Romy the Cat wrote:

I have to admit that since the torch of sane sounding horn-loaded loudspeakers nowadays in my hands (among the outspoken people with web presences) I feel sort of an obligation to comment about new interesting species enrolling in “my” domain.

Over this weekend I was introduced (virtually) to a 5-wasy installation from Germany upon which I would like to comment.  I requested more information about drivers, crossover points, throat decameters and the way how the channels are amplified. The system owner has access to my site and might post the information, including the thoughts he used to come up with some steps that he took. Warn you that from what I concluded in his emails the owner is not a typical internet yahoo that are breeding nowadays like mushroom after rain but he actually has own thoughts about development and use of horns. I do not think he has own site (I was not able to find) and I would like to take advantage of this thread as a platform to think about what this German installation offers 

It is 5-ways, mostly GOTO driver all horn playback. Right from beginning when I saw the very first picture I begin to count the number of the midbass horn leafs. What I got 11 leafs then I said to myself – “OK, the guy (Reinhard or Klaus?) is not a regular Moron”. Learn, the fools – this is how thinking in horns manifests itself. For the guy to make 11 leafs of 12 leafs on his sectoral horns had no difference but he chose uneven number. I stressed the very same point many times before at my site but no one who produce/use the sectoral horns cares about the unparalleling the leafs/sections.

Anyhow, the installation looks like use the MF Island, upperbass and midbass horns. The upperbass looks like a true full-size 100Hz with 2” throat. The midbass looks like 1/2-1/4 size of let say 40Hz mouth with 4” throat. The owner is a big GOTO fan:

http://www.GoodSoundClub.com/TreeItem.aspx?PostID=12427

But I do not know if for midbass horn was used GOTO driver.  The GOTO bass drivers are sealed and do not require back chamber. Reinhard’s midbass horn has HUGE back chamber. So, I presume that ether it uses a conventional drivers or Reinhard does in there something intricate with driver resonance to deal with throat reactance. The idea of the midbass horn on own rollable platform is superb – I love and if I render my real-estate project then I would consider to mimic it. Also in this configuration the damping and bracing might be added if necessary – love it! I would not mention that rotating the horn on axis for 90 or 180 degree it is possible to mount it to wall or ceiling. It is VERY interesting how the upperbass and midbass horns are crossed, the Reinhard’s about the impact of that crossover to sound and preferably the sweeps of individuals upperbass and midbass channels and combined.  Also it is very “kinky” moment how the delay from upperbass interacts with the delay from midbass. I know that not a lot of people would understand it but there are ways to “spread delays” or to use what I call the “distributed delays”. This system would be a perfect playground to experiment with it.

A few things that I would do different with this playback. I would flip the positions of upperbass and midbass. The midbass closer to the wall will pickup up some LF extension as the vertical mouth would go larger. The most important is that LF souses would not be emanated from the space between the MF souses – a big “no-no” in my book. It will do a phenomenal advance in imaging. It looks like the system is built in attic and the midbass bail is inserted into two opening on the back wall. I would keep everything as is but just turn the midbass on diagonal toward to the wall. I will not be as sexy but it will be very good for sound as the LF from midbass are shooting now directly to listening position and the bass has no room to develop itself. Unless midbass is 50 feet away I would prefer to use reflected midbass, when the midbass is matured. I have written about it a few times. So, the midbass neck will be going across from the hole in the wall and will not abstract the MF Island, if I will then the MF Island would move a bit closer. Actually it would be even more fun to make two other holes in the wall on extreme left and right, put in there the midbass’ tail and to point the midbass alongside of the wall, aiming it to the back of the room. That would give a LOT of room for bass to develop until the main reflection hits listener spot.

Ansyhow, it is interesting installation and I would like to know more about it.

A correction: the installation above is not Reinhard’s but by Klaus Speth. Klaus and Reinhard experiment with audio together and Reinhard has his own Goto setup. Here is more information about Klaus’ system with Reinhard’s comments:

Midbass horns: are there are two 20 cycle bass horns which normally have 6,50 m in length and 3,20 in mouth diametre (we had that for testing purposes and we thought, well, that's it, the space is there and the depth to be able to listen to, but to our surprise it was not !  they didn't perform that well, astonishingly neither with natural nor electronical time alignment), so Klaus cut them down to 4 m to get rid of the time delay. They are not - as one might presume only from the mouth diametre - 40 or 50 cycle horns, they are true 20 cycle, but cut off. These horns run from 30 - 70 cycles, each with double Goto SG38WN membrane bass - not Goto compression driver.

Uperbass horns: are 70 cycle horns, see photo, which are about 2 m in depth and which run from 70 - 200 cycles, each fed with one SG146LD bass compression driver… Yes, it is eleven leaves, not twelve. Right, because of the nature of the produced waves. Klaus didn't want to have any reflections and so on by horn amplification. For exactly the same reason the listening room - which is some 130 square meters with about 14 m in depth - is not rectangular, there is nothing parallel, the walls in depth go out for one meter in the run... so no standing waves and disturbing reflections and so on... Klaus started with 8 leaves, then 10 and then 11 - which to my feel is the best...

