I'm certain this is new to some people, others I'm willing to bet, already know this.
We spend a bunch of time on these boards discussing the relative merit of this shape horn vs that shape horn, this driver vs that driver. Sure horn A sounds different than horn B, sure driver A sounds different than B, but why? Here is why, it boils down to three things.
1 Headroom enough (dynamic range) enough to do this :
2. All needed EQ and
3. Your choice of coverage angle.
Case in point. I am going to assume we all take it as a given that we need a large enough horn mouth to do a low crossover point. For me that is 500 to 600 hz. This obviously means a big horn. So I started with a bog standard Peavey SP1 from the seventie
We spend a bunch of time on these boards discussing the relative merit of this shape horn vs that shape horn, this compression driver vs that driver IMO we have been a bit "conditioned' Sure, horn A sounds different than horn B, sure driver A sounds different than driver B, but why? IMO it boils down to three things.
1 Headroom (enough dynamic range enough to do this) :
2. EQ! *All needed EQ* and
3. Your choice of coverage angle.
Case in point. I am going to assume we all take it as a given that we need a large enough horn mouth to achieve a low crossover point. Obviously we are looking for a point source from as much of the pass band above the Shroeder point as possible. For me that is no higher than 500 to 600 hz. This obviously means a big horn. So I started my experiment with a bog standard Peavey SP1 from the seventies.
I'm sure some of you realize this is a basically a Lascala on the bottom with a rather restricted EV "clone" horn on top. By all rights this should be a prime example of a horn with enough compound diffraction that it would not respond well to EQ right?
Think again my freinds, and begin to bury that notion.
Some of you know I am a mastering and mixing engineer by trade. To say I am a bit picky about speakers is a severe understatement.
This Peavey horn and driver combo sounded pretty bad. Peaky, dippy, worse It sounded "phasey" Right away I thought OK, this is the sound of a bad driver plus uncorrectable throat diffraction issues, the kind we hear about so much right?
But somewhere in the back of my mind I remembered once hearing this "uncorrectable" horn sound absolutely great in a club, so I persevered. Why? Because it's just the kind of a S.O.B. I am.
Using a DCX2496, an RTA app on this stock speaker *with* the *stock* 22a aluminum driver and the *stock* (Eminence) woofer I was able to get it within range of the B&W 801s that I use every day for mastering.*Easily* and without breaking a,sweat from 550hz and *cleanly* to above 18k. No *phasey* sound. Well what do you know that problem, in a horn like this, is entirely EQ correctable.
I am floored. I could now actually use these for reference. I would never have guessed you could EQ a horn like this and drivers such da these into submission. The truth is they simply did not have the tools we have now. DSP is incredible, it makes IMO, a lot of the compression driver wine tasting we do here set of academic. Give me enough. headroom and I will EQ the world Bwahaahaaaaa.
Obviously the 105 DB sensitivity of this sort of speaker gives you one hell of a lot of this EQ room, but I expected to hear some dreaded "horn' artifacts. B.S. There simply are none that are not entirely negligible. Before EQ these were pretty horrid. They now sound pretty incredible. Horn sound, for the vast, vast majority of cases is absolutely curable with EQ. Either that or I stumbled upon God's own SP1's
So what is the moral of this story? Big efficient horn speakers Altec, EV, JBL, (Peavey even!) coupled with the incredible and now affordable DSP power of a unit like DCX2496 etc, plus a computer and a few tools will make most of these speaker "perfection" discussions, providing that we are actually striving for "perfection", academic. Big horns done right are simply as good as it gets, period.
Everything we need to roll our own is already out there. Not a lot of mystery here, no B.S. needed either. Big horns and compression drivers are big horns and compression drivers. All you can really do is pick the coverage angle you need and decide how much you are willing to twist a few knobs.
If you have enough EQ power, pro compression drivers, when used in a home environment, are going to pretty much sound the same *after EQ*. Ditto for *big* radial and "round based" horns without too much diffraction and with the caveat of the almighty coverage angle.
Obviously those that beam less will be preferable, but do NOT write off big radial and "roundish" horns.
This Peavey SP1 horn, certainly no prize, exhibits no "honk" after EQ. It is flat, it is warm. it is cuddly, it is... well I think you get the idea. Bottom line most horn issues *are * correctable EQ issues, and big EQ is inexpensive now. IMO we can give a bit less weight to all of the mysterious stuff that probably started with small exponential horns such as those in the Klipsch heritage line. Big horn, compression driver, big EQ, big sound. No wonder everyone is looking at Synergies, wanting even more of the band from a point source! Even a taste of this via a big efficient horn 2 way EQed flat from 500 up to the roof sounds absolutely incredible.
