Two mistakes: 1. A horn is not an acoustic amplifier, as there is no acoustic power gain. It is an acoustic *transformer,* which efficiently couples a high-pressure low-displacement driver to low-pressure high-displacement output at the ambient air. 2. You completely omitted the most important sound-quality aspect of horns: Transient response. They're not just about playing loud, they are about clarity and detail. It is no accident that horns are used in many ultra high-end speaker designs costing hundreds of thousands of dollars. ruclips.net/video/kaWpP95MwKw/видео.html But horns are tricky to incorporate into a multi-way system. They have an abrupt low-end cutoff, and the crossover must be designed to attenuate output far enough above that cutoff frequency, that it doesn't cause an audible abrupt step in the system frequency response. Not many horn systems achieve this, unfortunately, resulting in the objectionable "horn sound" that you often mention. Human hearing is extremely sensitive to abrupt steps in frequency response, in fact, that sensitivity is largely what makes speech intelligible, by making vowel and other sounds distinguishable.
Exactly right! Transformers are not amplifiers and are prone to all sorts of unwanted response characteristics. And, don't forget the nasty reality of time delay introduced by their physical length relative to the other driver(s).
@@carlosanvito And what are the "unwanted response characteristics" for direct drivers which benefit from almost no damping by ambient air? Time delay is a trivial problem to solve. Just mount the horns separately so the drivers are coplanar with the other drivers. Of course there are compromises with any driver type, but some of us feel the extra effort to design with horns is justified by the clarity and detail they offer.
@@marianneoelund2940 Time for me to chime in here being a fan of horns (which are also waveguides, in disagreement with Dr. Earl Geddes) since the 70s being around recording studios hearing the live sound and the sound through the studio monitors. I've heard excellent horn and direct radiator reproduced sound from studio monitors. Back in the day the horns did not sound as smooth as the direct radiators but sounded more lifelike and could handle the very high levels that were often used in the studios in those days. These days there are very much improved horns for much smoother sound yet also providing the lower transient and other forms of distortion which is the horn's claim to fame, and providing more lifelike sound than typical cone speakers can provide. You are absolutely right Marianne in all your comments. PS - that link about the $2M system was fantastic. He said he sold 8 of those systems. $16M in revenue for 8 systems, not bad. Also found it interesting that he said three systems in Thailand, the home of the super-rich now?
Beat me to it Marianne. I’m not a horn speaker owner, but I have heard truly high end, custom-designed horn speakers and they were truly amazing. As well as excellent transient response, I noticed that there seemed to be fewer audible clicks and pops from surface blemishes on the LPs I had brought along to the audition. The chap who built them is dead now and I have no idea if the system was maintained. The bass horn was the listening room itself. One problem that Marianne and others haven’t referred to is the comb effect on frequency response. It’s possible to combine a horn with a transmission line such that the comb of one compensates the comb in the other. It’s called a Voigt pipe and I’d dearly love to build/hear one. Fans of differing design stratagems always disparage the shortcomings of other designs, ignoring that there is no ideal design strategy. Paul is correct though in pointing out that now amplifier watts are cheap, the perceived need for the efficiency of horns has largely disappeared since bigger horns are expensive to fabricate. And there’s a distinct WAF factor here with few housewives willing to tolerate them on the basis of size.
@@marianneoelund2940 You misinterpreted my comments. I was referring to frequency response characteristics of various types of horns, e.g. parabolic, conical (Linear), exponential, etc. Regarding time delays - clearly a trivial problem, but one that's oven overlooked. Drivers, of course, are not nice textbook devices. Their impedance is all over the place, from capacitive through resistive to inductive. Modern, ultra-low impedance amps can easily drive them, but throw in a passive crossover and things suddenly get more complex (no pun intended).
One great thing about horns is that experience you get while listening to well recorded brass or winds through them. This of course, makes complete sense. The detail is incredible.
@@oysteinsoreide4323 The coloration is due mostly to crossover designs which allow some of the horn low-end cutoff to appear in the system frequency response. My mains have horn midrange and tweeter, and the detail with all sources, including voice, guitar, strings, etc. is astonishing.
Marianne Oelund Every speaker have their own colouration. And of course crossover designs affect the sound. The physical design of both the driver,the shape of the cabinet and the damping affect the colouration of the sound.
Marianne Oelund And I must admit that I am not a fan of horn speakers. But I understand that in live sound reinforcement, you will need horns to broaden the sweet spot. But it's on the tweeter. I have Dynaudio speakers, and they are quite different sounding. But I need a powerful amplifier to make it to sound dynamic.
Horns can sound extremely good, every theater in the world had horn speakers behind the screen up until the 1980's. Thirty watts (or less) would fill a 500 seat theater, and even the cheap seats could hear the dialog clearly. The problem is; those speakers were huge. I have a pair of theater speakers, and I cannot get the bass cabinets through the door. I am using the bass flares with 15" woofers however, and the "tweeter" is 16"x32" and 41" deep. The real tweeter is a ribbon. They are not in my living room, they have their own room. I can power them to ear damaging levels on 1/4 of a watt. If it wasn't for my love of single ended triode amps, I would not own these speakers, but I've never met a pair of commercial horns I really wanted.
That seems to be the main thrust; you can get a 6 inch horn in a bookshelf or a home subwoofer, but it takes well over a foot wide to really bring the bass home.
@@thunderpooch Every speaker is colored. It is my contention that we choose our speakers based on the colorations we prefer. My horns are 41" deep and have two cells 16" square, so 32" wide, with an exponential flare.They are bigger than most speakers. The actual driver is a 1 1/2" aluminum dome housed in a 20lb magnet/casing. They can play from 300hz (determined by the size of the mouth) to 15,000hz, but they start to sound terrible above 10khz. In a horn, the coloration really happens when you try to shrink them, fold them, mess with the flare, or run them outside of their range limits. No horn is full range. Why do I use them? 115db/w/m. I seldom use more than 10 milliwatts from a 2,000 milliwatt amplifier, and that's when they are playing at a high volume. This makes the famous high distortion from a single ended triode amplifier into a non-issue since there is almost no distortion at those power levels.
Love my Klipsch Forte iii. Have never heard drums so realistic and dynamic or horn instruments. Even piano is convincing and that his one of the hardest to convey over a loudspeaker. Also I don't feel I need to spend tens of thousands in amplifiers to get the most out of them!
All klipsch speakers with horns what I have heard have noticeable horn coloration. It can be easily heard and frequency response is all over the place. Not natural at all.
I'm sure it sounds great. I recommend you just ignore these people Dennis. The only one who has to listen to it, and enjoy it, is you anyway. And it seems like you do enjoy it. Maybe they're jealous, because you're actually happy with your system? Who knows? Either way. I'm not sure why they feel the need to stuff their opinion of something down your throat? I mean why do they even care? They don't have to listen to it. I'll be honest, and say it doesn't sound like my style really, but. I wouldn't judge it, until I've actually listened to it. Because no matter what I've heard in my life. I've not heard your actual system, in your actual room. So I couldn't possibly have an honest opinion on it. The only person in this conversation that has actually heard it is you. And until I know otherwise for sure. I'll take your word on it, and assume it sounds good. Like any other mature adult would. ✌️
Take it from a lifelong audiophile that has owned Wilson, several Martin Logans, Infinity Betas, Apogee and Focal. JBL M2s are worth a listen and will forever change your opinion about horn speakers.
Yeah there is quite a bit of outdated bias regarding well designed, modern horn loaded systems here. I run a Klipsch Jubilee with TAD drivers biamped with a Xilica XP4080 DSP. It is nicely calibrated to my room and it is sublime. It is my endgame.
I am a bit astounded that Paul does not like the sound of horns. In many ways good horns have a lot in common with the sound of the Infinity Reference Loudspeakers that Paul owns and loves.... For me it is the same....... If I would not own a pair of Apogee Fullranges I would like to have a large horn speaker system like the ones from Acapella, Avantgarde and so on. Soundwise I prefer either large dipole speakers or large horn systems. They both can sound very lifelike. Conventional box speakers only bore me..............
My latest system is a pair of Altec A7's on their sides , pushed together , bottom to bottom. They have Altec 1003 horns with 288 driver's the sound from the bass bins come out on medium high dense carpet with a high end padding underlayment. I sit twelve feet from these and they sound wonderful . No ringing or fatigue from the horns like so many claim all horns do. It takes more to make any audio system sound great than reading reviews, following to the letter what experts claim you have to do on setup to achieve the perfect listening space. I am always moving speakers around the house , trying different setups, some sound great and some not so great, but that's part of the fun. But then my life is about having fun with my love of music and always trying to out do myself on the last speaker build . Setup the perfect room with the top of the line audio equipment and there will still be times when you turn it on, you will swear you are listening to a sound design 8track from the 70's ! Our systems will always have bad day's just like we do, let it go and have fun.
Yeah there is quite a bit of outdated bias regarding well designed, modern horn loaded systems here. I run a Klipsch Jubilee with TAD drivers biamped with a Xilica XP4080 DSP. It is nicely calibrated to my room and it is sublime. It is my endgame.
I own a pair of Tannoy GR Westminsters and they are incredibly dynamic with very clesr treble huge midrange and really deep clear and fast bass i previously owned the se models.i run them with Tannoy supertweeters .
@@henrym78 thankyou a lot ofsaving up but worth it. Full range Horns take up a lot ofarea in a room and are very hard & expensive to design and build correctly. Tannoy ix the oldest speaker company dating vack to 1926
I built myself a hornspeaker. It is 4ft across at the mouth, with a throat 4ft deep, fitted with a 6in alnico 5watt full range guitar speaker, running about 2 watts. Took awhile to EQ properly, but now has a permanent home in my workshop. It sounds beautiful and I love it to bits. It was also quite difficult to make.
From all vintage and non vintage speakers the horns was the best I had and listen....but it must be good one.....from the best years and best manufacturer, lifelike experience 👌
I’m trying to imagine what Paul would say after hearing my (his) Stella Strata on my Klipsch Forte III’s. They play very well with each other softly or otherwise.
Horn speakers are just very expensive to make and if you are in the business of making 1200W amplifiers you have for good or bad clearly put your eggs in a different basket. So it should came as no surprise that PS audio is not a fan of horns which is fine as well just like I understand those who love horns.
My personal opinion: Today all the speakers with huge dimensions and strange form factor (la scala klipshorn etc.) are demonized because all the manufacturer prefers little cabinet and little woofers in order to solve packaging costs and positioning problems in the rooms (our wives point of view). All the speakers kind could sound great if very well made. Everyone has different taste in music listening and there is not a single rule. Today we see speakers with ridiculous 7 inch woofers pretending to sound good in bass frequency. Sorry for the bad english but hoping that the sense is clear.
I would just like to add my opinion about small woofers. I believe it is possible for a 7" woofer to sound great in base. For example Scanspeak make a 7" long throw woofer that can displace a significant amount of air while also offering good attack and decay due to stiff light cone materials, powerful magnet and voice coil. I believe their base response could be extended nicely with a well designed transmission line enclosure for a smooth, clean and reasonably flat response curve. To me base is not desirable unless it is clean and tight with good transient ability. I really don't like boomy or muddy base. I also think transmission line speakers offer other advantages such as better efficiency than base port or air suspension speakers. They can also often get away with 2 way cross-overs because the smaller woofer can be crossed over at a higher frequency. Only drawbacks I can think of are that they are difficult to design, their enclosures tend to be on the large side for the size of the woofer and they are maybe more sensitive to room placement than most other designs. Great DIY projects if you have the patience.