Midrange: Goto SG505DX with S150 horn

Tweeter: Goto SG370DX with S600 horn

SuperTweeter: Goto SG160

I think this post need to have an epigrapher:

“We knew what we wanted to hear, and so we developped, and developped, and developped... In hundreds of small and bigger steps. Over thirty years. Till we were "there" where we always wanted to be, but nobody had or could offer for sale” - Reinhard

It is not a secret that I have very low expectations from audio people in regard to audio subjects. The Audio Morons feel that it is because my “personal anger” and they create their stupid and very self-incrementing theories about it. I do feel that horn people in majority are Morons, and nowhere their Moronity manifests itself as deep as in web horno-pornography. You can see again and again on internet a picture of a horn system but neither the system owner nor the fools who look at the picture able to grasp what the see or show. The photographs do not create in Morons a need or an interest to analyze and the think what they see/present at the pictures. A picture of an audio installation and 4923873 idiots reply with the mandatory “Dude, that is awesome!” and any further for “audio intellectualism” is depleted with that. Tell me that it is not a regular behavior for audio Morons and I would reply that you are catapulted from other planet.

What is particularly interesting system owners are also mostly out of the expressive depth. Generally a system owner has very little individual thoughts about he does. If an owner does have some thoughts then his thoughts are mostly just fragments of marketing BS that he picked here and there. It is no surprise as most of the playback owners are very accidental people in audio and they have as a result a very accidental sound in their listening rooms. Do you remember the nowadays demised Greek Audio Club? They had a guy who was traveling around the world, visiting different Hi-Fi folks and publishing interviews with them. I did read at that site all interviews with people who built horns installations and I was very displeased from what I read. The people recited the equipment they own but practically none of them were able to make sensible commentaries about the Sound they are greeting in relation to the audio actions they made.  I am not even taking about the advancement of listening experiences projected by audio means – that was way off the table of interests for those people…

Anyhow, since am talking about all of it in context of the Klaus/Reinhard installation I would like to point that that it looks Klaus and Reinhard might be Real. Reinhard initially contacted me to inform me about my ignorance regarding Goto divers. I do not use Goto divers and I do not think I commented about them I rather was and am very critical about the way in which Goto users used the Goto drivers. Anyhow, communicating  with Reinhard further I discover that there is a lot of things cooking on in Reinhard’s head on the subject of horns systems and I felt that  is worthy to share. Below are some Reinhard fragments. Posting it I do not “endorse” what Reinhard say.  Some of the thing I find are very good, with some I disagree and some I things that he said I do not know. Still, behind the Reinhard commentaries there is sense of conviction, a sense of interest and the common sense - the senses that is so frequently is in shortage with HI-FI people:

These are the results of 30 years (in words: thirty) of research and development in bass horns. Nowadays nearly everybody is talking about horns, and especially bass horns, Tactrix, exponential, hyperbolic... But the discussion seems always very isolated and concentrated on only one type of horn at the time without any possibilities of listening comparison in reality, and hardly anybody seems to really concentrate and nail it down on the last two octaves from 16 - 32 and 32 - 64 cycles which very severely determine the mid and high range reproduction, they think they have a horn and that's it. No, unfortunately it is not...
 
We have been "through" all sorts of horns, i.e. we have built them all. Yes, and we have started with the first straight 40 cycle horn with some 4 m in length and 2,70 mouth diameter back in 1983 with the first ever available Goto Bass Compression Driver SG146LD. Since then we are in HiFi-heaven. And since then we have built and listened to all the other types of bass horns because we just wanted to know for ourselves. And because at the time we did not know anybody with practical listening experiences regarding this specific theme we did it all by ourselves. So we built all different types of horns up to a length of 6,50 m and 3,20 m in opening mouth diameter. And over the years we have visited and listened to all "big" systems in Europe to hear what it is all about with horns in general and specific. The only ones missing in our "collection", i.e. we have not yet listened to till today, is the Western Electric WE15 with the original drivers from the 1920ies, which we will "do" rather shortly.
 
I don't want to use the word "better". It doesn't say that much. It is the same with vinyl and/or CD. With a "good" system you will always listen to "music". And that's what we do: listening to music and nothing but music, no more system - and hardly any source - evident in reproduction. And we get the right "pressure" for the sound, we "get" the organ in a church in reproduction, down to 30 cycles precise in some 11 m distance from the mouth of the bass horns, clearly and without any boom-boom... The horns are only "big tailored" in the sense of practicing precisely physical laws, of precisely working out what they "get" from the amps, not more, but also not less.
 