We spend a bunch of time on these boards discussing the relative merit of this shape horn vs that shape horn, this driver vs that driver. Sure horn A sounds different than horn B, sure driver A sounds different than B, but why? Here is why, it boils down to three things.
1 Headroom enough (dynamic range) enough to do this :
2. All needed EQ and
3. Your choice of coverage angle.
Case in point. I am going to assume we all take it as a given that we need a large enough horn mouth to do a low crossover point. For me that is 500 to 600 hz. This obviously means a big horn. So I started with a bog standard Peavey SP1 from the seventie
We spend a bunch of time on these boards discussing the relative merit of this shape horn vs that shape horn, this compression driver vs that driver IMO we have been a bit "conditioned' Sure, horn A sounds different than horn B, sure driver A sounds different than driver B, but why? IMO it boils down to three things.
1 Headroom (enough dynamic range enough to do this) :
2. EQ! *All needed EQ* and
3. Your choice of coverage angle.
Case in point. I am going to assume we all take it as a given that we need a large enough horn mouth to achieve a low crossover point. Obviously we are looking for a point source from as much of the pass band above the Shroeder point as possible. For me that is no higher than 500 to 600 hz. This obviously means a big horn. So I started my experiment with a bog standard Peavey SP1 from the seventies.
I'm sure some of you realize this is a basically a Lascala on the bottom with a rather restricted EV "clone" horn on top. By all rights this should be a prime example of a horn with enough compound diffraction that it would not respond well to EQ right?
Think again my freinds, and begin to bury that notion.
Some of you know I am a mastering and mixing engineer by trade. To say I am a bit picky about speakers is a severe understatement.
This Peavey horn and driver combo sounded pretty bad. Peaky, dippy, worse It sounded "phasey" Right away I thought OK, this is the sound of a bad driver plus uncorrectable throat diffraction issues, the kind we hear about so much right?
But somewhere in the back of my mind I remembered once hearing this "uncorrectable" horn sound absolutely great in a club, so I persevered. Why? Because it's just the kind of a S.O.B. I am.
Using a DCX2496, an RTA app on this stock speaker *with* the *stock* 22a aluminum driver and the *stock* (Eminence) woofer I was able to get it within range of the B&W 801s that I use every day for mastering.*Easily* and without breaking a,sweat from 550hz and *cleanly* to above 18k. No *phasey* sound. Well what do you know that problem, in a horn like this, is entirely EQ correctable.
I am floored. I could now actually use these for reference. I would never have guessed you could EQ a horn like this and drivers such da these into submission. The truth is they simply did not have the tools we have now. DSP is incredible, it makes IMO, a lot of the compression driver wine tasting we do here set of academic. Give me enough. headroom and I will EQ the world Bwahaahaaaaa.
Obviously the 105 DB sensitivity of this sort of speaker gives you one hell of a lot of this EQ room, but I expected to hear some dreaded "horn' artifacts. B.S. There simply are none that are not entirely negligible. Before EQ these were pretty horrid. They now sound pretty incredible. Horn sound, for the vast, vast majority of cases is absolutely curable with EQ. Either that or I stumbled upon God's own SP1's
So what is the moral of this story? Big efficient horn speakers Altec, EV, JBL, (Peavey even!) coupled with the incredible and now affordable DSP power of a unit like DCX2496 etc, plus a computer and a few tools will make most of these speaker "perfection" discussions, providing that we are actually striving for "perfection", academic. Big horns done right are simply as good as it gets, period.
Everything we need to roll our own is already out there. Not a lot of mystery here, no B.S. needed either. Big horns and compression drivers are big horns and compression drivers. All you can really do is pick the coverage angle you need and decide how much you are willing to twist a few knobs.
If you have enough EQ power, pro compression drivers, when used in a home environment, are going to pretty much sound the same *after EQ*. Ditto for *big* radial and "round based" horns without too much diffraction and with the caveat of the almighty coverage angle.
Obviously those that beam less will be preferable, but do NOT write off big radial and "roundish" horns.
This Peavey SP1 horn, certainly no prize, exhibits no "honk" after EQ. It is flat, it is warm. it is cuddly, it is... well I think you get the idea. Bottom line most horn issues *are * correctable EQ issues, and big EQ is inexpensive now. IMO we can give a bit less weight to all of the mysterious stuff that probably started with small exponential horns such as those in the Klipsch heritage line. Big horn, compression driver, big EQ, big sound. No wonder everyone is looking at Synergies, wanting even more of the band from a point source! Even a taste of this via a big efficient horn 2 way EQed flat from 500 up to the roof sounds absolutely incredible.
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If there are some like this I don't see them, and if so they are not from my perspective, the point I am making here is reference quality horn spreakers can be made from available old stock and new DSP units, because the problems are now correctable. Oh yeah and one other thing, I'm a colorful writer, your Neilsons will go up. Gift horse, mouth etc (-: Ok I sanitized it a bit too, there ya go. And furthermore you just can't say enough about horns (-:
Pano;3:cool:701800 said:
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so what are you saying that you turned a horn into a reference level 801 speaker sound? which 801 by the way? not the diamond version?