Not to mention that profit margins are surely better for small but expensive speakers. And re the 7" driver comment, as I posted elsewhere, "Similarly, a small area large excursion driver doesn't have the "fast-twitch ballistics" or "torque" that a large area driver has (think bore and stroke of a piston engine), and I believe there are boundary anomalies generated at the edges of diaphragms that are minimized by using a single large driver (in reference to wavelength) rather than an array of smaller drivers, thus maximizing the ratio of area to total edge length." My Klipsch Forte 1s with 12" woofers have lower bass extension than my DIYs with 15" woofers, but the tautness and slam of the 15s more than compensate in overall quality of the listening experience.
@@naturalverities Some good points here. I guess it really depends a bit on what kind of music you are listening to. I don't think any one design can do it all. It seems all speakers are compromises. Even the expensive ones. I often think that a speaker that sounds impressive right off the bat is over emphasizing some facet of the music. I strive to design a speaker that tries to reproduce the original waveform as faithfully as possible with minimum distortion and coloration. To me the best way to assess a speakers performance is to live with it for awhile. If you seem to enjoy the listening experience with a wide range of music genres then its the right speaker for you.
@@jimgardiner1558 Thanks, Jim. Sounds like you have good goals for your speaker designs. I wish you success in achieving them. IMO, the greatest obstacle to getting excellent performance from a single design across multiple musical genres is the scandalous inconsistency in the quality of recordings, in part due to questionable sonic objectives and in part due to inaccurate monitoring systems. Speaker waveform fidelity is only as good as the quality of the source waveform. My experience is that the most source-faithful recordings of any genre can sound great on the same speaker design if it's a faithful transducer from electrical to mechanical to acoustic waves.
Horn speakers are great because they are more lively than most others. And they are much more efficient. So for the most part, if one wants a lively speaker that reeqires very little power, get a horn and add a sub for better bass. But if one wants a speaker that is more accurate, look elsewhere.
Lively = coloration. All klipsch speakers with horns what I have heard have noticeable horn coloration. It can be easily heard and frequency response is all over the place. Not natural at all.
When I was building my speakers, which use JBL 2040 compression drivers, I made some modifications. I originally used JBL 2307 horns with 2308 diffraction lenses. They produced a mild nasal tone. I replaced the horns and lenses with "The Tube" Karlson couplers. Karlson couplers work more on the principle of a flute than a horn. The compression drivers are still fully loaded, and dispersion is well controlled. The nasal tone is eliminated. There are designs for bass Karlson couplers, but I haven't implemented them.
In my experience good horn speakers, in particular those using waveguide-style horns which draw on the work of Earl Geddes, do not have the coloration issues Paul describes.
I'd like to see a "horn" made entirely out of an anechoic material or a frequency absorbing foam. Then you'd soley have a dispersion limiter and not a horn where the frequencies reflect off the walls of the horn. Efficiency would suffer a lot, but purity of signal, little to no added colorations, and controlled directivity would be achieved.
@@thunderpooch That's exactly what Dr. Geddes is achieving with his hyperbolic flare and reticulated foam damping, but with little reduction in sensitivity. Taken too far, what you propose would defeat the entire purpose of a horn/waveguide, which is to increase sensitivity and responsiveness by focusing energy propagation. Limiting dispersion by absorbing rather than focusing energy seems counterproductive to me.
@@naturalverities well, I'm not worried about efficiency. I'm "worried" about controlled directivity and the waveguide/horn adding coloration. The Geddes models are still horns made of a hard reflective surface and then stuffed with foam. I'd like to see measurements of "horns" made out of foam.
with horn loaded bass you get very fast bass response even outdoors, that is why they are used in concerts on long distance coverage. Using bass reflex you just loose everything (response, output, outdoor capabilitiy)
It ain't just about getting loud (not that there's anything wrong with that, of course!). It's mostly about low distortion, controlled dispersion and yes, dynamics of the macro and micro varieties. Horns excel in all these areas. I just got a pair of Klipsch Cornwalls and they sound absolutely amazing. But to each, his or her own, of course.
confidence in what you believe in and own. I would put my Altec based horn systems up against any speaker in the world. What's the worst that could happen, I would get to hear a lot of over priced, over hyped speakers that the herds of music lovers believe is better than sliced bread ! To each his own, the truth is it's just a numbers game for speaker manufacturers. The WAF is the largest driver in speaker design, she has to say what can come in her home. Men usually get the smallest area of the house for their hobby, so no big speakers. I have vintage Bozaks that sound wonderful but my horns are the most accurate true sounding speaker.
It all depends on the size and weight when it comes to horns. Some years ago where I worked we had a cinema equipped with an old Gaumont British double horn assembly.It was typical of what cinemas used before Dolby arrived. The thing when assembled was about 9 feet high and weighed around half a ton. It was similar to the much more common large Lansing "voice of the theatre" A2 unit. The cinema was often used for testing high end modern speakers. The interesting point is the GB unit ALWAYS sounded far better than anything else, despite it being 70 or more years old!! It was fatal to power on the cinema GB unit when the aim was trying to "sell" the new designs to prospective users!!! On several occasions when that happenned, the comments were always "Why don't the new speakers sound as good as that??", so it was forbidden to play sound through the GB unit when trying to sell new kit. I managed to save the GB unit when the cinema was being demolished. Regards, David Hine
Yeah there is quite a bit of outdated bias regarding well designed, modern horn loaded systems here. I run a Klipsch Jubilee with TAD drivers biamped with a Xilica XP4080 DSP. It is nicely calibrated to my room and it is sublime. It is my endgame.
One thing I like about horns, and why I ended up choosing Avantgarde is the ability to get the sound out of the speaker. If done right, horn loaded speakers can present an image up close like nothing else and they are incredibly immersive. This creates a massively positive listening experience for me. I have had Wilson (still do), Sonus Faber, Dynaudio and other things, and one thing I learned from all my years working live pro audio, was that I want sound that engages with me. I always say that I need a speaker that makes me want to dance. Can my Wilson's do some things in terms of resolution that my Avantgarde can't? Yes, but they don't present the music with the same level of enthusiasm, and they can't project the sound out and away from the speakers in the same way. Those horns are just "happy" and it's wonderful. There's more to good audio and the listening experience than just precision.
I have a folded horn bass speaker and it great sounding, the real reason is the money cheaper speakers don’t need high end equipment according to greed, but the most expensive speakers most likely are loaded with horns.
Great explanation of why horn speakers are not more common. Like you say for lower base frequencies the cabinets get rather large. I believe horn speakers do have one other nice feature, besides high efficiency, they offer the possibility of good control of the cone movement by amplifying all frequencies more or less equally by virtue of their curved walls. My understanding is that each frequencies pressure wave gets the inverse reflected wave occurring at a different point along the horn (shorter distance for higher frequencies) such that all frequencies tend to get similar horn effect. I think UNO do a good job of designing true horn speakers.
One issue with horns is that the horn tends to be more efficient that the woofer so that at say a low SPL (sound pressure level) they are equal but as you increase the volume at some point many horns seem to be putting out a higher SPL than the woofer which is why the best horn speakers also have a folded horn loaded woofer and a huge cabinet so the bass driver can keep up with the horn . Another issue is the smaller horn speakers do not produce much low bass so you end up needing a sub-woofer to compensate .
I think it's like eating, not everyone likes the same thing. i recently finished diy speakers, it's a three way speaker with a big midrange horn. I didn't have a horn speaker before, but they don't sound extremely horn-like to me. But they are very efficient. I like them.
One of the biggest drawbacks is horn coloration. Klipsch for example are even beginning to put some type of rubberized coating inside their horn waveguide to reduce this coloration.
If I understand correctly, horns do have the additional advantage of having greater effective radiating area reducing intermodulation (and other types of - though this is more implementation specific) distortion for a given sound level. In this way they are similar to many planar speakers and also "accordion" driver's which are enjoying a return to popularity. (Does this is have anything to do with patent expirations or perhaps improved material science?) Horns, I believe, also offer options for adjusting directivity. Thanks again, Paul!
I am pretty shure it's about patent's , all the major players in making great sounding horns have so many patents that it's nearly impossible to manufacture a great horn for comercial sale. Lot's of DIY projects is out there and all agree that it's nearly impossible to source down the theory and maths that was used in those great designs. Even those design today is extremely rarely used in any manufacturing ( extreme highend niche ) those companies who originally made those they hang on their patents as if it was at higher level than military grade technology and you wont be able to use them , if you are so lucky to do , well then it be very very expensive for a little niche production. SO as I see this - YES it IS because of patents that horns is so limited around. And the fact that loudspeaker manufacturers they ' follow the trend '' when making thir products.
I can understand someone liking a horn speaker. It is very dynamic and things like horns and drums have great impact. A very lively sound. To my ears, there are several shortcomings from most horn speakers, notably that they sound kind of blaring and in your face and, despite many claiming otherwise, I find them to be poor at imaging & creating a deep/wide soundstage. Also hard to properly match with a subwoofer to have a well defined, deep bass. I have heard a couple of very expensive horn (>$20,000) speakers which were more pleasing to my ears, albeit in short listening sessions. I am in the camp which Paul describes as just not liking the sound of horn speakers.
I have some horns. They really help with hearing loss. One pair disappear and have sound from everywhere. Others are quite directional. Big drivers get more mids and the smallest ones can be a bit sharp. I a/b them against the magnepans and it is very hard to pick favourites
You answered the question with just your hands and mouth, yes it was louder with your hands creating the megaphone but as you say the sound is altered, colored and your voice is much more pleasant when you spoke without your hands as a amplifier. Oswalds Mills Audio, need a Lottery winner to afford their line of merchandise.
In the early 1970s, I had the opportunity of professionally visiting an English speaker company in Bromely Kent called Lowther and meeting the owner. They had horn speakers that were absolutely stunning - a very memorable experience. I believe they stated they had produced drive units holding the record for greatest efficiency. I seem to recall (memory fading), 55% and was allegedly 10% greater than the theoretical maximum? They supplied cathedrals and theatres demonstrating full volume fidelity in these vast arenas with just 1.5 Watts. Incidentally, they were a very friendly and inviting company - just like PS Audio :) Lowther Museum: www.lowthervoigtmuseum.org.uk/index.html And, Company today: lowtherloudspeakers.com
Cartridge paper speakers. (Treated). I once listened to a pair of these in a pair of big wooden boxes and wow, they were indeed something special. Then I was told of the time it takes to run them in (hundreds of hours to tame a midrange bias) and I realised ownership takes a particular kind of dedicated listener. Must be one of the oldest speaker companies in the world, incredible experience.
Beamer, i too have always loved the "sound" of Lowther speakers. I used to have a pair of Lowther 108 aucustas and now have a pair of Bicor 200. Iv'e listened to a variety of other maker's speaker systems, they sound nice, but when i go back to my Lowthers, to me, they are the best. Incidently, Lowthers, the company, has been sold and moved upcountry. The new owners are committed to keeping up the high standards of Lowther.
@@ozosman3234 Great to hear from a real Lowther devotee. Some people say, "Why be concerned about Watts, we can throw 100s of them at inefficient, but superbly sounding speakers today" and that's true. I say it's like riding a bike instead of a car - you experience much more local detail per Watt and you can buy/make a really good, perhaps class A, 5 Watt amp - the size of a shoebox. Our modern world needs to be all about efficiency, and there's something really aesthetically pleasing about Lowther. And Paul, I haven't forgotten how excellent PS Audio products are too :)
They've got a reputation as shit-kicking rock & roll speakers. Not so much neutral audiophile speakers.They seem to be lively with lots of slam. Steve Guttenberg and others go on at great length about the Klipsch Heresy and some JBLs.
Everyone has different taste. Paul has different take on horn speakers than Steve. But that's fair. We must accept that people have different opinions. And steve has a totally different background.
Its the ability of speakers to convey emotion, as well as dynamics, clarity and frequency response. Unfortunately you can't measure that like the others. Some horn speakers reveal the emotion of performances better than other speakers. But to each his own. A niggle though. Why would someone buy an amp so overpowered that no speakers would ever use it all?
