The dirty little secret of horns.

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Horns are efficient and are waveguides, meaning that the energy is focussed. They are the best choice for an outdoor rock concert where you want max efficiency and to be able to focus the sound on the crowd, and nowhere else. They'd also be a good choice for an auditorium where you want to minimize room reflections.

I used to think like that too. Then I heard a pair of JBL 1400 Arrays and realized how completely wrong I was. They make "audiophile" speakers sound like, well...speakers. Any conventional speaker using wimpy little 1 inch dome tweeters with hair thin voice coil wire that heats up almost immediately sound dynamically compressed, boring, polite and quite frankly, dated. I like the sound of MBLs, which I can't afford, but good compression drivers coupled to low coloration horns give them a real run for their money. I'd rather listen to a pair of 1976 JBL L300s that a pair of brand new Alexandrias.

The real "dirty little secret" of high end audio is how bad (and shockingly similar) ALL conventional direct radiator speakers sound. Every show I go to features 1,000 different variations on a tired old theme that was pretty much perfected with the AR3 fifty years ago. Polite, low coloration speakers with ridiculously high levels of dynamic compression abound. If people think those pretenders sounds real they need to get their ears cleaned. The emperor has no clothes.
 
It is not a compressor but a speed sensitive volume control.

Ahh, Far too many variables there, problems like the old mechanical one. Road, tires, hills, (rpm) Cabin noise averaging and gradual slow release compression (optional and well explaned to the undereducated public) over a set time window would be better. Sensor near floor to reject pickup of converstion. I feel this could be done.
 
Of course it could be done, but it won't ever be done because it is too complicated. Speed sensitive volume works just fine and is very simple.

As I am actually allowed to disagree, and daily have to mix records that penetrate road noise etc, I can most heartily say that compression works better than turning the volume up, and would be worth the effort, even on Fords (-: I have JRiver running on my CarPuter, this is not conjecture. I am however, encouraged by the comprehension of my over complex explanation. Perhaps there is hope for the world after all
 
Our little 2006 car has it also.
How does it sense speed?

My '97 has such.
Sensor off transbox diff gear sends a pulse to the ECU which correlates them to engine rpms then deduces what gear the trans is in
It also continually reads combustion chamber ionization after EACH spark (using spark plugs as the Sensors) on each cylinder, using the info to adjust; fuel, timings and Boost pressures
Adjusting the sound levels in relation to car speed, on the low quality 'In car' sound systems is about as complex as the courtesy light function. :)
Even My cheapo Tom tom does this, based on speeds derived from GPS info.
 
The RPM and gear are available on the vehicle "buss" - for free. Basically all cars have this now so that everything can communicate. The audio head unit just reads the data posted on the buss. Speed from this is obvious. Variable compression would not be hard, it just doesn't add much to the party. Some may even be doing this now. I have been away from car audio for more than ten years.
 
OBDII data string 06, 0c is rpm and 0d is speed if I'm not mistaken. I have an OBDLink MX made by scantool.net. Oddly enough the android apps used (Torque and DashCommand) vastly outpace even most very expensive pc software.

Get yourself a decent adapter off Amazon for cheap eg <$30

I'd put a shoutout to Ian Hawkins, the man behind Torque and see if he could master a plugin for your needs. If possible, installing an inexpensive tablet as a music server could double for functionality.
 
Now you are in a different place Greeb.

Pete Leoni, one of the first people ever to make windows audio software run in real time here and reporting for duty! I live breath eat and sleep digital audio on PCs. My live rig runs .776 ms latency in and .776 ms latency out. I am indeed the latency king!

OBDII data string 06, 0c is rpm and 0d is speed if I'm not mistaken. I have an OBDLink MX made by scantool.net. Oddly enough the android apps used (Torque and DashCommand) vastly outpace even most very expensive pc software.

Get yourself a decent adapter off Amazon for cheap eg <$30

I'd put a shoutout to Ian Hawkins, the man behind Torque and see if he could master a plugin for your needs. If possible, installing an inexpensive tablet as a music server could double for functionality.
 
Dunno what latency has todo with it, Pete. I'd be more interested in actual speed and the rate all cylinders are firing than actual rpm tho one can be derived from the other. Tag a line off of the knock sensor (a peizo pickup) and use that.
Typical read speeds I see are in the 50ms range, but that depends on the OBD reader and more importantly the ecu providing the info. For example Mercedes are notoriously slow.
As this compensation is a running average even 3/4 sec latency would be largely unaffected.
 
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