Not sure what you mean there, GM. I wasn't talking about cost or fancy components or complex topology, just to be clear. And I like to use as few parts as I can to achieve the desired slopes and response. No fancy caps, and I do like the motor run cans.
I just meant that a well adapted crossover can really transform a speaker. Yes, there are some wonderful tools available now for us hobbyists that make all this so much easier. Very glad to have them.
I just meant that a well adapted crossover can really transform a speaker. Yes, there are some wonderful tools available now for us hobbyists that make all this so much easier. Very glad to have them.
Very smooth. Amazing natural vocals. But lacks the low end integration, and is difficult to get 500-1000 filled in good. It also lacks the outright dynamics of the big multicell. Were removing a wall out of our living room so listening distance will be more ideal for the multicell. Also, the onken woofer being so far away from the top horn is decernable. My idea is to load the onken with a front baffle horn similar to a RCA Ubangi with dual woofers. (Since i have them). This will grow the efficiency, but more importantly fill in that transition with the top horn.
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But moved out front of the box more to maintain enclosure volume, thereby keeping the awesome onken deep bass.
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Right! Let us know if you find the mid/high horn integrates better with the horn loaded woofers.
I think it will because the A7 Vott do it so well already. It's just, for deep bass, the crappy plywood boxes resonate and pale in comparison to the 1" reinforced baltic birch Onkens. I ran threaded rods front to back and placed the onkens on granite slabs. It went from great to amazing. Adding a front horn will shift the balance to midrange bass, but I can easily offset it with DSP (i think).
Just what I said. I wasn't 'pointing a finger' at anyone specific, just agreeing with you while ranting a bit about all the elaborate XOs, expensive parts, etc., so often used in multiple driver speaker designs, when less can be more when properly implemented.
GM
Thanks. That clears it up. 🙂
Crowe, I know what you mean about the A7 boxes. They need serious bracing a reinforcement to keep the buzzes and rattles away. It's a lot of work and makes for a very heavy box. The Onken/Ultraflex is better braced by its very design.
Crowe, I know what you mean about the A7 boxes. They need serious bracing a reinforcement to keep the buzzes and rattles away. It's a lot of work and makes for a very heavy box. The Onken/Ultraflex is better braced by its very design.
Unfortunately, this causes the same stepped bass response as the A7 [825/828] and other reflex horns; so FWIW, having been down this 'road' with Altec A4 [210] cabs, I cut off the reflex box and made a sealed cab to turn them into compression horns and added large dual 515B 6th order corner subs to fill in below 120 Hz.
Regardless, the Ubangi's or even the 825, etc., flare is much preferred over the 210's parallel wall design, which no amount of tweaking short of using too low an XO point was able to audibly completely quell its eigenmodes that modulated its HF output just enough to get on my nerves over time. At cinema/PA SPLs/distances, they're not an issue, but at typical HIFI/HT SPLs.........
Interesting semi-related tidbit; in the early days of the HE forum a fellow had me convert the 825 horn to a round one, which he tediously verified and cut from many layers of MDF and swore it didn't sound as good as his chopped off 825 horns with the same compression chamber on both.
Not having the opportunity to audition them, I can only assume it was due to the different polar responses, something that some folks poo-poo it doesn't matter much.
GM
I've often wondered how much of what I liked about my first A5 rig was due to the 1505 horn mouth and woofer flare having a very similar size and aspect ratio. Didn't think of it back then, but after working with the rig over the past few years I've begun to wonder.
I never owned to 1505 horns myself, and my 803 and 1005 horns did OK, but not as well as I remember the 1505. I don't suppose the top horn has to be multi-cell, but close in size and shape to the woofer front flare. Just speculation. Just curious.
I never owned to 1505 horns myself, and my 803 and 1005 horns did OK, but not as well as I remember the 1505. I don't suppose the top horn has to be multi-cell, but close in size and shape to the woofer front flare. Just speculation. Just curious.
My brother is suggesting at JBL 2118 8" in a sealed box running 200-2000hz. (On top the onken, with the wood biradial. Good idea, assuming it's efficient enough.)
A lot. Think about it, same shape, similar/same size point source drivers blend better the more overlapping BW they have and since horns are just really large point sources...........
Me neither, but I learned very early on that 'BIB' rules in acoustics and the best my system became was when I 'bit the bullet' and made WGs based on a tar filled 1803's dimensions even though it only had a single 802 driver, something I'd never seen and the local Altec gurus said would never work well enough to justify the effort.
Still not as big as the 210's mouth of course, but way closer than an 805 or the stacked 511s that replaced it, though I did experiment with them on large flat baffles, which gave me the impetus to try the WGs anyway, so with all that extra loading I could safely XO it with quasi-1st order slopes.
In short, even baffling small horns to be the same size [or bigger] in width/area than what they match to like Altec and others did with their cinema installs makes a worthwhile difference.
GM
Hmm, just 'running the numbers', it doesn't want a compression loaded horn unless a phase plug is used and even then the CR is higher than most for point source drivers, so is this biradial basically just a WG with < 2:1 CR?
GM
Funny that it had never occurred to me until yesterday, to build a mid horn the with the same mouth size and shape as the 828 (A7) bass flare horn. That might have given me a good idea how much the matched size makes a difference.
I suspect that it would beam in the HF, but maybe not enough to matter.
And looking at the Altec Multi-cell horns, they aren't really exponential, rather 3 section conical. The cells are exponential (I think) but the overall horn is not. Is that what you found when you built yours based on the tar filled models?
Asking because it may be a fairly simple way to build a nice midrange horn.
Ready for the table saw. There will be a front flange about the width of the A7 x about 14" tall.
It would and it's not subtle. At the very least, mount the HF horn in a baffle that's ideally the same size as the cab's front, i.e. 30" W x 42" H and seal it off. for extra 'points', add damping to same size as the bass horn's mouth to mimic it's better acoustic damping.
Then again, if you're starting with a large multi-cell, then it of course won't be quite as dramatic a difference.
Yes, it will have the rising on axis response typical of all traditional compression horns.
Yes, the cells are expo and the horn proper is expo, though with a much lower flare frequency, around 212 Hz for the 500 Hz series and around 127 Hz for the 300 Hz series IIRC, so they are obviously very truncated, making the flare look almost straight. The throat adapters are conical to keep the HF BW as linear/undistorted as practical.
The horns I built though were technically parabolic, which has even less LF loading than conical, i.e. a true WG, consequently only loading to 500 Hz at low power compared to the 1803's high power 300 Hz I mimic'd size wise.
GM
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