i am learning about speaker stereo system. and i see a lot of times horn with a bass speaker system. in fact i have seen them all my life, but now that it comes to it, what the heck are they for? what do they add to a stereo system, they sure are dramatic looking. are metal or plastic horns the best?
I've wanted a woofer + horn speaker system since 1966 when I heard an Altec Lansing Voice of the Theater setup at the Longpoint Cinema in Houston. Great sound. The mathematics was worked out by Bell Labs in the thirties, and applied to movie theather systems after that time. Something about coupling the electrical parts to the air effectively. Impedance matching. Like the way propellers work better with a duct around them (jet engines vs prop jet planes). Metal horns were the state of the art until recently, now I am quite happy with my SP2-xt with a plastic horn. The variation now seems to be in the material of the driver diaphragm. Some are metal, some kevlar or something. Manufacturers making a variation on this design are JBL (reciever of Altec patents years ago), Peavey, Electrovoice, Yamaha, Mackie, American Audio, I'm happiest with the sound this 2 driver system, whereas many "consumer" speakers have 4 or 5 drivers to baffle you with bu******. JBL sells both "consumer" speakers and pro sound speakers. Notice the frequency responses on the consumer line don't have a tolerance, or where stated it is +-10db, whereas pro sound speakers have a response quoted over a +-3 db range. Some 2 way horn+ wooffer speakers they actually plot out distortion charts over frequency, and dispersion over frequency, which I have not seen in speakers sold to consumers.
Horn+woofer speakers can get effectively 3 db down to 50 hz or so, but below that sub woofers and bi-amping apparently are required. Pro church organs always are best implemented with separate bass channels.
Horn+woofer speakers can get effectively 3 db down to 50 hz or so, but below that sub woofers and bi-amping apparently are required. Pro church organs always are best implemented with separate bass channels.
my goodness i only understood 40% of what you said...😱
so 2 drivers are better than 4 drivers? why?
so 2 drivers are better than 4 drivers? why?
I don't know why 2 drivers is better than four, but that is what my ears tell me. There were a pair of 5 driver speakers demonstrating down in front of the furniture rental center last year. They sounded like ****. I took my piano CD (top octave piano is hard to do without distortion) to the pro music shop when I found out the Peavey SP5 had a horn + driver. It had impressive highs but was lacking on the bass notes. Then the salesman switched to the SP2 next to it with the 15" woofer. Much better. I bought used instead of new, but I will be back there for parts (spare drivers) while they are still available. I've lost two speaker systems to unmatchable drivers that blew. Peavey is the most popular vendor of horn + woofer in this market for PA gear because of freight There are no "hifi" store except Best Buy, that doesn't demo at all. BB has one driver systems from Polk. There is some kind of a movement beginning with those, see the thread under speakers "full range", but with no demo,I have no opinion and will not spend money.
The art of designing a speaker involves flat frequency response and low distortion, both to be achieved in a space that people actually own, like 2' from a flat wall at the end of a rectangular long room.
I find consumer speaker brochures, and a lot of high end ones, accentuate the adjectives and long words. Look at the graphs on the Peavey SP2 (2004) version. They have frequency response +- 3 db 54-17000 Hz, they even have distortion versus frequency for the first and second harmonic at 1 % and 10 % power. People here make fun of PA speakers, and at 10 % power up they do distort, but the 1 % numbers, like in my living room, are excellent. To see this, get on Peavey.com, click customer support, click "search for product" then get the letter "S" box up, and click on SP2 (2002 version) to download the .pdf file. they have some ****s to print that out where people could sue them for it.
The art of designing a speaker involves flat frequency response and low distortion, both to be achieved in a space that people actually own, like 2' from a flat wall at the end of a rectangular long room.
I find consumer speaker brochures, and a lot of high end ones, accentuate the adjectives and long words. Look at the graphs on the Peavey SP2 (2004) version. They have frequency response +- 3 db 54-17000 Hz, they even have distortion versus frequency for the first and second harmonic at 1 % and 10 % power. People here make fun of PA speakers, and at 10 % power up they do distort, but the 1 % numbers, like in my living room, are excellent. To see this, get on Peavey.com, click customer support, click "search for product" then get the letter "S" box up, and click on SP2 (2002 version) to download the .pdf file. they have some ****s to print that out where people could sue them for it.
Last edited:
Here's a really basic explanation of a horn. A horn couples the pressure wave to the air a little like this:
If you put a pee in your mouth and spit it, it will go a certain distance. If you put that same pee in your mouth and blow it out a straw it will go much further. That's why some persons think the horn is "amplifying" the sound. It's not, it's just helping the sound into it's new environment. That's one thing it does.
The other is it controls the dispersion. You have no doubt seen many shapes and sizes. Basically the bigger it is, the lower in frequency it can go, but what about the shape? Often it is rectangular as that's the dispersion pattern the designers want the sound to follow. They come in all ranges from 40 degrees round up to about 135 degrees wide by 90 degrees high, determined by where the audience is located.
If you put a pee in your mouth and spit it, it will go a certain distance. If you put that same pee in your mouth and blow it out a straw it will go much further. That's why some persons think the horn is "amplifying" the sound. It's not, it's just helping the sound into it's new environment. That's one thing it does.
The other is it controls the dispersion. You have no doubt seen many shapes and sizes. Basically the bigger it is, the lower in frequency it can go, but what about the shape? Often it is rectangular as that's the dispersion pattern the designers want the sound to follow. They come in all ranges from 40 degrees round up to about 135 degrees wide by 90 degrees high, determined by where the audience is located.
- Status
- Not open for further replies.