Approachable horns?

thanks for the input...

lots more reading to be done then maybe some travelling but for now -

Easiest to get to would be Beauhorn B2's as Peter at alternative audio in Somerset has a pair; would be interesting to hear but by the sounds of it they are not for me

Felix - had already stumbled across the site whilst googling, must have a proper read - and Bath is certainly a plausible day trip

Bottleneck - thanks for the run-down.
Stone audio in Dorset also look worth a visit - they had a Tannoy evening last week (which I didn't get to); used to get to Walrus fairly regularly but can't see myself getting to London for a while now, will be interesting to hear thoughts afterwards though particularly given the dem room there!

Anex - interesting looking stuff; the other diy open baffles I came across were these: Bastanis which includes a comparison with the B2's by a designer of di-pole speakers.... get's rather circular after a bit

It's a long term project; we are going to totally re-build the house next year and I'd like to think that sounds will be planned for rather than accommodated after the event so any further pointers gratefully received

 

Hi Coda, no problem glad to talk about horns (a favourite topic anyway!)

Getting the best from a Lowther means a fantastic cabinet, made exactly the right shape and if you want any bass - pretty damn big...
My own impression of the B2 (and Id definately say its worth hearing to make your own mind up on) - I really didnt take to it at all. No bass, thin tinny sound, nasal, shoutyness in the treble.. YUK!

The big wooden virtuosos are in a different league IMO. Unfortunately they cost a shed load more too..

My comments on the B2 are almost certainly too strong, but if you do hear them and dont like them, please dont dismiss horns on the basis of them!!

 

Beauhorns

[Dragging up an old thread that is one of the few to mention Beauhorns...]

I came across a pair of Beauhorn B2.2 Revelations recently that are for sale as a demo model from a shop in Oslo 2 hrs from where I live. Presumably they are the pair that were exhibited at our local hi-fi show in late 2005 (see pic)

I know there have been some negative comments about these on this thread and elsewhere, but I'm tempted, even so (The demo asking price is NOK 38.000, roughly £3200) Does anyone have anything nice to say about them, perhaps in the light of experience after this thread started?

 

So, how long does it take to get from S.Devon to Bath?

Had to dig this out to see how long it had actually been- just over 20 months!
Many thanks to Martin, learnt more in an hours listening than any number of hours reading...

General sound is just excellent and Martin's system made all of the CDs I took along sound very different to anything I've heard before - but not in any way that I was expecting, must have spent a good half hour being completely baffled. I'm still trying to work it all out.
Reading back through this thread there is a comment from Mr Sukebe about lack of texture in the H2s he heard, and that may well be what was most odd to me.
Is a toning down of timbre a horn trait in general?
A thing that struck me as a contradiction was the great presence to particularly voices and piano that fell in a range (had to look it up this morning) broadly from 100 - 1000 Hz, or an octave below to two octaves above middle C coupled with a seeming smoothing out of other instruments in that range - most noticeably cello and oboe.
Another thing it took a while for me to come to terms with was that the general impression I get from forum chatter is that a forward presentation gets lumped in with a brightness or harshness to the top end. There was nothing harsh/hard or bright here but the presentation was definitely more front row than almost anything I have heard previously.

 

Thanks Robert, it was good to see you again - and a shame we didn't have longer to play!

The musical selections were all of an operatic or choral nature, at varying scales. It's great fun to have the pile of boxes you're used-to auditioned by someone else, for all sorts of reasons. On Saturday the discussion was thoroughly illuminating to me in finding ways to re-approach / critique the familar. I am now an internet expert on 'squillo' ; I also have a longer list of music to buy...

 

Even more so given the amount of the afternoon spent watching morris dancing (unintentionally I should add - eating lunch, minding our own business then suddenly surrounded by bells, sticks and waving hankies). Definitely a set-up I'd like to revisit should the opportunity arise. (The horns not the morris folk)

Did you come across anything relevant relating to analysis of the actual sound produced? ISTR getting sidetracked into reading a fair bit about vocal technique which was interesting in it's own way but for a different set of reasons.

 

Th eonly reference I found on how it's produced is this:
http://vocalway.com/issue14.htm

You'll be most welcome - unless you dance into view singing 'Roberte is icumen in'.

 

Hi Coda

Am going through the same dilemas myself at the moment, having recently bought Bottlenecks 300b they do work really well with my modified Tannoys but I can't help but wonder what a proper pair of horns would sound like.

