Audibility of distortion in horns!

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bending mode waves are slow enough for audio concern

in thin shells fabricated of metal too - its only compression waves that are fast in metal

Bending waves can be slower than compressional waves, but they are dispersive - meaning that the wave speed increases with frequency, so at some frequency they will almost always be faster than compressional waves. When the wave speed in the material matches the wave speed in the air surrounding it is called "coincidence" and the sound radiation coupling can be very high.

Fluid-structural interactions are extremely complex and usually require numerical computation to analyze.
 
Thin Wall Horn

I found a bunch of these little HF horns by the side of the road this afternoon.
Kinda thin walled, but an interesting profile. Wonder what this would sound like? 🙂
 

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well it does seem that from a DIY perspective not much can be done to reduce audible distortion in horns.
choice of flare type brings with it unavoidable distortion whose character is part and parcel with the choice of curve.
new driver designs seem to still grapple with the classic caveats.
such is life.
 
Imo almost any horn shape is useful as long as it always expands and has no sharp angles. There are those that have patented "no sharp angles" around here, but in reality as long as the horn is shaped to cover your area conztanly expands and has no sharp angles it is going ti sound good. 😃😃😃😃😉
 
Lets not worry about "the jab" for now.

You state that "distortion is audible in horns", to which I agree. But that is a non-statement in that it doesn't say anything. One could just as easily say "Distortion is audible in any loudspeaker as long as the signal is audible." which is also true. Its like say that "nothing is bluer than blue".

Until you quantify the type of distortion and the levels of the signal we are talking about there simply is not any relevance to the distortion conversation.

The issues are:

1) linear versus nonlinear distortion
2) the signal level
3) the type of nonlinear distortion
4) the type of linear distortion

These all matter and the answer to audibility will be different for every one of them.

So you see that just saying that "distortion" is audible, says nothing, until you quantify it. Like "nonlinear distortion is not audible from a horn at typical home listening levels" - this would be true. "At a high enough level nonlinear distortion will always be audible" - this would be true as well. "Linear distortion has the same audibility at all levels" - this would not be true based on the results that we have.

Or maybe "I can hear 1% THD in loudspeaker A, therefor I will be able to hear 1% THD in loudspeaker B" - this is not true. "Loudspeaker A has more THD than loudspeaker B and therefor it will sound better" - this is also not true. There is no valid scale of nonlinear distortion that has global applicability - each "form" of nonlinear distortion is different. There are forms of nonlinear distortion in electronics that are highly audible at .01% THD, but these forms virtually never occur in loudspeakers.

It is the nuances of the effects that matter and over simplification does not acknowledge these nuances.
 
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well it does seem that from a DIY perspective not much can be done to reduce audible distortion in horns.

This is true for nonlinear distortion, but completely false for linear distortion. A horn is a passive device and will have a negligible effect on nonlinear distortion of the driver and can neither add nor subtract nonlinear distortion in itself (sufficiently rigid devices assumed here.) But the horn completely dominates the linear distortion audibility of a driver/horn system.
 
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