Forget Klipsch or anything else. Okay here we go there is a company that make the very best horn speakers in the world. Not only that their original drivers, from the 60's, fetch ridiculous money from Australia to Zimbabwe and all the letters in between. That company is Tannoy and what I dislike about Paul is he only tells a minuscule part of the truth.
Horn loaded tweeter vs. horn loaded mid/bass drive which is what he was talking about in the video. Personally I think if you A/B test Klipsch with a comparable non-horn loaded tweeter, the traditional tweeter will sound more natural 9/10. But that's just my take. Obviously there are a lot of Klipsch fans out there.
Not just Klipsch. The JBL M2 monitor has an outstanding reputation, and horns appear in many ultra high-end systems. They're also used in most live-sound reinforcement speakers, but that's mostly an efficiency consideration for filling very large venues.
Just not a fan of horns. Much prefer AMTs or domes. However, many folks do like them, and I'd never begrudge them that. Love whatever sounds best to you.
'why aren't there more horns speakers?' off the top of my head...because people are ignorant, dumb and easily influenced by crappy salesmen. Horns are more difficult and expensive to produce, they actually require engineering rather than just talking shit. PS audio sells very powerful amp so it's totally against their marketing goals to promote hi eff horns. Personally I was totally unaware off the beauty of the horn sound until I tried them, never been back to boxy sounding regular speakers since.
The reason you don't see them for " mainstream consumers" is because to do it correctly they're BIG. BUT, when done correctly, there's nothing better imho
@@jzizmor fyi, I've been in the audio industry 45+ yrs, I'm a pro installer and company owner, with that said, I'm not talking about normal consumer shit, I said that in the post, peace
Yeah there is quite a bit of outdated bias regarding well designed, modern horn loaded systems here. I run a Klipsch Jubilee with TAD drivers biamped with a Xilica XP4080 DSP. It is nicely calibrated to my room and it is sublime.
So what are your thoughts on the Klipsch Lascala? I finally had the opportunity to listen to these speakers and while I feel they may not be the "best" speaker out there listening to them definitely seems to add a feeling or emotion to the music.
Yeah there is quite a bit of outdated bias regarding well designed, modern horn loaded systems here. I run a Klipsch Jubilee with TAD drivers biamped with a Xilica XP4080 DSP. It is nicely calibrated to my room and it is sublime. It is my endgame.
Ray Cimbalnik: Years I ago at an AES convention in Los Angeles, I saw a Belle Klipsch(this was named after Paul's wife) in polished cherry wood. The La Scala was just painted black plywood, which costed way less because of the huge amount of handwork required in the finishing of a Belle Klipsh. I was blown away by the sound. I also met the man, Paul W. Klipsch, he gave me one of his yellow buttons with the word "bullshit" on it. BTW the Klipsch horn-loaded super tweeter is an Electro-Voice T35. EV would send Klipsch some 35s, and they would check the freq response and cherry pick the best, and send the rest back to EV.
There are very modern horns with very sophisticated electronics: active conventional bass (can be adapted to the room acoustics) and passive horns for highs and mids also adaptable to the room. And these lsp are audiophile, I am talking about the german Avantgarde acoustic.....
Hi Paul, In your closing statements, you mentioned Wilson being a not so efficient speaker like they were ago. Why don't speaker companies design something killer out of the box and then leave well enough alone? Like JBL and their 100's. They worked wonderfully 30 years ago and they still do today, so why mess with the recipe? I keep hearing about how great so-n-so's was, but not today. I once was honoured to own a set of DQ-10's and I so wish I had them back.
They're superior in many ways. Avoiding lossy I(squared)R losses is significant. The reason there aren't that many is simple; size ... impacting manufacturing, consumer appeal, shipping etc. Everything in loudspeaker design is a compromise... regardless of price.
the word compromise is not usable in hifi, because horns is a compromise in sound quality, as is ported speaker. you confuse ignorant people that now thinks that anything sounds good its just differences between things. the calories of hifi world, meaningless generalizations words that confuses people.
@@sudd3660 Certainly didn't intend to confuse you or anyone, however the word "compromise" is indeed perfectly usable and accurate relative to loudspeaker design. Individuals involved in such work are well aware of this.
If you have limited budget and space with low sound pressure demand, the dome tweeter is the way to go. When high sound pressure is needed, the 10x more efficient compression drivers have to be used. For decent sound quality with high sound pressure you need a very high quality horn loaded compression driver, which is more expensive, bigger and much heavier than a cheap tweeter. HiFi manufacturers tend to spare money where possible besides no high SPL is needed and size matters. Their answer is the cheaper tweeter, which provides great sound quality for their price.
Everytime I look at the comments someone says the exact opposite of what is said in the video. I don't know what to think after watching most of your videos...
I went to go check out some paradigm monitors on Craig’s list. At this audiophiles house in the garage he owned a ton of speakers/ vintage receivers as well as modern every model you name it. To the point I thought he was a little crazy. Even though my wife thinks I own to many speakers and amps. But I asked him if all of this stuff is for sale witch most of it was high end. What system do you have in your house. And he said Cornwall’s and heresy hooked to a Sansui au 919 He said out of all the gear he has tested it’s very hard to beat that sound. Haha I own a pair of heresy and I agree. With the right amp it’s hard to compete
I'll comment on the why we don't have horns. Cost. Plain and simple. I design loudspeakers for a living. The raw cabinetry cost on a standard loudspeaker is shockingly low. A properly designed horn with a Tractrix or better yet a LeCleach horn profile takes money to do right. Second problem is that there are to few people that truly understand how to design them. Third problem is size. There is no getting around the size issue. A horn subwoofer is large. Refrigerator sized. But as for can they sound good? Well under the right designer, and builder they can be as distortion free as anything that is available. They can throw a beautiful soundstage. And they can provide dynamics on the few recordings that demand that kind of reproduction that are jaw dropping. By the way, I have been designing horns in many forms since 1993. Presented many in audio gatherings and busted quite a few myths in the process. Enjoyed every minute of it! Mark
Harman has the most advanced research facility in the world and all of their flagship speakers use horns for both home and professional audio. Plus there is Klipsch, famous for making the best Rock n Roll speakers of all. It will be nice if Paul released measurement curves to sustain his claims. I guess my problem is that if he said I’m a salesman and I like this, then fine but he always talks like he was a Dr. in Audio Engineering and that is not cool.
Yeah there is quite a bit of outdated bias regarding well designed, modern horn loaded systems here. I run a Klipsch Jubilee with TAD drivers biamped with a Xilica XP4080 DSP. It is nicely calibrated to my room and it is sublime. It is my endgame.
Opinions are like assholes, everybody has one as the saying goes. For many, many people the psycho acoustic response to horns is a very enjoyable experience. Dynamics. Let’s face it, horn speakers are just a pain in the ass to make measure decently AND sound good. Not a coincidence that the companies that manufacture horns have been around for many years. They know all the tricks.
Using horn loaded tweeter/midrange is a very complicated when it comes to crossover design and waveguide..if it is not in the right tune either it will be irritating or it will be a rubbish but if you got it right you will be happy ☺️
Is it a case of the air being more efficiently coupled between the driver and the mouth of the horn and, the width of the mouth being wide enough to not cause diffraction of waves until wavelength exceeds the width of the mouth. I’m guessing that the wave front remains flat as it exits the horn and is mostly directed at the listening position. Lower frequencies would have a more spherical wavefront. The containment of the pressure wave in a flaring horn would increase the mass of moving air particles directed at the listening position and make the energy do more work at the listening position. There may even be fewer room interactions with less diffraction and greater directivity. I guess the downside would be size. It’d be cool to combine horn treble and midrange with a transmission line for bass frequencies. I wonder if anyone has done it?
I designed and built a nice pair of transmission lines using 5 1/4" Focal woofers and they don't roll off until below 40 hz. They are down about 6db at 30 hz. I never thought of using a horn tweeter with them but it might work if you can work the cross-over to get a reasonable efficiency match. Might have to experiment with this idea.
In part it's due to size constraints. Yes, homes are larger on average than the historical norm but that doesn't mean any individual space is large enough for a fully horn loaded set up. Bass horns are freaking huge! And good mid horns aren't exactly petite, either. Now, another consideration is that it's difficult to get horns right. Many people have heard bad horns and written them off without ever trying them again. Others simply grew up hearing the zombie mantra "horns bad". But if you were to put a pair of Avantgarde Duos or Trios along with a full set of their bass horns in the correct environment (meaning, in part, a very large room) and behind an acoustically transparent screen so the horn haters couldn't see what was playing they would fall all over themselves to know where they could buy that slice of sonic heaven. Properly set up high end JBL's, the big Heritage line Klipsch's as well as various off-shoots such as those from Volti would blow them away as well. But they all require space and careful setup. Heck, when Magico set out to design their ultimate speaker years ago they built a horn loaded design. When done correctly horn designs really can't be matched for realism and dynamics. I've heard a few non-horn systems that do one or the other as well but not both. Of course, we can get close enough using dynamic drivers that most people, most of the time won't care about that missing ten percent and they can still walk through their living room due to the space savings.
I have an awesome vintage 10 cell horn speaker set up with a dual driver neck. I'm selling in Ebay that ends tomorrow night. It's too big for me but would love to see what someone is going to do with it.
I play a lot of rock so when my tweeters went a few years back I got horns, they seem to last longer and thought the sound was great. But then I got a stereo system for my bedroom the speakers have 1inch silk dome tweeters. I must say they proved me wrong. They are absolutely beautiful. And a quality sound I didn't hear before. I think it my be because of the amp?
No where in audio will you get a quicker debate than about speakers. Paul is in love with those infinity's sound. I personally can't stand them. First high end speaker I ever owned were Infinity Quantum series, do't recall what the names but they were floor standers. Sounded dead and would blow tweeters at least once a week. It's been all about Klipschorns ever since.
If we ask ourselves why or how a transducer efficiency must be optimized to achieve proper horn designs, we should also consider why or how our inner ears must also be optimized to "enable" proper mid & outer ear designs. Anything between transducers and eardrums are coupling elements. Any change intended, involves bending the laws of physics (or someone’s arm)?
Horn speakers are not perfect but what kind is ? The main difference I hear is the effort less dynamic range and the detail at low listening levels which moving coil drivers lack even the most expensive seem only to have a certain happy sound level range I am old and noticed this when movie theaters changed to "normal" speaker systems a lot of the magic went
There will NEVER be concensus between horn and direct radiator speakers. The issue is NOT coloration. It is the issue of playback environment. The more difficult the room, the BETTER that restricted dispersion will perform. As most domestic environments are NOT optimal, there are very compelling arguments for horns and waveguides. There are no issues with tonality and precision IF the speaker developer has decent chops. Heck, even the PS Audio Aspen series has waveguides (albeit small ones).
Finally some real talk on horns. So much Hype on horns these days. Then I listen to them and I'm like... yep nothing has changed. Good party and rock n roll speakers though.
