I built a 4 way Goto system with a passive crossover, but it was not a simple crossover. It probably would have been a bit better with an active or digital crossover - there was a spot in the upper mids that I couldn't get smooth without doing weird stuff to the impedance curve or making other undesirable compromises.
LOL. Yes that sort of sums it up. Well put. I don't understand why, as the parts and pieces seem to be rather good. They should combine into a better system.
Thanks for your experience with the GOTO. They seem like such a good idea and with a good history, it's a shame not to hear them used well.
Your experience mirrors mine. I have no idea what GOTO drivers sound like, except a distorted, jumbled mess. They might be good, they might not, I have no idea. I don't see how anyone pulls off a 5-way system unless it is measured with great precision, DSP'ed to the hilt, and multi-amped. If you tried to balance it subjectively, you would never quit ... it would sound different on every record.Pano, it looks like we similar experiences
I listened to a system in Tokyo in 2005, a full GOTO system. It was a 5-way system + sub below 40Hz. It showed some fantastic properties here and there. The here and there was also the main issue, it failed big time to paint a homogeneous picture. It was a fully active system with separate amps for each channel, massive! I guess it can be made into a really good system with the help of a DSP, infact I think it is impossible without one.
I have also heard a number Avant Garde set-ups and to my ears they have all succeded in making a horn system with all the good horn vertues removed. They are dynamically crippled, flat sounding and sounds more like an over driven dome system.
//Anders
I'm even more at a loss why Avante-Garde sounds the way they do. No tone color, no dynamics, no phase coherence, none of the things that horns are so famous for. How do you make a horn sound like that? Are the drivers that badly designed? How is it even possible? And it's not like AG's are neutral ... they're not. Response is not flat, and horn coloration is quite noticeable and not enjoyable.
My only guess is the drivers are not well chosen (since I doubt they design their own) and have high distortion. And maybe fashionable 1st-order crossovers are resulting in a lot of out-of-passband excursion contaminating the intended passband with IM distortion. I've never seen their crossovers, nor which drivers they use, so I have no idea what's actually happening.
And unfortunately a lot of audiophiles will hear the giant, expensive AG's at shows and think "so that's what horns sound like" and dismiss all horns from further consideration.
All of the truly great high-efficiency systems I've heard were 2-way. Without exception. I think the old-timers back in the Thirties knew what they were doing.
They were all large-format, with 15-inch woofers and large-format horns.
They sound nothing like the $100,000 to $250,000 Oligarch Audio systems we see at the trade shows, with a typical 3-way of Scan-Speak drivers in a MTM pattern at the top, a pair of 10 or 12-inch metal-cone woofers at the bottom, combined in a stone-like enclosure with a "magic" crossover.
They were all large-format, with 15-inch woofers and large-format horns.
They sound nothing like the $100,000 to $250,000 Oligarch Audio systems we see at the trade shows, with a typical 3-way of Scan-Speak drivers in a MTM pattern at the top, a pair of 10 or 12-inch metal-cone woofers at the bottom, combined in a stone-like enclosure with a "magic" crossover.
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Just carefully reviewed the GOTO driver measurements. Wow, only two even cover two octaves, and the others are more ragged and cover even less. That's kind of amazing, in a weird way. Almost the antithesis of a classical 2-way system, with the MF/HF driver spanning a good part of the audio spectrum all at one go.
Your GOTO/Avante-Garde experiences, Lynn, Pano, and Bappe...are good to hear...thx...
I've never heard a truly large multi-section horn array. But your comments match what I would expect.
I question how any speaker with such disparately located acoustic centers could work in any way other than what might be described as schizophrenic.
Setting aside issues of xovers, levels, delays, ect...and assuming those were all done correctly, .....I still can't see how a good speaker can come from widely separated acoustic centers (which all the largish horns beg for).
It seems the horns' different geometric locations can only be aligned to some particular axis and distance, like a large radio dish antenna.
Working with synergy muli-ways, I've come to greatly value the benefits of keeping acoustic centers as close as possible.
I think this helps explain why simpler designs, like a good two-way, works so well...fewer acoustic centers to keep close (and of course fewer xovers to deal with).
I've never heard a truly large multi-section horn array. But your comments match what I would expect.
I question how any speaker with such disparately located acoustic centers could work in any way other than what might be described as schizophrenic.
Setting aside issues of xovers, levels, delays, ect...and assuming those were all done correctly, .....I still can't see how a good speaker can come from widely separated acoustic centers (which all the largish horns beg for).
It seems the horns' different geometric locations can only be aligned to some particular axis and distance, like a large radio dish antenna.
Working with synergy muli-ways, I've come to greatly value the benefits of keeping acoustic centers as close as possible.
I think this helps explain why simpler designs, like a good two-way, works so well...fewer acoustic centers to keep close (and of course fewer xovers to deal with).
