather differently in terms of looks and sound.

The reason I get back to this old article, is that I am building a set of petal horns myself, which I hope to showcase here occasionally over the next few months. Some aspects of my design and building processes are interesting as well. I will show and illustrate them here.

We are back and we are moving forward!

Hiatus

2008-07-21T14:29:00.000-07:00

Just a note to explain the hiatus in posting. I have a new job which absorbs a lot of energy. But... I'll be back...

YouTube find: Tractrix Wood Horn For hobbyist And Technician

2008-07-08T04:51:00.001-07:00

Speakerbuilding is about sound. As a consequence, I never really looked for speakerstuff on YouTube. Granted, there's some funny videos about hooking woofers up to the wall outlets, but seriously, why look at a speaker when you should really hear it. (The soundquality of YouTube gets in the way as well.)

Well this video shows why YouTube turns out to be really valuable for us: for showing practical techniques.

The creator of this video shows how he makes an adapter to mount a given driver to a given horn. Interesting to see him do it, and a very relaxed approach.

Extensive build report - Eyecandy

2008-06-16T05:27:00.000-07:00

The Grand Klipsch Post is still being edited. In the mean time, we need something to get excited about, so I post this: http://www.jubilation.ws/

Enjoy:

The URL is aptly chosen, in many ways. It is a build report of the Klipsch Jubilee, one of the horns that will be featured in the Grand Klipsch Post. It was sort of the anniversary version of the Klipschorn, hence the Jubilee name. The craftsmanship displayed does the design and legacy justice, which is also cause for jubilation. Finally, the builder/owners look very happy with the finished product, so I bet there's some jubilation in that house!

There are dozens, if not well over a hundred, photos there, that show the entire build process. He starts with raw ply and ends up with a furniture quality horn. Respect! You also get excellent views of the structure of the horn which, combined with the plans (upcoming in the Grand Klipsch Post!), allows better 3D visualisation of the horn.

Note that the Jubilee is considered an "easy build" compared to the traditional Khorn...

Horns and the Google search algorythms

2008-05-31T16:24:00.001-07:00

I'm working on a monster Klipsch post, compiling links to plans of all the fully hornloaded PWK designs. This will go from the original Klipschorn all the way to the Jubilee and should provide interesting references for anyone designing their own horn cabinets. In terms of creative design and cabinetry, PWK was in a class all by himself.

I thought compiling this list was going to be pretty easy. There's lots of stuff on Klipsch out there, the plans for all of these designs have been published in print and online and there's enough buzz to keep it around. So just type in the words "Klipsch", "horn" and "plan" and they should pop up, right?

Well, they didn't pop up so easily. What you mostly get is threads on the various speakerboards, discussing plans of Klipsch horns. So, more search terms. Try out "LaScala", "Belle", "Klipschorn", "Jubilee", "DIY" and whatever else you come up with. It doesn't really help...

What happens, is that Google ranks the search results, following a weighting system. Listing the actual words is important, of course. But also how many times the word is mentioned in the text. Also, how often the page is read. Perhaps how many pages refer to that page. In the end, the original design, website or post is completely lost in the forest of forum activity about the topic, simply because the forum activity is much more and highly conspicuous.

We've been generating so much talk and so little content, that it becomes increasingly harder to find the actual, relevant information. By this post, I am actually adding to the clutter... I decided to post this anyway, because it illustrates the need for a few online places that are about focus and content. The HornloudspeakerMagazine aims to be such a place. I can't produce expert technical literature about horns, but I can point you to some excellent stuff. It might save you a week of Google nightmares... How does Brainiac put it? "We do these experiments, so you don't have to"...

So, stay tuned for that monster Klipsch post, because I have very nearly found everything I am looking for.