But not only the horns. As well the amplification. Been through all highest end: Mark Levinson, Macintosh, Audio Research... no amplification really did what we wanted to have rsp. hear. And what we wanted (and what we have now) was : input = output, without any add ones and without any deduction. And we wanted all Class A. Because the sound of Class A was so spectacular. And at that time Jean Hiraga had just developed his "Le Monstre" 7 Watt mono Class A, which we took as a model and then optimized during time. So we now have all Class A, 10 Amps, one for each driver, two 4 resp. 5 channel crossovers, and one pre-amp. And during the last years we have all amplification extended to separate controlled power supply for each unit. That was a huge step forward. It made the whole sound not only crystal clear but really stable down to the lowest frequencies, and the boom-boom was completely gone. And at that time we had already listened extensively to all highest end systems in Europe. And it was immediately clear what we didn't want to have and what we wanted to have. So we continuously worked on it.
 
By the way, we never ever followed any "new horn fashion". We wanted to check them all out. One after another. And we did. To get our own impression. And it was and still is just the sound that we are interested in. And nothing but the sound. And after all self-experiences we keep with the Goto philosophy: Kugelwellen-horn. We knew (at least we had a deep feel inside) what we wanted to hear, and so we developed, and developed, and developed... In hundreds of small and bigger steps. Over thirty years. Till we were "there" where we always wanted to be, but nobody had or could offer for sale. And "there" we are now in a sense that we have a platform where nothing in music is disturbing, no matter what source or music you play or what loudness. But one thing we wanted urgently was playing at highest levels and "feel" the music live with the natural sound pressure on the stomach. But not "loud", we wanted it "naturally loud", that is something different. That is to adjust a voice in playback at that level as if someone is singing in front of you, or playing an instrument or...
 
Crossover: Yes, we neither were content with available crossovers with phase shifting and so on... So we let build crossovers without phase shifting, because we wanted to have that and because we realized that the industry does have no interest in generating products like this... and the frequencies are cut according to the Goto recommendations: natural octaves, and I have to admit: that works for me. 4 resp. five way.
 
During all our constructions and research and developments regarding the horns (we did not build the amps ourselves that made a physician according to our proposals) we found one thing to be the quintessence in reproduction: the squares. No matter at all what source you are listening to. The more we optimized the squares horizontally and vertically in amplification (and within the sources of course, i.e. Vinyl- and CD-players) the more natural the sound came out of the horns. Result: what you do not put in, you cannot get out.
 
While Klaus is using some "older" Goto drivers (which have nothing lost regarding their magic), I use all highest end Goto beryllium drivers, i.e. SG188BL, SG3880BL, SG5880BL and SG146LD for the bass (30 - 200 cycles). Expensive? Yes. But cheap as well. Because they bring me - whenever I want - into paradise without dying. The throat diametre mid range is 75 cm (200 - 1000 cycles), the highs 21 cm (1000 - 5000 cycles) and super high 3 cm (5.000 - open end).
 
For me the most important thing was the Goto SG146LD. Klaus started with a straight 10 leafs 40 cycle horn in 1983. And it was awesome. SG146LD is the only compression bass driver which does not produce boom-boom if fed right. The SG146LD contrarily is on first impression not to be heard as bass, first you think, hey it is wrong, it is not connected, but then you realize, what they are doing, they integrate completely homogeneously into the sound, totally natural, like a royal soufflé, no more "cuts" between bass and mid-range (especially in the voices), just "one" sound. Marvellous. Really marvelous. And they make the right pressure. 113 db/watt/m... and you can put some 35 watts in there... and you get volume like on stage... and nothing disturbing...
 
Perhaps one has to get used to that sound a little at first, because it is so "unspectacular" without boom-boom, but then there is no way back... nearly exactly the same is with their membrane basses...But, please keep in mind, we are exploring new territory ... nobody was able to advise us so far... and we are still learning... deeply learning...the adjustment of all those horns is not yet finished... and now comes the next big revolution: high resolution digital stream...

Romy, you wrote: "...no one talk about the SOUND of Goto drivers, neither the driver owners nor the driver’s salers.   I still hope to hear from someone who has a direct experience with Gotos about the sound of those drivers…" if it is like that then let me try.
 
1. As is with all drivers and horns: they only sound as good as with what they are fed; if the amplification is good, i.e. squares, the sound is good; if the amplification is weak or bad, the sound is like that (and that begins within the vinyl-system and the error correction in CD-players; so, wherever we start, we start "bad", exception: reproduction from computer files). The horns in itself are "neutral", but it is obviously very hard to reach that aim...
 
2. The drivers of Goto. Well it is like cars from Daimler Benz Mercedes. You have a range from A 180 to 560 SLC and on top formula 1 racing cars. They all drive fine. And there are lots of cars from other societies, which are comparable and which drive fine as well. But at the absolute top it is getting otherwordly unique... with the material beryllium... (but that material is not easy to implement; although not bad, the TADs beryllium have no chance in direct comparion to Goto beryllium!) the sound gets that light, that easy, that uncomplicated, that natural, it is on the border of no more being sound, the differences between an original and reproduction are really neglectable, nothing disturbing, you can listen for hours and hours and hours, and you scream for "More, More, More..."
 
