Markus wrote:

http://cgi.ebay.com/Bass-Horns-for-Ale-Western-Electric-JBL-Altec-Drivers_W0QQitemZ300388291899

I have seen it and I do not like it. I applaud to the efforts but the pictures of horns do not make me aroused.  47 feet will give you around 5msec delay – this is a LOT. The horn itself is just a part of the game. The key is how it was used, how it was fixed into the room. How the rest of the channels were organized with respect to the given large mouth. That is very complex and to do it properly it is much more complex then to built 47 feet horn. The horn like this might look like an impressive accomplishment but it might have very limited use, if any use at all. If it is done properly then people do not sell those things but they die with them, probably inside of them...

Markus, I speak as a non-commited direct radiator guy when I say that the horn EQ as a raw principle is a very powerful model that theoretically opens the door to the sort of overall efficiency that direct radiators can only dream of.  Then I will turn right around and say that if one is OK with low(er) efficiency, then indeed, horns look like a lot more trouble and expense than they would otherwise be worth.  Ironically (?), I think that many of my own hi-fi shortfalls are tied to compromises I've made with respect to efficiency, which is always a factor, after all; it's not like that just goes away.

Still, I believe that the key to any successful hi-fi installation is tied up in the idea of "careful arrangement", since care with implementing highly-developed demands will probably have more to do with success in the end than topology will.  Trite words by now, but still true.

Best regards,
Paul S

Romy, I realize that you have a good deal more acoustic drive available than I do, but here is my experience, FWIW:  I lived in a larger version of a very similar configuration for 13 years.  My listening room was in "the same" spot as you picture, with a 20' high 1/2 vaulted ceiling.   I could not really load it with 100 wpc (RM9) driving 92 dB 5-way speakers (Fulton modulars), despite a solid slab floor and a longer [reflective] wall section opposite the drivers.  I got some very nice sound at times, but no real room loading I could build on.  Later, I got some nice sound and very nice ambience (when the power was good) with 7 wpc Wright 2A3 SETs driving the 97 dB DEBZs, but this combo would not load the room properly, either.  IMO, the ML2s are at the peg driving the DEBZs into a 17' X 21' X 8' hard-plastered room with raised, carpeted floors.  What there is of LF has some redeeming qualities, but nothing serious yet.  I am a hopeful guy, and I still believe I can tweak my way toward a more loaded room; but I am not where I'd like to be, with plenty of power to burn.

As we have discussed, much can be done with a raised floor if there is underfloor access and a way to solidly shore up the floor from the ground under it.  OTOH, the classic yuppie "apartment", with raised, carpeted floors and high, vaulted ceilings (volume!), and no way to shore up the floors, is the ultimate energy sink.

I am not sure from the little reading I have done on the subject, but I think there is a whole school of followers that aim the speakers directly at their ears and they do not try to load the room.  Duddleston (sp?), Geddes and some others, I think, might have some ideas for people who cannot or do not want to load their rooms.  I have no serious idea how they would do LF.  If I had to guess, I would guess biased plate amps or similar exponential power schemes.

Paul S

An interesting post, Paul, thanks. It looks like my fear or bass loading of this room were not accidental. If I get this room then it would be even worse in my case. Your have solid slab floor –something that I would like to have. But this house does not have it. What it has is 1700sq feet basement under it as shitty floor with holes in the listening room. I perfectly understand the frustration of the people who would love to pump that space of neat 3400 sq foot from a pair of speaker with imbedded bass drivers. Would it be big Wilsons of small monitors with yellow driver is irrelevant. There is in that my perspective house some feature that kind of unique and made me really like it. This front wall behind the speakers is very easy removable and the room can be easily reconfigurable into “no back wall” type of the configuration. So, we are taking about truly near infinite bass loading scenario… I did not play with it a lot but I certainly would not attack the problem with driving my bass horns lower as some idiots do (The Oswald Mill idiot with his repulsive bass would the first who come to my mind).

So, I think with a proper dedicated LF modules and enough power of amplification this space might be handled. The house has a lot of hidden positive moments for bass enforcement that I have recognized and a lot of bad things for the same bass task. How all those bad and good things will work all together is very hard to say. I would like to see the faces of those people when I ring LF speaker with real-time analyzer to the home inspection….

