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     If there is one thing that I have learned in life, and heard many times,  is that making a mistake is not a bad thing if you learn from it. In addition the lesson learned is just as valuable if you learned it from someone elses mistakes.  And the beauty of learning from someone elses mistakes is that you didn't have to put any work into making that mistake. That is why I am asking these questions on this website. 

    I realize that making these horns is going to consume a lot of time and materials.  I already know what I want, a 4-way horn loaded active XO system.  I know were I want my crossover points to be (2-3 octaves each horn).  I know that bass horns should be hyperbolic or exponential, midbass tractrix, midrange tractrix, tweeters exponential. I'm aware of the problems with the physical arrangement of horns and time alignment and therefore are going to use DSP. The mistake I did not want to make was picking the wrong dimensions for the midbass horn.  

      According to John Inlow his 4-sided 19" diameter horn he states "Drum snaps are crisp, but slap bass guitar is especially striking. There's an accentuation, a thrust if you will. I couldn't wipe the grin of my face if I tried. Effects like lightening (hard to get a real slap of thunder in older recordings) are much more believable" 

     And according to Jorge in this thread his round 36" diameter horn he states "sounds better, more lively and effortless, the system with the 140 hz is still fantastic and still alive but size does matter, and where you will really notice the differences will be when you play a big orchestra and get better definition of instruments in that range" 

    Well that brings up a red flag.  Both horns get great reviews from their builders and yet one is 1/2 the size of the other.  This is were I started this thread. 

     Romy has weight in with 36" diameter also, which seems reasonable because it is in the neighborhood of one wavelength in circumference at cut-off frequency.  I am now happy that I will not make that mistake.  Lets now talk midrange horn for a moment.  I am going to follow the JBL 2446 tractrix midrange with a EV T350 (1" compression driver) at about 4-5K XO what do you generally advocate the midrange mouth diameter to be?

Rerurn to Romy the Cat's Site