Stepwise folded BLH or TL

[mashaffer]

A quick question on design and implementation of TL and BLH cabinets. I was thinking about playing around with this style of cabinet but with the flare or taper approximated by steps rather than a true conical progression. What I mean is that at each fold the area of the line is increased or decreased and then is held constant until the next fold. Thus a stepwise approximation.

Obviously with only four segments possible you can't really simulate this with hornresp and I am not at the point where I can invest the time to learn Akabak. So if you simulated the ideal horn or TL in hornresp what would you expect the real world differences to be with a stepped version?

[Don Hills]

Stepwise versus tapered profile doesn't make a big difference in response within the intended passband of the enclosure. I have simulated a multi-section tapped horn in AkAbak, both stepped parallel sections and tapered sections, and the response curves in the intended passband were very similar.

The important rule to remember is that this only applies when the half-wavelength of the sound is longer than the enclosure path. At higher frequencies you will start to see differences, as each step section startes to resonate at its half-wavelength frequency.

(TL, TH, and BLH enclosures are only intended to handle bass frequencies. A FLH has to handle higher frequencies as well, so the profile becomes important.)

You don't have to "learn" AkAbak. You can do your initial design in Hornresp, export the result to AkAbak, and tweak each segment's values to turn it from a taper to a series of steps.

[mashaffer]

Thanks for the tips Don. So the shorter the individual segments the less the effects will be. Makes sense. Will try exporting akabak from HR and see if I can grok it out.