Horn for Radian 950pb

Status
This old topic is closed. If you want to reopen this topic, contact a moderator using the "Report Post" button.
2" Horn for Radian PB-950

Hi there,

suitable 2" entry horns with limited mouth size could be the old JBL ones?

2311 and possibly with it's lens, 2390 also with or without ('gold') lens.

I personally find the later ones very nice indeed and could live with them in a home environment. They should suit Your lovely Radians just a treat...:)
JBL's legendary Hartsfield employed just these for and with good reason...;)

Best regards

'Doc'O aka a1greatdane
 
biradial vs symmetrical

Guys.. i think i have found it!

Biradiale Vollholzhörner

But now i'm start to wonder if i'll be more happy with a 20" (50 cm) horn and just make my boxes a bit wider and thereby getting 400 Hz horn. What do you think?

I find that combining direct radiators with bi-radial type horns is quite difficult especially when you go up in frequency. The radiation pattern of the horn is after all very different from the direct radiator.

In my experience, which is not exhaustive, the imaging qualities suffer compared to a 'natural' or symmetrical profile horns.

best
Kris
 
recently I had a chance to hear Radian 950-PB and Faital Pro HF-200. to my ear Faital wins the competition by a nose. sounds a bit smoother and highs are better pronounced. both were crossed at 370Hz with active crossover. Faital is better for a 2-way application as Radian seems to lack some highs. Faital is 500USD/pr and 950-pb is 800USD/pr.
 
recently I had a chance to hear Radian 950-PB and Faital Pro HF-200. to my ear Faital wins the competition by a nose. sounds a bit smoother and highs are better pronounced. both were crossed at 370Hz with active crossover. Faital is better for a 2-way application as Radian seems to lack some highs. Faital is 500USD/pr and 950-pb is 800USD/pr.
But what about in a three way? Say I used an Ess heil dipole tweeter, Which is better for mids?
 
If I get a radian 950pb and cross it over at 5 or 6 khz will I do better to have a horn loaded tweeter or a dipole tweeter? If horn then what would you recommend for driver and horn?
I prefer to stay in the range of $800 pair for drivers and $500 for horns.
The woofers I will be using are Acoustic elegance LO15 up to 500 or 800 hz and dipole 15 for the bass.
 
I read a post quoted from a Radian engineer, who said unless you need to go past 500hz that the 850pb was just as good if not better...

I still can't find any good measurements on just how low it can go without distortion going sky high. I'd be happy to drop the £££ on a 950 with beryllium diaphragm if I can see some tangible proof of its capabilities, rather than opinion and conjecture based on heavily smoothed graphs.
 
Horn for beyma 950pb

Greetings to all.
Just saw the thread know.
I have a wonderful experience with the 950 Pb attached to fast lane audio tractrix elliptical horn.
They are mostly aimed to the klipschorn but do very well in my system based on scoops.

Home

The result is very musical, very very good image and beside looking good it’s very sweet with no hint of harsheness.

We did a very unconventional set up as it is in a very hi sensitivity system, so it is played in hi-fi context with very low power, so we were able to bring it down to 500 hz to blend with the bass horn. If you are not planning to play at insane limits they will hold well. Mines are working for seven years know. Almost about 20 hrs per week. No problems. Sometimes we party too, David Mancuso style and we put more power. About 20watts. Still no problems and very loud with dynamics to die for.

Any way the minus part, is that they start a smooth roll off at about 12000hz

So you will always need a tweeter if you want a crisp sound.

Our solution was let the horn go naturally rolling of and insert a beyma tpl with horn at about 8000hz 6db/ oct.

The crossover has an l pad for the horn to match sensitivity.

I can’t stop telling that the sound is wonderful but it’s of capital importance that the horns are time aligned and in proper acoustic phase, which may differ from electrical phase, or things start to loose a lot of definition, and become muddy and sometimes harsh.

After time aligning and proper phase, it is wonderful.

Last but not least, it is important to align the sweeet spot to in terms of angle and height.

Best resultes with the elliptical were with a structure a little bit like the one they put on the most expensive models of focal, that can tilt the horn and tweeter together towards the listening position, both vertically and horizontally.
I hope this late post helps.
Enjoy,
Joao.
 