3. The Gotos could not at all "open" as we are used to and show what they are capable of. The sound was steril. Like kissing your aunt and nothing happens. Get me right: there were no mistakes, not at all, one can easily live with that, it is just that we did not like the outcoming sound, the sterilness, the lifelessness, there was no "breathing"...
 
4. So what are the Gotos capable of?
    4.1. Although they measure badly, they sound best. We do not understand why, but it is like that. But when you listen to their sound, you are not really interested in measurements, although we do that of course: Goto says: "You shall not measure, you shall listen!" I have to admit: Yes, it is like that. Although I like measurement controls. They are necessary, but I had to learn, that they practically say nothing about the "sound", as to be seen with the totally flat curves at Jean-Yves.
    4.2. Their sound pressure brings you to life atmosphere, exactly there where other drivers are off limits, not that they are not able to play loud, but you are not willing to crank them up to that level because there will come up things you will not listen to and which with Gotos simply are not there...
    4.3. The neutrality of the reproduction - well I repeat: if amplified correct - is jaw dropping, awesome
    4.4. The mode of reproduction is not only natural, it is easy as well; when you reach a natural reproduction level, i.e. a voice is like a voice, a guitar like a guitar, you feel no need to crank futher up because of the lack of dynamics...
    4.5. The preciseness of reproduction (well, again depending on the squares of the amplification)
    4.6. The "easiness" with which they do it: 113 db/Watt/m, respectively 116db/Watt/m, it is like riding 60 miles/hour and you don't realize that you are driving
    4.7. The dynamics, the capability of transferring loudest impulses out of nothing and that easy - makes you shiver
    4.8. Closest to reality what I have heard in my life
    4.9. You will realize most what Goto really is, when you remove the drivers one by one out of your system and put in others...
    4.10. for me the best description of the impression of the sound is: the modesty, the unspectacularness, you are missing things, exactly those things that other drivers do wrong and/or are not capable of...
 
For Klaus and me it is "it". Not to say that other systems do not sound good or very good. But there are certain things only Goto is capable of. One has to hear this to believe. And the result is: nodding with your head. That's the sound of Goto. You will never go back..
 
P.S. I am totally aware of the fact that in reproduction all things are more or less compromises. The only aim we can follow is to minimize the impression of listening to something coming out of a conserve...

I find that one of the most interning and stimulating ideas that you expressed was your experience with your bass horn

Reinhard wrote:

Midbass horns: are there are two 20 cycle bass horns which normally have 6,50 m in length and 3,20 in mouth diametre (we had that for testing purposes and we thought, well, that's it, the space is there and the depth to be able to listen to, but to our surprise it was not !  they didn't perform that well, astonishingly neither with natural nor electronical time alignment), so Klaus cut them down to 4 m to get rid of the time delay. They are not - as one might presume only from the mouth diametre - 40 or 50 cycle horns, they are true 20 cycle, but cut off.

You are saying that gong fro ¼ size horn without even loading it to boundaries gave some advantage. This is very interesting. Going from ½ horn size to ¼ horn size you reduced the throat reactance, did you play with back chamber and driver resonance or you just cut the horn until it make the Goto driver to sound better?

Reinhard wrote:

… But the discussion seems always very isolated and concentrated on only one type of horn at the time without any possibilities of listening comparison in reality, and hardly anybody seems to really concentrate and nail it down on the last two octaves from 16 - 32 and 32 - 64 cycles which very severely determine the mid and high range reproduction

Who could believe!
 

Reinhard wrote:

And since then we have built and listened to all the other types of bass horns because we just wanted to know for ourselves. And because at the time we did not know anybody with practical listening experiences regarding this specific theme we did it all by ourselves.

Really cool, here is where I truly envy.
 

Reinhard wrote:

So we now have all Class A, 10 Amps, one for each driver, two 4 resp. 5 channel crossovers, and one pre-amp. And during the last years we have all amplification extended to separate controlled power supply for each unit. That was a huge step forward. It made the whole sound not only crystal clear but really stable down to the lowest frequencies, and the boom-boom was completely gone.

Welcome to the DSET world. BTW, you need to get rid of your 5 channel crossovers and imbed the filter into your 10 amps.
 

Reinhard wrote:

Crossover: Yes, we neither were content with available crossovers with phase shifting and so on... So we let build crossovers without phase shifting, because we wanted to have that and because we realized that the industry does have no interest in generating products like this... and the frequencies are cut according to the Goto recommendations: natural octaves, and I have to admit: that works for me.

Well, I do not believe in crossovers “without phase shifting”. What might be interesting it to understand the “the Goto recommendations of natural octaves”. I do not know what it is.
 

