The bottom eaters from AA raised an interesting subject:

http://www.audioasylum.com/forums/hug/messages/16/160276.html

... and of cause covered it within the scope of own fears and limitations.  I particularly like their idiotic idea that the amount of channels in acoustic system  combined with amount of records of the playback owner collection form some kind of constant secretive number and the less channels playback will have would yield more records on the shelves. Well, the idiots are idiots….

Still, the subject itself is not idiotic and very well worth covering.

The very first question that comes to mind would be: who is starting from scratch? Would it be the person who just enters audio, the person who just enter the horn-loading subject or the person who has experience in the field and just re-enter the “business” from scratch? Than… What would be the objective or the person? How much money/efforts s/he is willing to spend? Dose the person has ability to build himself or needs to hire help? Does the person has ability to make own decisions as it or he needs to experiment and to make assessments? What is the interaction between person audio life and his/her regular live? There are those and many other subjects that need to be covered in order to define what horn system might serve better, or at least satisfying.

I have covered this subject I believe 6-7 years back when I fantasized about big fire that burned out all my audio and made me to start from scratch.  I can’t find the posts at my site and I would like to have this new thread where I later on as I have time might express some of the UPDATED thoughts on the scratch subject. Feel free to share yours…

Romy the Cat wrote:

...to hear it from a person who advocates a single driver approach :-)

haralanov wrote:

Romy, the actual sound benefit of this 4-channel upper bass configuration, is rather in the type of sound presentation. The commonly used single upper bass horn (or direct radiator) sitting under the midrange horn, gives the feeling that the midrange floats over a dense and soft upper bass cloud. It is in a way interesting effect, but it is much more interesting (at least in my view) when the upper bass radiating area is very big AND equally distributed around the midrange/main channel. This creates an effect of having huge and very widerange coaxial driver, which gives the unique feeling that the upper bass is real physical part of the midrange, loading the whole (!) room with tone. Actually it can no longer be detected as upper bass sound – it just becomes part of the instruments. And this is much more important than the fine tuning of the sound of all these 4 horns.

Romy the Cat wrote:

In fact I do feel that my MF and upperbass are very good integrated. But again, I might not know how different it might be if it was otherwise.

Romy the Cat wrote:

I have to admit that it has some design problems. You see, the multiplication of upperbass is in way eliminates an ability to put the midbass horn in right position. I think the right positioning of midbass is more important then what you propose and if you put 4 upperbasses than they will not allow to put midbass in the game in the uncompromised location.   ..going for the 4-drivers upperbass configuration a person effectively eliminates any other options

haralanov wrote:

Some time ago I also thought my upper bass channel is flawlessly integrated, but when I added another, symmetrically arranged UB driver (over my WR driver), I quickly understood the new configuration is MUCH more expressive and full-bodied sounding compared to a single UB channel. The upperbass started to breath completely effortlessly and it was perfectly centered at the WR/midrange driver’s axis. So it should be experienced to be appreciated…

haralanov wrote:

Yes, of course the multiplication of upperbass in a way eliminates the ability (but not exactly) to put the midbass horn in right position, but who cares about that, given the fact that proper placement of upperbass drivers is at least 10 times more important than the placement of midbass horn? Cat, you have placed your midbass horns on the roof behind you and you don’t feel it is wrong, so why did you suddenly decide that arranging the midbass horns sideways of the whole upperbass stack (where they should be) is problematic?

haralanov wrote:

If I have to think further about this, I see no option to use a midbass horn in close proximity to the midrange channel (even if there are NO upperbass horns there) simply because it will act as reflecting wall for the midrange channel (if it is placed in time aligned position)… So all these upperbasses practically do not eliminate the option for proper using of the huge midbass horns: [image]

Haralanov, I partially know what you are talking about and I got my sense of it when I added the Fundamentals and Insertion channels. They both are position above MF and act as nice compliment to Macondo upperbass horn. I still do not know if the result you describe comes from psychoacoustical reasons of from the fact that when a driving current is being spread to more individual drivers than everyone has better life.

For sure to do “such an oversized project without first building a huge dedicated room” would help but there is more to it. Building a HORN system from scratch in my mind automatically implies the USE of the listening room as one of the system incident. For sure if one would like to end up with 2-way loudspeaker then it is different matter and there is nothing wrong with it. However, if a person would like to have not just loudspeaker but the whole experience of an “installation” then it is very different matter.