It is very simple , most people do in fact have small rooms . yes i know tendency say people buy homes bigger and bigger but if you not live in the US then you will realice that the price of homes is high and wages is low , especially in Asia . Thus peoples homes is small . I live in philippines and the average '' philippino style '' is quite small . Also look at homes of average people in Europe , Japan , ect ect ... There is many more people with small homes so of course the market goes towards those. Producing big speakers gets more expensive because not so many is going to buy them . And as we know horn speakers is the biggest and thus the least amount of people will buy such ones . Also another factor ( thats mostly for married couples ) most wife's do not want big systems in their living room ect . ( and not everybody have the privilege of a dedicated listen room ) It is clearly based on demand . Market is about money and profit and if the interest was there for those speakers then you can be shure there would be much more producing them . As it is now it is a relative small amount of people who have space / want big speakers what ever it is horn or not , so market dictate that they focus on smaller speakers . ( Not to mention all those terrible ' Bluetoot soundbars " and ' usb / BT Boomboxes ' that dominate a lot of the lower end market removing focus from traditional low price hifi systems . ) Sadly the market also decrease for serious HiFi as all those smart digital devices dominate all the shops more and more . Most people today do really not know how real quality audio sound like . They are streaming ( as we all know thats compressed and even those claiming to be HD audio ect , they still store the music in a standard format and when you streaming they upscale the format you downloading so in reality you still only get standard compressed sound . ) Combine this with their use of smartphones and all those digital Bluetooth devices / equipment /wireless speakers ect ect . Then you see the picture why big speakers and especially those big horn speakers is not so much on the market anymore . The market is flooded with those low quality devices and sadly more and more dedicated HiFi shops is closing as the majority of people they just buy online .... There was a time where walking into a dedicated HiFi or musicians shop ( guitar store ) wasn't a problem . Today there is less and less of them . ( more and more just buy online ) This have the biggest disadvantage ever seen . You can almost no longer Listen to equipment before you buy it . Also as a guitar player I wuld NEVER buy an electric guitar without trying it first . There is very few guitar stores left and often you have to travel far to get there . Yes this is BECAUSE OF INTERNET SHOPS ... Online sales .. Personally I will never buy any of such without listen to / try it out first . By buying online you have NO guaranty that you will get what you wanted . But for buy those cheap ' soundbars ' and other ' plastic ' low quality stuff it make sense simply because the quality is as cheap as it is and look . For shure that ' market ' have spoiled what people like me grow up with . So No we wont see more big horn speakers produced . Only a few and the rest will be second hand from the ' forgotten ' time of good quality . ----- Sadly we is moving from getting higher quality ---- / / down to / / ----- produce more and more cheap junk in less and less quality to gain as much profit as possible ... ------ Sad but true and it is not just in Audio industry , it is in everything from food to .... ( Yes everything ) Edit -- I forgot to mention that another important factor of the industry's ' choice ' of equipment to produce more and more going towards devices that can not be repaired so if / when it break then you have to buy new stuff , is for shure increasing more and more . There simply is not the same amount of ' profit ' in making those quality products that can last year after year and ...... Oh can be repaired too ... So cheap ' plastic boom box / soundbar ' market is growing . Not to mention speakers ( sonos ) where they function wireless and oups they can with a simple firmware upgrade just choose that your device no longer function . ( That never happen Right ? - sarcasm - )
Have to disagree with you horns can sound fantastic especially if they're made of fibreglass. Not about efficiency necessarily it's about the speed of the driver nothing's fast not even electrostatic or magma plane
Paul’s comment on horns inability to create great bass verify’s he’s not heard the wonderful Bela Fleck and the Flecktones “Flight Of The Cosmic Hippo” on a pair of Klipsch Corner Horns. To each their own pleasure and opinion of course, but jeepers creepers that statement is more than a bit out there brother. I enjoy your vids but when a professional bass player told me my Corner Horns produce the most accurate bass he’s heard in a home environment I might disagree with this one... Ciao.
Countless horns sound awful but well designed ones don't have a "horn" sound. Horns are largely used just for directivity control. Take a listen the JBL M2. I've gotten rid of all tweeters in my room for a few years and never want to go back. Now, whenever I hear a system with a tweeter, it just sticks out too much. Many audiophiles love that airy sound but it's not neutral.
That's exactly my impression! I've had 3" titanium driver with 500Hz exponential horn which was ruler flat between 600-16000Hz. Great sounding with no horn sound to it, very natural. I've decided to upgrade to a dedicated fast midrange and best beryllium tweeter on the market. Now I'm stuck with a non-harmonic sound... It is lacking so many things that are not visible in the basic measurements...
I love my JBL M2s! They are phenomenal speakers without a hint of honk from horns of yesteryear. They provide the most realistic live experience I’ve ever heard and I go to high end stereo stores all the time to experience other, far more expensive, speakers.
@@CobraChamp my old speakers are prototypes which were refereed to as the "M2 Killer" by the designer. Very similar but with a different concept horn and 3-way. Another phenomenal system is the Meyer Bluehorn ($55,000 per speaker) but that one does have some horn resonances which I didn't like. I think it may have something to do with the material they use or they need to dampen the horn
Yeah there is quite a bit of outdated bias regarding well designed, modern horn loaded systems here. I run a Klipsch Jubilee with TAD drivers biamped with a Xilica XP4080 DSP. It is nicely calibrated to my room and it is sublime. It is my endgame.
Many You Tubers have identified Klipsch and other quality horn speakers. Klipsch has been around since 1940s. Have you ever listened to any present day horn speakers?
Yeah there is quite a bit of outdated bias regarding well designed, modern horn loaded systems here. I run a Klipsch Jubilee with TAD drivers biamped with a Xilica XP4080 DSP. It is nicely calibrated to my room and it is sublime. It is my endgame.
Efficiency comes by trading of bass . That’s why big cabinets for horns speakers to compensate that. Even bass drivers In most horns speaks doesn’t have actual woofer surrounds. On longer usage ears going to damage significantly. Because we crave for bass and listen at higher volumes.
Horns are problematic. Generally they are only deployed on tweeters, The reason is that a large driver area can more easily transfer energy into a mass of air as there is more mass of air in contact with the diaphragm (cone), so horns are not required on bass drivers. However, the large diaphragm cannot produce high frequencies accurately party because it's mass and partly because it is larger than the sound wave length. So, you need a small area to produce accurate high frequencies. The problem here is that you can't transfer high energy to a small mass of air, so the tweeter is not as efficient. Enter the compression driver. Placing the tweeter on a compression horn, where the throat is constricted, increases acoustic impedance of the compression chamber, so more energy can be transferred into the small mass of air, making the tweeter more efficient. The horn then controls the wave front exiting. However, this restricts the dispersion pattern of the tweeter to a narrower angle while the bass driver has a dispersion wide angle. Most PA speakers employ this solution. The effect is that the on axis sound has a fairly even frequency response however, the wide off axis sound is pretty well entirely bass. In a large venue or particularly outdoors, the excess bass usually disperses pretty well and is not too much of a problem provided the speaker is not placed near a hard surface. What happens when it is placed near a surface is that some of the excess bass is reflected into the audience area making the sound there very bass heavy. Enter EQ usually through DSP these days to correct this. This may be OK in a fixed system where you have the time to EQ for the room and the equipment to to that. However in a mobile gigging scenario, you don't have much any control and venues are often poor acoustically. You may have DSP and can do sweep and adjust in favor of just one location but it's not going to be averaged out everywhere. For this reason, gigging system priorities are mostly about setup efficiency, light weight portable, easy and fast to plug everything together. Sound quality is pretty much a non consideration. In this scenario, speakers tend to be made for versatility, so you get just one speaker model that can be deployed as either a main of a stage wedge monitor, but this is a complete disaster acoustically because the speaker with an even on axis spectrum response and wide bass dispersion is now sitting on the floor (stage). This massively exaggerates the stage bass. The performers will be unaware of this as their ears are on axis while the bass bounce off the floor is coming past them below waist level and directed at the back of the stage area. In most gigging venues the stag area is an afterthought with no acoustic treatment whatsoever. So now you have an enormous amount of out of phase bass reflected out to the house from the rear of the stage and ceiling. To make things much worse, the stage may even be in a corner and the reflected Bass is from the junction of 3 surfaces, each adding another 3dB of out of phase bass. The upshot of all this is that the house sound is now excessively bass heavy and muddy. In terms of EQ, you might offset the stage monitor spectrum to attenuate this excess bass from polluting the house sound but that makes the performers spectrum tinny and metalic, or you may off set the house spectrum but the remaining bass is out of phase and if you adjust the house volume during performance, this also upsets the house spectrum. This is one of several reason why most PAs sound so gosh awful. A solution is to use in ear monitors but these tend to be considerably more expensive than stage monitors. Another issue with horns is that, unless they are round, as the frequency increases, the dispersion response becomes multi lobed, meaning you get a broken up pattern of SPL across the dispersion area. The desire for compact speakers means that horns tend to be any other shape but round in order to fit in a small box. The upshot is that horns can be a real disaster for sound quality. As a general principle, for drivers without horns, as the frequency increases, the dispersion pattern narrows. So, at crossover frequency, upon transferring power to the next driver, the dispersion becomes wide again, then gradually narrows as the frequency increases further. In that way the spectrum across all dispersion angles is much more evened out than with a horn tweeter but it will require more efficiency, power surface area etc.
Two mistakes:
1. A horn is not an acoustic amplifier, as there is no acoustic power gain. It is an acoustic *transformer,* which efficiently couples a high-pressure low-displacement driver to low-pressure high-displacement output at the ambient air.
2. You completely omitted the most important sound-quality aspect of horns: Transient response. They're not just about playing loud, they are about clarity and detail. It is no accident that horns are used in many ultra high-end speaker designs costing hundreds of thousands of dollars. ruclips.net/video/kaWpP95MwKw/видео.html
But horns are tricky to incorporate into a multi-way system. They have an abrupt low-end cutoff, and the crossover must be designed to attenuate output far enough above that cutoff frequency, that it doesn't cause an audible abrupt step in the system frequency response. Not many horn systems achieve this, unfortunately, resulting in the objectionable "horn sound" that you often mention. Human hearing is extremely sensitive to abrupt steps in frequency response, in fact, that sensitivity is largely what makes speech intelligible, by making vowel and other sounds distinguishable.
Exactly right! Transformers are not amplifiers and are prone to all sorts of unwanted response characteristics. And, don't forget the nasty reality of time delay introduced by their physical length relative to the other driver(s).
@@carlosanvito
And what are the "unwanted response characteristics" for direct drivers which benefit from almost no damping by ambient air?
Time delay is a trivial problem to solve. Just mount the horns separately so the drivers are coplanar with the other drivers.
Of course there are compromises with any driver type, but some of us feel the extra effort to design with horns is justified by the clarity and detail they offer.
@@marianneoelund2940 Time for me to chime in here being a fan of horns (which are also waveguides, in disagreement with Dr. Earl Geddes) since the 70s being around recording studios hearing the live sound and the sound through the studio monitors. I've heard excellent horn and direct radiator reproduced sound from studio monitors. Back in the day the horns did not sound as smooth as the direct radiators but sounded more lifelike and could handle the very high levels that were often used in the studios in those days. These days there are very much improved horns for much smoother sound yet also providing the lower transient and other forms of distortion which is the horn's claim to fame, and providing more lifelike sound than typical cone speakers can provide. You are absolutely right Marianne in all your comments.
PS - that link about the $2M system was fantastic. He said he sold 8 of those systems. $16M in revenue for 8 systems, not bad. Also found it interesting that he said three systems in Thailand, the home of the super-rich now?
Beat me to it Marianne. I’m not a horn speaker owner, but I have heard truly high end, custom-designed horn speakers and they were truly amazing. As well as excellent transient response, I noticed that there seemed to be fewer audible clicks and pops from surface blemishes on the LPs I had brought along to the audition. The chap who built them is dead now and I have no idea if the system was maintained. The bass horn was the listening room itself.
One problem that Marianne and others haven’t referred to is the comb effect on frequency response. It’s possible to combine a horn with a transmission line such that the comb of one compensates the comb in the other. It’s called a Voigt pipe and I’d dearly love to build/hear one. Fans of differing design stratagems always disparage the shortcomings of other designs, ignoring that there is no ideal design strategy.
Paul is correct though in pointing out that now amplifier watts are cheap, the perceived need for the efficiency of horns has largely disappeared since bigger horns are expensive to fabricate. And there’s a distinct WAF factor here with few housewives willing to tolerate them on the basis of size.