Reinhard wrote:

SG146LD is the only compression bass driver which does not produce boom-boom if fed right.

Hmmmm, I do not understand it. The boom-boom is NOT the properly of driver but the properly of the drivers performance. You can make ANY driver to do boom-boom and you can make any driver do not have the boom-boom…

Reinhard wrote:

The SG146LD contrarily is on first impression not to be heard as bass, first you think, hey it is wrong, it is not connected, but then you realize, what they are doing, they integrate completely homogeneously into the sound, totally natural, like a royal soufflé, no more "cuts" between bass and mid-range (especially in the voices), just "one" sound. Marvellous. Really marvelous. And they make the right pressure. 113 db/watt/m... and you can put some 35 watts in there... and you get volume like on stage... and nothing disturbing...

Never heard this driver, not mention properly used. Perhaps my US Goto rep would send me one for Xmas to try after I move into a new place…
 

Reinhard wrote:

Perhaps one has to get used to that sound a little at first, because it is so "unspectacular" without boom-boom, but then there is no way back... nearly exactly the same is with their membrane basses...But, please keep in mind, we are exploring new territory ... nobody was able to advise us so far... and we are still learning... deeply learning...the adjustment of all those horns is not yet finished... and now comes the next big revolution: high resolution digital stream...

Yes, it  is difficult to get advisement as audio people are not accustomed to properly reproduced bass and the run bass 3-4 dB more then it shell be. I was there….

Reinhard wrote:

let me try.   1. As is with all drivers and horns: they only sound as good as with what they are fed; if the amplification is good, i.e. squares, the sound is good; if the amplification is weak or bad, the sound is like that (and that begins within the vinyl-system and the error correction in CD-players; so, wherever we start, we start "bad", exception: reproduction from computer files). The horns in itself are "neutral", but it is obviously very hard to reach that aim...   2. The drivers of Goto. Well it is like cars from Daimler Benz Mercedes. You have a range from A 180 to 560 SLC and on top formula 1 racing cars. They all drive fine. And there are lots of cars from other societies, which are comparable and which drive fine as well. But at the absolute top it is getting otherwordly unique... with the material beryllium... (but that material is not easy to implement; although not bad, the TADs beryllium have no chance in direct comparion to Goto beryllium!) the sound gets that light, that easy, that uncomplicated, that natural, it is on the border of no more being sound, the differences between an original and reproduction are really neglectable, nothing disturbing, you can listen for hours and hours and hours, and you scream for "More, More, More..."   3. The Gotos could not at all "open" as we are used to and show what they are capable of. The sound was steril. Like kissing your aunt and nothing happens. Get me right: there were no mistakes, not at all, one can easily live with that, it is just that we did not like the outcoming sound, the sterilness, the lifelessness, there was no "breathing"...   4. So what are the Gotos capable of?     4.1. Although they measure badly, they sound best. We do not understand why, but it is like that. But when you listen to their sound, you are not really interested in measurements, although we do that of course: Goto says: "You shall not measure, you shall listen!" I have to admit: Yes, it is like that. Although I like measurement controls. They are necessary, but I had to learn, that they practically say nothing about the "sound", as to be seen with the totally flat curves at Jean-Yves.     4.2. Their sound pressure brings you to life atmosphere, exactly there where other drivers are off limits, not that they are not able to play loud, but you are not willing to crank them up to that level because there will come up things you will not listen to and which with Gotos simply are not there...     4.3. The neutrality of the reproduction - well I repeat: if amplified correct - is jaw dropping, awesome     4.4. The mode of reproduction is not only natural, it is easy as well; when you reach a natural reproduction level, i.e. a voice is like a voice, a guitar like a guitar, you feel no need to crank futher up because of the lack of dynamics...     4.5. The preciseness of reproduction (well, again depending on the squares of the amplification)     4.6. The "easiness" with which they do it: 113 db/Watt/m, respectively 116db/Watt/m, it is like riding 60 miles/hour and you don't realize that you are driving     4.7. The dynamics, the capability of transferring loudest impulses out of nothing and that easy - makes you shiver     4.8. Closest to reality what I have heard in my life     4.9. You will realize most what Goto really is, when you remove the drivers one by one out of your system and put in others...     4.10. for me the best description of the impression of the sound is: the modesty, the unspectacularness, you are missing things, exactly those things that other drivers do wrong and/or are not capable of...   For Klaus and me it is "it". Not to say that other systems do not sound good or very good. But there are certain things only Goto is capable of. One has to hear this to believe. And the result is: nodding with your head. That's the sound of Goto. You will never go back…

