Horns 2017

bonzo75

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What is custom? One, two, ayear? Or no two are alike?

I meant more like DIY hobbyist, made as a one off or two by an individual, initially for himself, tuned over a period. Seldom sold. Never seen at a show. Rare ones like Yamamura, though he made other horns, he stayed at Pietro's for a couple of months or so fine tuning it. One guy in Berlin does sell a couple a year maybe. I doubt two are alike.
 

kodomo

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It took me as of now more than 2 years working on tuning it. This winter I will be finishing the room at last, rebuild the midbass backchamber for its latest iteration, build the crossover enclosures and I am mostly I will be done. Only then I may design a new stand as these were utilitarian (as a bonus I came to like the stands too with time) but then again I may keep these.

I had the chance to listen to some very expensive horns and had guests having heard or are living with very expensive horns as well as some amp and speaker designers. First of all let me say this again, those good commercial horns are too expensive and good ones are very few. For what I wanted in horns I had to spend over 300k euros. I can understand, this is not a viable business product to build a company upon as the sales are too few. This may be the reason good horn systems are generally one-offs or hobbyist made. I can not put a price on the time I spent for these but I enjoyed it as much as I enjoy listening through them. In the end every single one who listened to them told me they liked these better than their commercial counterparts and I have even been offered generous sums for it. I feel the same way but I can not be the judge of this as I have been living and tuning them for so long. I am very critical though and all my audio friends were already satisfied with my speakers as I continued to push forward. Small things add up to measurable and discernible differences in the end and horns amplify every little thing you make.

I am not well versed in electronics so I rely upon companies and some engineer friends for my front end. There are some people who not just build their horns but the whole amplification for them as well. Like Romy and an Australian guy called following in his footsteps called Anthony.Anthony builds his incredible multichannel set amp dedicated for his horns and up to an incredibly high standard.

I did not feel like I have been missing too much there as I am very satisfied with my amplification.
 

bonzo75

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It took me as of now more than 2 years working on tuning it. This winter I will be finishing the room at last, rebuild the midbass backchamber for its latest iteration, build the crossover enclosures and I am mostly I will be done. Only then I may design a new stand as these were utilitarian (as a bonus I came to like the stands too with time) but then again I may keep these.

I had the chance to listen to some very expensive horns and had guests having heard or are living with very expensive horns as well as some amp and speaker designers. First of all let me say this again, those good commercial horns are too expensive and good ones are very few. For what I wanted in horns I had to spend over 300k euros. I can understand, this is not a viable business product to build a company upon as the sales are too few. This may be the reason good horn systems are generally one-offs or hobbyist made. I can not put a price on the time I spent for these but I enjoyed it as much as I enjoy listening through them. In the end every single one who listened to them told me they liked these better than their commercial counterparts and I have even been offered generous sums for it. I feel the same way but I can not be the judge of this as I have been living and tuning them for so long. I am very critical though and all my audio friends were already satisfied with my speakers as I continued to push forward. Small things add up to measurable and discernible differences in the end and horns amplify every little thing you make.

I am not well versed in electronics so I rely upon companies and some engineer friends for my front end. There are some people who not just build their horns but the whole amplification for them as well. Like Romy and an Australian guy called following in his footsteps called Anthony.Anthony builds his incredible multichannel set amp dedicated for his horns and up to an incredibly high standard.

I did not feel like I have been missing too much there as I am very satisfied with my amplification.

Agree with you wholeheartedly about the commercial aspect, the price, the lack of good horns.

Do you have any link to Anthony's system?

my previous post
The best horns I have heard are all custom made.
should have read "The best speakers I have heard by far are custom made horns. "
 

kodomo

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bonzo75

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Zero000

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The whole point of DIY horns is that they are DIY Ked.

So DIY yourself some!:)
 

Argonaut

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I suspect that Kedar, like myself, would prefer to adopt the DBSE approach to Horns.
 

bonzo75

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Do by someone else?
 

