First horn?

[garymck]

Hi,

I'm looking for a design for a small (ish) horn as a first dip in to single drive designs. It will also be my first foray back into hifi for nearly 2 decades. I'm looking for a very dynamic, clean sound. i don't mind later building some form of bass augmentor, but I'm after a nice clean midrange and smooth treble, but wonderful dynamics and imaging. My main problem is that I will essentially be building on recommendation. I've looked around at frugal horns, metronomes and all the websites I can find on single range drivers, but nothing beats some personal recommendations since I will have no opportunity to pre-audition. As this will be a first dip in to the horn area, I'm looking at something in the $US 100 per driver range, and something that can be made by a home handyman with a brand new table saw.

I long for the sound that I had in the mid 80's but can no longer afford...a Linn Sondek LP12, Grace G707 Tone arm, Dynavector 10x cartridge, NAD 3155 amp, and Rotel Rl850 speakers. At the time I was employed selling Hifi and was able to spend quiet times optimising numerous components, and this was truley synergistic, even though the speakers cost less than a tenth of the turntable, and the amp was also relatively inexpensive. I still remember a night with friends listening to Dire Straights "Telegraph Road" in the dark, and being greeted by their complete silence as they were stunned by the realism of the sound.

I'd like to try to get close to that again, and I believe a single driver horn, could be the start of the journey (obsession?) agin.

TIA
cheers
Gary

[Glowbug]

Small-ish? Horn?

Hard to get any simpler than a BIB. Tall, but doesn't take up a lot of floor space at all.

http://www.zillaspeak.com/bib-howtobuild.asp

[chrisb]

Be careful entering into the world of highly addictive world of DIY, Gary

There are too many choices of driver flavors and enclosure designs from which to choose, and even more opinions - just remember that there is no best - just what you like.

As glowbug noted, there is probably not any simpler a horn for a first time builder than the BIB, with the additional advantage of flexibility of wide range of driver choices.

Another family of BLH (or "like") designs would be those that originated with the collaborative Frugalhorn project, and evolved into the SPAWN series by Scott Lindgren. Of the latter, one of the simplest, and unfortunately overlooked builds, that delivers great sound in a compact floorstander with high WAF is the Brynn.

Regardless of the degree of enclosure complexity you're comfortable undertaking, recommending a speaker is a very tricky proposition, as your enjoyment will ultimately depend on the sound of the raw driver. That's the tough part - until you get a chance to audition a variety of potential candidates, you'll never know.

For that reason, you might want to consider starting with a smaller project, such as for a bedroom or workshop system, just to taste-test the drivers themselves.

Having said all that, my current favorite small FR drivers that I'd be confident to recommend would be Fostex FE126 for BLH, or FE127E / FE167E for BVR/ MLTL, etc, or the Mark Audio CHR70 & new paper cone EL70. As you're no doubt aware, there are a huge number of designs for these drivers on the Planet10 / Frugalhorn websites, and elsewhere.

It's hard to recommend a particular enclosure design, as at any given moment, I'll have at least 4 or 5 types in rotation in 3 different systems, and in combination with entirely different source / amplification types. My main audio system, for example, currently has 4 quite different sounding tube amps from which to choose - and compared to some folks, that's little league.

[Scottmoose]

Edit, Chris beat me to it, but FWIW...

You don't say what the rest of the system is like (unless it's the same one you describe above?) how large the room is, or what sort of material will generally be played -all of these are very important, as you know from your days selling the stuff, so that rather limits how much help we can be at present.

However, my first reaction is to suggest caution. If you think an FR driver based BLH is going to give you the type of sound as the aforementioned Sondek / NAD / Rotel, you may end up disappointed. They have many virtues of their own, but they aren't necessarily the same as what you had back in the 1980s -in some cases closer than others, but still not the same. I'll hang fire on any suggestions though until you can get back to us with the extra gen needed.

[hm]

Hello garymck,

look on my HP a lot of single and double horns,
last year i compair the TUBA with the KORNETT,
Kornett wins with better Bass and soundstage
by half of the Tuba size,
if you need more than 95 dB,
look the SAXOPHON and the RDH20.

[planet10]

Originally Posted by Scottmoose

However, my first reaction is to suggest caution. If you think an FR driver based BLH is going to give you the type of sound as the aforementioned Sondek / NAD / Rotel, you may end up disappointed. They have many virtues of their own, but they aren't necessarily the same as what you had back in the 1980s -in some cases closer than others, but still not the same. I'll hang fire on any suggestions though until you can get back to us with the extra gen needed.

As to that Lin system i was in much the same position you were, working in a hifi store and getting to play with lots of stuff -- i've probably owned a dozen LP12s, and certainly one with a 707 (we literally sold 1000s of those).

I sure enjoy the systems i listen to more than the ones of those days, and for a lot less money in. You should be aiming higher than what you had in those days...

dave

[Scottmoose]

True enough; I was just thinking aloud really that they're inherently rather different sorts of setup; a classic flat-earth style plays an FR based type. Could be very interesting though...

[garymck]

Hi Guys,

thanks for the constructive comments. The room they will be used in is about 4 meters wide by 5 meters long by 2.7 meters high. The floor is polished hardwood with about 2/3rds covered in a thick rug and some soft furnishings. The windows are covered by wooden blinds. I guess I'd characterise it as somewhat hard and reverberant. The room is in rented accommadation and hence is likely to change so I'm not specifically trying to build something that is ideal for that room. I doubt that my first build will be my last!! I have this new table saw that is just itching to cut wood!!

From my reading I had thought about something in the 4-6" driver range - one of the Fostex varieties that have been mentioned.Music is very diverse, love opera, blues and mild metal (!!)

For amplification I will use my old NAD 3155 initially until I can afford to build/buy a nice valve amp. Source will initially be a yet to be bought CD player followed by a turntable as yet to be determined. Aiming to get a lower budget version of true HIFI if that is possible......

Any other information I can provide?

cheers
Gary

[garymck]

Originally Posted by Scottmoose

True enough; I was just thinking aloud really that they're inherently rather different sorts of setup; a classic flat-earth style plays an FR based type. Could be very interesting though...

I am aware that they are very different systems, but the thing about my old system that stunned everybody who listened to it was the soundstage, and the dynamic. A lot of this was due to the turntable / cartridge combination. The Dynavector had a fabulous transient response, a bit bright, but toned down by the smooth speakers.

It is this combination of Transient and sound stage that was always the most important for me. Got my toes tapping!! Hoping the FR/horn speaker will get me there with some sweat equity rather than dollars spent....!!!

cheers
Gary

[Scottmoose]

Hi Gary,

That helps. Given what you say you're looking for, and the budget limitation, I'd be inclined toward either the Mark Audio CHR70, Fostex FE126E or CSS EL70 (also built by Mark Audio) in as large a horn as you can manage; Saburo would be about right. It won't sound like your old setup, but I reckon you'd enjoy it & you'd certainly get the dynamics you want. If nothing else, it'd give your new tablesaw a work-out. The 126 wouldn't be thrilled with the NAD, although you could reduce this with the cabling to some extent (think high inductance wire). The others are more forgiving of the components upstream in terms of balance at any rate. As for sound, the 126 is probably the most lively of the bunch while the CHR & EL are a little more neutral sounding, the CHR probably being the cleanest & the EL striking a compromise somewhere between the two. They have a bit more headroom than the Fostex to cope with large transiet swings, although the 126 actually sounds much better than the paper figures suggest it should on that score.

There's one option at any rate.