.Good luck with your project. I think something like this hasn't been tried before. Are you designing a 3-way or a 4-way system? The K-402 allows you to make a 3-way system, I think. I am aiming at a 4-way system. I'm aiming at adding a mid bass section but without altering the original design and its character. I just want to relieve the bass horn from the task of also delivering mid bass and thus free up the sound a bit.
You have done a better search than I did. I didn't even manage to find a 4" driver of that calibre. It doesn't go below 500Hz, however, so how do you drive the mid bass horn down to 80Hz with it?
He obviously uses the Radian in the Klipsch horn and a woofer in the midbass horn.
I have sadly given up on the idea of midbass horns. The horns sound disembodied, unless you have a listening room large enough to house a class of school children playing brännboll. ^^,
Omholt: JMLC IWATA, perhaps?
I have sadly given up on the idea of midbass horns. The horns sound disembodied, unless you have a listening room large enough to house a class of school children playing brännboll. ^^,
Omholt: JMLC IWATA, perhaps?
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3-way system with separate horn subwoofer(s).
Like Rewind mentioned, the Radian compression driver is obviously for the top horn with an Xover around 500-600 Hz. The midbass horn needs to be crossed to a separate bass system at 90 Hz or higher.
The midbass horn is clearly a step above a 15" front firing woofer. The horn has constant directivty low in frequency and lower distortion. The response in every position I've tried in the room is flatter compared to a traditional 15" box. The only caveat is the size.
Several stacked ported subwoofers can match one subwoofer horn. I've done the comparison and other have too. But the cost is higher for the ported solution due to more drivers and boxes, and you also need more amplifier power.
Well, I leaving a 5 watt tube amp on 15% volume so that is not an issue for me. Maybe I can have 5-10% with a midbass horn.
But yes, more than one subwoofer sound better usually. Recently I bridged my Bittner Basic 800 PA amplifier that I use for my single sealed Eminence Lab12 subwoofer getting 800W instead of 400W and it made a big difference even if I don't play that loud.
But yes, more than one subwoofer sound better usually. Recently I bridged my Bittner Basic 800 PA amplifier that I use for my single sealed Eminence Lab12 subwoofer getting 800W instead of 400W and it made a big difference even if I don't play that loud.
Thanks for sharing your experience with "disembodied" sound from mid bass horns. Do you think the cause is due to an imaging problem created by the size of the mid-bass horn or is it a cross over zone integration issue with the upper horn or something else?
Ok - now it makes sense. It looks like you're making a Jubilee with a separate midbass section, right?
If you're using horns, you must have the room in the first place. So, can you disclose what you're using as a midbass driver? Why not just use the same driver as for the horn sub? (Btw, the Radian 2218 Neo woofer looks both very impressive and fit for the task) Most woofers can reach up to 500 with ease I think. Looking for a dedicated 10" or 8" driver suitable for horn loading might be a very hard or expensive exercise. There's some benefits to be had, I think, when using the same driver in two adjacent areas of the audio spectrum.
My next project (assuming I ever do make a midbass horn) would be to add folding panels that I would use to shape the room in such a way so as to enlarge the bass horn mouth but that I can fold and hide away when not listening privately. These would be heavy and large (maybe 5-6' tall) but might be placed on caster wheels to help sliding them in position. I might use magnets to lock them in place. A bid mad, I know.
The whole idea behind using a midbass section for me was that I would free up some available bandwidth from the bass section and thus be able to extend the system's lower end.
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The JBL 2220h is great for horns, it is the one I used. I used mine from 90-100Hz to 400-500Hz. Don't expect too much bass, unless your horn is gigantic, but then I would go for something else. What would work from 20-100 in a horn I have no idea.
We have a large lounge bar in Oslo which has a full Avantgarde Trio with the six Avantgarde basshorns, and overall it sounds weird and boomy with a thin midbass. They probably have the basshorn from 20-130Hz as the 8" driver in the midbass horn of the Trio doesn't go very low. The 8" driver midbass horn has clear mids though, clearer than the 2220H. You can't build speakers without compromise. But to have treble, mid and midbass horns and then let the subhorn do the midbass will never work for me.
