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In the Forum: Horn-Loaded Speakers
In the Thread: Adding one more spherical to Macondo.
Post Subject: Crossing in the middlePosted by jessie.dazzle on: 9/27/2007
For anyone playing with S2s and horns, particularly if contemplating splitting the mid-range between two drivers/horns...
Jessie Dazzle wrote (in the context of the compressed recordings thread) :
"...Another thing that seems to make compressed recordings more tolerable...The other day I tried letting the 180Hz lower-mid horn do more, and the 400Hz upper-mid horn do less, by moving the crossover points up. I need to take time and listen to it more with a clear head. I don't yet know if it is better or worse when playing well-recorded music. I also have not measured the output. My motivation in trying this was to let the the upper-mid S2 concentrate only on the upper half of the mid-range..."
I've been listening for about one week now with the filters set so the hand off from lower-mid to upper-mid happens higher up (upper-mid S2 is high-passed at 4800Hz instead of 3200Hz), meaning the small 400Hz horn is doing only the upper "half" of the mid range. I left the 180Hz horn as it was (790-3200Hz).
I have been playing everything from content-loaded classical to "modern beat-driven music", to compressed pop, to some damn intense electronic***(ok ok, see note at end)...
I have not measured the output (too many other things to finish). I don't know exactly where the acoustic transition is happening, or if I am leaving a range uncovered. The point is, that the difference is such that I don't need to measure anything to be sure that this is better than when I had the upper-mid horn high-passed (electronically) lower down, at 3200Hz. I was most likely getting some overlap in the crossover region between the two horns (I don't attenuate the 180Hz "Fundamentals Channel", or any other channels).
So the 180Hz horn is currently handling two octaves (electronically), the 400Hz horn is also now handling only two octaves (electronically)... I like what I hear well enough to not ask these horns to do more than this. If measurement reveals an uncovered zone between the two, I would rather add another horn than to ask more of the existing horns...
jd*
***The off-thread "Note at end" :
While I listen mostly to music made by "acoustic instruments" and vocals (lots of "Lieder" recently... I sort of inherited a library), I will, at the risk of completely discrediting myself, state the following:
There IS electronic music that has nothing to do with the thumping mindless "Techno" club, cut & paste poorly recorded garbage we most often associate with the genre... it can be very well done... I would even go so far as to say that it is the genre that most closely approaches classical... and as I am discovering, it can be extremely well portrayed by an as yet incomplete full-range horn system with good lower-bass capacity.
Of course an oboe played by a synthesizer is not the same as the real thing (these guys don't have the means to employ 37 musicians), but listening to this music, one is less looking for that sort of fidelity... There is quality in the sound, but it is more about sheer creativity and the overall message... seen as an abstract representation, in the best cases, the issue of not having the real instrument is just not an issue. Yes it may have started off wanting to be an oboe, but it is now just sound, and of interest here is how that sound is employed. This sort of system will bring out the care that was put into the creation of such music, in a way that has little to do with what we look for (technically) in traditional acoustic performances.Rerurn to Romy the Cat's Site