Zero000

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As a side note I have only ever heard two pairs of DIY horns and they were both, well, to be kind, absolutely rubbish!:D

Plenty of scope, then, for a complete disaster:D

Most commercial ones have fairly obvious issues even at very high price points in A LOT of cases.

It is a VERY SCARY breed. Lest you seriously like odd sounding things going on.
 

bonzo75

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Well there are a lot of DIY which are rubbish. Good thing is only one needs to be good.
 

Zero000

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Well there are a lot of DIY which are rubbish. Good thing is only one needs to be good.

Bad thing is they aren't yours!:)

If that Silvercore (I think it was) dealer will share his plans I'd just get a cab maker to knock you up some cabs, buy the drivers, and get some dude to build you the crossover (Paul at RFC). Done!
 

853guy

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Well there are a lot of DIY which are rubbish. Good thing is only one needs to be good.

Hi Bonzo,

Yep, good is good, but “good” often comes with additional baggage, especially with horns.

As I’ve previously mentioned, when we sold the big dumb system we used Living Voice OBX-RWs for a time as a single constant variable in order to swap various components in and out of what would become knows as the “experimental” system. The purpose of which was to work out what I liked and didn’t like, and more importantly, why I liked what I liked and didn’t like. That eventually lead me toward the DIY world, and through a friend was introduced to some practitioners (as opposed to theoreticians) who were fooling around with DIY horns and DIY SETs.

During that process, I figured out that I preferred idlers to DDs and belt-drives. I preferred Koetsu’s on heavy arms to zingy carts on univpivots. I preferred custom wound SUTs to internal impedance switches. I preferred active line stages to passive ones. I preferred output transformers to having none. I preferred R2R DACs to Delta-Sigma ones. I preferred multi-tap transformers/autoformers to volume pots. I preferred interstage transformers to cap-coupling. I preferred linear power supplies to switch-mode ones. I preferred no feedback to any form of local or global feedback. I preferred directly-heated triodes to indirectly-heated ones. I figured out that implementation beat topology, and topology beat exotic parts.

I also figured out I really wanted horns.

It was this collective experience that convinced me to leave behind the world of “mainstream” hi-fi (at least as represented by the mainstream hi-fi press) and pursue a system based not on ideas, but their implementation. In order for me to realise the type of sound I wanted, I’d be looking for a designer - not a brand, not a topology and not an acronym or buzz-word made up by a marketing company - at least when it came to amps and digital.

But when it came to DIY horns, there were several aspects that prevented me from being so willing to go down that path - despite the fact the best of them were absolutely convincing in terms of what matters most to me, musically speaking.

Firstly, they were all massive. Were I looking at a future of bachelor-hood in an abandoned warehouse, that would be fine. Given that I’m not, the impractical realities of accommodating OB/W-Cab/Slot-Loaded enclosures with multiple 15” and 18” drivers made them instantly redundant for my purposes. (Not a fan of Onkens.)

Secondly, many were very complex. Three-, four- and five-way systems, amplified by multiple channels, often with line-level crossovers. Time and phase alignment was a huge issue, requiring each individual driver to be mounted independently or co-dependently with support structures that presented complexities in-and-of-themselves. For those that were assembled using passive crossovers, cut-off frequencies and slopes were complex to work out, made more difficult by the shape/size of the horn and the challenge of gathering objective data given all measurements were performed in-situ.

Thirdly, all of them were continuing works in progress. These were guys who were fascinated by the question of “But what if I did this?” Were I still in touch with some of them today, I’m sure their systems would be vastly different. Their living-rooms resembled workshops. They cared very, very much about the process, and very, very little about any sort of final “product”. The results they were able to produce were great - amazing even - but their nature as inveterate tinkerers clearly delineated the differences of approach and personality. I simply don’t have the time, energy or engineering chops to do what they do, and nor do I want to.

