Horn Sub Jr.

[Tomac]

Greetings!
Due to redecorating my apartment, I'll be soon forced to place my speakers in corners of a room. Currently I have 3 way active sytem, all sealed w/ Linkwitz transform. I was thinking of going OB in bass before these changes, but since loudspeakers will be in corners I don't think it is a very good idea.
I know of various corner enclosures but they are mostly designed for fullrange or coaxial speakers.
I wanted to keep active 3 way approach, possibly a hornsub + OB for mids.
Does anyone have some experience with William Cowan Hornsub JR?
I thought of using it corner loaded, and crossed over to a mid at 150Hz. What's the quality of bass compared to sealed sub? I know they are quite different in approach.
Thanks in advance

[MaVo]

I dont have experience with this sub, but William knows what he does and since the simulations and his measurements look good, i would build it if it fits my needs.

But getting to such a design isnt very complicated with hornresp and maybe you could have fun designing your own. This way, you could get exactly what you like. Also, tapped horns could be worth a closer look, their prime benefit being a flatter response in the same size as a normal horn.

As to the quality, i belief a properly implemented horn will sound better, due to its high frequency rolloff and higher efficiency, resulting in lower distortion. Additionally, horn loading does some nice things to the phase response. But it will be big, which is the tradeoff for the better performance

[cowanaudio]

G'day Tomac

I have a bit of experience with those little horns, and have received lots of emails from others who have built them too.

If you can corner load them and can live with the 40Hz lower cutoff, they work well. They have high sensitivity of around 105dB/W/M and are simple to build and move around. 100W RMS into one of these is probably more than enough output for most people. With your proposed 150Hz crossover a pair would work better. The pictures of mine show no bracing, but I would recommend it in all cases.

You asked for a comparison with sealed. Well, for a given driver at a given level within the passband of the horn, the horn will have orders of magnitude less distortion. As the level goes up, the sealed woofers will become unusable (and you'll only be feeding a few watts into the horn). The sealed boxes will go lower, though.

Others have had good success with the Eminence 15" Delta LF in this box.

Your OB will work best out from the corner, otherwise use lots of damping behind it.

Cheers

William Cowan