Reinhard, thanks a lot. I wish my local US rep open his mouth and spread some Goto propaganda not you. No one talks about Goto sound unfortunately. I heard two Goto systems (MF drivers), generally like what I heard but they were not up seriously setup, so I did not expect too much from them. I do not know Goto sound but from what I hear myself, from what you guys Goto user express and from my own experiment with high magnetic forces drivers I might not feel that I might not necessary will be thrilled what Goto would do. I think to make any further comment somebody like you and somebody like me need to hear the sound of others and to understand what we are trying to make with sound. The reason why I have concerns about Goto sound is that I kind of looking for slightly different properly in sound then what you describe.  If you hear my sound then you would understand it. How I would characterize my sound, or at least how I would like it to be? I would call it as “Strategically-Bacteriological Bound”. I would like sound to be infested by an army of flash-eating parasites their “distraction” shall be very-well quantified by my will and by intend.  I am a bit afraid that Goto might be a bit too neutral for me. I do not mean coloration, I mean the Bacteriological control.  My Vitavox is neutral and colorful but it is not enough for me. My sound is a combination of a few very fine palettes. And I do not think that at this point my sound is a derivative from a performance of a single driver – the “art” of my sound is in proper balance of a few ingredients of the big salt. So, even if you stop by at place and bring your MF Goto driver then I have a very high probably that I would find it too clean and would add to it something from my “bacteriological” menu. I think it might be mutually educational….

The problem is that with those freaking horns to put a single MF driver in system, to understand it, to make it to work properly is a month of work….

jessie.dazzle wrote:

Romy wrote:   "... Also it is very “kinky” moment how the delay from upperbass interacts with the delay from midbass. I know that not a lot of people would understand it but there are ways to “spread delays” or to use what I call the “distributed delays”. This system would be a perfect playground to experiment with it..."   The above statement and images of the system have me curious... I assume that at least some time alignment is done via electronic delays (this is possibly what is meant by "RESP" ???). Again, it would be interesting to hear from Klaus and Reinhard on this subject.

Do not Google the Distributed Delay - it does not exist. The Spread or the Distributed Delay is my “invention” if you can call of it as “invention”. The nature of the “Distributed Delay”, let call it DD, is complex.  It is not the complexity of DD itself but the complexity to interpret “where is right” as DD lives in a very murky water of ever-evolving perception. Let me to explain.

Let pretend that you have MF, Upperbass and Midbass channels – very much as Klaus and Reinhardt have.  Because the sizes of the horns are large at Midbass we have MF and Upperbass in time but the Midbass let say 7mSec delay.  We can use is as is or we can implement the Distributed Delay (DD). The DD approach implies that we set the Upperbass channel to have a delay between 0mSec and 7mSec. What it does is smearing some negative effects of time miss-alignment.

I discovered it once when I had a change to experiment with re-reposition musicians in orchestra.  I did not mange the musicians, the conductor did, but I had a chance to assess the results that I was looking for and had 360 degree access to orchestra from any sides. Locating different orchestral sections at the different distance in accordance to their frequency range I recognized that the time miss-alignment might be masked to a degree. Later on I modeled this behavior with small bass divers. It worked and it did not.

You see, the miss-aligned bass channel is a slave of a group delay. From a common sense perspective you might find a summit of a wave in the next few periods and align the driver in there.  If dose not work for Midbass as a next period is two streets way. Also, the miss-aligned bass and the bass group delay in some cases sound…. very pleasant.  I would even say that the majority of people who sing songs that bass are are great in realty so not react positively to bass sound coming from horns but rather the feel good hearing the bass group delays. I was able to mimic with two bass monitors the effect of “bass horns” just by change the distances between the monitors.  Add to it the fact that in Midbass over 50% of sound is the room reflections you would understand how murky the things are.

So, what the point of all of this? The point is that is it possible to have MF and Upperbass in phase but the Midbass with significant delay 7mSec delay. Then intentionally offsetting the Upperbass it is possible to make the Midbass to sound… differently. How much to offset Upperbass – imposable to say as very many thighs had to be considered (types of horns, crossovers, loadings, room, distances, refractions and summations etc, etc, etc…). It juts need to be heard and tuned by ears to make it to sound in the way how one feel it shall sound.

I still in favorer of absolute time alignment but with 3m-5m horns not a lot of people can consider it as a realistic possibility. The DD might be a good direction to experiment and Klaus and Reinhardt setup is a perfect playground for this.

http://twogoodears.blogspot.com/2010/11/gotorama-leau-de-cologne-part-1.html

http://twogoodears.blogspot.com/2010/11/gotorama-leau-de-cologne-part-2.html

Honestly, I did not get a lot from those reports but it is what it is….

A few days back I got a hold of an article in some kind of French publication and a site reader helped me to translate it. In the article Klaus and Reinhard reported that Arthur Benade’s helped them better understand the propagation of sound in horns. From the article the gist- translation:

“…Arthur Benade's work centered not on horns for audio, but on horns as musical instruments (physics of woodwinds 1960 and of brass 1973) stressed the influence of acoustic impedance of the reed (or lips working as a reed) as well as the theory that sound does not "exit" from the instrument, it is produced by an interaction, a "collision" between the sound emitted by the reed, the stationary waves, and the "back waves" (reflected waves formed at the mouth of the horn). These lessons have been employed in recent research, notably in an acoustic lab in Le Mans, France and at the CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique). As a result of this research, in horn audio, we can deduce that the micro vibrations of the horn walls, though at -40dB relative to the sound emitted at the mouth, serves to color and give personality to the sound. Furthermore, beyond the formula of a "well-calculated" horn, these micro vibrations, particularly those near the throat, could have an indirect but spectacular effect on the geometry of the air column vibrating in the horn.”