@@marianneoelund2940 You misinterpreted my comments. I was referring to frequency response characteristics of various types of horns, e.g. parabolic, conical (Linear), exponential, etc. Regarding time delays - clearly a trivial problem, but one that's oven overlooked. Drivers, of course, are not nice textbook devices. Their impedance is all over the place, from capacitive through resistive to inductive. Modern, ultra-low impedance amps can easily drive them, but throw in a passive crossover and things suddenly get more complex (no pun intended).
One great thing about horns is that experience you get while listening to well recorded brass or winds through them. This of course, makes complete sense. The detail is incredible.
Still with horn colouration. Music seldom consists only horn instruments.
@@oysteinsoreide4323
The coloration is due mostly to crossover designs which allow some of the horn low-end cutoff to appear in the system frequency response.
My mains have horn midrange and tweeter, and the detail with all sources, including voice, guitar, strings, etc. is astonishing.
Marianne Oelund Every speaker have their own colouration. And of course crossover designs affect the sound. The physical design of both the driver,the shape of the cabinet and the damping affect the colouration of the sound.
Marianne Oelund And I must admit that I am not a fan of horn speakers. But I understand that in live sound reinforcement, you will need horns to broaden the sweet spot. But it's on the tweeter. I have Dynaudio speakers, and they are quite different sounding. But I need a powerful amplifier to make it to sound dynamic.
Oystein Soreide - you obviously haven’t listened to a decent horn speaker.
Horns can sound extremely good, every theater in the world had horn speakers behind the screen up until the 1980's. Thirty watts (or less) would fill a 500 seat theater, and even the cheap seats could hear the dialog clearly. The problem is; those speakers were huge. I have a pair of theater speakers, and I cannot get the bass cabinets through the door. I am using the bass flares with 15" woofers however, and the "tweeter" is 16"x32" and 41" deep. The real tweeter is a ribbon. They are not in my living room, they have their own room. I can power them to ear damaging levels on 1/4 of a watt. If it wasn't for my love of single ended triode amps, I would not own these speakers, but I've never met a pair of commercial horns I really wanted.
Here's Your Horns!!!
Danley Sound Labs Jericho Horn playing Jennifer Warnes track
ruclips.net/video/pk54IFD4znw/видео.html
That seems to be the main thrust; you can get a 6 inch horn in a bookshelf or a home subwoofer, but it takes well over a foot wide to really bring the bass home.
@@emilybowman6415 To get a 20hz, the horn would have to be about 60' long with a mouth the size of your average wall.
Shallow waveguides are more sensible than an outright horn. With a horn you'll always get coloration.
@@thunderpooch Every speaker is colored. It is my contention that we choose our speakers based on the colorations we prefer. My horns are 41" deep and have two cells 16" square, so 32" wide, with an exponential flare.They are bigger than most speakers. The actual driver is a 1 1/2" aluminum dome housed in a 20lb magnet/casing. They can play from 300hz (determined by the size of the mouth) to 15,000hz, but they start to sound terrible above 10khz. In a horn, the coloration really happens when you try to shrink them, fold them, mess with the flare, or run them outside of their range limits. No horn is full range. Why do I use them? 115db/w/m. I seldom use more than 10 milliwatts from a 2,000 milliwatt amplifier, and that's when they are playing at a high volume. This makes the famous high distortion from a single ended triode amplifier into a non-issue since there is almost no distortion at those power levels.
As the Germans say, the only thing better than a horn, is a bigger horn.
And as person with German heritage, I can say we've never gotten anything wrong ;) haha
@@thunderpooch Now that is some dark humour, hahah
Love my Klipsch Forte iii. Have never heard drums so realistic and dynamic or horn instruments. Even piano is convincing and that his one of the hardest to convey over a loudspeaker. Also I don't feel I need to spend tens of thousands in amplifiers to get the most out of them!
Yes! Its all about the transient speeds + dynamics! I like my Heresy III + subwoofer setup too 😎
All klipsch speakers with horns what I have heard have noticeable horn coloration. It can be easily heard and frequency response is all over the place. Not natural at all.
My favorite are Klipsch Cornwalls bought them in 1978 power by a crown DC 300 .Absolutely love them .
@Dave Micolichek no , I've had really good results .And for what was available at the time it rocked .
@Dave Micolichek , absotively...... i guess its a match made in the ladies room.
I'm sure it sounds great. I recommend you just ignore these people Dennis. The only one who has to listen to it, and enjoy it, is you anyway. And it seems like you do enjoy it. Maybe they're jealous, because you're actually happy with your system? Who knows? Either way. I'm not sure why they feel the need to stuff their opinion of something down your throat?
I mean why do they even care? They don't have to listen to it. I'll be honest, and say it doesn't sound like my style really, but. I wouldn't judge it, until I've actually listened to it. Because no matter what I've heard in my life. I've not heard your actual system, in your actual room. So I couldn't possibly have an honest opinion on it. The only person in this conversation that has actually heard it is you. And until I know otherwise for sure. I'll take your word on it, and assume it sounds good. Like any other mature adult would. ✌️
Take it from a lifelong audiophile that has owned Wilson, several Martin Logans, Infinity Betas, Apogee and Focal. JBL M2s are worth a listen and will forever change your opinion about horn speakers.
I think he is talking about horn loaded woofers.
Yeah there is quite a bit of outdated bias regarding well designed, modern horn loaded systems here. I run a Klipsch Jubilee with TAD drivers biamped with a Xilica XP4080 DSP. It is nicely calibrated to my room and it is sublime. It is my endgame.
I agree. I also want to add, having heard ATC 50 active spkrs, there is no need to buy amplifiers when these spkrs are Class AB tri-amp.
I am a bit astounded that Paul does not like the sound of horns. In many ways good horns have a lot in common with the sound of the Infinity Reference Loudspeakers that Paul owns and loves.... For me it is the same....... If I would not own a pair of Apogee Fullranges I would like to have a large horn speaker system like the ones from Acapella, Avantgarde and so on. Soundwise I prefer either large dipole speakers or large horn systems. They both can sound very lifelike. Conventional box speakers only bore me..............
I love the nativity that “Paul doesn’t like” something he doesn’t sell🙈
My latest system is a pair of Altec A7's on their sides , pushed together , bottom to bottom.
They have Altec 1003 horns with 288 driver's the sound from the bass bins come out on medium high dense carpet with a high end padding underlayment.
I sit twelve feet from these and they sound wonderful .
No ringing or fatigue from the horns like so many claim all horns do.
It takes more to make any audio system sound great than reading reviews, following to the letter what experts claim you have to do on setup to achieve the perfect listening space.
I am always moving speakers around the house , trying different setups, some sound great and some not so great, but that's part of the fun.
But then my life is about having fun with my love of music and always trying to out do myself on the last speaker build .
Setup the perfect room with the top of the line audio equipment and there will still be times when you turn it on, you will swear you are listening to a sound design 8track from the 70's !
Our systems will always have bad day's just like we do, let it go and have fun.
I've been running full size Klipschorn's in my living room(s) since the mid-70's and absolutely love them!
Yeah there is quite a bit of outdated bias regarding well designed, modern horn loaded systems here. I run a Klipsch Jubilee with TAD drivers biamped with a Xilica XP4080 DSP. It is nicely calibrated to my room and it is sublime. It is my endgame.
I own a pair of Tannoy GR Westminsters and they are incredibly dynamic with very clesr treble huge midrange and really deep clear and fast bass i previously owned the se models.i run them with Tannoy supertweeters .
Now that’s a speaker!
@@henrym78 thankyou a lot ofsaving up but worth it. Full range Horns take up a lot ofarea in a room and are very hard & expensive to design and build correctly. Tannoy ix the oldest speaker company dating vack to 1926
I built myself a hornspeaker. It is 4ft across at the mouth, with a throat 4ft deep, fitted with a 6in alnico 5watt full range guitar speaker, running about 2 watts. Took awhile to EQ properly, but now has a permanent home in my workshop. It sounds beautiful and I love it to bits. It was also quite difficult to make.
I love horn speakers from Klipsch. Life-changing.
Heresy III + SVS subwoofer combo here. I like it !
From all vintage and non vintage speakers the horns was the best I had and listen....but it must be good one.....from the best years and best manufacturer, lifelike experience 👌
Frazier
Frazier
I’m trying to imagine what Paul would say after hearing my (his) Stella Strata on my Klipsch Forte III’s. They play very well with each other softly or otherwise.
Horn speakers are just very expensive to make and if you are in the business of making 1200W amplifiers you have for good or bad clearly put your eggs in a different basket. So it should came as no surprise that PS audio is not a fan of horns which is fine as well just like I understand those who love horns.
Boom! The Truth!
It's great that the colour of the rose matches the colour of the garden furniture. :)
My personal opinion:
Today all the speakers with huge dimensions and strange form factor (la scala klipshorn etc.) are demonized because all the manufacturer prefers little cabinet and little woofers in order to solve packaging costs and positioning problems in the rooms (our wives point of view).
All the speakers kind could sound great if very well made.
Everyone has different taste in music listening and there is not a single rule.
Today we see speakers with ridiculous 7 inch woofers pretending to sound good in bass frequency.
Sorry for the bad english but hoping that the sense is clear.
I would just like to add my opinion about small woofers. I believe it is possible for a 7" woofer to sound great in base. For example Scanspeak make a 7" long throw woofer that can displace a significant amount of air while also offering good attack and decay due to stiff light cone materials, powerful magnet and voice coil. I believe their base response could be extended nicely with a well designed transmission line enclosure for a smooth, clean and reasonably flat response curve. To me base is not desirable unless it is clean and tight with good transient ability. I really don't like boomy or muddy base.
I also think transmission line speakers offer other advantages such as better efficiency than base port or air suspension speakers. They can also often get away with 2 way cross-overs because the smaller woofer can be crossed over at a higher frequency. Only drawbacks I can think of are that they are difficult to design, their enclosures tend to be on the large side for the size of the woofer and they are maybe more sensitive to room placement than most other designs. Great DIY projects if you have the patience.
Rockgi59 - You did an excellent job of making your point.
Not to mention that profit margins are surely better for small but expensive speakers. And re the 7" driver comment, as I posted elsewhere, "Similarly, a small area large excursion driver doesn't have the "fast-twitch ballistics" or "torque" that a large area driver has (think bore and stroke of a piston engine), and I believe there are boundary anomalies generated at the edges of diaphragms that are minimized by using a single large driver (in reference to wavelength) rather than an array of smaller drivers, thus maximizing the ratio of area to total edge length." My Klipsch Forte 1s with 12" woofers have lower bass extension than my DIYs with 15" woofers, but the tautness and slam of the 15s more than compensate in overall quality of the listening experience.
@@naturalverities Some good points here. I guess it really depends a bit on what kind of music you are listening to. I don't think any one design can do it all. It seems all speakers are compromises. Even the expensive ones. I often think that a speaker that sounds impressive right off the bat is over emphasizing some facet of the music. I strive to design a speaker that tries to reproduce the original waveform as faithfully as possible with minimum distortion and coloration. To me the best way to assess a speakers performance is to live with it for awhile. If you seem to enjoy the listening experience with a wide range of music genres then its the right speaker for you.
@@jimgardiner1558 Thanks, Jim. Sounds like you have good goals for your speaker designs. I wish you success in achieving them. IMO, the greatest obstacle to getting excellent performance from a single design across multiple musical genres is the scandalous inconsistency in the quality of recordings, in part due to questionable sonic objectives and in part due to inaccurate monitoring systems. Speaker waveform fidelity is only as good as the quality of the source waveform. My experience is that the most source-faithful recordings of any genre can sound great on the same speaker design if it's a faithful transducer from electrical to mechanical to acoustic waves.
Like having a frog explain wings on a bird.
Horn speakers are great because they are more lively than most others. And they are much more efficient. So for the most part, if one wants a lively speaker that reeqires very little power, get a horn and add a sub for better bass. But if one wants a speaker that is more accurate, look elsewhere.
Have you heard of Tekton?
You obviously haven’t listened to really good, modern horn loaded speaker systems.
