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Horn rig with conical mid horn - update

Posted by PK (A) on July 21, 2009 at 23:52:04

This is an update regarding my horn system pictured above. During the years I have asked many questions on the AA board and I have learned a lot from many of you. Especially guys like Bill Fitzmaurice, John Sheerin, djk, JLH, weltersys, RCA-fan, Jeff Robinson, and Tom Danley have been very helpful indeed. First of all I would like to thank all of you!

The system as it is now is fully horn loaded and 3-way:

Bass (same since 2004): Straight, 29 Hz, hyperbolic-exponential (T=0.6) bass horns each loaded with double 15” PD.158 woofers from Precision Devices.

Mids (fairly new): Conical front horns loaded with P.Audio WN-520N drivers

Highs (new): Horn loaded AMT pro driver from Beyma (model TPL-150H).

The system is actively tri-amped using digital crossovers and SS amps from GroundSound. Crossover points are 260 Hz and 1300 Hz using 8th order slopes all through.

A bit on journey that lead to the current setup:
I have had the bass horns since 2004 and started out using AER MD3’s in Oris 150 horns for mids/highs crossed at 160 Hz. While the AER MD3’s were excellent on acoustic music, they sounded somewhat ‘thin’ at times when listening to rock music, which I hear the most. Therefore, I sold the AER’s in order to try out compression drivers for the mid/high section (BMS 4592 ND and Community M200/B&C DE25 on different horns). While the compression drivers definitely had the impact I was looking for, I never really managed to get them sound as natural as I would prefer. Even though the Community/B&C combo was somewhat more relaxed and ‘open’ sounding than the BMS, I was never really pleased with the sound. At that time I thought that my bass horns sounded somewhat congested when used up to, say, 300 Hz (I had to use a higher crossover point with the compression drivers than with the AER’s), but now I know that it was actually the mids that annoyed me!

By using a light cone driver with a very strong motor (5.25” P.Audio WN-520N: Mms=10.61g; BL=16.43; Qt=0.20) in a conical horn, I believe I have found a good balance between the naturalness and presence of the AER’s on acoustic music on the one side and the weight and impact on rock music that I got from the compression drivers on the other. Since I initially thought that the bass horn could not be used above 200 Hz, I started out looking for a driver on the mid horn would load down to 160 Hz. I ended up using the P.Audio WN-520N driver for the 260-1300 Hz range. Until I settled for the P.Audio driver I tried out a several mid drivers: 8“ Fane Studio 8M, 8” Ciare 8.50 NDMR, and 6.5” Ciare 6.38 NDMR. All of these actually sounded pretty good, but the P.Audio came out on top. The Fane has a very natural tone, but died out at 1000 Hz. The Ciare 8.50 NDMR and the Fane were very close soundwise. But I thought that both sound both sounded somewhat less open in the upper register than I would prefer. This is probably due to fairly small throat of the conical mid horn (81 cm2) relative to their SD. The Ciare 6.38 NDMR was promising regarding its specs, but actually sounded less open that the other candidates – probably due to the tighter suspension of this driver.

The Beyma AMT TPL-150H is a great tweeter! It has a max SPL around 120 dB and cannot ultimately go as loud as the compression drivers, but 120 dB is more than enough for a home rig – at least for me! The TPL delivers very fast, clean, and clear highs, while still sounding very natural. Some of the records that I (almost) could not stand listening to with compression drivers are now listenable again. S- and T-sounds sound just right (with the BMS, sibilance was simply too much)! Besides sounding natural and open, I like the larger sweet spot using CD horns.

PS: The are more pictures of the rig in my gallery.

Best regards
Peter

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