Thoughts about the Western Electric horns

[GM]

Have you auditioned my fave, a Jensen 32 cell?

 

[Ro808]

No, and I must admit I've never dived into Jensen Horns.
I just discovered your thread, but this sentence:

"Bifurcated^3 seems a bit too abstract, so I guess 'segmented' best describes it."

makes sense 😉

 

[Ro808]

Western Electric MIRROPHONIC (DI-PHONIC):

26A horns + TA-7397 (central) and TA-7396 baffles.

 

[Ro808]

Impression:

 

[billshurv]

And I thought I had a bad room for music replay!

 

[wesayso]

I wish I had a room like that to play with... including those toys!

 

[Ro808]

The Sound Revolution at the Constitution Hall in 1933​

 

[waxx]

The set (2 x 555 driver/15A horn) i hearerd was with a (pair of Altec 416) woofers anda JBL supertweeter and they need that to fit modern standards a bit; because their frequency range is limited (150-7k i thought). But in their limit, they are extremely good for their age. Their dispertion is also very narrow. They are about a 100 years old but as midrange they can compete with modern drivers on sound i think.

But today you can do that also with much smaller and cheaper systems i think, they are mainly valuable as historic piece, not as must need for good sound. And on sound they are certainly not worth the crazy prices they go for, there you pay for the brand and the historical value.

 

[Ro808]

The Fletcher Horn System (1933) featured Wente's 594A (optimized) prototype drivers crossed at 300 Hz to a folded bass horn with 20" aluminum diaphragm. The response was uniform between 40 and 15.000 Hz with and designed to radiate 450 watts (Sound Power).

 

[Ro808]

Background story.