(Image from the Klipsch Forums)

Preserving the Knowledge of the Ancients

2008-05-26T04:52:00.000-07:00

I know that all of you technical minded horn-fans are looking for Harry F. Olson's book called Dynamical Analogies. This is one of the most, if not the most cited reference for in-depth understanding of the functioning of horns. As the title indicates, Olson illustrates analogies and describes the acoustic interactions of soundwaves with alternative principles, like electronics. My background in math and engineering is ...... limited (cough)..... so this book is over my head. Although I do browse in it from time to time and I understand more every time. Some day. In the meantime, long live Bruce Edgar for making horn design more accessible to me with his popular style.

Anyway, here's a link to an online library of technical books, mostly audio-oriented. You can find it at Technical Books Online. These books are decades old and their copyrights have not been renewed. The maintainer of this website (webrarian?) is therefore free to offer them online. The direct reason that makes it elligible for a post here, is that it provides Olson's book. However, there are many more interesting books at this site.

Among the very interesting things that I found, are Magnetic Recording - Wire and Tape by M. L. Quatermaine, a wonderful little book with lots of diagrams and illustrations. Anything you never knew you wanted to know about your tapedeck!

There are also a lot of audio textbooks, of varying level. I am an educator myself and am of course interested in both "vintage educational material" as well as in improving my knowledge of things audio. I can tell you that some of this vintage material is still excellent textbook material, if you can look through the outdated graphic work. Didactically, there isn't much wrong with them and I enjoy reading them.

Happy browsing!

Dynamics To The People - Bjørn Kolbrek's Private Website

2008-04-28T17:17:00.000-07:00

A few posts below, I linked to the articles "Horn Theory: an Introduction" by Bjørn Kolbrek. I forgot to add a link to his private website. I have actually known about Kolbrek and his horns for years, he's had his system up online for years now. It has been fun to follow his developments and I was extremely jealous of the "Kolbrek Sub Horn". I didn't realise his engineering background, the papers published in AudioXpress took me sort of by surprise.

In any case, it is interesting to see what kind of stuff is built by someone who knows what is important and what isn't.

Hornresp 19.00

2008-04-18T16:45:00.000-07:00

I passed announcing the release of versions 18.20 and 18.30, because I thought it was getting a little too much, announcing updates almost every other day. This is a fully new version, however, so I am glad to announce it.

I am even more glad that I had something to do with it. David McBean is open to suggestions for his software and many DIY-ers give them. I took the opportunity to ask for off-set driver mounting. This means mounting the driver not at the throat, but at some other location along the horn path. This alters response and can therefore be used to tune the horn in a specific way. Just one more tool in the toolbox. The trick itself, off-set driver mounting, is also known from transmissionlines and TQWTs.

Anyway, David refused initially, but suprised me by releasing version 19.00, with the off-set driver mounting. Thanks David!

Hornresp download site.

Chance Google Find: Horn/Dipole Hybrid

2008-04-18T15:25:00.000-07:00

I was looking for Onkens, go figure... :)

Published on diyaudio, by CLS. The midhorn is an Oris 150 by BD-Design, in this case not used with fullrange drivers, but with a focal midrange driver. This system really struck me, because it's an interesting combination between a few things.

First of all, I am a fan of the Oris-style tractrix/fullrange approach to midrange. I have been sold since hearing various Oris systems at the BD-Design showroom and in private homes. A hornloaded fullrange driver gives an excellent overall combination of range, dynamics, resolution and easily achievable coherence. The compressiondriver loaded Oris horn takes it a step further, but the price reflects that as well. I don't have the budget for real Oris horns at the moment, but I have been able to get at least some of the magic with DIY horns, which is proof-of-concept to me. Clearly, the maker of the featured system took a different approach and uses separate midrange and treble drivers, which is fine too. In general, the directional nature of a tractrix horn reduces negative room interactions in a domestic environment (less reflections off side walls), which is useful.

