One of the things that might not be immediately apparent about the Danley Synergy Horns is that they're quite deep. For instance, here's a pic of the Danley SH50 sitting next to my Gedlee Summas. The width and the height of the Summas is quite large, because that's a fifteen inch waveguide, but the cabinet itself is fairly shallow because the waveguide is 90 degrees. The face of the SH50 is smaller overall than the Summa, but it's quite deep; a 50 degree waveguide is 2.4x as deep as a 90 degree waveguide.
The Lambda Unity Horns had sixty degrees of coverage and the Danley SH-50 has fifty. I don't think this was accidental; narrowing the angle makes things a lot easier in a Unity horn. This is because it can be challenging to get the midrange in a Unity horn to 'meet up' with the tweeter. You can play around with this in Hornresp; you'll see that narrowing the beamwidth raises the output of the tweeter and the midrange.
For instance, the big QSC waveguide is 13cm deep. That means that it's starting to unload about 654Hz. Which sounds good for a Unity horn, right? We have horn gain down to 654Hz. The problem here is that everything in the horn is unloading near the same frequency:
1) The tweeter is unloading around 1500Hz
2) The horn is unloading around 654Hz
3) The midranges are unloading around 1khz (because the mids are mounted just a few inches from the mouth.)
Now I'm not saying it's impossible to make a Unity horn with a wide beamwidth, just saying it's difficult. If you don't get all the variables JUST right, you're going to have a dip in the midrange. Which is the last place you want it, and it may be geometrically impossible to fix it.
There's a new waveguide out there which may be helpful for the DIY crowd that's dealing with this problem. On the left, is the QSC 15" waveguide. I'd argue it's been one of the best waveguides ever for Unity horn DIYers, right up there with the SEOS 15. It is no longer available. On the right is the "11" x 17" ABS 2" Bolt-On Long Throw Horn 90° x 40° For Many 2" Exit Driver." Yeah, that's a mouthful, I wish they just named it horn-9040 or something catchy.
In the pic, you can see that the mouth of the new horn isn't a whole lot bigger than the venerable QSC...
But flip it over, YOWZA, that thing is deep. 30cm deep to be exact. That'll load your tweeter down to 283Hz and your mids down to about 340Hz.
The eBay seller "zxpc" advertises this as a 90° x 40° horn. My calculator indicates that this would be a 67.4° x 49.2° IF it was conical. From the profile, you can see that it starts out narrow and goes wide at the mouth. I'd estimate it's about 56° x 40°. I'd have to measure it to confirm, I'm just basing this on the measured geometry. If it's 56° x 40°, that's an average of 48°, or almost identical to the Danley SH-50, SH-64, and SH-46.
So what's the downside? It sure isn't the price, it's only $40. And the build quality is better than Pyle. One lil' problem, this is a 2" horn, so it's going to need an adapter.
Stay tuned...
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Kudos to Skydover, who clued me in on this find:
PRV wg45-50 and other 2" options - Technical/Modifications - The Klipsch Audio Community
PRV wg45-50 and other 2" options - Technical/Modifications - The Klipsch Audio Community
As Bruce Edgar discovered, soft domes work nicely on horns. Based on a conversation I had with Andrew Jones, I believe that soft domes behave like ring radiators on horns. Basically at high frequency the apex of the dome is decoupled from the rest of the diaphragm. This leads to near ideal wave propagation on a horn.
This is the frequency response and distortion of a TangBand 29mm soft dome on the 2" horn. I made very little effort to mate it up properly, I just ratcheted the thing together with two clamps. So there's a gap of about 10mm on either side of the dome, which is what's causing that dip at 10khz.
This measurement includes EQ.
Here are my EQ settings.
Here's the polar response, from 0 to 44 degrees, with EQ. This is a ground plane measurement, performance in a room will be superior to this. Based on the measurement, it appears that my original 'hunch' was correct: the beamwidth of this horn is about sixty degrees.
All in all, not too shabby for $80 per side.