Nevertheless, the preferences that developed during my experimental system years lead me to shortlist a few small practitioners who most aligned with what I was looking for. As I’ve written before, that person and his company best realised those accumulated biases, and made a horn that suffered from none of the three issues of size, complexity and being a continued WIP. In terms of a real-world product, built and assembled with the sort of engineering capability many DIY practitioners lack (through no fault of their own), it’s become a very easy choice.

That’s not to say that a DIY horn cannot produce great sound and musically communicative experiences, and it’s not to say a DIYer can’t bring chops to play that sometimes embarrass what passes for “engineering” from many pseudo-horn “specialists” that are simply hugely compromised (and yes, for me, unjustifiably expensive). It just means they’re not for me.

Be well,

853guy
 

Zero000

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Great post 853, and your observations about the nature of DIY horn builders are absolutely spot on I think.
 

bonzo75

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Nicely written.

I prefer both Idlers and DDs to belts. I am not sure if you have heard Kodo Beat, NVS, or a well restored Sp10. I know you haven't heard Schopper

I too like Koetsu, on the FR, but it isn't my favorite cartridge. I am not sure how well you know Zyx, Etsuro Urushi, or Opus (I haven't heard the Opus yet).

I always preferred active line stages to passive ones.

I have never liked anything switch mode unless Berning can be considered one.

My favorite dac is R2R, but the person who designs it prefers the Delta Sigma, and I haven't heard the new ones to compare the R2R and the DS

Point is, I won't make principles on these and will be open to designs.

Now, this the problem I have with the DIY write-up. It is perfect. Because there are 80 or 90% that confirm to it. It is also completely wrong, because you need to find only one exception there to benefit. There is no brand called DIY - so while you can generalize to some extent for Avantgarde, you can't generalize for a DIY horn. And DIY is not as complex a process as you made it there, because you end up purchasing what you heard, so the rest then becomes irrelevant. Time and phase and integration complexity is out of the question because if it hadn't been managed, you would not have liked it. He is not going to change anything, or experiment more. You spot it, you move it over to yours. No margins. No branding cost. No hifi show transport cost. No cost for making sure he is paying his employees on a monthly basis to maintain an ongoing concern. Unfortunately no resale either, so you need to make doubly sure. And you don't need to find five. Just one. Btw, I haven't heard a small horn sound good yet. And I agree with you, DIY are butt ugly for the living room, which is why they cannot make it commercially. But then kodomo's looks brilliant.
 

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bonzo75

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kodomo

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Kodomo's looks like my speakers without composite side panels.

I guess yours are Cessaro Gamma. Those are the closest relatives I have with my speaker commercially. There are many similarities but as I said, even little things cause difference. I wonder which bass option you got. All of them I have seen with Cessaro had time alignment problems and that was one thing I did not want after my last horn system which was not time aligned. For that reason I did go for direct radiator below my midbass horn. That is one difference. Midbass is very close, my horn is a little bigger and with smaller throat because of the compression chamber I have, but we use even the same drivers (Supravox 285-2000 alnico) but mine are modified. The rest looks similar but are different. Different drivers, different cutoff point of horns and even different flares. I tried the TAD cd's and prefered beryllium Radians over them. The TAD cd I most liked was 2003 but then again two radians blended better. I got TAD 1601b woofers for my direct radiator though, lovely tone. I also employed my favourite tweeter with horns the Fostex t500amkII's. Our crossovers follow similar models but I have impedance correction so set amps drive them beautifully. I also biamp for my bass, like cessaro does, but rather than plate amps, I have monoblock solid states. One other difference is the distance between drivers vertically. I spent so much time on this, and was the reason I have built that stand. I tried many configurations, measured, listened for weeks, changed and listened and measured. I tried Cessaro Gamma heights and what I achieve with mine sounds more cohesive and the image is standing lower than Gamma's stereo image. You dont feel like someone is on the stage singing to you with mine. Mine are as close as they can be without causing a problem at and around listening spot.

Great speakers those Cessaros are! First class workmanship too!
 

853guy

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Nicely written.