If “accuracy” has anything to do with distortion - then nothing beats a properly loaded compression driver
Lively = coloration. All klipsch speakers with horns what I have heard have noticeable horn coloration. It can be easily heard and frequency response is all over the place. Not natural at all.
When I was building my speakers, which use JBL 2040 compression drivers, I made some modifications. I originally used JBL 2307 horns with 2308 diffraction lenses. They produced a mild nasal tone. I replaced the horns and lenses with "The Tube" Karlson couplers. Karlson couplers work more on the principle of a flute than a horn. The compression drivers are still fully loaded, and dispersion is well controlled. The nasal tone is eliminated. There are designs for bass Karlson couplers, but I haven't implemented them.
In my experience good horn speakers, in particular those using waveguide-style horns which draw on the work of Earl Geddes, do not have the coloration issues Paul describes.
Paul has always been biased against horns.
I'd like to see a "horn" made entirely out of an anechoic material or a frequency absorbing foam.
Then you'd soley have a dispersion limiter and not a horn where the frequencies reflect off the walls of the horn.
Efficiency would suffer a lot, but purity of signal, little to no added colorations, and controlled directivity would be achieved.
@@thunderpooch You might Google "Acoustic Research MGC-1 Loudspeaker", which used thick foam for absorptive directional control.
@@thunderpooch That's exactly what Dr. Geddes is achieving with his hyperbolic flare and reticulated foam damping, but with little reduction in sensitivity. Taken too far, what you propose would defeat the entire purpose of a horn/waveguide, which is to increase sensitivity and responsiveness by focusing energy propagation. Limiting dispersion by absorbing rather than focusing energy seems counterproductive to me.
@@naturalverities well, I'm not worried about efficiency. I'm "worried" about controlled directivity and the waveguide/horn adding coloration.
The Geddes models are still horns made of a hard reflective surface and then stuffed with foam. I'd like to see measurements of "horns" made out of foam.
horns can do things dynamic drivers simply cant do
with horn loaded bass you get very fast bass response even outdoors, that is why they are used in concerts on long distance coverage. Using bass reflex you just loose everything (response, output, outdoor capabilitiy)
It ain't just about getting loud (not that there's anything wrong with that, of course!). It's mostly about low distortion, controlled dispersion and yes, dynamics of the macro and micro varieties. Horns excel in all these areas. I just got a pair of Klipsch Cornwalls and they sound absolutely amazing. But to each, his or her own, of course.
PAUL , I'll put my Lascala II speakers up against your new speaker any day of the week
Wouldn't you first actually have to hear both to make such a claim?
@@davidfairchild1640 , yeah, that was kinda dum
Sound taste is personal. I would probably like the new speakers of PS audio better.
@@oysteinsoreide4323 , as will _a l m o s t_ everyone
confidence in what you believe in and own.
I would put my Altec based horn systems up against any speaker in the world.
What's the worst that could happen, I would get to hear a lot of over priced, over hyped speakers that the herds of music lovers believe is better than sliced bread !
To each his own, the truth is it's just a numbers game for speaker manufacturers.
The WAF is the largest driver in speaker design, she has to say what can come in her home.
Men usually get the smallest area of the house for their hobby, so no big speakers.
I have vintage Bozaks that sound wonderful but my horns are the most accurate true sounding speaker.
It all depends on the size and weight when it comes to horns. Some years ago where I worked we had a cinema equipped with an old Gaumont British double horn assembly.It was typical of what cinemas used before Dolby arrived. The thing when assembled was about 9 feet high and weighed around half a ton. It was similar to the much more common large Lansing "voice of the theatre" A2 unit. The cinema was often used for testing high end modern speakers. The interesting point is the GB unit ALWAYS sounded far better than anything else, despite it being 70 or more years old!! It was fatal to power on the cinema GB unit when the aim was trying to "sell" the new designs to prospective users!!! On several occasions when that happenned, the comments were always "Why don't the new speakers sound as good as that??", so it was forbidden to play sound through the GB unit when trying to sell new kit. I managed to save the GB unit when the cinema was being demolished. Regards, David Hine
I know they’re not practical but big giant horn loudspeakers to look incredible 😀
Yeah there is quite a bit of outdated bias regarding well designed, modern horn loaded systems here. I run a Klipsch Jubilee with TAD drivers biamped with a Xilica XP4080 DSP. It is nicely calibrated to my room and it is sublime. It is my endgame.
Dave Micolichek - Yes, I am lazy and the anti-horn bias is overwhelming
One thing I like about horns, and why I ended up choosing Avantgarde is the ability to get the sound out of the speaker. If done right, horn loaded speakers can present an image up close like nothing else and they are incredibly immersive. This creates a massively positive listening experience for me. I have had Wilson (still do), Sonus Faber, Dynaudio and other things, and one thing I learned from all my years working live pro audio, was that I want sound that engages with me. I always say that I need a speaker that makes me want to dance. Can my Wilson's do some things in terms of resolution that my Avantgarde can't? Yes, but they don't present the music with the same level of enthusiasm, and they can't project the sound out and away from the speakers in the same way.
Those horns are just "happy" and it's wonderful. There's more to good audio and the listening experience than just precision.
I have a folded horn bass speaker and it great sounding, the real reason is the money cheaper speakers don’t need high end equipment according to greed, but the most expensive speakers most likely are loaded with horns.
The right Klipsch speakers, paired with the right subs, and a good tube amp, can’t be beat.
Great explanation of why horn speakers are not more common. Like you say for lower base frequencies the cabinets get rather large. I believe horn speakers do have one other nice feature, besides high efficiency, they offer the possibility of good control of the cone movement by amplifying all frequencies more or less equally by virtue of their curved walls. My understanding is that each frequencies pressure wave gets the inverse reflected wave occurring at a different point along the horn (shorter distance for higher frequencies) such that all frequencies tend to get similar horn effect. I think UNO do a good job of designing true horn speakers.
I've never heard them, but they certainly LOOK more impressive.
One issue with horns is that the horn tends to be more efficient that the woofer so that at say a low SPL (sound pressure level) they are equal but as you increase the volume at some point many horns seem to be putting out a higher SPL than the woofer which is why the best horn speakers also have a folded horn loaded woofer and a huge cabinet so the bass driver can keep up with the horn . Another issue is the smaller horn speakers do not produce much low bass so you end up needing a sub-woofer to compensate .
I have two systems in my house both are anchored by Klipsch Cornwalls and Hersey. I love both and so does my wife.
I love horn speakers I have the JBL4367 speakers and the sound fantastic
I think it's like eating, not everyone likes the same thing.
i recently finished diy speakers, it's a three way speaker with a big midrange horn.
I didn't have a horn speaker before, but they don't sound extremely horn-like to me. But they are very efficient.
I like them.
Seems like the Klipsch Cornwall IV is getting some very good reviews. Any thoughts on that particular horn speaker?
That's kinda like asking Ford what their favorite Chevrolet is.
Got'em...Love'm!
There are fantastic. And the entire Heritage Line will hold their value quite well - check the Audiogon listings
One of the biggest drawbacks is horn coloration. Klipsch for example are even beginning to put some type of rubberized coating inside their horn waveguide to reduce this coloration.
please provide the source for this
If I understand correctly, horns do have the additional advantage of having greater effective radiating area reducing intermodulation (and other types of - though this is more implementation specific) distortion for a given sound level. In this way they are similar to many planar speakers and also "accordion" driver's which are enjoying a return to popularity. (Does this is have anything to do with patent expirations or perhaps improved material science?) Horns, I believe, also offer options for adjusting directivity. Thanks again, Paul!
I am pretty shure it's about patent's , all the major players in making great sounding horns have so many
patents that it's nearly impossible to manufacture a great horn for comercial sale.
Lot's of DIY projects is out there and all agree that it's nearly impossible to source down the theory and maths
that was used in those great designs.
Even those design today is extremely rarely used in any manufacturing ( extreme highend niche ) those
companies who originally made those they hang on their patents as if it was at higher level than military grade technology and you wont be able to use them , if you are so lucky to do , well then it be very very
expensive for a little niche production.
SO as I see this - YES it IS because of patents that horns is so limited around.
And the fact that loudspeaker manufacturers they ' follow the trend '' when making thir products.
I can understand someone liking a horn speaker. It is very dynamic and things like horns and drums have great impact. A very lively sound. To my ears, there are several shortcomings from most horn speakers, notably that they sound kind of blaring and in your face and, despite many claiming otherwise, I find them to be poor at imaging & creating a deep/wide soundstage. Also hard to properly match with a subwoofer to have a well defined, deep bass. I have heard a couple of very expensive horn (>$20,000) speakers which were more pleasing to my ears, albeit in short listening sessions. I am in the camp which Paul describes as just not liking the sound of horn speakers.
I have some horns. They really help with hearing loss. One pair disappear and have sound from everywhere. Others are quite directional. Big drivers get more mids and the smallest ones can be a bit sharp. I a/b them against the magnepans and it is very hard to pick favourites
You answered the question with just your hands and mouth, yes it was louder with your hands creating the megaphone but as you say the sound is altered, colored and your voice is much more pleasant when you spoke without your hands as a amplifier. Oswalds Mills Audio, need a Lottery winner to afford their line of merchandise.
In the early 1970s, I had the opportunity of professionally visiting an English speaker company in Bromely Kent called Lowther and meeting the owner. They had horn speakers that were absolutely stunning - a very memorable experience. I believe they stated they had produced drive units holding the record for greatest efficiency. I seem to recall (memory fading), 55% and was allegedly 10% greater than the theoretical maximum? They supplied cathedrals and theatres demonstrating full volume fidelity in these vast arenas with just 1.5 Watts. Incidentally, they were a very friendly and inviting company - just like PS Audio :) Lowther Museum: www.lowthervoigtmuseum.org.uk/index.html
And, Company today: lowtherloudspeakers.com
Cartridge paper speakers. (Treated). I once listened to a pair of these in a pair of big wooden boxes and wow, they were indeed something special. Then I was told of the time it takes to run them in (hundreds of hours to tame a midrange bias) and I realised ownership takes a particular kind of dedicated listener. Must be one of the oldest speaker companies in the world, incredible experience.
Beamer, i too have always loved the "sound" of Lowther speakers. I used to have a pair of Lowther 108 aucustas and now have a pair of Bicor 200. Iv'e listened to a variety of other maker's speaker systems, they sound nice, but when i go back to my Lowthers, to me, they are the best. Incidently, Lowthers, the company, has been sold and moved upcountry. The new owners are committed to keeping up the high standards of Lowther.
@@ozosman3234 Great to hear from a real Lowther devotee. Some people say, "Why be concerned about Watts, we can throw 100s of them at inefficient, but superbly sounding speakers today" and that's true. I say it's like riding a bike instead of a car - you experience much more local detail per Watt and you can buy/make a really good, perhaps class A, 5 Watt amp - the size of a shoebox. Our modern world needs to be all about efficiency, and there's something really aesthetically pleasing about Lowther. And Paul, I haven't forgotten how excellent PS Audio products are too :)
They've got a reputation as shit-kicking rock & roll speakers. Not so much neutral audiophile speakers.They seem to be lively with lots of slam. Steve Guttenberg and others go on at great length about the Klipsch Heresy and some JBLs.
Everyone has different taste. Paul has different take on horn speakers than Steve. But that's fair. We must accept that people have different opinions. And steve has a totally different background.
@@oysteinsoreide4323 Am I not accepting that people have different opinions?
Here's Your Horns!!!
Danley Sound Labs Jericho Horn playing Jennifer Warnes track
ruclips.net/video/pk54IFD4znw/видео.html
@@fookingsog Haha Love it!
Its the ability of speakers to convey emotion, as well as dynamics, clarity and frequency response. Unfortunately you can't measure that like the others. Some horn speakers reveal the emotion of performances better than other speakers. But to each his own. A niggle though. Why would someone buy an amp so overpowered that no speakers would ever use it all?
