GoodSoundClub - Romy the Cat's Audio Site

In the Forum: Horn-Loaded Speakers
In the Thread: Macondo’s Midbass Project – the grown up time.

Post Subject: Official end of the midbass project…Posted by Romy the Cat on: 10/28/2010

I changed the new flash at my site to “Ok, the midbass horn project is successfully over. Over 3 months, over 400 posts, over 180 pictures… all publicly available…” The project started physically on July 16, 2010, ended on October 28, 2010. The preparation for the project took much longer - I would say that it was the last 8 years… The cost of materials in my rough estimate is around $5000. I will not disclose the cost of labor, it is a lot but frankly it is still lower then I initially expect.

During the project… The major fuckup was just one - the difficulties with accessing of the right size of back chamber. The major worry - the upper positioning of the midbass would too much localize the midbass direction. The major success – an existence of a properly made, 42Hz midbass horn that is in time-aligned but invisible and doesn’t ruin the room décor. The major discovery - if horn has no reflections then it linearizes driver impedance. The major coincidence – the efficiency of midbass horns driven by Milq’s bass channel is identical to the Macondo’s MF reference efficiency. The major funny story – me telling to a person who inquired what I was building, informing him the I am building a “God’s Voice machine”

Now is the most interesting question: was it worth it? I do not know. I pretty much wasted a summer on this project but from another point of view EVERYTHING that we do is waste of time in one way of another. This midbass horn is something that I wanted, so I got it and I guess it made it worth and valuable to me.

Would I do it again? I do not know. I did it because THIS listening room did inspire me to have this THIS type of horn. If I move out of this room then I would need to get another inspiration. I am thankful that I did this project in my mid 40s it would be much more difficult for me to do it in 10 or 20 years…

I kept the whole project open and available for public, sharing my success and failures, blinders and brilliance, stupidity and cleverness. If nothing else, then I feel that my project extends knowledge base about midbass horns and create opportunity for the installations of others to sound better. So, in the way the torch of the horn-loading idea is still lit and now is passed to whoever have interest in it.

The Cat

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