DIY Beginner: Horn Speaker Project

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#22
Brett said:
I bought my pair on a whim when they were listed on epay late one night and I happened to be online to see them. I'd never seen another pair and had the cash, so I jumped on them, no matter the fact they were about 600mi away and I only had my Yamaha bike. There was a small removalist company nearby and they brought them back on a backload trip.

I loved them. They were nothing like anything I'd had before and the room had perfect corners and was a flat under a house cut into a steep hill so a solid concrete bunker.

One of the best mods is to go active DSP and get the three sections time aligned and crossed steeply.
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That's a great story!

My basement is concrete floor and walls but there's a floating laminate floor over the concrete. I'm looking forward to fixing them up - what I got had no drivers, essentially just the bass bin. I've since obtained a pair of Altec 511B horns (thank goodness they are Aluminium and not steel) along with Altec compression drivers. I got a pair of Eminence Kappa 15's for the bins.

Last night I received my miniDSP-HD which will give me that active DSP you recommend.

I've read that Khorns with steep XO's don't work well in small rooms, that you must have a good amount of overlap between horns (e.g. 1st order) so that the sound is sufficiently integrated at the listening position. The Anima horns are first order. My basement is not so huge as the chap who started this thread so I'm not sure if steep slopes are best. On the other hand, the negative reports that I read about steep slopes were all passive XO which implies poor time alignment and maybe steep slopes accentuated the poor time alignment which the DSP will deal with.

The good thing is, with a DSP it will be easy to try out all the options and listen to the results.
 
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#23
^^ Excellent. I'll look forward to seeing a build thread if you do one. The 511s should be OK, I'm just not sure they'll reach low enough to match with the bins.

Oddly enough, I found a lone 511/ Emilar 175 in the back of my garage last weekend. Going to sell it as I have too many other projects.
 
#26
Brett said:
Where's a good kit to the type of designs the OP listed? I've never seen one, but it would be great for him if there were.
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I did not want to say “this is not possible”. I do not believe that there is a sense for a newbee to start a project with unclear concept. There is so many kits, thousands of it, just to mention the USA and German diy market or sophisticated Troels kits. If there is not some kit with the very long list of OP wishes + WAF it is probably for a reason, cost, or simply physics.
A good kit is just a beginning, not exactly what he wanted but close to it.
 
#27
Brett said:
I used to do the load in/out for our band's PA (it was mine) and I'm glad it wasn't that one. Looks impressive though. Are those Funktion One units?
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Nope, sound gear orbit 4s. Although soon to be replaced with two way midrange and hf compression driver tops. In order to increase output and fidelity. All fits in a Ford transit normal wheel base.
 
#29
^^ Yeah Troels does lots of horn projects like the OP asked about.

Not to mention insanely expensive xovers for the fairly conventional designs he does do. Same with Tony Gee. Not impressed at all and would not recommend.
 
#35
To the OP, good idea seeking alternative pro input -- your task is neither easy nor small. You may be the 1% of the market for which the new Klipsch Jubilees were directed, but that was my 2nd thought. First one was to call Danley, have them handle your whole job and work on finding a way to hide everything behind screens or build faux walls and use your time on aesthetics. If you still want to learn about horns, you can do it while listening to something targeted to your requirements (and work the rest of your life to try to beat it). FWIW. BTW, we are the _last_ people to discourage anyone from the pursuit of hatching speakers, just a little wiser from the wear of it. Please keep us posted. Call us all cautious optimists 🙂
 
#37
Look into Joseph Crowe and his designs

If you want someone to do the engineering for you, I suggest you look into what Joseph Crowe is doing. He is designing horns for specific drivers and I believe he provides the plans for building them. He can build the horns for you as well at fairly reasonable prices.

I am not affiliated with Joseph in any way, I just find his work interesting.

I use Lowther DX65 drivers in front waveguides, Karlson boxes below that and subwoofers below that and supertweeters for the highest frequencies. I have been tweaking the system for years - these systems are not plug and play, which I enjoy. But if you don't want to spend time tweaking the system, I suggest buying a proven, well working system that will work well on day one.

Retsel
 
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