The best multiway all horn system I ever heard were Bruce Edgars with his seismic sub. After that would be the Classic Audio's Hartsfield replica's. Hybrid wise I really think the 15" large format driver combo is without a doubt the best of both worlds. Looking back at VOT's 604's and the Lansing Iconic I would say they nailed it back in the day.
Those measurements on the GOTO drivers are eye openers. Would not have expected that thanks for posting.
Rob
Those measurements on the GOTO drivers are eye openers. Would not have expected that thanks for posting.
Rob
Hello Mark 100
It's much easier doing that with a hybrid approach as to all horn loaded. Look at a JBL 4367 vs Klipsch La Scala measurements thanks to Stereophile. I have never heard either one but looking at the measurements there is quite the difference.
Rob
Attachments
Those plots just show time alignment being wrong assuming that's acoustic pressure. Probably pretty typical for old school all horn systems that weren't physically aligned and didn't have the advantage of digital delay. Acoustic centers I took to mean vertical spacing. Horn 2 ways still have pretty bad vertical spacing unless you go to something like a unity / synergy design but that's not usually going to be a 2 way either. Personally I haven't found the large vertical spacing between an upper-mid driver and a super tweeter to be too problematic. You can definitely see it in the vertical polars, but I guess the spatial comb filter is dense enough that I don't notice it even when moving through it.
A well executed two-way speaker is a thing of beauty and can bring a lot of listening pleasure into the home.
But the best speaker system I ever heard, far and away the best - was 4-way. Direct radiating woofers, 3-way horn on top of that. Of course I'm talking about the big system we did in my theater in Paris. I have spoken of it on (too) many occasions.
Onken W double 15" woofer cabinets, W.E. 15A horn with 1940s Westrex 2080 driver, sand filled wooden horn with TAD 2001 driver, JBL 2405 tweeter. All 2nd order passive crossover at 200Hz, 1kHz, 8kHz. The diagram shown below is for a setup of the same system six years later, the crossover points are different. I had really hoped for a sophisticated active crossover on the system (at the time I was in love with active crossovers) but it didn't happen. Well this system and one Altec system completely changed my mind on crossovers. If passive crossovers can sound this good, then no need to worry about anything else.
Having that giant 15A horn playing between 200Hz and 1kHz must have been a large part of what made the system so darn good. The super clean Onken W bass cabinets helped too. The system just got things right, voices and instruments, tonal balances and tone colors. But other systems can do that. The most remarkable part, the part that set the system so far above any other I've heard, was space. It could do 3D space like nothing else. The system could convince you that there was a string quartet on stage, or that you were in a smokey jazz club, at in a huge concert hall with an orchestra in front and the choir behind or in a giant cave underground. Every recording was remarkably different You could point right to where everything was in the recording. Even height! You could clearly hear three rows of choir. I still don't know how that's possible, how that even exists in a recording. I've never heard (but almost) another system that could do that. And I've searched and searched for decades without finding it.
This isn't the sort of system that you are going to put in your living room, but it did prove a lot a important things to me.
The giant WE 15A horns must be quite an experience, as well as the double 416's in the Onken cabinet, supporting it all below 250 Hz (below any cabinet modes).
That's why I briefly jumped in the Hybrid thread next door, where the poster combined a vented box 12" with an identical 12" in an open baffle directly above it, both sharing a common series crossover around 100 Hz. It cleverly bypassed box modes while retaining the power-handling of the 12" driver. Obviously, this could be scaled to two, three, or four 416's, as desired.
But the scale of what you described above must have been other-worldly.
That's why I briefly jumped in the Hybrid thread next door, where the poster combined a vented box 12" with an identical 12" in an open baffle directly above it, both sharing a common series crossover around 100 Hz. It cleverly bypassed box modes while retaining the power-handling of the 12" driver. Obviously, this could be scaled to two, three, or four 416's, as desired.
But the scale of what you described above must have been other-worldly.
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Hello
No at the first Mid West Audiofest set up by Mike Baker. I was a ton of fun!!!
Rob
The mk3b2 fin horn has now been published and is free for use:
https://www.diyaudio.com/community/...simulation-results.382115/page-2#post-7320747
confirm impressions above on an onken w.
Built mine but with non altec woofers after looking at all the modern pro-speaker manufacturers.
In my humble experience: the onken w, in passive filtering mode, is boomy. Only with a parallel lcr to tame the upper bass reflex impedance peak will it reveal the holy graal of bass. Even with my current 2x15 w el84pp integrated amp. Almost as good as a 1200w crown studio reference 1 amp with its incredible damping factor. I’ve changed my opinion on many things after that discovery…
Built mine but with non altec woofers after looking at all the modern pro-speaker manufacturers.
In my humble experience: the onken w, in passive filtering mode, is boomy. Only with a parallel lcr to tame the upper bass reflex impedance peak will it reveal the holy graal of bass. Even with my current 2x15 w el84pp integrated amp. Almost as good as a 1200w crown studio reference 1 amp with its incredible damping factor. I’ve changed my opinion on many things after that discovery…