3:02 Which speaker company uses a compression driver without an accompanying horn?
last year i attended Capitol AudioFest. there i heard a horn speaker from Avantgarde. i liked it *a LOT*
Forget Klipsch or anything else. Okay here we go there is a company that make the very best horn speakers in the world. Not only that their original drivers, from the 60's, fetch ridiculous money from Australia to Zimbabwe and all the letters in between. That company is Tannoy and what I dislike about Paul is he only tells a minuscule part of the truth.
I knew a guy in the ‘80 with a PA that had Community bass horns. They were about 6’x6’x6’ enormous. And very loud
Klipsch would disagree.
I was waiting for him to bring up Klipsch...
Horn loaded tweeter vs. horn loaded mid/bass drive which is what he was talking about in the video. Personally I think if you A/B test Klipsch with a comparable non-horn loaded tweeter, the traditional tweeter will sound more natural 9/10. But that's just my take. Obviously there are a lot of Klipsch fans out there.
Not just Klipsch. The JBL M2 monitor has an outstanding reputation, and horns appear in many ultra high-end systems.
They're also used in most live-sound reinforcement speakers, but that's mostly an efficiency consideration for filling very large venues.
@@marianneoelund2940 it also comes down to personal sound signature preference. Different strokes for different folks 🔊
Just not a fan of horns. Much prefer AMTs or domes. However, many folks do like them, and I'd never begrudge them that. Love whatever sounds best to you.
'why aren't there more horns speakers?' off the top of my head...because people are ignorant, dumb and easily influenced by crappy salesmen. Horns are more difficult and expensive to produce, they actually require engineering rather than just talking shit. PS audio sells very powerful amp so it's totally against their marketing goals to promote hi eff horns. Personally I was totally unaware off the beauty of the horn sound until I tried them, never been back to boxy sounding regular speakers since.
The reason you don't see them for " mainstream consumers" is because to do it correctly they're BIG.
BUT, when done correctly, there's nothing better imho
poserwannabe Klipsch makes great consumer and professional quality horn speakers of ALL sizes. Do some homework. Other companies too.
@@jzizmor fyi, I've been in the audio industry 45+ yrs, I'm a pro installer and company owner, with that said, I'm not talking about normal consumer shit, I said that in the post, peace
They are big and they are more complicated to build and design. Unlike a plain box with drivers.
They aren’t that big. Look at heresy
@@faludabutt8253 yeah well when earbuds are the norm ..😂🤣
True. Horns are quite shrill at certain volumes
Depends on the amp
Yeah there is quite a bit of outdated bias regarding well designed, modern horn loaded systems here. I run a Klipsch Jubilee with TAD drivers biamped with a Xilica XP4080 DSP. It is nicely calibrated to my room and it is sublime.
Have you ever heard Fraziers ? !
I luv horns thats why I currently own 2 pairs of klipsch as well as kefs an boston acoustics they all have there good an bad points
So what are your thoughts on the Klipsch Lascala? I finally had the opportunity to listen to these speakers and while I feel they may not be the "best" speaker out there listening to them definitely seems to add a feeling or emotion to the music.
Yeah there is quite a bit of outdated bias regarding well designed, modern horn loaded systems here. I run a Klipsch Jubilee with TAD drivers biamped with a Xilica XP4080 DSP. It is nicely calibrated to my room and it is sublime. It is my endgame.
Ray Cimbalnik: Years I ago at an AES convention in Los Angeles, I saw a Belle Klipsch(this was named after Paul's wife) in polished cherry wood. The La Scala was just painted black plywood, which costed way less because of the huge amount of handwork required in the finishing of a Belle Klipsh. I was blown away by the sound. I also met the man, Paul W. Klipsch, he gave me one of his yellow buttons with the word "bullshit" on it.
BTW the Klipsch horn-loaded super tweeter is an Electro-Voice T35. EV would send Klipsch some 35s, and they would check the freq response and cherry pick the best, and send the rest back to EV.
@@ronaldlee3537 super cool!
There are very modern horns with very sophisticated electronics: active conventional bass (can be adapted to the room acoustics) and passive horns for highs and mids also adaptable to the room. And these lsp are audiophile, I am talking about the german Avantgarde acoustic.....
Hi Paul, In your closing statements, you mentioned Wilson being a not so efficient speaker like they were ago. Why don't speaker companies design something killer out of the box and then leave well enough alone? Like JBL and their 100's. They worked wonderfully 30 years ago and they still do today, so why mess with the recipe? I keep hearing about how great so-n-so's was, but not today. I once was honoured to own a set of DQ-10's and I so wish I had them back.
They're superior in many ways.
Avoiding lossy I(squared)R losses is significant.
The reason there aren't that many is simple; size ... impacting manufacturing, consumer appeal, shipping etc.
Everything in loudspeaker design is a compromise... regardless of price.
the word compromise is not usable in hifi, because horns is a compromise in sound quality, as is ported speaker. you confuse ignorant people that now thinks that anything sounds good its just differences between things.
the calories of hifi world, meaningless generalizations words that confuses people.
@@sudd3660
Certainly didn't intend to confuse you or anyone, however the word "compromise" is indeed perfectly usable and accurate relative to loudspeaker design.
Individuals involved in such work are well aware of this.
You would only need 2 watts or so, but I make one with twelve hundred watts. Imagine 1200 watts into a horn. A trip to emergency is in order
If you have limited budget and space with low sound pressure demand, the dome tweeter is the way to go.
When high sound pressure is needed, the 10x more efficient compression drivers have to be used.
For decent sound quality with high sound pressure you need a very high quality horn loaded compression driver, which is more expensive, bigger and much heavier than a cheap tweeter.
HiFi manufacturers tend to spare money where possible besides no high SPL is needed and size matters. Their answer is the cheaper tweeter, which provides great sound quality for their price.
Klipsch has joined the chat
@Dave Micolichek , hiding in the corner
@@googoo-gjoob good one! hahahahaha
Everytime I look at the comments someone says the exact opposite of what is said in the video. I don't know what to think after watching most of your videos...
Would still give my right arm for a pair of Altec Nineteen's...
My 19s are the best speakers I have ever owned. The woofers are not horn loaded.
Everyone would. You could ask just about whatever you wanted for a set on Audiogon. Which tells you something. 👀
I went to go check out some paradigm monitors on Craig’s list. At this audiophiles house in the garage he owned a ton of speakers/ vintage receivers as well as modern every model you name it. To the point I thought he was a little crazy. Even though my wife thinks I own to many speakers and amps.
But I asked him if all of this stuff is for sale witch most of it was high end. What system do you have in your house. And he said Cornwall’s and heresy hooked to a Sansui au 919
He said out of all the gear he has tested it’s very hard to beat that sound. Haha I own a pair of heresy and I agree.
With the right amp it’s hard to compete
Paul I normally agree to most of what you say. But I have JBL Synthesis speakers and Come here and make your point
I'll comment on the why we don't have horns. Cost. Plain and simple. I design loudspeakers for a living. The raw cabinetry cost on a standard loudspeaker is shockingly low. A properly designed horn with a Tractrix or better yet a LeCleach horn profile takes money to do right. Second problem is that there are to few people that truly understand how to design them. Third problem is size. There is no getting around the size issue. A horn subwoofer is large. Refrigerator sized. But as for can they sound good? Well under the right designer, and builder they can be as distortion free as anything that is available. They can throw a beautiful soundstage. And they can provide dynamics on the few recordings that demand that kind of reproduction that are jaw dropping. By the way, I have been designing horns in many forms since 1993. Presented many in audio gatherings and busted quite a few myths in the process. Enjoyed every minute of it!
Mark
Harman has the most advanced research facility in the world and all of their flagship speakers use horns for both home and professional audio. Plus there is Klipsch, famous for making the best Rock n Roll speakers of all. It will be nice if Paul released measurement curves to sustain his claims. I guess my problem is that if he said I’m a salesman and I like this, then fine but he always talks like he was a Dr. in Audio Engineering and that is not cool.
Yeah there is quite a bit of outdated bias regarding well designed, modern horn loaded systems here. I run a Klipsch Jubilee with TAD drivers biamped with a Xilica XP4080 DSP. It is nicely calibrated to my room and it is sublime. It is my endgame.
Peter Southern Boy very nice setup you got. I want to get a pair of JBL horns for my system
Opinions are like assholes, everybody has one as the saying goes. For many, many people the psycho acoustic response to horns is a very enjoyable experience. Dynamics. Let’s face it, horn speakers are just a pain in the ass to make measure decently AND sound good. Not a coincidence that the companies that manufacture horns have been around for many years. They know all the tricks.
Using horn loaded tweeter/midrange is a very complicated when it comes to crossover design and waveguide..if it is not in the right tune either it will be irritating or it will be a rubbish but if you got it right you will be happy ☺️
Horn speakers are quite literally everywhere in PA systems.
Is it a case of the air being more efficiently coupled between the driver and the mouth of the horn and, the width of the mouth being wide enough to not cause diffraction of waves until wavelength exceeds the width of the mouth. I’m guessing that the wave front remains flat as it exits the horn and is mostly directed at the listening position. Lower frequencies would have a more spherical wavefront. The containment of the pressure wave in a flaring horn would increase the mass of moving air particles directed at the listening position and make the energy do more work at the listening position. There may even be fewer room interactions with less diffraction and greater directivity.
I guess the downside would be size.
It’d be cool to combine horn treble and midrange with a transmission line for bass frequencies. I wonder if anyone has done it?
I designed and built a nice pair of transmission lines using 5 1/4" Focal woofers and they don't roll off until below 40 hz. They are down about 6db at 30 hz. I never thought of using a horn tweeter with them but it might work if you can work the cross-over to get a reasonable efficiency match. Might have to experiment with this idea.
In part it's due to size constraints. Yes, homes are larger on average than the historical norm but that doesn't mean any individual space is large enough for a fully horn loaded set up. Bass horns are freaking huge! And good mid horns aren't exactly petite, either. Now, another consideration is that it's difficult to get horns right. Many people have heard bad horns and written them off without ever trying them again. Others simply grew up hearing the zombie mantra "horns bad". But if you were to put a pair of Avantgarde Duos or Trios along with a full set of their bass horns in the correct environment (meaning, in part, a very large room) and behind an acoustically transparent screen so the horn haters couldn't see what was playing they would fall all over themselves to know where they could buy that slice of sonic heaven. Properly set up high end JBL's, the big Heritage line Klipsch's as well as various off-shoots such as those from Volti would blow them away as well. But they all require space and careful setup. Heck, when Magico set out to design their ultimate speaker years ago they built a horn loaded design. When done correctly horn designs really can't be matched for realism and dynamics. I've heard a few non-horn systems that do one or the other as well but not both. Of course, we can get close enough using dynamic drivers that most people, most of the time won't care about that missing ten percent and they can still walk through their living room due to the space savings.
I have an awesome vintage 10 cell horn speaker set up with a dual driver neck. I'm selling in Ebay that ends tomorrow night. It's too big for me but would love to see what someone is going to do with it.
I play a lot of rock so when my tweeters went a few years back I got horns, they seem to last longer and thought the sound was great. But then I got a stereo system for my bedroom the speakers have 1inch silk dome tweeters. I must say they proved me wrong. They are absolutely beautiful. And a quality sound I didn't hear before. I think it my be because of the amp?
The problem in live sound is pattern control. Direct radiating drivers just don’t produce a tight enough beam to keep the sound off the walls.
No where in audio will you get a quicker debate than about speakers. Paul is in love with those infinity's sound. I personally can't stand them. First high end speaker I ever owned were Infinity Quantum series, do't recall what the names but they were floor standers. Sounded dead and would blow tweeters at least once a week. It's been all about Klipschorns ever since.
