Horn designing software

[Puggie]

I want to design a large basshorn. It will be a folded horn to go into the back of a car, rear seats are going and the car is a large estate (I think thats a 'station wagon' to you guys on the other side of the pond). The driver will be a Resonant Engineering XXX18, I'm sure with a decent horn we can get something resembling efficiency out of it .

What software is out there for designing a suitable horn shape?

[mwmkravchenko]

http://www.users.bigpond.com/dmcbean/

Great program. Give the instructions a good read and you will be pleased with the programs flexability and power.

Don't and have fun figuring it out! ( a bit of advice from someone who thought that it was a dumb program untill I read the Help file )

Mark

[Rademakers]

The driver will be a Resonant Engineering XXX18

Bare in mind it could be that the simulating is telling you it's not suited for your application at all.

Mvg Johan

[Puggie]

Originally posted by Rademakers
Bare in mind it could be that the simulating is telling you it's not suited for your application at all.

Mvg Johan

Yep, the reason for the XXX is its what we have to work with I'm not convinced it will work hence I want something to predict the response before we start cutting.

[mike.e]

Read the helpfile,input the driver specs in the right order

Use the hypex function at first. Then make throat and mouth realistic size,model in 0.5pi i guess for a sealed car. Adjust vtc to reflect the sort of throat youl use[small with baffle infront of driver or labhorn style]

Folding the horn is another issue

[Puggie]

My initial (totally unscientific idea with no proper thought or design) was to have the horn mouth just behind the front seats, more or less full height and width of the car, this would taper back to the rear of the car, where it would fold 180degrees, and taper back towards the front of the car with the driver firing into the side of the throat a bit like the scandinavian (I think) monster horn posted on here a few months back. I'm hoping to get about 4m total length if you unfolded it and a horn mouth of about 1.5X2m.

changing driver is perfectly reasonable and the amp we are using will kick out a good 2kW at 4Ohm (quality class a/b noise maker too ) I was wondering about the Volt radial as a replacement because despite being rated at 500W RMS I know they can take lots more power (the baskets get a bit warm though).

[mwmkravchenko]

You get about a 10db of gain over most of the passband when using a horn. You realisee how much power you can do without now. Eight times less. Ie 100 watts will get you the same loudness in a horn that 800 watts will get you in a normal box. Cool !!

Mark

[Puggie]

I'm hoping for something like that, my friend has been told repeatedly sensitivity doesn't matter, just keep pumping more power into it if you want to go loud (hence a 2kW amp and Resonant Engineering sub). I'm hoping this little excercise will enlighten him a bit into the pros of an efficient system. The other positive is I'm hoping it will sound better than a typically huge bass reflex box, at the moment it booms and wobbles and thats about it.

Its a very silly project but thats half the fun

[Rademakers]

I was wondering about the Volt radial as a replacement because despite being rated at 500W RMS I know they can take lots more power (the baskets get a bit warm though).

It's the diafragm displacement graph (in combination with the dynamics of the music/signal) that will decide what power the speaker can handle.

Is it ment for use only inside the car or to open the trunk and use it mainly for outside? For inside you could take roomgain in account which is pretty big in a car/van. For outside halfspace would probably be about it.

How low it's supposed to go?

And can you post the T/S-parameters (for second opinion)?

Mvg Johan

[djkib]

I'm surprised nobody chimed in about the subs designed by Bill Fitzmaurice at http://www.billfitzmaurice.com . Great looking folded horn designs, and fairly easy to build.

My $0.02...
Keith