Before I delve into the realm of this speaker type, I would love to hear (and measure) the differences between a 12,15 or 18" BR and the equivalent sized Tapped Horn(12,15 or 18) ,hopefully both with the same model driver. Is there any DIY'er around the Toronto/ Barrie area I could come and listen to the differences,
. Thanks for any replies!
. Thanks for any replies!Before I delve into the realm of this speaker type, I would love to hear (and measure) the differences between a 12,15 or 18" BR and the equivalent sized Tapped Horn(12,15 or 18) ,hopefully both with the same model driver. Is there any DIY'er around the Toronto/ Barrie area I could come and listen to the differences,
Me too.
There's a brilliant and talented guy named mwmkravchenko in Perth with THs and real horns, great taste in music, knowledge of where the 32 foot pitch organ notes are recorded, very smart, and I wish we could visit him.
Do you suppose bringing pizza and beer would help? Caviar, smoker sturgeon and cream cheese?
Not saying there aren't other talented people nearer.
My own unjustified theory: TH lets you have loud sound across an octave and half. If that's your goal, TH may be the recipe. You get loud sound for minimum excursion and you can do front-and-back twin drivers in the mouth for additional benefits. But tricky to get all the phases and resonances to line up for that octave and a half without a lot of trial and error.
I was at the Stockey Centre in Parry Sound, your neck of the woods, this week for some chamber music concerts as part of Festival of the Sound - reverb time is like 2 seconds in there. Great hall.
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Pizza and beer sound great! I would love to hear different types of music
as well. An octave and a half? From what I've read here there seems to be a
little more bandwidth than that?(Driver dependant)! I have been a big fan of
building 15" and 18" BR's and FLH's for many years but I would like to see
what all the hype's about. Seems everyone that builds one or two has the power
to knock down buildings and make grown men cry.
as well. An octave and a half? From what I've read here there seems to be a
little more bandwidth than that?(Driver dependant)! I have been a big fan of
building 15" and 18" BR's and FLH's for many years but I would like to see
what all the hype's about. Seems everyone that builds one or two has the power
to knock down buildings and make grown men cry.
Ah, you are exactly right about driver size and how that seems to mold the edges of the frequency compass (in my ignorant opinion). That is why there seems to be a lot of "art" in making them despite the fanatical attachment everywhere in the subwoofer forum to simulations and trust in their predictions.
HYPE!!! Now them's fightin' words on certain threads. Sure glad I didn't use a word like that. Take care.
Yes, near Ottawa. A picturesque nice town - with canals. Famous giant cheese sent to the Chicago fair of 1893 and reproduced in their museum. Quite a beautiful trip for you through Algonquin Park and Bancroft. Doubly so in the fall colour season and multiply so if biking.
I think I heard my name used.
Ben you know how to make a guy turn red!
Thanks for the complements.
Only two quasi tapped horns in the shop at the moment. And a really big 12" FLH. A true tapped horn I have not made yet.
For what I have modeled it is very driver specific. And modeled I mean designed one that approaches the efficiency of a FLH. Check the baseline 2Pi efficiencies of almost all of the posted tapped horns. THey are not really tapped horns ala Danley but tappered pipes.
JBell has done a really well worked out tapped horn.
Mark
Ben you know how to make a guy turn red!
Thanks for the complements.
Only two quasi tapped horns in the shop at the moment. And a really big 12" FLH. A true tapped horn I have not made yet.
For what I have modeled it is very driver specific. And modeled I mean designed one that approaches the efficiency of a FLH. Check the baseline 2Pi efficiencies of almost all of the posted tapped horns. THey are not really tapped horns ala Danley but tappered pipes.
JBell has done a really well worked out tapped horn.
Mark
I think a lot of the suggested designs you're seeing here are driven not only by how big a box the designer is willing to live with, but also what drivers they'd prefer to use and what passband they're aiming for, and of course their budget.
I've modelled several dozens (e.g. almost 12" driver in the PE catalog) and discarded almost as much
. Almost completed work on my second POC using a cheap 12" driver from PE in fact. Based on published specs, it's certainly no TH-112, but it is less than half the gross size, does a respectable 40 Hz and can be built for $180 or less, including the driver.
Good to hear someone else has been after the concept. A proper horn is a tough nut to crack.
From some reverse engineering I'll say this much. A true tapped horn driver closely resembles a good car audio driver. The closest thing available was the peerless XLS line of drivers. William Cowan did some great work on that driver.
William Cowan's Homepage
The lab 12 can be coaxed into some decent output in a decent box. but it requires a bit of modification.
Mark
From some reverse engineering I'll say this much. A true tapped horn driver closely resembles a good car audio driver. The closest thing available was the peerless XLS line of drivers. William Cowan did some great work on that driver.
William Cowan's Homepage
The lab 12 can be coaxed into some decent output in a decent box. but it requires a bit of modification.