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I think it has to do to with the size of the room. I can see how one would need a concert hall, or something, and not a regularly sized livingroom. It was better 7 meters away, but then I was almost in the next room.
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Jubilee is speaker created for corner placement where it uses the room to "lengthen" the horn and directivity. That's not what I'm doing. The horn I'm working on has constant directivity low in frequency without corner placement. I personally don't want a horn that requires corner placement for CD low in frequency for several reasons. And while a V horn like the bass bin of Jubilee can obviously be EQ'ed it's quite uneven above a certain frequency.
The top horn we're working on is also quite different from the top horn (K-402) of the Jubilee. It offers CD lower in frequency vertically, CD higher in frequency both horizontally and vertically and has some other advantages as well. Time will tell how well it works and how it actually compares to the K-402.
A driver that's suitable for the midbass horn (100-600 Hz) would not be suitable for sub frequencies.
I have several 15" drivers (JBL, B&C, etc) here for the midbass horn but I'm waiting for a new driver from Acoustic Elegance that will likely be the one being used.
It's not a modified K-402. I don't know where that came from. It's a new and different design. At this point, there's not much more I can share. It's too early really.
Right. For some reason I assumed you were using the corner horns for the bass. I think the main limitation with corner horns is room geometry, i.e. most rooms have a parallelogram shape and their corners are not designed to form horn extensions with the proper angle for listening...
And now, back to reality: by "uneven above a certain frequency" do you mean below 80-90Hz? I'm not sure if there is significant unevenness below 100Hz but I don't have the frequency response at hand right now.
Hmmm.. it is used for that purpose in the K-horn. It's not "ideal" - nothing is - but you obviously have raised the bar significantly above the K-horn standard. I'm thinking of using the same cheap CTS driver and see how far this can get me. The most expensive single part in the K-horn is the Atlas PD5V driver and even that is cheap compared to other similar drivers with hifi aspirations.
To be honest, the lack of low bass offends me more than unevenness/gaps in the mid bass of the K-horn. Once that is tackled, I'd turn my attention to some occasional shrillness in the highs. I don't find it particularly objectionable but it's definitely not hifi and it's noticeable.
I can tinker around a lot with digital crossovers and multi-amping but that don't help me if I want to listen to analogue sources. It can point the way to some crossover scheme however which might prove helpful. I still got a long way to go though till I reach that stage.
Thank you for sharing all the detailed information about your project. It certainly is a very interesting effort.
You wrote earlier you would "improve upon the Klipsch K-402 horn", I was hoping you had a sketch how you would improve/modify that design.
My sirens go off when I hear Atlas being suggested as a midrange driver, pun intended. At least go with the Klipsch K55V, although I never liked nasal sounding phenolic diaphragms. The Atlas driver is a police siren!
The Klipsch K55V can at least pull off some surfer rock with a groovy vintage sound.
Above 150 Hz and especially between 200 Hz and 300 Hz the V folded horn is very uneven as can be seen by the measurement below.
Our midbass horn measures flat.
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Ah, yes. - I did remember correctly. Are these your measurements? I only remember a response curve that's been floating around the internet for ages that is much less detailed (i.e. has been smoothed).
I think this "dip" might be due to the type of the horn and possibly its construction too.
Some modelling might reveal whether this is due to the horn - others have probably done this. As far as its construction is concerned, certainly one would not expect to have proper midbass coming out of it. I can't help wondering whether, if somehow one managed to smooth all these sharp corners in the folds, it would benefit the response. This is not a cheap exercise of course. Much easier to address this by directing the midbass to a separate section of the loudspeaker - which gives you the added benefit of letting the woofer do its job more comfortably. If, on the other hand, the anomaly is due to horn shortening, it's easier to fix by using some external panels, however, this solution has other shortcomings.
The point I'm trying to make is this: the original folded horn seems to be something a lot of diyers are keen to reproduce or improve by making it more sturdy etc. but no-one has attempted to actually improve the design as far as I know. I did read about someone making an enlarged corner horn that could go deeper while at university many decades ago but there's nothing else since. I don't expect there will be either - not any time soon - due to the magnitude of the cost and effort involved. I suspect this is mostly due to the material used for its construction (plywood) which is both expensive and cumbersome to work with due to the sizes involved.