Next is the dipole section. Dipoles are very hot for bass at the moment, partly because they excite roommodes less. The front and rear waves are out of phase, they meet at the edge of the baffle and cancel each other out. In a normal box speaker, the sound is radiated in all directions, but in an open baffle speaker the radiation towards the sides is much reduced. With less sound going into your room, there is less chance of room resonances and other room interactions. Dipoles are also much less efficient than basshorns or box speakers. Overall, people that use dipole bass seem to value the reduced room interaction more than efficiency. You can read more about dipoles at Linkwitz's site or, if you can read German, at dipol+. Also note that dipole is also used for midrange and treble applications and there are strong points to be made for that as well. Linkwitz is a particularly good source for that.

In any case, considering midrange horns are appreciated for their reduced room interactions, and dipole bass sections are appreciated for their reduced room interactions, it seems logical to combine the two. This full blown approach, with three 18" woofers per side, also seems to aim to "fix" the lower efficiency of the dipole section compared to the midrange and treble section. It's large (the television is 53", for reference), I wouldn't readily put it in my own living room, but I see the how and why behind the design.

Finally, it reminded me a lot of the Western Electric theater horns with dipole bass sections. Their obvious strong point was the elaborate and finely designed HUGE midrange horn. Their obvious weak point is the extreme time delay caused by the very long midrange horn. The added path of the soundwaves makes them arrive much later at the listener's ears than the soundwaves from the woofer. According to the Lansing Heritage website (also the source of the image), the delay issue was so serious, that the click sounds from tap dancing could be heard twice; once from the woofer and once from the midrange horn! The featured system is a nice iteration of the Western Electric style system. It features a midrange horn with a fairly low cutoff, mated with a dipole bass section, without the tremendous time delay.

More wood/DIY multicell horns

2008-04-12T07:34:00.000-07:00

I knew I had a nice link somewhere in my bookmarks...

This is a French effort, from the website http://jipihorn.free.fr/, showing audio gear by Jerome and Thierry Prevost. I havn't had contact with them, but I assume they are brothers sharing a nice hobby. :)

They have several pages detailing this and other horn developments and show some of the design and construction steps. It's all in French so might be a problem for some, but the pictures alone are worth more than a million words.

(Note: although this horn consists of cells, due to its general lay-out and expansion style, it would probably be more accurately described as a radial horn. Examples of this style follow later.)

CH Audio Design - beautiful craftmanship

2008-04-10T05:19:00.001-07:00

I just came across the CH Audio Design website, through a link posted on Audiotreff. This company (or person?) offers spectacular wood reproductions of the Altec 1505B multicell horns. This style of hornbuilding, splitting the horn into smaller segments and pointing them in a radiating style, is intended to prevent beaming. These smaller segments are the multicells. In the usable pass-band, the wavefronts of the individual horns combine well and a smooth response and wide dispersion is achieved. At higher frequencies, each individual multicell exhibits beaming.

There is more than just pretty pictures there, including a set of drawings for an adjustable base assembly, allowing variable tilting. If, like me, you are used to adjust the position and angle of your midhorns by adding books to the stack underneath your driver (...), you will surely appreciate this feature. :) Also interesting to see is Dietmar of Germany's system. Clearly a Big Rig.

Hurray

2008-04-01T04:20:00.001-07:00

I am pleased to announce that this blog has had over 10,000 pageviews since it's start. It's a real joy when people read what you collect/write for them, so thanks for stopping by every now and then!

Sitemeter offers a lot more information than just pageviews. It also shows entry pages, referrals, what search words were typed in Google to get to this page and also, interestingly, how you *left* this site. I set out to make this page a place that could direct you to the information about horns you want to find, good quality stuff that you want to read. It seems that many of you do indeed follow the links and look at the stuff. I am happy to reach that goal.

Also, a lot of people look for stuff on JABO horns. I will endulge and string together some JABO stuff.

Otherwise, just thanks and I'll try to keep it up.

Wow... Hornresp 18:10...

