horns

[jzeleznik]

I am new to this site and am very happy to have discovered it. Let me be brief. I have been toying with the idea of building som EV regency cabs for my listening. My brother has a vintage pair with all EV. After some reading I have surmised they are not true horns. I ran across the Frugal Horns and The Chang family of designs and realized there is much better, more efficient, and up to date designs available. Not only that I could not find plans for the Regencys. Will I be satisfied with the Frugal horn or Changs for listening to Zeppelin, JJ Cale, or Wagner or are they just meant for jazz? Are they full range and do they produce any volume for a normal sized listening room? What type of amplification is needed ? I want to use 8 ohm drivers. Any thoughts and ideas or guidance will be greatly appreciated. I have a Carver M400 and a M400t and a Carver sonic H preamp to run these speakers. WHat is a good first build for a novice that will still be a thrill? Thanks Again

[John Sheerin]

From my own experience, I would suggest adding a subwoofer if you go with any of those designs using full range drivers and filtering out some of the low frequencies from the full ranges. Those are all rear-loaded horns, but really have more in common with a transmission line than a horn. They will reinforce the low end of the full range driver's output. If you want real horns, check out some of Earl Geddes' designs. That will give you much more output among other things. There are lots of other ways to go as well, but most of them require more knowledge to get good results.

[Scottmoose]

Well, if you want sub-bass, then yes, they will need a sub. They are not designed for the same duties as a setup with multiple 15in HE woofers. In an ideal world, if my staple musical diet was Led Zep, Bach organ music or very large orchestral pieces then I'd certainly want to support them with the aforementioned woofers to get as little compression of the LF dynamic BW as possible. That said, I know a few rockers who are quite happy with their Chang cabinets, so YMMV as always.

Actually John, the cabinets mentioned actually have very little in common with an acoustic transmission line, which is a heavily damped line designed to provide the flattest possible impedance (the electrical transmission line being the origin of the name). With respect, they are all just as much 'real horns' as any other. By definition a horn simply needs to expand toward the terminus sufficiently to generate 1/2 wave behaviour. Impedance matching down to Fl, or reactance annulling may be a design goal, but technically it does not define whether something is a horn or not. Of course, like most back-horns, they are also more-or-less distant cousins of the bass reflex cabinet too.

Agreed, a multiway front horn setup will provide greater efficiency -all back-horns using a single full-range unit are inherently limited in practice to the sensitivity of the driver. You can boost it through the roof with the horn, that's no big deal & 110db+ 1m/1w with a 3in Fostex is easy enough if you've got the space & a digital delay, but given that a back-horn is generally very much a narrow BW device, there isn't much point. Again, we're back to differences & which compromises you wish to live with.