Mark
BTW, if there's anything in my sig of interest to you, I invite all to pack favorite CDs and visit me at Bathurst/St Clair, even on short notice. Start with a PM.
Sadly, my present music room is just 10x16 feet (small room in our 14 room home, don't ask). But OK for my one sweet spot Laz-Y-Boy chair.
But there's one thing I can say that may not be widely true on this forum of creative types: it is in fine present working order and almost always is.
Sadly, my present music room is just 10x16 feet (small room in our 14 room home, don't ask). But OK for my one sweet spot Laz-Y-Boy chair.
But there's one thing I can say that may not be widely true on this forum of creative types: it is in fine present working order and almost always is.
Well there are good clean car audio subs. Actually quite a few of them. But I'll be the first to admit that about 95% of them are misaligned and produce nothing usefull to service of music.
But that nasty remark can a does have it's exceptions. There are gents who are very capable of making a car environment one of the cleanest and clearest sound environments. So it's all in the details.
The woofer requires a somewhat large moving mass to function properly in a tapped horn. At least in the simpler ones. Tom Danley has done a number of designs that can be reverse engineered if you want to put in the sweat equity. But that is merely copying with little depth of understanding. The spud is a good example.
As with all horns there is no real holy grail of small box and a box plumbing the depths. If you want to go really low you have to pay the piper.
Mark
Glad to see you accepted my spoofed horror at car audio with good grace.
Now......... seems to me, one just might, and without spoofed horror, say that needing a heavy cone is a bad sign as well.
Like being never too thin or rich, a driver which is light, powerful, low in Fs are always good to have. Yes, you can make HornResp beg you for something otherwise, but that is satisficing, not optimizing.
Very Vicious Footnote: heavy cone, eh? Does that help spread the TH boom by lowering the Q?
Now......... seems to me, one just might, and without spoofed horror, say that needing a heavy cone is a bad sign as well.
Like being never too thin or rich, a driver which is light, powerful, low in Fs are always good to have. Yes, you can make HornResp beg you for something otherwise, but that is satisficing, not optimizing.
Very Vicious Footnote: heavy cone, eh? Does that help spread the TH boom by lowering the Q?
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With the corollary being for a given BW it is very driver specific
, i.e. I've yet to model any tapped alignment that doesn't work good enough over 'x' BW for a given driver same as with FL/BL horns, but if one doesn't know what sort of driver specs is required for a desired BW you wind up with a less than optimal design as I understand it, though it may still be good enough for the intended app as JBell's and a few others proves.Anyway, for all but prosound use, size dominates in the vast majority of apps, so the streamlined BP6, BP8 designs typically published can perform better overall to sealed or BR and HornResp makes it relatively easy to design them whereas before only hardcore DIYers would tackle BP6 alignments (B*$3 WC or similar) and of them only a very few out at the deep fringe would attempt BP8s (Karlson K15, or similar).
GM
LOL!
You've pegged me to a 'T'! Only once in my active DIY speaker building 'career' have I had a 'stable' system and it was only because I transferred the time/budget to another hobby. Too many drivers/alignments, too little time.......... GM
He's not wrong about that though... most of my own tapped horn designs use woofers one wouldn't normally think would be good for high SPL low frequency use for movies. For example, there's a topic on the Hi-Vi SP10 and how it's not very suitable for anything but car audio SPL competitions... I've gotten that one to model well in a TH. I can't find it for a good price or I'd try it, but it does model well. Even better is the Beyma XMAX-12, another car audio targeted woofer.
What I'm finding is that if a woofer has a nice tight suspension and a low Vas, it's probably worth an attempt at modeling a TH with it. I used the Tang Band W8Q-1071F in my TH (two of them), and it's a good TH woofer, but since then I've found better options. Many of those better options are car audio woofers, believe it or not.
Edit - taking back my comments about the Hi-Vi... it only models so-so for me. Been too long since I looked at that one.
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Not for sub bass horn duty. Think about it, as one goes down in frequency the BW/octave shrinks, so the lower in frequency one goes, the narrower the BW, ergo the lower the driver's Fs and mass corner (~2*Fs/Qts) needs to be.
Factor in room modes, amplitude modulation distortion and how we perceive sound and we don't want a wide BW sub, ergo a light, powerful (low Qts) driver is the last thing to use, though it can be made to work well enough by adding series resistance to raise its Qts and it has a large enough throat (St) to keep it from audibly deforming (or outright destroying) its moving mass assembly.
What TH 'boom'? The few THs I've auditioned do anything but..........
GM
The driver I'm trying out at the moment is anything but a car audio driver, LOL. The Dayton PA310-8. Seems Ok in the TH I designed for it, but peak SPL is likely going to be limited by its 5mm Xmax.
I was told about this driver in another forum - the Fi X12. See https://ssl.perfora.net/www.ficarau...0_Speakers/0045_X/product_overview.shopscript . The specs suggest it might be worth a closer look. It's actually built to order - a plus for DIYers
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