I wonder if I could revive this old thread with a couple of questions for those who have immersed themselves in this stuff:
1. The OP was to do with finding a small scale horn that was compatible with the 950PB. What if a larger horn was acceptable - which horns best suit the 950?
2. Is there a consensus about the generic pros and cons of a 1” vs 2” CD? Comments invited on what those pros and cons are.
 
Hello to all.
I am using a tractrix horn elliptical from fastlane áudio with absolutely lovely results. Be aware that despite all the published info, the response start to slowly decay about 12000hz, so a super tweeter is necessary. I am using the beyma tpl 200 with the beyma horn for the higs. 6db oct 500hz in the radian and natural roll off, beyma starting around 9000 6db oct also.
The radian has to be attenuated with lpad to match.

Results are very smooth but present mid range with uncoloured voices, and wood instruments to die for.
I hope it helps.
 
Hi Everybody

I recently bought a pair of the wonderful Radian 950pb 2" compression driver - and it's simply stunning. My JBL 2435HPL is nothing compared to the Radian.

However, I'm not quite pleased with the serious beaming of my 400 Hz tractrix horns.
The dispersion doesn't match my midrange speaker very good, either.

Therefore: I could really use some help picking up the best possible horn for my Radians, which isn't extremely huge. I would prefer a width less than 16 inches.

I use TAD TL-1601a for lows and TAD TM-1201H for the mids.

Appreciate any suggestions.

Thanks,
Jeppe

Many Thanks for the kind words regarding the Radian 950PB.
I did the conceptual design back at Millennium change and was paid a good consultancy fee in exchange. It's was back then the Only Comp. Driver to sport a 5-slit Bob Smith derived and so correct Phase Plug. Think B&C had a less succeful attempt of cloning it. It also employs the magnet under the Centre-Pole like in old AlNiCo designs and this has been found to seriously enhance the Sound and tonality for the better.

My own preferential 2"entry Horn-Flare/Wave-guide, would be the JBL 2385A with so called 60x40 degrees coverage. It is reality a little wider in the Horizontal and more like 70...
That has nice low distortion since the diffraction slit for enhancing the dispersion, does not interfere to much and the Flare expansion rate is fairly linear..

https://www.jblpro.com/pages/pub/components/2385a.pdf

There is newer designs and the one probably best at this is Dr. Earl Geddes aka GedLee.
Think him to have his own allocation here on this site.
There's of course the option of gd ol 'try and error' - tend to be costly and time consuming tho, but what else is HiFi dedication about? and eBay sure provides a good platform for 'shifting things around'!

Best of winds from
a1greatdane
 
Last edited:
I read a post quoted from a Radian engineer, who said unless you need to go past 500hz that the 850pb was just as good if not better...

Crazy, I happen to own both Radian 950PB (4" diaphragm, 2" exit and neo magnet) and 760NEO PB (3" diaphragm, 2" exit and neo magnet)
If the 850PB with ceramic magnet comparison are similar, I do not get it.

Both on tried on Azurahorn JMLC 340hz flare, it's not even close how better the 950 is. Subjective and measured.

With either, I was using a tweeter above ~6khz so potential HF extension gain of the 760PB wasn't any advantage. And JMLC flare beam quite a bit.

The 760 isn't happy at all below ~800hz, I can't imagine how a small 1" exit would sound at such low frequency, some people must love distortion...
Even the big 950, I can't go much lower than 480hz with steep cutoff. (I saw people using 350hz but I certainty won't venture there)

Because of beaming on the 340hz JMLC, I swapped the bullet tweeter (Beyma CP22) to a tractrix loaded Celestion CDX1-1425 and used 3500hz crossover point. MUCH better subjectively and much wider sweet spot. Yea, the 1425 doesn't reach 20khz and does have breakup but overall, it is worth the drawback...

Used to own Beyma tpl150 and sold because of narrow directivity and bad overall matching with horn, would be great with a high efficiency 10" mid though, just not what I'm after.

I also have ~95db Tlabs beryllium dome tweeter collecting dust in basement... if that can be of any indication.

One of my friend is turning me 2 custom JMLC horn for the CDX1-1425 and a pair of BMS 4526 I just bought. Both will be 2000hz flare.

YMMV
 
Status
This old topic is closed. If you want to reopen this topic, contact a moderator using the "Report Post" button.