GoodSoundClub - Romy the Cat's Audio Site

In the Forum: Horn-Loaded Speakers
In the Thread: Another time aligned 5-way horn project

Post Subject: Once you find it, stick to the path...Posted by anthony on: 8/17/2015

Putting together a speaker system that ticks all your boxes is a lot like doing anything else well: it is fine to experiment in order to find your range and learn your options but once you choose a path you must stick to it. Chopping and changing is not going to get you a good system, but once something takes your fancy then it is time to build a system around that. This may be the midrange or the bass or the tweeter or something else, but it will be something. Then you will be able to revisit a lot of your past decisions and equipment and ideas because you made judgements based on the context "at the time", and not under the new context of your playback.

For example the ET-703 may not have worked for you for any number of reasons that have little to do with the driver itself. Look at Romy and the Vitavox S2 and how many iterations he has been through to get it performing just as he wants: he has tailored the nature of the amplification (from fullrange two stage SET to single stage DSET to DHT DSET); he has tailored how it is used (frequency range and horn profile and crossover points); he has tailored how the driver is mechanically tuned (diaphragm types and alignment and tuning for harmonics). Just plonking a pair of S2 or any other driver/horn/dac/etc. into a system and judging its worth on the immediate change in sound character is rarely going to deliver all the results that are possible because its performance is dependant on so many things other than itself. But if you manage to find something that "does it for you" then I think that it will be time to follow that path and try to get the rest of the system surrounding it to compliment and augment it. There are so many paths, each with their own technical and other shortcomings that one cannot try them all and eventually it will come down to picking something and making it work as best you can.

Your approach, however admirable, is a long one...think years and years before you are "there".

Rerurn to Romy the Cat's Site