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Post by steveeb on Mar 21, 2016 9:42:40 GMT
Why do you think they wouldn't be Chris? Have a look at Speedy Steve's beauties!
As Philip says, if you can't afford to have a pair built to that standard, assembling a kit will give you not only the satisfaction of having your hand in there (you CAN do it! ) but I'm sure the sonic result will be better than most used offerings that you would pick up for a couple of hundred quid.
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Post by pre65 on Mar 21, 2016 11:23:22 GMT
The cabinets for my Frugalhorn 3's came from an Ebay seller in Germany.
They were in MDF and fully assembled , even had the wadding behind the driver.
Can't remember the price, but £120 rings a bell. 
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Post by pre65 on Mar 21, 2016 11:39:53 GMT
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Post by steveeb on Mar 21, 2016 12:18:37 GMT
If they were fully assembled then they had better have the damping in there!  There is DIY which sounds superb and is excellent VFM. But you can cut the cost too far and end with a result that makes you wonder what all the fuss is about. It looks like a duck, walks like a duck and honks like a goose. Save on labour and retail margin to use good quality materials. It's easy enough to get decent 18mm Birch ply kits, which is a minimum requirement if you want to approach the sound that is possible. DIY was the foundation of commercial HiFi but it's priority was, and still can be, the sound quality and the pleasure of making your own equipment, no? |
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Post by speedysteve on Mar 21, 2016 13:28:03 GMT
IME the upper frequencies will always work well. Go with a ribbon tweeter of quality and tractrix horn with a decent compression driver to do down to around 1200Hz.
Ideally another pair of horns down to around 300-500Hz. A 250Hz horn is not that big.
There are interesting dual concentric mid/upper freq drivers from BMS that work in the 250Hz horns and will cover 500Hz and upwards (I've only used those BMS drivers on the mid channel sub 1200, and they were very good). I'd like to try the dual concentric sometime.
What you do below that is very much room dependant and needs to be controlled to integrate with the room.
4 way is doable. 3 way and it starts to be more problematic and you won't go deep enough for me:)
Horns only honk if you get something wrong or try to use to few horns:)
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Post by MartinT on Mar 21, 2016 14:07:07 GMT
That's the problem with a single Lowther driver, although I've always liked Horning's solutions around the Lowther unit. Fast and dynamic to the nth degree.
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Post by steveeb on Mar 21, 2016 16:00:09 GMT
I was actually only being playful rather than literal about honking It's an association many think is an inherent characteristic of the technology. I thought it was an urban myth until I heard the Carfrae LBH at a show. |
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Post by Chris on Mar 21, 2016 16:46:05 GMT
Hello Steveeb and thank you for your input into this thread. I simply wasn't sure about how they would work - I always thought horns were for bigger spaces and never even realised how they could look! The DIY approach isn't for me though.
All in all I'm finding the answers fascinating.
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Post by steveeb on Mar 23, 2016 12:43:07 GMT
Chris, do you still have the AN/K speakers? I would say the Frugels presentation is broadly not dissimilar to the AN/J or AN/E style; strong projection and room interaction giving a large, room filling scale.
As Steve said, one consideration with a small room is that the bass needs to be managed, so you need to look to a model with either the potential for adjustment and/ or tuned with the intention of near field listening. I made speakers for a lovely Polish guy with a room 2.5m x 4.5m. When he first heard them he was distraught and said he couldn't tell me how they sounded because he couldn't hear anything through the overwhelming bass. With some recommended adjustment he described them as going "from a Trabant to a Ferrari".
With back-loaded horns the cabinet size is often an indication of the air being moved and you are quite correct in assuming that most large sized examples you may have seen would not be suitable for a small room. Not only would they produce bass suitable for a larger space but they can require a minimum listening distance in order to integrate the driver and horn mouth into a cohesive source. My 6' Sachikos need to be heard about 8-9' away.
Really a horn is only another method to extend the low frequency response and connect the driver to the air. Greater performance can be achieved with a long pipe and large exit, so some examples are very big, but this doesn't mean that the same technique can't be employed in a more modest format, any more than a bass reflex or a transmission line design can.
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Post by speedysteve on Mar 23, 2016 18:22:55 GMT
Yes, tapped horns for instance will give you true 20Hz bass from a relatively small enclosure.
IME they need room mode management in normal sized rooms. The same would be true of any speaker capable of generating such bass. It does depend on the room at which frequency control is needed though.
The beauty of time aligned front loaded horn systems is the ease of integration. I don't sit that far away from my drivers.
No back loaded delay to manage.
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Post by Chris on Mar 23, 2016 18:38:38 GMT
Both excellent and highly informative answers. Much appreciated.
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Post by steveeb on Mar 23, 2016 19:24:32 GMT
The beauty of time aligned front loaded horn systems is the ease of integration. I don't sit that far away from my drivers. No back loaded delay to manage. Yours do come halfway across the room to meet you though!  |
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Post by speedysteve on Mar 23, 2016 22:28:50 GMT
The beauty of time aligned front loaded horn systems is the ease of integration. I don't sit that far away from my drivers. No back loaded delay to manage. Yours do come halfway across the room to meet you though! Actually no as the mouths are farthest away. Active / time alignment means that first peak positive from all drivers arrives at the ear at the same time to the millisecond or so. You can't do that with a driver radiating and backloaded in the same cab. |
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