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RE: Can It Be a Horn If It Doesn't Look Like One?

Posted by Larry I (A) on November 6, 2024 at 06:29:09

In Reply to: RE: Can It Be a Horn If It Doesn't Look Like One? posted by Bill Fitzmaurice on November 5, 2024 at 07:27:22:

Loading refers to the treatment of the air in front of or behind the speaker cone. It is very difficult for the cone to transfer energy to air because of the great difference in mass (think of how hard it is for you to throw a feather, the feather does not have enough mass to push back against your body so it is hard to transfer much energy to it. The way a speaker traps air in front of or behind the driver so that the mass is increased or the resistance increased through compression of the air, affects efficiency. The greater the resistance the more effective is the transfer of energy. The horn in front of the speaker acts to contain the air and improve such energy transfer. The same is true with the various approaches to the back wave. All speakers, except perhaps open baffle designs, harness that back wave energy and provide some resistance and control of the woofer movement.

Some speakers employ a long, gradually widening channel behind the woofer which is then ported to the outside, this back wave substantially adds to the speaker output. Such designs are often described as back loaded horns (e.g., "quarter wave back loaded horn") or some described as "transmission line").

For other people a horn means a speaker where one or more drivers has a wave guide in front that directs the propagation of the sound wave into a narrower beam than would be the case without the horn wave guide. To me, a horn wave guide does not make a speaker a horn system. I use that term for a system where the midrange has a horn wave guide, but also the driver is a compression driver. A compression driver utilizes a dome diaphragm pushing against air contained in a small chamber. Because the diaphragm has to work against higher resistance from the tramped air (it has to compress that air), energy transfer is much improved and the drivers tend to be very efficient. To me, the magic of horn-based system is mainly in the midrange compression driver and horn waveguide combination.

As far as sound characteristics, horn systems tend to be very vivid and lively sounding, though some tend toward being tonally colored (nasal or peaked at some point in the midrange). But, there are many systems that don't use midrange compression drivers that do sound like very good horn systems and have similar high efficiencies, such as some fullrange driver systems. For example, Charney Audio makes terrific sounding speakers using one fullrange driver that delivers most of its treble and midrange from a paper cone driver (no horn wave guide), but the back wave delivering most of the bass would be considered a quarter wave back loaded horn. Songer Audio makes systems using a field coil fullrange driver that reminds me of horn system and their speakers are also terrific.

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