I prefer both Idlers and DDs to belts. I am not sure if you have heard Kodo Beat, NVS, or a well restored Sp10. I know you haven't heard Schopper

I too like Koetsu, on the FR, but it isn't my favorite cartridge. I am not sure how well you know Zyx, Etsuro Urushi, or Opus (I haven't heard the Opus yet).

I always preferred active line stages to passive ones.

I have never liked anything switch mode unless Berning can be considered one.

My favorite dac is R2R, but the person who designs it prefers the Delta Sigma, and I haven't heard the new ones to compare the R2R and the DS

Point is, I won't make principles on these and will be open to designs.

Hey!

No experience with Kodo or NVS, but have heard various implementations of the SP10. By “well-restored” SP10, do you simply mean an SP10 that most aligns with your individual preferences?

Have heard ZYX a little, but don’t have enough accumulated body of evidence to say I liked or didn’t like them (system variables, set-up, loading, etc). Heard the Opus on an air-bearing arm on a completely unfamiliar turntable with no idea of loading, set-up, et al - again, zero context with which to make any sort of valid judgement.

I appreciate we're all different, and arrive at our preferences via differing means. Your point if I understand you correctly is you’re not willing to arrive at any conclusions just yet, which I respect. My point is that the end game for me is assembling a system that meets various preferences as I’m less interested in audio tourism as a hobby, and had to be able to understand and articulate what those preferences were in order to align those preferences with a real-world designer/manufacturer.

Now, this the problem I have with the DIY write-up. It is perfect. Because there are 80 or 90% that confirm to it. It is also completely wrong, because you need to find only one exception there to benefit. There is no brand called DIY - so while you can generalize to some extent for Avantgarde, you can't generalize for a DIY horn. And DIY is not as complex a process as you made it there, because you end up purchasing what you heard, so the rest then becomes irrelevant. Time and phase and integration complexity is out of the question because if it hadn't been managed, you would not have liked it. He is not going to change anything, or experiment more. You spot it, you move it over to yours. No margins. No branding cost. No hifi show transport cost. No cost for making sure he is paying his employees on a monthly basis to maintain an ongoing concern. Unfortunately no resale either, so you need to make doubly sure. And you don't need to find five. Just one. Btw, I haven't heard a small horn sound good yet. And I agree with you, DIY are butt ugly for the living room, which is why they cannot make it commercially. But then kodomo's looks brilliant.

Have you found that exception? Will you and your significant other be prepared to live with its compromises? Its size? That it may place greater demands on the amplification chain (wattage and/or number of channels), or be semi-active, or need correction via DSP requring your analogue sources to be digitised? That its horn flare will need to conform to a specific shape that will be bandwidth limited and come with a diffractive signature? That its cut-off may be very close to its cross-over frequency? That its made from single sheets of MDF? That it may do physical "time alignment", but its crossover's group delay is neither constant nor linear? That it may major on micro- and macro-dynamics, note-to-note transition, and texture, but be compromised in imaging, sound staging, and top-to-bottom frequency coherence? Of these, which are you willing to live with or not?

Again, my “generalisations” are simply the accumulation of first-hand experience associated with specific systems and limited solely to it - they’re not theoretical. Yours will likely differ, because you’ll be accumulating experiences I won’t have.

But as you say you only need one and I’ve found it - it exists in the real world. Its group delay is constant and linear, is able to be fitted into a domestic living room, is entirely passive, looks great and can be driven by a single SET. But it's not a DIY job. For my preferences - emphasis on “my” - I’ve yet to hear a more compelling transducer.

You’re theorizing you’ll find yours, that it’ll cost you much less and look great. Have you?

I hope you do.

My best to you and your ongoing search,

853guy
 

853guy

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Great post 853, and your observations about the nature of DIY horn builders are absolutely spot on I think.

Hello!

I made some other observations about a few of those DIY horn builders that are more... er, socio-cultural in nature, but I'll omit those and attempt to stick to the topic of the thread.

Be well, User211,

853guy
 

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