2008-03-30T16:11:00.000-07:00

McBean is a fast and enthusiastic worker. As far as I've checked, the update entails a compression chamber option for tapped horns.

Hornresp download site.

Kolbrek on horn theory, an introduction

2008-03-29T17:24:00.000-07:00

The audioXpress magazine has a couple of articles out, an introduction to horn theory by Bjørn Kolbrek. This introduction has a more theoretical approach than the papers bij Bruce Edgar in Speakerbuilder magazine. You can download these files at:

Part 1
Part 2

Hornresp update: version 18.00

2008-03-25T07:31:00.001-07:00

David has put more options in the tapped horn wizard. It is possible to shift driver position with a scroll bar and see the frequency response chart change in real-time. This makes it much easier and quicker to find the right driver position. A great update!

Find it here.

Schmacks Sub in Sketch Up

2008-03-24T18:27:00.000-07:00

This is just a quick one with some pictures.

Before I made this horn, I made a Sketch Up model to see where all the panels went. When I started the model, I wasn't sure yet, but when I realised how few panels there are and that most are pretty easy to cut and position, I decided to go ahead. Here are two depictions of the interior, that make it easier to visualise the internals of this horn:

Next is what I believe is the standard, intended placement of this horn, in a corner.

Finally, this is the way I wanted to put it in my room. You can see it's put on its side. This makes no difference to the functioning of the horn, as the boundary loading is exactly the same. The footprint is a lot smaller though, so this positioning takes up less space.

The corner Schmackshorn, a subwoofer

2008-03-24T08:45:00.000-07:00

A familiar classic backloaded horn, is the Schmackshorn. While I can't precisely trace back the maker of the original design, I do know that the most widely known versions are from the Klinger book of loudspeaker designs. I mentioned this book earlier in reference to the Dinohorn, anyone interested in European horn DIY will come across it a lot. I know of at least two other derivations, which take the original design elements a step further. One is the Isophon version, with lots of reflectors, the other, is the Side Vivace, an adaptation for Lowther and other fullrange drivers, which uses helmholzresonators to smooth response.

The Schmackshorn is famous for being a fairly large and uncompromised horn. Its size enables it to have a low and efficient bass response. This is something that many fullrange drivers need help with, so the Schmacks was often used with such drive units. Combinations by Philips/Norelco, Coral, Lowther and Fostex are known, probably many more. An added trait of these horns, of larger horns in general, is that their hornmouth/radiating surface is very large and therefore closer to the size of a natural low frequency soundwave. Most backloaded horns have fairly small mouths. While small-mouthed horns can sound good, large mouths generally tend to help a lot.

A fascinating combination of both (large mouth and lots of driver surface), is this version of the Schmackshorn. Click image for a higher resolution. This comes from an Italian website and there are more Schmacks-plans there.

It is a design for a 12 inch driver. It was also featured in the loudspeakerbook by Klinger. This is another backloaded horn, with a rather simplified but clearly Schmacks-style folding. As far as I know, this is a bottom-firing corner horn. The only illustration (drawing, not a photo) of an application I saw, was two of these firing in corners. I haven't found more details on placement. I think it is very likely that it is a corner horn, or is suitable for corner placement, based on length and mouthsize calculations.

The Schmackshorns are "old-style" horns, which means they are designed around a number of standard rules of classic horn theory (the type by Olson). These horns generally had a quarter wavelength of the lowest intended frequency, and a mouthsize appropriately reduced for room placement (1/8th for corner placement, 1/4th for wall placement, etc. etc.).