My definition of installation is slightly different then to have wooden trims and panels that hide cables. To me an “installation” is a complex set of measures and arguments that converts a listening space into sound expressive space. Toward to this end my definition of success is to recognize the specific room’s need and to build playback in the room that will be designed in accordance with the room’s needs, room’s capacity etc… so, to me the most stimulating installations are not the one that use rare Amish-made drivers but those where rooms and playback create an expressive elegance of design. Where the things made to work but there are no visible efforts of the efforts. In my view the multiplication of upperbass channels is “too much trying” and there is absolutely no way to hide this trying. For sure it might be a good experiment for some kind of text lab but I absolutely do not see it as building a HORN system from scratch objective. But again, mine or anybody else agreement or disagreement for this matter is absolutely irrelevant.

Romy the Cat wrote:

To me an “installation” is a complex set of measures and arguments that converts a listening space into sound expressive space.

Romy the Cat wrote:

I still do not know if the result you describe comes from psychoacoustical reasons of from the fact that when a driving current is being spread to more individual drivers than everyone has better life.

haralanov wrote:

Actually I see the biggest benefit (besides the huge sound body) in the fact that such a configuration allows very precise adjustment of the way how the harmonics of each UB channels touch  the midrange, by simply dealing with the crossovers on each of them individually. This gives almost unlimited freedom of possibilities for adjustments (the only requirement is the man who adjust it should know what to listen/adjust, otherwise it is a wasted opportunity) and this degree of precision could not be achieved by using just one horn…

Romy the Cat wrote:

I do not disagree with it but I would certainly question the practicality of it alone with cost/benefit ratio. I think if the identically amount of effort would be spend for other aspects then the benefits would be higher.

Romy the Cat wrote:

My presumption is that if we have one single narrow band driver that severs an excellent purpose foe own operation region then I would not need to use injection and you would not be fantasizing about slicing upperbass upon 4 sub-channels.

Romy the Cat wrote:

I do get you message about enlargement of geometrical size of upperbass but I personally do recognize it as a need. If you support your upperbass with midbass horn (that by definition is very large) than you will not be worrying or expire any concern about the "size" of upperbass as midbass interaction with upperbass will do all tricks.

haralanov wrote:

Let pretend you have (at least hypothetically) really excellent (satisfying your reference points) single UB channel. Then how are you going to achieve the coaxial effect one gets with 4 allocated in space channels? It will be very educational for me to learn the answer of this question :-)

haralanov wrote:

Well, my idea of using 4 strategically arranged channels around the midrange driver is not because I need bigger sized upper bass, but because this technique allows the lower midrange (and also the upperbass) to flow freely in the space

Romy the Cat wrote:

You will have problem to position 2, 3, 4 upperbasses however in context of practical installation.

Romy the Cat wrote:

I do not see that 4 strategically arranged channels would allow lower midrange to flow more freely in the space.

haralanov wrote:

Ironically or not, I have no practical problems with it, simply because I’m not using big UB horns. My upper bass channels are much more compact – 4 very massive 15” drivers with no horns. Their integration to my main widerange channel is easier than a childish game and there is a lot of free space for some huge lower bass drivers around them. But I didn’t mention that earlier, because the thread is about horn loaded drivers – not direct radiators. So the fact that it is very difficult to implement 4 UB horns in practical terms, is not going to ruin my good sleep :-)

Romy the Cat wrote:

...a single 15” driver does not sound well not matter what you do to it, unless you are sitting in a closet

haralanov wrote:

Come ooon, comparison between the radiating area of direct radiator vs. the area of horn’s mouth is too amateurish even for some diyaudio.com level simpletons… It is as naïve as saying Leonardo’s Mona Lisa is simply 100 grams of paint splashed over a 630 sq inch sheet of paper…:-)

Romy the Cat wrote:

Remind you that horn not only does that but it performs acoustic transformation gradually.

Romy the Cat wrote:

Horns is completely different animal and you need to educate your with upperbass horn sound.

Romy the Cat wrote:

So, as the person who do deal with horns I do admit that with multiplication of horns per channel you will have benefits but the benefits will be less significant than those that you observe with direct radiators, which bring the whole idea to very questionable viability or even need (with horns).

haralanov wrote:

Most of the acoustic instruments in reality have strong boundary effect of their tonal pressure. Have you ever heard somebody complaining by the fact the violin does not release its pressure gradually in the surrounding environment?!