Have a look at the following sites www.frugal-horn.com and diyaudio.com (which has a full range driver section) there's masses to read on new ideas designs for room friendly horns - just a problem deciding what to go for!

Let me know how you get along.

regards philip

 

H2s can be stunning. I've had a pair for a good few years now and find that they give a good taste of what horns are all about - speed, immediacy, scale, dynamics but temper some elements of the more extreme designs such as horn loaded Lowthers.

Mine are out of use at the moment and I'm running much, much smaller boxes. It is very difficult to adjust to a small stand mount after H2s even though there are some gains.

 

oops - sorry - just noticed the date on the thread

 

No problem - the system hasn't actually changed since the thread started. On the other hand the room around it has changed completely so at least I now know what space I am dealing with.

 

Scale was one of the things that confused me. On orchestral songs the soloist(s) often sounded wonderfully present but in contrast the orchestra was rather confined behind them. Part of this was probably to do with distance from the speakers but I did also wonder whether what gives (me) the impression of size in an orchestral recording is the separation between the types of sound produced by different instruments: the violins sounding different to the violas to the cellos and so on. Not that I would be able to pick one line out from another and positively say which section was playing it but that the differences in timbre help to spread the sound in the room.
Whether the lack of emphasis on this particular aspect is a trait of Martin's system, or H2s, or horns in general I would be interested to know.

 

Interesting point. Perhaps, but maybe it's also a function of evenness-of response (whatever the speaker).

A thought just occurred to me. Suppose a 2-way speaker where some of the important formant/consonant sounds fall into the crossover range - losing some energy/articulation on replay. Going for a little more volume to increase apparent articulation would then also emphasise the orchestra - particularly the bottom end 'weight' the ear is pretty insensitive to at lower volume - leading to a 'bigger' orchestral sound for the same perception of vocal performance.

Alternatively - electrostats can give superb clarity and insight into this kind of depth perspective, even at low volume - presumably because they are full-range, and very 'clean' (no stray energy storage in boxes and flapping cones etc). But I have to say the ESL57s I had ...made the orchestras behind choral works sound even smaller than the H2s!

 

I thought the new Quads have separate parts of the panel for separate ranges? So they can not really be called full range in that they have no crossover. Although, rather than a crossover I suppose simply varied levels of LP filtering would make more sense.

Slight differences in the amount of BSC can effect the depth of the stage as well, with a more full bodied speaker sounding less present to me, while a speaker with a slight dip between around 100Hz and 500Hz (just 1dB or so) can make it sound more alive and up front. So response plays a big part.

 

I'd be quite happy to believe that H2s and ESls are right and pretty much everything else I've heard has been wrong!

But what about the cello sonata - piano definitely came forward with the cello receding. With the Bill Evans you'd expect the piano to be forward; would it be stretching things to suggest that voice and piano have similarities in terms of attack, with strings (and oboe as I remember) being in a different camp?

(to anyone wondering why we didn't sort all this out at the time: it's my fault - only had an hour and spent most of that listening, now trying to work out what I heard)

 

Nope, googled still don't know, BSC whasat?

 

Baffle Step Correction.

57s 'cross' below 800Hz and a 1st order rolloff to both IIRC. Stator sensitivities and panel dims also effect correction for BSC/alteration of environment from omni to dipolar with frequency. Clever bloke, PJW...

Agree completely.

Incidentally, my H2s are setup about a metre out from the wall, and the Deltec amps take their feedback from the speaker terminall - both these things conspire to a very 'tight' - though extended - bass presentation (no dependance on room gain and underdamping!). As a result (in my setup) they don't necessarily sound like 'big speakers are expected to' - and that has surprised a few people before.

 

Sorry BSC is baffle step correction. When the sounds wavelength is bigger than the front of the speaker, the sound spills around it and so the level received at the front of the speaker goes down (the sound has to fill a bigger space). The BSC compensates for that.

Voice is made of three main types of sound, voiced, fricative and polsive, and polsive could I suppose, have a similar attack to that of a tight string being hammered in the right frequency range.

 

While we are getting technical: have either of you, or anyone else, come across a breakdown of orchestral instruments in terms of harmonics produced? A comparison of, say, a flute which I'd guess is relatively pure toned and others with a more complex sound - maybe reeds or stringed instruments.
Or put another way: which instruments differ most from a pure sine wave and which least?

 

I think I've got somethign at home, but James Boyk touches on it in this article:

http://www.cco.caltech.edu/~boyk/spectra/spectra.htm

(more articles here:
http://www.cco.caltech.edu/~boyk/ARTICLES.HTM)