Hi all,
Is there any kind of specific guidelines or recommendations as to to deploying and spacing horn speakers in an outside environment. I have been looking for a high performance IP rated speaker and came across these Kicker 8" Horn-loaded compression speakers. https://www.kicker.com/48KMXL8
Ive seen they sell enclosures which have them mounted directly side by side, but I am wondering if this is based on them both being used as a single channel, not as a stereo pair. Can horn speakers be placed close together if they are acting as a single channel or is there still scope for audio issues? Ideally I would like to mount a couple of these speakers outside to with two pairs functioning as a left and right channel.
Any advice appreciated.
Is there any kind of specific guidelines or recommendations as to to deploying and spacing horn speakers in an outside environment. I have been looking for a high performance IP rated speaker and came across these Kicker 8" Horn-loaded compression speakers. https://www.kicker.com/48KMXL8
Ive seen they sell enclosures which have them mounted directly side by side, but I am wondering if this is based on them both being used as a single channel, not as a stereo pair. Can horn speakers be placed close together if they are acting as a single channel or is there still scope for audio issues? Ideally I would like to mount a couple of these speakers outside to with two pairs functioning as a left and right channel.
Any advice appreciated.
From an audiophile or other perfectionist standpoint, there are issues with placing two speakers next to each other when they are playing higher frequencies or when the spacing is large. This is the case whether they are horns or direct radiators. From a "getting some music outside standpoint," I don't think I'd worry about it.
Basically any speakers that are spaced more than 1/4 wavelength apart are going to experience constructive/destructive effects based on angle when they play a correlated signal (often referred to as comb filtering). In practice these defects tend not to sound as bad as they measure, so for background/outdoor music I wouldn't fret about it.
If you want to test the idea, just grab whatever speakers you have around or can get cheaply and mock them up in a configuration similar to what you are thinking. Give them a listen and see if you can detect any issues.
Thank you, in the scenario I am hoping to achieve, I'm not looking for audiophile sound, but good quality thats loud if needed, which seems to be the suggested concept of what theses speakers are designed to achieve. I want to get some distance in terms of coverage from the back of the building where they would be mounted and they claim these are good for a quarter of a mile, not that thats my intention 🙂
Thanks again, I have two letter box type positions about 8 meters apart into which I can fit an enclosure with speakers. I could fit four or more depending on spacing in each location, but they would have to be a in a row horizontally side by side rather than veritcally. Not sure if that would cause possible issues.
Open to suggestions but not seen many IP rated options particularly with horn/compression driver.
Thanks for your response. The main focus is primarily good sound quality with some potential for high volume, rather than an audiophile exeperience. The main issue as I understand it is that where i can mount the speakers they can only be placed horizontally in a row, rather than veritically. So I could have 4 speakers in a horizontal row for the left channel and 4 speakers in a row on the right channel. They could be placed side by side closely. Based on what you are describing, and sorry if I misunderstood, you said if speakers are placed more than 1/4 wavelength apart there will be negative effects, so for example in what I described above if having speakers in a row, having speakers mounted side by side would potentially be problematic as whilst speaker 1 and speaker 2 would be fine because they are next to each other, Speaker 1 and 3 would be more than 1/4 wavelength apart and cause the negative "interferance".
The high frequency horns probably are crossed at 2000Hz or higher, 1/4 wavelength of 2kHz is around 1.7 inches.
It is not possible to get the co-ax horns center to center distance within 1/4 wavelength of each other.
Splay a pair ~30 degrees apart (or as much of an angle where you don't get a "hole in the middle") from each other and the HF won't be so "swishy" and "squawky".
The 8" speakers are not going to make much bass below ~80 Hz.
Outdoors, you will be wanting more bottom end, add subwoofers either side if you want it to sound decent.
That's a little different than just 2, since longer rows start behaving more like a line source, which could restrict your horizontal dispersion a bit more. The longer the array gets the more you start seeing directivity effects in addition to the comb filtering we already talked about (both are wavelength dependent issues, so "long" is relative). As @weltersys suggested, splaying the drivers or arranging them on an arc is a good idea to help broaden the coverage.
In arrays you are typically looking at the spacing between individual elements for comb filtering effects. So it's about the distance between 1 and 2, then 2 and 3, etc. The first half of this short video shows the basic effect
With the size array you are talking about, these are less likely to be egregious issues. They are things to be aware of and try to mitigate, but if the application isn't critical, you'll probably be OK.
There's software to model all of this, but if you aren't familiar with the plotting methods and interpreting what they mean in relation to sound, it's often easier to just mock something up and listen to it than to accurately model it. You could do this temporarily with very cheap co-axial drivers to get a feel for things. It won't be exactly what you'll have with the final drivers, but it should be close enough to tell you what coverage is like.
Thanks, I have subwoofers planned but cant fit them into the same speaker arrangement as 8" is the max I can fit into the enclosure, Regarding splaying them apart, if for example I went with 4 in row, would it be better to sort of incrementally angle them within the enclosure, so for example sepakers 2 and 3 were facing directly forward and 1 and 4 would be angled outwards at 30 degrees.
That link explains things nice and clearly, it might be the case I need to do a cheap experiment. The software aspect Im not so familiar with. I'd hoped to make a kind of soundbar type shape enclosure but will need to look at how speakers could be angled within the enclosure. I dont have a lot of depth to play with so splaying out 4 speakers sufficienly might not work, but its food for thought, and maybe need to give this more consideration. One other thing comes to mind from whats highlighted in the video, would be the design of the speaker itself. In the case of the ones I am looking at, whilst they say they sound good up close, they are supposed to have a very long throw, so I wonder if the dispersal of the sound is perhaps "more narrow" and less likely to overlap, allowing for closer placement. Sorry for the simple analogy.
Only the tweeter is horn loaded, and it's a pretty small horn on a relatively small driver (1.25 inch). To get significant directivity typically requires a larger horn or larger radiating area. Just looking at it and given its intended uses, my guess is that the speaker is going to behave more like a typical point source-ish co-ax. You are not dealing with a line array unit where the high frequency section is intentionally tall.
They will go from fairly narrow, ~60 degree up high to near omni at 300 Hz, the wall restricting that to 180 degrees.
Ideally, you would want all the co-ax speakers to describe an arc with a virtual central point, something like this:
The cabinet depth would only need to be a line between "C" and "B".
That said, if you are planning on subwoofers, you probably don't need more than two 8" co-ax.
Crossed at 120Hz, a pair should do ~95dBA at 20 meters, 65 feet, without considering +6dB from the wall boundary, or another +3-6dB if the cabinet will be a bass reflex. Screen over ports to keep critters from nesting.
A pair at 65' should be about as loud as drill instructor yelling at you at arm's length 🙂 .
You'd need subs capable of around 130-136dB at one meter to keep up, like four decent front loaded 18".