After measuring the internal length of this horn in a few different ways, I always end up with a hornlength of around 280-290 cm. The quarter wavelength of a 30 Hz, is 285 cm, so I have decided that his horn is very likely a 30 Hz horn. Reverse engineering the mouthsize is somewhat harder, as its bottom firing. A general rule of thumb I have seen for bottom firing horn mouths, is that the final mouth size is about two times the mouth coming out of the cabinet. However, I have also seen suggestions of 1.6x to 3x as large. Also, making the final hornmouth smaller is a trick to modify/repair the acoustic impedance of the horn, so relating the mouthsize to a cut-off frequency is tricky. I come up with estimates between 6,000 and 9,000 cm^2, of which 9,000 cm^2 would be expected with a 30 Hz flare rate (throat size is 400 cm^2). Pretty good approximation, if you ask me.

Simulation in Hornresp shows that the difference is rather insignificant, leading to only minor differences in the simulated response. These are most likely smaller than the accuracy of Hornresp, so from here on, I consider this to be a 30 Hz horn, with a mouth of roughly 9,000 cm^2. Considering I model this in a corner, and considering some designed-in extension of the horn using room boundaries, this is not unlikely at all.

Furthermore, we can see a cancellation dip around 100 Hz, which is where the directly radiated sound interferes with the horn sound. It is interesting to note the cabinet design has parallel surfaces between the floor and the (inside) top of the cabinet. The distance between them is about a quarter wavelength of 100 Hz. A possible occurring standing wave will attenuate the horn sound at 100 Hz and the cancellation dip may be greatly reduced by this. This is a feature also known from the Olson backloaded horn and a suspected factor of succes in the Fostex recommended enclosures. By either placing these standing waves at a single frequency or spread out over a larger area, response anomalies can be controlled acoustically. A very interesting feature of this design. I have no measurements of the horn, so I don't know if it works the way I see it.

Now, I used to have one and I liked it, but threw it out when I moved to a new home. I regret that now. It had a really nice low bass range. It was a bit messy in the crossover region to midrange horns (220 Hz), but then again I had no measurements and therefore the crossover was messy. I'd really like to build one or two again and do measurements, a good crossover, apply it in an appropriate range. It really deserves it.

(Note: I posted this a day or two, three ago, but because I started writing on this post earlier in March, it was posted way below. Apparently you give it a date and time of posting when you start the draft. I moved it back up, since it's the most recent message. )

Lowther Voigt Museum

2008-03-16T14:23:00.000-07:00

Here's a really nice link!

Paul Voigt was the developer of what we now know as the Lowther drive units. These are developed a bit further, but much of their design is as it was in the thirties. While there are other strategies for fullrange drivers with high efficiency (ie smaller or larger diameter, without whizzer cone, different materials, different suspension characteristics), the Lowther school is still highly respected and led to other drivers following a similar strategy. AER and Fostex come to kind, Feastrex as well.

Paul Voigt initially put these drivers in large frontloaded horns. There were large, ready made, furniture grade cabinets, but also a DIY kit to be built from plans, pictured here. Whether he designed the drivers to be placed in horns, or designed the horns to make the drivers work, I don't know, but the end result is the same. This type of drivers has a response curve and a suspension type that works best in a frontloaded horn. By this, I mean that there is more treble and a general decline in lower frequency response. The horn boosts the lower frequencies and restores balance. The horn also reduces distortion, damps resonances in the driver, and gives that horn flavour that counts (even if only psychologically). In principal, you can apply this to any low Qts driver with a tilted frequency response.

Modern examples of large horns for these drivers, are the Oris range of horns by BD-Design. I have used Lowthers in "official" backloaded horn designs and was quite happy with the results, but after hearing a full-tilt Oris system at the BD-Design audition room, I started making fronthorns for my Lowthers as well. The positive effect of front hornloading was strong, expect a more dynamic, relaxed and controlled sound.

Back to the Lowther Voigt Museum. Basic horn formulae haven't changed much since the days of Paul Voigt, the application of these rules has. Nevertheless, it is very interesting to see these old designs and meditate on the creative use of knowledge of the time. Even if you don't build a Home Constructor Horn, it is noteworthy that Voigt obviously saw an advantage to using a large frontloaded horn, as opposed to say a backloaded horn, or use a smaller fronthorn to go with the TQWT/resonant pipe. Apart from this, it's just cool to see some pieces of historical significane.