Then below:

“…. The V-arrangement of the dual Goto SG-38W drivers was the result of many trials, backed up by and discovered while conducting a series of acoustic measurements and listening sessions. The V-arrangement is not symmetrical. The parallel but out of phase wiring of the coils allows, in the case of a positive signal, a "pinching" (throttling) effect in the forward propulsion of the air, and in the case of a negative signal, the opposite effect (a vacuum); think here of the reed effect stated above...”

This is superbly interesting. It looks like Klaus and Reinhard took my Resonance-Oops idea much further and were able to inject into the horn an active “Resonance-Oops” element but contra-phasing double driver on a single thought and use the neck length as the Resonance-Oops bias. I would say that it is a brilliant idea if it works. Of close to assess how it works is necessary to hear the thing - it is all about execution. Conceptually I might be possible to do not do what Klaus and Reinhard but to have a bass thought with a delay channel. Shaping the entrance to the delay channel, the delay channel geometry and the delay channel acoustic résistance I think it is possible to get the similar effect with a single driver and do not lose too much of the channel sensitivity.

Anyhow, the idea ether as Klaus and Reinhard did is or as I propose to do it is hugely stimulating and I hope someone will take upon it.

I do have my own attitude toward musical interments as I feel that horn-shaped musical interments and audio horn are in fact different devises, called to address different tasks. Still, the injection of virtual reed into the driver and getting the Resonance-Oops out of it is truly great idea. If I go to Germany again then I would like to hear it.

There is an interesting catch in what Klaus and Reinhard did with their virtual reed. Is it tuned by speed or by pressure? That is very interesting as it would indicate it the virtual reed might act as “coloration”. To shape the question differently: Will the change of output impedance of amp will require changing the way how the virtual reed is tuned (length of the one leg of the Y)?

rowuk wrote:

Brass instruments function much differently than audio horns. First of all they are built extremely resonant by mismatching length and horn taper. The taper of the bell is there not for horn type efficiency, rather to change the acoustical length of the instrument depending on the played frequency. In addition, we get different notes out of the trumpet by "overblowing" the fundemental resonance. Our Pedal note is the fundemental - one wavelength in the instrument, let's call this note C, the next "natural note" is 2 wavelengths or one octave higher also a C. The next is 3 wave lengths (G), 4 wavelengths is a C again, 5=E, 6=G(octave higher than the 3 wavelength g), 7 is discordant but close to a Bb, 8 wavelengths are the octave again. This continues until the 17th overblown partial where the resonance of the instrument no longer is sufficient for control, the entire work is now performed by the lips. It is interesting that the sound of the trumpet comes from acoustic mismatch. What we hear is what leaks out from the standing wave - NOT an amplified buzz of the lips! Throat and reactance matching on musical instruments is done with the construction of the mouthpiece How does this apply to loudspeaker horns? Well, Romy has posted that we should NOT use the horns at the bottom of their calculated possible range. The reason is that they become resonant there like a musical horn. Overblowing is very much like harmonic distortion. The voice becomes that of the standing wave, not the driver. We need to use the horn in the range where we have pattern control, not resonant support. The "feedback" that Klaus and Reinhard use actually could correspond to the braces used on brass instruments. They must be critically placed or the response and articulation is destroyed. Some of the braces on musical instruments are used for feedback, others short circuit resonance by damping it.

Romy the Cat wrote:

A few days back Simon Rattle brought but Berlin Philharmonic in Boston and blew my mind. I never was a huge fun of Simon Rattle and the music was garbage (Mahler 7). We were sitting accidently very close (Berlin extended the stage consuming the first 8 rows) and where able to see all small interactions between the musicians. God, I so love what I saw and what I heard. The Berlin Philharmonic was spectacular and I did not see for a while this aristocratism of playing and behavior. It is truly that compare to them our BSO is just a bunch of an assembly of angry semi-amateurs.

martinshorn wrote:

I agree its a relief to hear finally someone describing something. Because all the mysterious dust around it makes one really curious …

martinshorn wrote:

This is at least how i (surprisingly) perceived Goto: very wild - though not colored, respectively. And very important how you choose your words - the way of presentation. This is a fine but important difference to "having own sound" which i perceive like coloration. Which really wasnt the case. So ill remember that phrase, a very good one!

martinshorn wrote:

