pucho812
Well-known member
Aesthetics aside, are there any real benefits to using a speaker horn made from wood?
wood speaker horns.
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pucho812
Well-known member
JohnRoberts said:
I thought so but then I got to thinking there are benefits(if you call them that) of wood VS fiberglass when it comes to drums so had to ask.
The only advantages are in terms of cosmetics (as John said) and in terms of prototyping/small scale production.
Remember that the horn is supposed NOT to resonate, so the analogy with drums (or guitar amp cabinets) is not pertinent.
Wood yields much better consistency and precision than GRP. Tom Hidley had assembled an international database of woodworkers who could build a studio according to his rather sketchy drawings AND produce his trade-mark horns in almost any country in the world.
Remember that the horn is supposed NOT to resonate, so the analogy with drums (or guitar amp cabinets) is not pertinent.
Wood yields much better consistency and precision than GRP. Tom Hidley had assembled an international database of woodworkers who could build a studio according to his rather sketchy drawings AND produce his trade-mark horns in almost any country in the world.
made in maine
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I read an article way back and it talked about soaking wood cone material in sake, i know its good for making calamari nice and tender when you fry it up, damn it I want to eat sushi now! 
pucho812
Well-known member
abbey road d enfer said:
O.k.
Rob Flinn
Well-known member
When I was lucky enough to have a guided tour of the JMF audio headquaters ( http://www.jmf-audio.com/ ) in France a couple of weeks back, they demonstarted their speakers with wooden horns for the top end. They sounded really unbelieveably good. The cabinets are made of 6 different types of laminated hardwoods, of to kill different resonances. I've never heard anything as good.. Unfortunately the basic set of stereo speakers is 30,000 euros, so sadly I won't be buying any in the near future
pucho812
Well-known member
pucho812
Well-known member
> just diy these...
Ouch. Sectoral exponential is SO 1930. Terrific as a minimum-mouth squirt-the-balcony product, with a rising directivity to compensate the drooping response of the max-efficiency drivers needed to make the most of 25 Watt theater amps.
In a small room they spew 900Hz all over the ceiling and laser-beam 15KHz.
It can be an exciting experience. Gats to be ice-pick after a while.
Constant Directivity theory is old, and has been mature for decades. Compared to raw exponentials, they are less exciting, need top-boost (or low-efficiency drivers), and good CD is large. But a good CD horn is a precision power tool, makes dome drivers seem like toys.
> can't afford. wood horns ya say?
Bah. A pretty-good traveling-show 800Hz wood horn is $30 of plywood and lumber and glue. Beat hell out of A7-type horns like Yuichi's plan. (The A7 horns also suffer metal resonances, but that's not a big deal; wood doesn't "fix" them.) A less-compromised plan for fixed installation should be bigger and maybe nicer-looking wood, but good wood is cheap.... couple hundred bucks? Less than the cost of decent drivers, fer-sure.
Ouch. Sectoral exponential is SO 1930. Terrific as a minimum-mouth squirt-the-balcony product, with a rising directivity to compensate the drooping response of the max-efficiency drivers needed to make the most of 25 Watt theater amps.
In a small room they spew 900Hz all over the ceiling and laser-beam 15KHz.
It can be an exciting experience. Gats to be ice-pick after a while.
Constant Directivity theory is old, and has been mature for decades. Compared to raw exponentials, they are less exciting, need top-boost (or low-efficiency drivers), and good CD is large. But a good CD horn is a precision power tool, makes dome drivers seem like toys.
> can't afford. wood horns ya say?
Bah. A pretty-good traveling-show 800Hz wood horn is $30 of plywood and lumber and glue. Beat hell out of A7-type horns like Yuichi's plan. (The A7 horns also suffer metal resonances, but that's not a big deal; wood doesn't "fix" them.) A less-compromised plan for fixed installation should be bigger and maybe nicer-looking wood, but good wood is cheap.... couple hundred bucks? Less than the cost of decent drivers, fer-sure.
abbey road d enfer said:
Ah, but it does. Not condoning cork-sniffery, but much of what we discuss here revolves around how different materials/components offer different flavors. (this coming from a guy who runs MP3s thru his computer, lol)
Iron or nickel?
Iron and nickel transformer cores give different distortion characteristics which are easily measured. They also have very different permeability values which mean that the windings require different numbers of turns. Talk of different "flavors" just obscures the fact that they are designed differently. I doubt that the differences between a properly designed wood horn and a similar horn made from something else would be as noticeable or measurable. (Not saying differences don't exist, just that they're not likely to be so obvious).schmidlin said:abbey road d enfer said:
Ah, but it does. Not condoning cork-sniffery, but much of what we discuss here revolves around how different materials/components offer different flavors. (this coming from a guy who runs MP3s thru his computer, lol)
Iron or nickel?
strangeandbouncy
Well-known member
Hi,
me no likey horns. You get high efficiency, but at the expense of distortion and dispersion. I like it to sound the same at channels 1 and 96, as well as the middle of the console . . . Efficiency is not really an issue with modern high power amps and drivers.
horns are extremely useful in PA systems where efficiency and narrow dispersion patterns are desirable. Not so the studio.
I have yet to experience any studiosetup with horns that provides anything other than vibe.
Dont bite me!
AndyP
me no likey horns. You get high efficiency, but at the expense of distortion and dispersion. I like it to sound the same at channels 1 and 96, as well as the middle of the console . . . Efficiency is not really an issue with modern high power amps and drivers.
horns are extremely useful in PA systems where efficiency and narrow dispersion patterns are desirable. Not so the studio.
I have yet to experience any studiosetup with horns that provides anything other than vibe.
Dont bite me!
AndyP
Like anything it depends on design and implementation. Philip Newell and Keith Holland have produced a well-regarded horn design (used extensively in Newell's high-end control room designs) for example. A lot of people like Tannoy dual concentrics too. The main reasons for "horn sound" are misapplication and lack of understanding of the principles involved.strangeandbouncy said:
jensenmann
Well-known member
strangeandbouncy said:
In my book distortion is not the problem in studiomonitors. If you use high efficient drivers which are properly aligned to the other speakers in the cab they will never work at a volume where nonlinearities due to air pressure will come into the game (which is the biggest source of distortion). At these volumes will not even heat and power compression be a problem. Even the loudest monitors spit barely more than 120dB SPL out, which is a joke for a good HF horndriver. I have monitors at work with a short radial horn and a 1,4" HF driver. Describing their resolution with megatransparent is even at maximum volume an understatement.
jensenmann said:
+1 loudspeakers are full of compromise and tradeoffs so it all depends on the execution and application.
WRT horns, they are not all the same, and in fact there have been (IMO) major developments in that area. One is the application of DSP to deal with correcting for some horn distortions, and another is to seamlessly combine multiple different frequency range drivers into a single horn.
Most of the research in new technology horns is for large scale sound reinforcement, because that is the heavy lifting of the speaker world.
JR