The website offers some history of the company and persons, it gives pictures and descriptions of products and. apparently, the museum also sells copies of brochures and plans.

http://www.lowthervoigtmuseum.org.uk/index.html

Collaborative Tapped Horn Project

2008-03-11T07:33:00.001-07:00

Posting here has been low, but there continues to be a constant flow of hits and views to this magazine. There are loads of people interested in hornloudspeakers online and they clearly want more stuff to read. This, I can provide, through a bulky link...

By now, a lot of horn enthusiasts will be familiar with the Tapped Horns of Tom Danley. In tapped horns, the driver is placed in such a way, that both front and rear are inside the hornpath and contributing to the final frequency response. www.diyaudio.com is hosting a thread by a number of DIY-ers, who have been reverse and forward engineering the tapped horns. Tom Danley even pops round to offer advice and hints!

This entire thread is interesting reading material. With the aid of hornresp and some background knowledge, a functional tapped horns is easily designed and constructed (think folded TQWT and you're 95% there). Those who have tried it, are generally over the moon.

Here is the link, knock yourself out with some excellent, innovative, exciting and yet accessible reading material. I start on page 1, the thread has grown to 136 pages by the time I am posting this...
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?s=b42dfd69fb368c5249d462678eba5362&threadid=97674&perpage=10&pagenumber=1

Klipsch LaScala and Belle, original and modified

2007-12-07T15:52:00.000-08:00

Due a series of posts on a Dutch forum, I remembered an interesting mod to the Klipsch LaScala. This is as good a reason as any to feature the LaScala in itself.

It came after the famous Klipschorn and was initially designed as a public adress speaker for an election campaign. It turned out to work well in the home as well, not requiring perfect corners for proper placement. Due to its simplicity, it was also cheaper to manufacture. Of course there is no free lunch, the Klipschorn has lower extension.

The LaScala was or is popular amongst first-time horn builders. This is not suprising when comparing the Klipschorn plans and LaScala plans. The LaScala has fewer parts and less extreme cuts.

There are several drawings floating around online. There are old drawings in metric measurements from a German source, apparently based on original Klipsch plans. I think I have seen English versions of this as well, in inches. Then there are newer private drawings, made by someone over at the Klipsch board. The Klipsch board keeps rearranging its messages, so my link is dead. They were very nice and insightful drawings, though. When I feel like it, I will dig in deep into the Klipsch archives and find it.

For DIY-ers, I link the German plans, from Audiotreff:

The Belle Klipsch is a squished version of the LaScala. It is essentially the same horn, but it is folded into its enclosure differently. As a result, the cabinet is wider and shallower than the LaScala. It makes it easier to place in the home. As I understand, Paul Klipsch recommended it as a centerchannel to use with Klipschorn. Mind that this was as a fill-in between stereo speakers that were spaced too widely apart. This was before surround sound. However, these days the Belle Klipsch is indeed used as a center channel (and surround channels) in surround set-ups with Klipschorns, as is the LaScala. There are private plans of the Belle somewhere at the Klipschboard, if you can find them.

Finally, we get to the thing that sparked this post. I read a thread on a Dutch forum about Altec Voice of the Theatre-like (VOTT) enclosures. These have a horn in front of the driver and a bass reflex box on the rear. One remark to another and eventually I remembered an interesting mod to the LaScala. It was pioneered by djk, who hangs out here and there on the usual high efficiency loudspeaker areas online.

It assumes that the driver is underutilized by the tuning of the horn and backchamber. By enlarging the backchamber (also known as 'doghouse' in Klipsch designs) and porting it, the cutoff is lowered. Note that this mod essentially turns the LaScala into sort of a VOTT, because the front of the driver is hornloaded and the rear is in a bass reflex box.

