[Kenneth Patchen]

Everything you wanted to know about horns and more ... over a 1000 pages. 




“this is THE book... I have seen snippets... discussed a few of the findings.. the level of research is deep and wide... the curation is incredible... and the layout is clean and easy to comprehend... yes, they are my friends, but seriously, if you care about high fidelity music reproduction, you will snag this book the instant it becomes available.. (Amazon or AES NYC)....


something like five hundred pages of history - like Bell Labs classified technical papers that have never been published... several hundred of theory - Bjorn is the king (no offense, Dunker).... and a couple hundred on application - something these Vikings are extremely good at... so yeah... a THOUSAND pages.... wanna be freaked out?  here is a link to the Table of Contents...
http://www.hornspeakersystems.info/images/pdf/TOC.pdf

http://hifiheroin.blogspot.com/2019/09/the-horn-loudspeaker-reference-book.html

[mresseguie]

Me thinks you are becoming interested in horns....no? 

Watching and waiting...

[JLM]

Horns can be the ultimate speakers, but IMO...

The horns themselves must be properly dampened to avoid vibrations that cause typical horn colorations due to high pressures.  Except for solid wood mid/treble horns it's extremely rare to find a properly dampened horn.

Bass horns (the kind that really reach say 30 Hz) are huge, like the size of a bedroom or garage.  Again proper damping would involve reinforced concrete construction (have seen a couple of examples over the years).  So fully glorified horns are extremely bulky and heavy and overwhelm any reasonably sized residential room.  A small auditorium is minimum needed. 

Even then the inevitable phase delay between bass and midrange/treble drivers can't be easily overcome.  So there is still no perfect speaker.

[Mike B.]

 If the horn is adding echo or hollowness to the sound it is a big fail for me. Not a easy thing to pull off from my many years of listening to systems.

[FullRangeMan]

It have something about the Frugal Horn or other dipole horn?

[Letitroll98]

I've enjoyed the horn systems I've heard and I really like the things they do well, but they all sounded like horns.  Some very nice sounding horns, very seductive sound, but nevertheless like horns.  I can see how people go nuts for them, I completely understand their attraction if that appeals to you, enjoy!

[richidoo]

Everything you wanted to know about horns and more ... over a 1000 pages. 

Hey that's cool! Thanks for posting this Kenneth! 
Looks like I found my Christmas present!
It's not listed for pre-purchase on amazon yet, but I'll check again on the release date.

[richidoo]

Structural resonance and internal reflections are famous horn problems, but they have been solved. Building horns that don't have these problems is not trivial because they are complex curve designs and not so easy to make from plywood. Rear loaded box horns and conical-based horn shapes have these problems and are the most common designs. But fast-expanding all complex-curved horns like LeCleach and JBL Image Control Waveguide don't have these problems at all.  Hopefully somewhere in the 1000 pages they will discuss these issues and the solutions.

[Kenneth Patchen]

Me thinks you are becoming interested in horns....no? 

Watching and waiting...

Well,  yes and no. I’ve been a dedicated headphone man having jettisoned my 2-channel system years ago. But I’m still intrigued by horns, why they work and don’t work and still enjoy reading about the history of horn design - horn guys are a bit nutty, imo - so I’m looking forward to the book which I’m hoping will give me vicarious thrills. I started with horns in the 70s, owned several pair but none stayed for long. I really, really tried to love them, tweaked them, dampened them, braced them, coupled them, uncoupled them, added resistors, removed resistors, moved them hither and yon but in the end they wore me down with listening fatigue. WAF was always a factor as well.

I’ve owned Heresys, Cornwalls and Fortes (and maybe liked the Fortes best), a pair of Louis Erath(!) LW1s(!) with a 5" ElectroVoiceT35 horn loaded tweeter, a few pair of Lowthers, etc. Couldn’t get them to work. Still, there’s something about horns and a SET amp that pitter-patters my heart.

At audio shows I always seek out the horn rooms first. Several years ago I walked into a room with the German Avantgarde Trio Classicos - in Red- and I started to have impure thoughts, got the fantods, had to put up my parasol and drink minted ice water while fanning myself with the program and saying things like “Land O’ Goshen it’s sure gotten warm in heah, mighty warm.” Works of art that cost almost as much as our house.

So yeah, even though we just Marie Kondo’d this place to hell and back, I might have to give horns another go ... i.e., after reading the Horn book.