Dear Paul, I love your videos, but respectfuly i have to say thst the new horn is not my father’s horn. Have you listened to Klipsch RP-600m?
Someday I'll build myself some hornspeakers
i have done it as my covid project. it is a full horn and i love it a lot
If we ask ourselves why or how a transducer efficiency must be optimized to achieve proper horn designs, we should also consider why or how our inner ears must also be optimized to "enable" proper mid & outer ear designs. Anything between transducers and eardrums are coupling elements. Any change intended, involves bending the laws of physics (or someone’s arm)?
Maybe you should be asking yourself “why is your ear canal shaped like a horn” ?
Are there environments where horn speakers can be used best?
Pro audio and movie theater speakers are usually horn tweeter speakers.
Horn speakers are not perfect but what kind is ? The main difference I hear is the effort less dynamic range and the detail at low listening levels which moving coil drivers lack even the most expensive seem only to have a certain happy sound level range I am old and noticed this when movie theaters changed to "normal" speaker systems a lot of the magic went
There will NEVER be concensus between horn and direct radiator speakers. The issue is NOT coloration. It is the issue of playback environment. The more difficult the room, the BETTER that restricted dispersion will perform. As most domestic environments are NOT optimal, there are very compelling arguments for horns and waveguides. There are no issues with tonality and precision IF the speaker developer has decent chops. Heck, even the PS Audio Aspen series has waveguides (albeit small ones).
Finally some real talk on horns. So much Hype on horns these days. Then I listen to them and I'm like... yep nothing has changed. Good party and rock n roll speakers though.
It is very simple , most people do in fact have small rooms .
yes i know tendency say people buy homes bigger and bigger but if you not live in the US
then you will realice that the price of homes is high and wages is low , especially in Asia .
Thus peoples homes is small .
I live in philippines and the average '' philippino style '' is quite small .
Also look at homes of average people in Europe , Japan , ect ect ...
There is many more people with small homes so of course the market goes towards those.
Producing big speakers gets more expensive because not so many is going to buy them .
And as we know horn speakers is the biggest and thus the least amount of people will buy
such ones .
Also another factor ( thats mostly for married couples ) most wife's do not want big
systems in their living room ect . ( and not everybody have the privilege of a dedicated listen room )
It is clearly based on demand .
Market is about money and profit and if the interest was there for those speakers then you
can be shure there would be much more producing them .
As it is now it is a relative small amount of people who have space / want big speakers
what ever it is horn or not , so market dictate that they focus on smaller speakers .
( Not to mention all those terrible ' Bluetoot soundbars " and ' usb / BT Boomboxes '
that dominate a lot of the lower end market removing focus from traditional
low price hifi systems . )
Sadly the market also decrease for serious HiFi as all those smart
digital devices dominate all the shops more and more .
Most people today do really not know how real quality audio sound like .
They are streaming
( as we all know thats compressed and even those claiming to be HD audio
ect , they still store the music in a standard format and when you streaming
they upscale the format you downloading so in reality you still only get
standard compressed sound . )
Combine this with their use of smartphones and all those digital Bluetooth
devices / equipment /wireless speakers ect ect .
Then you see the picture why big speakers and especially those big horn
speakers is not so much on the market anymore .
The market is flooded with those low quality devices and sadly more and
more dedicated HiFi shops is closing as the majority of people they just buy online ....
There was a time where walking into a dedicated HiFi or musicians shop
( guitar store ) wasn't a problem .
Today there is less and less of them .
( more and more just buy online )
This have the biggest disadvantage ever seen .
You can almost no longer Listen to equipment before you buy it .
Also as a guitar player I wuld NEVER buy an electric guitar without trying it first .
There is very few guitar stores left and often you have to travel far to get there .
Yes this is BECAUSE OF INTERNET SHOPS ... Online sales ..
Personally I will never buy any of such without listen to / try it out first .
By buying online you have NO guaranty that you will get what you wanted .
But for buy those cheap ' soundbars ' and other ' plastic ' low quality stuff it
make sense simply because the quality is as cheap as it is and look .
For shure that ' market ' have spoiled what people like me grow up with .
So No we wont see more big horn speakers produced .
Only a few and the rest will be second hand from the ' forgotten ' time of good quality .
----- Sadly we is moving from getting higher quality ----
/ / down to / /
----- produce more and more cheap junk in less and less quality
to gain as much profit as possible ... ------
Sad but true and it is not just in Audio industry , it is in everything from food to ....
( Yes everything )
Edit --
I forgot to mention that another important factor of the industry's ' choice '
of equipment to produce more and more going towards devices that can
not be repaired so if / when it break then you have to buy new stuff ,
is for shure increasing more and more .
There simply is not the same amount of ' profit ' in making those quality
products that can last year after year and ......
Oh can be repaired too ...
So cheap ' plastic boom box / soundbar ' market is growing .
Not to mention speakers ( sonos ) where they function wireless and
oups they can with a simple firmware upgrade just choose that your device
no longer function .
( That never happen Right ? - sarcasm - )
I think Paul has lost it...RIP!
What is the difference between old-fashioned horns and the expensive new ones that look like mutant flowers?
Answer...get hold of a pair of Klipsch Cornwall 4 and run that 1200 watts through them.
But do it on a cricket pitch,!!!
Have to disagree with you horns can sound fantastic especially if they're made of fibreglass.
Not about efficiency necessarily it's about the speed of the driver nothing's fast not even electrostatic or magma plane
Paul’s comment on horns inability to create great bass verify’s he’s not heard the wonderful Bela Fleck and the Flecktones “Flight Of The Cosmic Hippo” on a pair of Klipsch Corner Horns. To each their own pleasure and opinion of course, but jeepers creepers that statement is more than a bit out there brother. I enjoy your vids but when a professional bass player told me my Corner Horns produce the most accurate bass he’s heard in a home environment I might disagree with this one... Ciao.
I agree.
Countless horns sound awful but well designed ones don't have a "horn" sound. Horns are largely used just for directivity control. Take a listen the JBL M2. I've gotten rid of all tweeters in my room for a few years and never want to go back. Now, whenever I hear a system with a tweeter, it just sticks out too much. Many audiophiles love that airy sound but it's not neutral.
That's exactly my impression!
I've had 3" titanium driver with 500Hz exponential horn which was ruler flat between 600-16000Hz. Great sounding with no horn sound to it, very natural.
I've decided to upgrade to a dedicated fast midrange and best beryllium tweeter on the market. Now I'm stuck with a non-harmonic sound... It is lacking so many things that are not visible in the basic measurements...
I love my JBL M2s! They are phenomenal speakers without a hint of honk from horns of yesteryear. They provide the most realistic live experience I’ve ever heard and I go to high end stereo stores all the time to experience other, far more expensive, speakers.
@@CobraChamp my old speakers are prototypes which were refereed to as the "M2 Killer" by the designer. Very similar but with a different concept horn and 3-way. Another phenomenal system is the Meyer Bluehorn ($55,000 per speaker) but that one does have some horn resonances which I didn't like. I think it may have something to do with the material they use or they need to dampen the horn
horn speakers are no good says the amplifier builder
Very good. That fact explains Paul's bias, and uneducated opinion.
Yeah there is quite a bit of outdated bias regarding well designed, modern horn loaded systems here. I run a Klipsch Jubilee with TAD drivers biamped with a Xilica XP4080 DSP. It is nicely calibrated to my room and it is sublime. It is my endgame.
lol
Many You Tubers have identified Klipsch and other quality horn speakers. Klipsch has been around since 1940s. Have you ever listened to any present day horn speakers?
It's called prejudice.
Obviously he hasn't. He is still living in the past.
Dan B of course he has. You have horn in almost every PA speaker that exists.
Yeah there is quite a bit of outdated bias regarding well designed, modern horn loaded systems here. I run a Klipsch Jubilee with TAD drivers biamped with a Xilica XP4080 DSP. It is nicely calibrated to my room and it is sublime. It is my endgame.
Efficiency comes by trading of bass . That’s why big cabinets for horns speakers to compensate that. Even bass drivers In most horns speaks doesn’t have actual woofer surrounds. On longer usage ears going to damage significantly. Because we crave for bass and listen at higher volumes.
add subwoofer(s) for those low freqs below 50hz or so
The Teufel Rockster has Horn Speakers, it is "portable" even.
Horns are problematic. Generally they are only deployed on tweeters, The reason is that a large driver area can more easily transfer energy into a mass of air as there is more mass of air in contact with the diaphragm (cone), so horns are not required on bass drivers. However, the large diaphragm cannot produce high frequencies accurately party because it's mass and partly because it is larger than the sound wave length. So, you need a small area to produce accurate high frequencies. The problem here is that you can't transfer high energy to a small mass of air, so the tweeter is not as efficient. Enter the compression driver. Placing the tweeter on a compression horn, where the throat is constricted, increases acoustic impedance of the compression chamber, so more energy can be transferred into the small mass of air, making the tweeter more efficient. The horn then controls the wave front exiting. However, this restricts the dispersion pattern of the tweeter to a narrower angle while the bass driver has a dispersion wide angle. Most PA speakers employ this solution. The effect is that the on axis sound has a fairly even frequency response however, the wide off axis sound is pretty well entirely bass. In a large venue or particularly outdoors, the excess bass usually disperses pretty well and is not too much of a problem provided the speaker is not placed near a hard surface.
What happens when it is placed near a surface is that some of the excess bass is reflected into the audience area making the sound there very bass heavy. Enter EQ usually through DSP these days to correct this. This may be OK in a fixed system where you have the time to EQ for the room and the equipment to to that. However in a mobile gigging scenario, you don't have much any control and venues are often poor acoustically. You may have DSP and can do sweep and adjust in favor of just one location but it's not going to be averaged out everywhere. For this reason, gigging system priorities are mostly about setup efficiency, light weight portable, easy and fast to plug everything together. Sound quality is pretty much a non consideration. In this scenario, speakers tend to be made for versatility, so you get just one speaker model that can be deployed as either a main of a stage wedge monitor, but this is a complete disaster acoustically because the speaker with an even on axis spectrum response and wide bass dispersion is now sitting on the floor (stage). This massively exaggerates the stage bass. The performers will be unaware of this as their ears are on axis while the bass bounce off the floor is coming past them below waist level and directed at the back of the stage area. In most gigging venues the stag area is an afterthought with no acoustic treatment whatsoever. So now you have an enormous amount of out of phase bass reflected out to the house from the rear of the stage and ceiling. To make things much worse, the stage may even be in a corner and the reflected Bass is from the junction of 3 surfaces, each adding another 3dB of out of phase bass. The upshot of all this is that the house sound is now excessively bass heavy and muddy. In terms of EQ, you might offset the stage monitor spectrum to attenuate this excess bass from polluting the house sound but that makes the performers spectrum tinny and metalic, or you may off set the house spectrum but the remaining bass is out of phase and if you adjust the house volume during performance, this also upsets the house spectrum. This is one of several reason why most PAs sound so gosh awful. A solution is to use in ear monitors but these tend to be considerably more expensive than stage monitors. Another issue with horns is that, unless they are round, as the frequency increases, the dispersion response becomes multi lobed, meaning you get a broken up pattern of SPL across the dispersion area. The desire for compact speakers means that horns tend to be any other shape but round in order to fit in a small box. The upshot is that horns can be a real disaster for sound quality.
As a general principle, for drivers without horns, as the frequency increases, the dispersion pattern narrows. So, at crossover frequency, upon transferring power to the next driver, the dispersion becomes wide again, then gradually narrows as the frequency increases further. In that way the spectrum across all dispersion angles is much more evened out than with a horn tweeter but it will require more efficiency, power surface area etc.
Wow thank you
Think its because horn excel on rock and roll genre. Its just too fatiguing to me. Im starting to appreciate a more smooth sound.
So you have never really owned a nice pair of horned speakers, because that is the statement of inexperience.