You can find more info about this mod at: http://forums.klipsch.com/forums/p/27063/226375.aspx

Next step in hornresp, contribution by Horst Möller forthcoming

2007-12-05T11:29:00.000-08:00

Just wanted to let you know that the next step in the hornresp-series is coming up, planned for this weekend.

I have also had some contact with Horst Möller, a German horn designer. He uses some tricks to make very small backloaded horns. He has a cult-following and a counter-cult, so it will be interesting to read some of his ideas. We're not negotiating deadlines yet, we just agreed that he is willing to write something and I am willing to edit and post it. More info is forthcoming, in the meanwhile you can check out his designs here.

A modest milestone

2007-11-20T06:50:00.001-08:00

1,111 pageviews! :-)

The Dino Horn

2007-11-19T16:16:00.000-08:00

Something to break the Hornresp series.

This is a vintage design. It was featured in the Klinger loudspeaker book, and that's about all I know about its origins.

This picture comes from the World Tune website, an art project that travels around, placing these giant horns in large space or the open air to play soundscapes. Thanks to the persons in the shot, you can appreciate its formidable size.

A noteworthy feature of this horn, is its floor-firing mouth. Actually, the mouth is formed by the opening at the base of the cabinet, but the cabinet itself is firing downwards. This folding topology is used in the Edgarhorn slimlines and Seismic sub, as well as the older Monolith design. The classic Swedish Klason horn also has a down-firing mouth. By letting the mouth be part of the horn, the enclosure itself can be reduced, which makes the horn seem a lot smaller. Considering its current size, imagine what it would look like when folded in a more traditional way!

I can't find any listening experiences of it, but literally everyone that ever writes about it online is fascinated by it.

You can find the plans at http://www.worldtune.com/archive99/edu9702.htm. Note they are all in metric.

Getting started with Hornresp - #2

2007-11-17T17:05:00.000-08:00

This time, we're adding a driver and entering the new driver's name and parameters. To get started, you must have installed Hornresp by now. If not, now is a good time to do it. When you are done, you can start it up and when it is ready for use, the screenshot below is what you will see:

Note that the software starts at a default screen, or a default driver and horn. If you want to work with other drivers, you can click "Add" to open a new section. I have marked it red in the above screenshot.

The resulting frame is given below. At this point, it is just a copy of the default frame, with all the driver parameters and horn parameters copied from the default. You can modify this new frame to the new parameters, without losing the default settings.

You can enter your own driver data, by selecting a field and typing in it. You select it by left-clicking it's textfield. When it is properly selected, it lights up blue.

In the following image, I have already changed the driver name (bottom of image) and now I have selected Sd, or driver surface area.

Finally, there may be some parameters that you don't know about your driver. Hornresp can calculate Cms, Rms, BL and Mmd out of other parameters. You can activate these calculators, by double-clicking on the parameter that you need to calculate. A small window pops up and asks you for one or two Thiele-Small parameters. Simply enter them and click OK, the calculator will produce the right value *and* enter it into Hornresp, then disappear. The calculator looks like this:

These are the basics for driver entry in Hornresp.

Getting started with Hornresp - #1

2007-11-07T08:16:00.000-08:00

The first thing you do, is download it... Man, that's so bad. But as it's an essential step anyway, here's the link.

http://mywebsite.bigpond.com/dmcbean/

Next step will be entering driver data and simulating your first standard horn. This will feature screenshots of every step and location. I admit that it only starts getting interesting from there...

Announcement

2007-11-03T13:11:00.001-07:00

Blogspot/Google suggests placing AdSense advertisements in your blog. Google makes money, bloggers get a financial incentive to create content, the readers get more to read. It seems a win-win situation. I looked into it, both for this blog and some other blog-activities I have running. The end conclusion can only be, that this blog should not, and will not be commercial.