Hell no not the diamond one, the trusted matrix 801. And I am saying it comparing favorably fr wise with all of my ref records now, something I have not ever seen. It is also interesting to note that pink noise now sounds nearly the same out of them when in the same room. The distortion clarity and dynamic level of the Peavey's simple shame the B&Ws. One example is reverb tails, they ate simple lost on the direct radiation B&Ws, on the Peavey's I can now hear when the pre delay timing of the Lexicon plate is of by a few ms. Little things like that get buried in direct radiating speakers. It is very nice to have a horn speaker that is flat enough for reference duty in addition to the "everyman" speakers like the B&Ws, Genelecs, and Events here all direct radiators, all very flat but non if then capable of the dynamic range and depth of a big horn speaker. With this proven I might load these horns up with some HF140's just to see if there will be an improvement with less dsp needed. I'm doubting it. These old 22a drivers sound way better than they have a right too with radical eq. Kinda shocking actually. majesty
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Sure you can, but man that can get expensive and figity. With DSP you can make mistakes try different approaches, use delay to align, etc etc. Diana Krall in Paris, which I consider to be the best POP/JAZZ mastering reference ever, would still be waiting for caps and coils from "Parts Excess" instead of ******* my 801s off by sounding more accurate. 
Lets see now. I do not know anything about HOMs, Instead we will fix some LOMs and see if it sounds familiar. Sonotube transmission line, parallel surfaces after driver set up resonances. In fact they generate "LOMs" Peaks valleys. Ok we will stuff the area with foam or polyfill, mess with the speed of sound and damp this out. Wow! the LOMs are reduced, it it easier to EQ to, its almost as if someone had figured out damping in a box works wonders, makes EQ easier. Probably work on MOMs and even VHOMS too. What the hell I'll try some of Earl Geddes patented Hom Foam too, its just that I am not hearing anything untoward on these horns now. I am questioning if the foam is more of a mechanical EQ than we realise, which is fine of course always better to treat an issue at the source.So where's the dirty little secret now? I thought that was HOMs
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pink noise sounds the same on any speaker. why would you user that as a reference? Its just random noise. And those 801 are not a reference level by todays standards. You should use the nautilus as a reference.
Lilun, buddy your skirt is showing here, there is nothing more revealing of even minor difference in fr than pink noise the equal energy per octave makes peaks and valleys sound like small "tuned" hurricane. It is unmistakable. Now the Nautilous.....reviled by many MEs who I trust although I haven't heard the latest one I did not think the first diamond units were mastering material. I'll stick with older Matrix or Dunlaveys. As a side note I think the Matrix 802s may be a better choice than the 801s which IMO have some small low end issues one needs to be aware of. The truth is none of them have the dynamic range we need now for hip hop etc. My money is on Geddes or Danley stepping up to the plate and filling this truly gaping hole.
you don't know what you are talking about sorry. look at the waveform of a 'hip hop' recording and you will see a rectangle. No dynamic range whatsoever.
No serious ME uses old matrix 801 as their main. its just an old speaker superseded now. you can pick them up cheap on ebay. Thats the only good thing about them
Pete
I can buy a lot of what you are saying, but not all of it. First, more than just one person would have to agree to what you are saying and since you are the one doing the experiment, your opinion has to be discounted if not all together ignored.
It is surely possible to EQ any speaker to match any other speakers frequency response with DSP. That part is fine. But unless the two speakers have very similar polar responses, then the power response will not be the same after the EQ. For what you say to be true, the power response differences would have to be completely irrelevant and no study has found that to be true. Yes, we all agree that getting the direct field correct is the first and most important, but it is not everything.
What your test shows is that you either have a fairly dead room or two speakers with comparable polar responses. Or maybe the comparison is not quite as equivalent as you are making it out to be. At any rate what you are saying does not seem to me to be completely accurate.
I can buy a lot of what you are saying, but not all of it. First, more than just one person would have to agree to what you are saying and since you are the one doing the experiment, your opinion has to be discounted if not all together ignored.
It is surely possible to EQ any speaker to match any other speakers frequency response with DSP. That part is fine. But unless the two speakers have very similar polar responses, then the power response will not be the same after the EQ. For what you say to be true, the power response differences would have to be completely irrelevant and no study has found that to be true. Yes, we all agree that getting the direct field correct is the first and most important, but it is not everything.
What your test shows is that you either have a fairly dead room or two speakers with comparable polar responses. Or maybe the comparison is not quite as equivalent as you are making it out to be. At any rate what you are saying does not seem to me to be completely accurate.
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