Midrange horns for outdoor use..

[Tuborg40]

Hi all.

I'm quite new into speaker building, so be patient on me

We are a group of people, currently building a small/medium outdoor moveable, semi-pa setup mounted on large 3-wheeled bicycles..

Amps and everything else electrical, is powered with 12 volt from truck batteries.

We have built 4 wicked ones as subs, and some nice tweeters for frequencies from 3.500 hz and up.

Now we need to build 4 midrange speakers, which would be mounted 3 meters vertically from the ground when the bicykles are stationary, and then lovered to 2 meters when riding, because of stabilty.. - Weight is an issue too...

Do you have any good advice for diy speaker designs for this ?

Thanks in advance

[dangus]

Maybe line source midrange drivers with neodymium magnets (for lighter weight)? Cut out the side of a length of plastic pipe or Sonotube and fit a 1/2" plywood baffle to mount the drivers to.

Alternatively, some kind of horn, but there you have trade-offs between colouration and directionality. I believe the line source has a nearly ideal pattern: narrow vertically, wide horizontally.

[chrispenycate]

Or you could use pressure drivers in fibreglass horns; generally higher efficiency, and can be very light. You can find horns in practically any directional pattern, and if you go the constant directivity route (although that generally requires some specific equalisation) you can model your soundfield pretty accurately.

One thing to remember; they catch the wind quite a bit, and might tend to topple your tricyle if they've got a large enough moment arm (= high off the ground). Might need some bracing struts.

How high do your "subs" go (frequency wise, not distance from the ground)? Evidently, the lower a mid horn has to operate, the bigger it tends to be (though not necessarily heavier).

[yangbaibing]

I want to know the purpose of this system and the effect you want to achieve.

If you just want to use it to enlarge the voice and do not care the effect(that is to say,this is not a HIFI system),I suggest you choose the standard midrange horn.It has a amazing 25% efficiency ,as you know,many PA loudspeaks just have 1% efficiency or less.It can be bought on web and the price is low.

For instance:Amazon.com: Pyle PHSP16 16-Inch Indoor/Outdoor 70/100 Volt 100 Watts PA Horn Speaker: Electronics

[Tuborg40]

Ok - I have skipped the idea - instead im gonna build a mid/high line array on a bike instead...