This blog basically runs on theoretical and practical material that is published by horn enthusiasts and professionals online all over the world. Some of the best stuff that's out there, has been around for 10 years or more and came out of a desire to simply share information and turn people on to an interesting hobby. These days, everything looks flashy and makes the owner money, without actually offering much. Well that's an exaggeration, but you get my point.

This blog wants to bring together good solid stuff, whether published here or elsewhere, and get some of that horny caring and sharing spirit back. So I dig up interesting horn theory and context from all kinds of sources and present them here.

So. Most of it isn't mine and I fondly remember the day when people shared their hobby for free. Could I make money off it? Of course not.

The Hornloudspeaker Magazine blog will remain AdSense-free. Not a statement against AdSense or commercial blogging at all, but in keeping with the spirit of this blog.

Midrange horns/the Edgar Midrange Horn

2007-11-02T18:41:00.001-07:00

The first annotated link. Starting with Bruce Edgar's midrange horn article in Speaker Builder Magazine (cover illustration linked from http://www.alkeng.com/). A famous horn-diy-er named Volvotreter has the article scanned and posted on his website. He has a lot more on there, both horn theory articles in general as well as spectacular projects of his own. I give you a general link to his website instead of links to all individual pages. His pages are worth a visit, you navigate from there. http://www.volvotreter.de/dl-section.htm (scroll down to articles/the Edgar Midrange Horn)

In this publication from 1986, Edgar explores characteristics of midrange horns using cone drivers and arrives at strategies and guidelines for midrange horn designs. These are still the basis of his own product range, so heads up if you want to learn.

An interesting feature that Edgar refers to, is that you can tune the horn to give a different response characteristic. You can tune a horn to compliment a specific driver's response peculiarities. Given time and dedication, you can squeeze the most out of whatever potential your driver has.

Next time, a first episode in the series about Getting Started with Hornresp.

Horn Hits

2007-10-24T16:45:00.000-07:00

I am still working on the infrastructure for this magazine, but I saw in the statistics of Sitemeter that this site is already getting quite a lot of visitors. From all over the world, as well. I am sorry that I aroused anticipation without delivering!

I am planning ahead some posts/issues. I am going for hard content, because there's already enough sites that link to sites that link to sites that link to sites.

I have noticed that first-time users of the excellent hornsimulation program Hornresp (by David McBean) often find it hard to get started, so I want to write a short tutorial, with some screenshots. This will start with your basic frontloaded horn, get to backloaded in a later post/issue and the series will probably end with tapped horns.
I am after permission to publish some famous patents and papers by the horn giants, on whose shoulders we (try to) stand.
I have invited one horn-professional to author on this blog, I am considering a few more.
Of course, any of you who showed an interest in this blog so far, is welcome to send in copy!

The copy deadline for the first issue is november 1st 2007, publication shortly thereafter.

Oh...

2007-10-14T15:21:00.000-07:00

And bear with me, as this is my first attempt at editing and publishing a magazine. :)

Statement of intent

2007-10-14T08:54:00.000-07:00

A blog about hornloudspeakers.

Anything from all-horn multiway fronthornloaded monsters, to tiny single drivers in backloaded horns
Tech stuff (theory, designs, plans, filters, calculators)
Reviews (listening experiences and measurements)
Lust (pretty pictures etc.)

Items:

Periodical bigger features, like reconstructing a vintage design and simulating its response with modern drivers, or introducing a DIY-design by a contributor (hence the 'Magazine' in the title)
Incidental, though possibly frequent shorter news flashes, like referring to an interesting new thread on an audioboard

Single/multiple authors:

While this is a hobby venture of one person, contributions and collaborations are appreciated
Contributors and collaborators can be both amateur and professional

External horn stuff:

This magazine will support and endorse good external information anytime. Inform me, I will link to it!
I have a large folder on my harddisk, with lots of horn designs and articles. Eventually, most will be posted here, but if you are missing something and need it quickly, you can ask about it and I will try to find it for you.