I 3D printed a throat adapter, turning this 2" horn into a 1" horn. I matched the entrance angle to the exit angle of my BMS 4540ND.
Here's the polar response, measured groundplane
Here are my EQ settings
The results were promising, so I elevated the horn 1.5M off the ground, to see if that would smooth out the treble. It did, but introduced ripple in the midrange, due to lack of termination.
Here's the EQ settings
Being narrow, it loses pattern control relatively high. I measured a jump at ~800Hz with mine, and it is nearly omni <500Hz.
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/atta...ange-compression-drivers-budget-jbl-polar-jpg
That was the stock horn. I should re-measure this. With the extended mouth & big roundover*, the transition to omni should be lower and smoother.
- only one supplier, so ~double the price if you're not in the USA
- the walls aren't very strong; one of mine arrived cracked.
- the lip at the mouth is pointless: too small to have any acoustic effect, but prevents rear mounting (I had to cut & grind them flat).
Even so, it is still better value than pro equivalents I've considered (JBL 2386) or tried (Selenium HL 4750).
IMO, not a problem: they work well with a 2" alu driver. The top octave seems nearly as extended as from a 1" tweeter, and the bottom end is good to 500Hz. The latter seems like it'd be a huge win for a unity build. The low crossover would allow a mini version of Chris' MEH build.
A K-402-Based Full-Range Multiple-Entry Horn - Technical/Modifications - The Klipsch Audio Community
*post 39 shows ~current pix
paper cone open frame driver for front horn
I could construct a MEH with this: the ~100 litres behind the horn is enough to house a quad of 6" drivers and thereby get 93dB midbass sensitivity from humble Tympany drivers (which are cheap via Digikey). I could cross the whole mess to a sub at ~60Hz.
The narrow pattern and industrial appearance would be the major downsides.
I've housed mine in a butchered JBL 4691B cab, so the face is 70x50cm (if you ignore the roundover, about 24"x16") ...still not big enough to be 'perfect'.
Mine was very arbitrary
It took a long time for this to 'click' for me. I initially thought horn gains were all in the low end.
My 2" driver spec sheet says Half Space Sensitivity db@2.83V/1M 85.67
...but because it is radiating into (roughly) 1/8th space, the effective sensitivity is >90dB, even after I've used subtractive eq to reign in the low frequency boost.
Just noticed this over at Partsexpress: TE-8180 1" Horn 22.5" x 10" 1-3/8"-18 TPI
22.5" x 11" 90x40 horn. IIRC the Small Syns is based on the Seos15 which is also 90x40 pattern.
There is this one to. It is 20cm deep and 40x60. If we are building a single unity mid design like SmallSyns this might work to. The price is right on this one at $12 too! BL-409 Plastic Horn Waveguide
Figured I would post it here if anybody is interested. They also have a copy of the NLA QSC horn for $12 if someone was looking.
22.5" x 11" 90x40 horn. IIRC the Small Syns is based on the Seos15 which is also 90x40 pattern.
There is this one to. It is 20cm deep and 40x60. If we are building a single unity mid design like SmallSyns this might work to. The price is right on this one at $12 too! BL-409 Plastic Horn Waveguide
Figured I would post it here if anybody is interested. They also have a copy of the NLA QSC horn for $12 if someone was looking.
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Looks like a nice flat surface for smashing a midrange onto it, though. But the screw-on mount would have to go, don't want a straight pipe between the HF driver and the waveguide on a Unity - would want to saw off the throat at the point it starts to expand and glue on a CD mounting plate (which might not be too easy to do)
Some 1.4" and 2" options with flat wall sections (and no obvious throat problems) are on the clearance page here:
http://www.loudspeakersplus.com/Spe...htm?searching=Y&sort=7&cat=197&show=30&page=1
If I was in the USA, I'd be tempted by a few things on that page.
EDIT: The PH-220 looks like a decent 1" option, but I don't see it at a similarly crazy sale price anywhere. Locally, they are $AUD 79, which a normal, non-crazy price
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