Anyhow, I have a good feeling about this one. I do not know if I get good sound in there but this room is very inspiring for me canvas to replicate my sound but in larger scale and more comfortable listening. Let see how it goes….

Ok, I do officially like this “Battle Road” hours. Upon many considerations (and there are 4 ways to implement the midbass horn in that room) I have inclined to my leading idea to do it elegant and with time alignment.  The drawing below and a above are way out right proportion and dimensions are by my visual assessment. Still the idea is there.  I am considering to put two straight, irregular pentagon  or heptagon shaped, 12’-13’, Hypobaric 0.7, 45Hz horns in the attic of the house and to have the mouths to fire into the bid room. This will kill with one hit the following objectives:

1)      Not notable in the room

2)      Time-alignable

3)      Not direct radiation and allowing wave maturation

4)      Do not destroy property too much

5)      Kill the fist reflection for the MF channels

6)      Elegant.

I do see in this a tremendous opportunity.

Yep, you were close. The listening room is looking right to the conservation land, in the middle of which there was the original Battle Road. So, that proverbial “shot that was heard around the world” was fired some in the backyard of that house.

http://www.woburnhistoricalsociety.com/images/buildingsandsites/battleroad.htm

I was talking with city hall’s housing authority and was inquiring about any perspective lend development and I was told that this conservation land is dead-untouchable. They told however that sometimes they have minutemen reenactment in the conservation - I afraid that it will be where I was planning to install my antenna tower. If I get the house then I would need to register as a republican and apply to a license to put some landmines around my antenna tower. If any of those minutemen will interfere with my Bruckner then I will start a second American Revolution...

Wojtek wrote:

but I attached a double layer of 3'x5' cement boards (wonder board) under the suspended floor (crawl space) and it seems to help with bass a little. It's a cheap and fairly easy solution ($9 for a board) if you have an acces and helping hand.

Wojtek, interesting, can your elaborate on it? You placed under the floor (from the basement) the 3'x5' cement boards right under the speaker? How you were able to do it? Did you floor supporting beams allow you to do it? What is the distance between your cement boards and the floor? Is the floor carpeted? How much dB attention you get at 100Hz at the location of your cement boards?  When you said “seems to help with bass a little” then it is your subjective feeling (that might be due to electricity change) or it is the actual measurable change of amplitude? What the percentage of the whole rooms represent those 3'x5' space?  What LF section your and how you drive it?

It might be an interesting solution, I just need more data.

Romy the Cat wrote:

Ok, I do officially like this “Battle Road” hours. Upon many considerations (and there are 4 ways to implement the midbass horn in that room) I have inclined to my leading idea to do it elegant and with time alignment.  The drawing below and a above are way out right proportion and dimensions are by my visual assessment. Still the idea is there.  I am considering to put two straight, irregular pentagon  or heptagon shaped, 12’-13’, Hypobaric 0.7, 45Hz horns in the attic of the house and to have the mouths to fire into the bid room. This will kill with one hit the following objectives: 1)      Not notable in the room 2)      Time-alignable 3)      Not direct radiation and allowing wave maturation 4)      Do not destroy property too much 5)      Kill the fist reflection for the MF channels 6)      Elegant. I do see in this a tremendous opportunity.

Hm, I was so proud about myself for a few days. I thought I have a key how to render my midbass horn in perfects time-aligned position and to make it literally invisible in my new room. It was such an elegant design!!! It still might be renderable but I discover some aspects in the new house that can make it very hard to implement. I was already thinking about the color patter of my new horns! Such a blow!!!

Anyhow, if I get this house then the configuration of the room still allows me to implement very good midbass horn but it will be no time alignment.  That is not good and I need to think about it. To have midbass with 12-15msec delay… I do not know if I want even to experiment with it.

Romy the Cat wrote:

Hm, I was so proud about myself for a few days. I thought I have a key how to render my midbass horn in perfects time-aligned position and to make it literally invisible in my new room. It was such an elegant design!!! It still might be renderable but I discover some aspects in the new house that can make it very hard to implement. I was already thinking about the color patter of my new horns! Such a blow!!!