What Klaus also highlighted, is the importance to him to unlimit dynamics - in order to achieve the most live-alike sound. First of all, he noticed that Goto pleases him the most with uncompressed transient attacks more than other drivers. Of course this means to have horns in all octaves. To also have maximum dynamics in lows. Same importance to him was not to fold any horn, because folding costs you some dynamics (even if you fold and filter well to prevent coloration), you always loose dynamic in a fold.

martinshorn wrote:

Then it was important to have all octaves with horns, made in same style. One of his secrets was, to design all channels coherent, meaning having the same character.

martinshorn wrote:

All drivers shall have the same flavor. For him, it is better to choose e.g. a tweeter that plays a little less good but matches the rest, rather than taking the best in each channel but not merging into one harmonic total. That's why it was important to choose all drivers Goto, and all preferably from the same series with same diaphragm material. He admits, there was one better tweeter model in the goto-portfolio, but he wouldn't like to disturb the harmony they all have together as one. Many people make the mistake to pick the best, neglecting the collaboration. My ears could very much confirm consistency in all channels.

martinshorn wrote:

He also prefers filter of 4th order, and crosses in the very latest version with 90-300-1600-6600 cycles all in same filter typology.

martinshorn wrote:

The time alignment is being precisely "absolute" between super tweeter and tweeter (6600). The alignment between tweeter and midrange is done "relative" to have the mouth almost aligned (prevent reflections) but still slightly offset. To merge both at the 1600 cycles in one positive non cancelation period of the wave. So the tweeter is only slightly set back, however it improved the phase response a lot. A similar relative alignment is done between mid-bass-sub channels, where rather the mouth is aligned but you have a smooth continuous increasement of groupdelay downwards. Considering the phase-shift of 4th order, it very well might be a smooth transition without "stairs" in the groupdelay.

martinshorn wrote:

I must say, I'm trained noticing group delay artefacts of phase problems especially in the lows. And I could not hear any smeared transients. Considering that bad filters often cause 10 times worse effects than such 4 meter offset in the lows, this even sounds logical. I was surprised with this too.

martinshorn wrote:

Last but not least, I was very happy to have someone confirming my vague theory, the basshorn pre-chamber very much influences the sound in terms of speed and transient. Prechamber volumes must be avoided and are not to be overcome with phase plugs. He designed the long bass horn 4 meter long from driver to mouth. Utilizing 2 x 15 inch Gotos. But the horn continues further behind the drivers to infinite small size. So that actually no pre chamber exists, just the drivers have an offset from the point-zero, as much as needed to fit the big drivers onto the horn.

martinshorn wrote:

Also adding a slight advantage, one driver plays with front-face in phase, the other 15 incher plays out of phase with the rear-side. This cancels out any remaining assymetric behavior of the bigger heavier non-compression drivers. My ears also confirm the superb lightness and speed and ease of precision in the whole bass. So as the consistency of flavors, this was pointed by me before he even explained the design typology behind to achieve this (!)

martinshorn wrote:

I did listen to Klaus' individual composition. And people fallen in obsession with a specific brand should very much remember this.

Romy the Cat wrote:

Folding introduce a bunch of resonating chambers and cost audio coloration in most of the cases that do MASK OUT the transient dynamics but folding itself should not have an impact to dynamics itself.

Romy the Cat wrote:

All octaves with horns, made in same style? I am sorry, it is nonsense in my view. The lower you get in frequency the slower horn opening should be, I will stick with this rule. There is absolutely nothing that demands all change to be the same opening rate. For sure when the horns in the same style it does serves great optical benefit. You Klaus looks like did made the horns of the same style. Good for him and I am glad it works for him. However, there is absolutely no need to declare it as some kind of mandatory rule.

Romy the Cat wrote:

Again, I do not agree with it. It is good that you do not use word synergy and the audio reviewers love to use. The section of the best driver in each individual channel does include the assurance that the drivers will be working together and should be evaluated together. Furthermore if proper evaluation is made then the selection of the “best drivers” should ONLY woks as complimentary pairs. There is absolutely no reason why the best drivers would be from a same barrel.

Romy the Cat wrote:

Good for him but in my books this is the biggest flow in his system. The problem is that he use very fragile drivers that fry like crazy, ask any Goto distributor and they will let you know that true statistics how many tweeter and MD drivers they replace diaphragms. Goto has very light and thin voice coils and they are spectacular. They are also unfortunately very fragile for current handling. This is where the “preferable” 4th order come from. In my view 4th order has too much damage, particularly with speaker level filtration.

Romy the Cat wrote:

...in my view we do not hear amplitude but phase.  With first order in LF we are much more involve room into play and we smear phase anomalies over speakers and room response. I am not insisting that I am right, I saying that it is debatable...... Possible. Would you be so kind to share what subjective methodology/principle you use to recognize “noticing group delay artefacts of phase problems” in LF.

Romy the Cat wrote:

Sorry, I did not get this. Did you mean the back chamber? No one use phase plugs for 15 inch drivers.