Full range desktop horn speakers

[ChrisRiggle]

Well, I'm still going to give it ago. Call it my learning experience. But I'm going to go at it from different angle. My goal is to simply get better sound from the tweeter, mid woofer, and sub woofer of my logitech this 2.1 system.

I'm going to make horn twitter, horn mid woofer, and maybe horn the sub??? Dunno about the sub. Maybe just make a better enclosure for it.

Does anyone have any input on what makes a good horn tweeter? From googleing around it seems to be a simple affair. Just put a tweeter in an inclosed box before the throat and expand from there. I know there's a lot more to it but for near field listing I'm thinking It doesn't have to be a large assembly.

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I did do some wood work today that clearly pointed out the birch plywood I'll be using on this project. Below are pictures of Lowes birch vs Home Depot birch. I've gotten 2 different quility birch plywood from Lowes before. Bad and worse. Yesterday I picked up a sheet of Home depot birch and has won me over big time. From what I can tell it is voidless, machines better than lowes, and much denser all around. The HD birch veneer on the ply gives a much better edge. If your local Home Depot carries the same Birch ply I'd highly recommend it.



PIC1 pocket operation straight from my cnc on the HD birch (used a 1/4 2flute carbide upspiral for the pocket and cutout and a 1/8th single flute for the wire lead)

PIC2 after a light sanding on the edges

PIC3 Lowes birch right off the machine (used a 1/4 2flute carbide upspiral for the pocket and cutout) The edges look better than HD birch but it's a lie. The splintering is deeper and further in than the HD.

PIC4 Loews after a light sanding. Here you can see the difference between HD and lowes birch.

PIC 5 A corner comparison. Notice HD on top has thicker and more even layers than the lowes at the bottom.

[xrk971]

A horn for a tweeter sometimes looks like a small conical disc to give good wide dispersion. The tweeter is aimed axially at disc centerline, the cone shaped disc in conjunction with disc on surround of tweeter expands radially. There is also the Smith horn, also a disc but driver axis is perpendicular.

[ChrisRiggle]

Continuation of Lowes Birch vs home depot Birch ply.

PIC 6 This shows a pocket operation up close. Notice the tool marks on the Lowes on the bottom is much more pronounced the the HD on the top.

PIC 7 HD on the bottom and lowe's on the top. The definition of HD's thicker layers is much more attractive to me.

PIC 8 Lowe's side view after sanding and application of linssed oil as finish. Uneven layers and voids.

PIC 9 HD side after linseed oil finish. I love it.

PIC 10 unfinished product afte sanding. Just so you know what you've been looking at. It's a his/hers, Iphone 4/5/ipod charging station/ valet. Mens wallet upfront. Girls wallet in the back with a spot for keys in the back too.

PIC 11 after linseed oil.

PIc 12. This is a modern fruit bowl after I tried sanding it!!! It was made with the lowe's birch. As you can see it's not usable. I'm going to try to make it again in HD birch at some point.

Anyhow, I hope the above pictures helps people when they are deciding to use HD birch or Lowe's for their speaker builds. If you're HD birch looks like the above pictures, I'd highly recommend it.

OK back to designing my future desktop speakers.


Chris

[ChrisRiggle]

Originally Posted by xrk971

A horn for a tweeter sometimes looks like a small conical disc to give good wide dispersion. The tweeter is aimed axially at disc centerline, the cone shaped disc in conjunction with disc on surround of tweeter expands radially. There is also the Smith horn, also a disc but driver axis is perpendicular.

Smith horn... Hrmm.. I'm liking that. Looks like it'll be easy to build to boot.
http://www.audioheritage.org/vbullet...1&d=1150603130

[Pemo]

Hi Chris, I just remembered seeing this somewhere, and finally found it:
Tang Band D4-1 DIY Back Horn Speaker Kit

You might like it.

PEMO

[bear]

It's NOT a horn.

It is a tapered Transmission Line at best.

It's too short to be effective at low enough freqs IF it were designed as a classical horn. In reality it is not much different than a long pipe. Otoh, IF the flare rate was slow enough to match the expansion of a large bass horn, it would act like a very very short horn, and have a really rotten up/down frequency response - assuming there was enough of it to resemble the larger horn. eg. a horn with too small of a mouth.

I may be all wrong here, but I think that what I said will stand up ok.

Nothing wrong with a short TL...fwiw. Best to model it that way imo. Check Martin J. King's stuff for info on how to do this...

[ChrisRiggle]

Pemo- Thanks for the link. I've seen that one before but it's a little too deep to use on my desktop. I am going to make a model of it though to better understand it.

Bear- I hear what you are saying. Slowly this horn business is starting to sink in. Lot of googling. I guess this would be a Transmission line (didn't know what TL stood for). Anyhow, since I'm going to use my 2.1 pc speakers for this, it'll have a sub to help with the lows and a tweeter to help with the highs. Hopefully the midwoofer will get some benifit from the short horn/TL cabinet.

Chris

[ChrisRiggle]

I've been thinking, reading, designing, etc.. Any-who, I'm kinda now leaning towards this minibvr I've designed. Does anyone think it would sound horrible?

[gafhenderson]

Originally Posted by ChrisRiggle

I've been thinking, reading, designing, etc.. Any-who, I'm kinda now leaning towards this minibvr I've designed. Does anyone think it would sound horrible?

I like the sound of BVRs, it Removes the horrible thump and bellow of Normal ported boxes.

Curved 'horn' paths from my recent errors with forward firing horns, ends up spewing a load of garbage out the horn mouth that ruins imaging and smudges the sound. Any front firing box I try next will have flat corners and folds to try and limit the high frequencies escaping and running the sound.

[ChrisRiggle]

Originally Posted by gafhenderson

I like the sound of BVRs, it Removes the horrible thump and bellow of Normal ported boxes.

Curved 'horn' paths from my recent errors with forward firing horns, ends up spewing a load of garbage out the horn mouth that ruins imaging and smudges the sound. Any front firing box I try next will have flat corners and folds to try and limit the high frequencies escaping and running the sound.

Thank you for the sage advice. I wonder if I'd added ridges to curves if that would help out. Give it a more bumpy path.