new living voice prototype horns

Yes Antonio. Ears tell us something is wrong. The graphs show us why. My ears tell me all the FR drive units I have heard have had characters that I could not live with and which colour the music to a greater extent than I personally would consider acceptable. But I know there are people out there who like them. Swings and roundabouts, but you won't find full range drive units is studios.

 

Nor horns...

 

some of the best studio monitors are horn loaded, antonio. used to be in the 70s and still are.

 

:ffrc:

 

These were designed for studios and sound engineering labs they are also used by the military.

These are the latest active versions



I have a pair of the 109's but I want a pair ofthe new active ones for myself.

But just to the point. the manger driver is a full range driver 80hz to 35Khz. and is in a lot of studios.

 

I've never seen a Manger in a studio. I've heard them many times of course- always coming to the conclusion that the bending wave drive unit is dynamically challenged somehow (and no it's not the lack of distortion!). But I've never seen them in a studio - even in Germany surely most are equipped by Dynaudio, ME Gethain and Klein + Hummel?

Of course Ted Jordan's latest units run from around 100hz to 22khz. Beam like buggery in the treble but sound decent with a 10" coming in around 120hz. Of course they don't have dynamics either, but for very different reasons i suspect.

 

Have owned the 107 zero boxes, nice dynamics, and openness, lacking tonal colour/real texture and palpable depth though, a fair speaker none the less Yes I did have an Asr emitter tagged on to them as well)
Did not Derrick Wilson use these in his early Overkill audio designs?

 

I think he still does Tony. Funny - I'd always put the colour thing down to the amps I've heard them with - typically Lyngdorfs and the like. Maybe it's a case of a killer product waiting for someone to package it properly. I'm not sure Overkill ever managed that - although the DEQX Derek uses has it's own issues IME.

 

SM could it be another project for you in the future? I have a DEQX pre + xover to use on my line array thingys built for my by Judy spotheim. The problem i found is that it killed all dynamics. I said i would loan it to richard in sunny SE london and let him have a play. I'm still searching.

I have a list of the people who use the manger unit somewhere.

Tony the 107's for some reason i could not get working right. I had much better results using the big active 103 and the 109.

 

Did you use all the EQ facilities? I've found it seems to be pretty reasonable as a straight forward digital crossover/dac/preamp - especially if used with a decent mains conditioner. It's the heavy use of DSP in eq and drc that seems to screw the dynamics. It's certainly a step up from the Lyngdorf though - Tom Evans does some really good work on it as well.

Mine's sat in a box waiting for resale though - I'm an analogue guy at heart. Richard would have some fun with it I suspect.

 

Sm,

Like wise mine is boxed up in a corner waiting for me to decide what to do with it.

 

Show me...

 

http://www.westlakeaudio.com/Speakers/Professional_Series/bbsm_series.html

http://www.reyaudio.com/large-e.html

http://quarkconcept.online.fr/tad2404.htm

 

And, of course, pre-eminently, Tannoy, various models of which, both horn-loaded and not, have been used professionally all over the place for many years.

I haven't been at all impressed by the Manger-based designs I've heard, and the drivers are ridiculously over-priced. The cabinets on the Zeroboxes etc look nice though.

-- Ian

 

Well...

This is probably the top commercial monitor design currently available.

Again have a look at this page from Studio Consultants to find the kind of product intstalled in those studios that can afford the best.

Without posting a link as such, do a Google for George Augsberger - probably the most famous studio acoustician in the US. Most of the very best studios are equipped by him or by Westlake - you will see a common theme in the use of JBL and TAD driver units and horn loading.More hits have probably been recorded and mixed on Augsberger's horns over the past quarter of a century that just about any other design in the US. And don't make me laugh by mentioning ATC and PMC

And then of course as Ian says there is Tannoy.

 

Damn, if I had bought a horn tweeter instead of my Tannoys ST-50, I would be in your select group...

As for Tannoys, they are closer to FR than to horns, as you said...

Also, what I hear is that more studios use B&W than any other speakers, then there are many with Dynaudio, Harbeth, etc...

It makes sense they want to use what most people use, not exoteric monitors, not to mention the lousy recordings most make, to suit car audio and MP3...

 

Not really - they are two ways with a crossover at 1khz to a horn loaded tweeter - in many ways similar to many JBL and Urei monitors.

All studio's have lower end speakers - most have a fairly large selection. Only the top echelon of studios can afford soffit mounted Augsbergers, Kinoshitas and Westlakes. They don't come free or subsidised. Large Westlakes cost more than 5 times the price of top of the range PMC, ATC and B&W. As I say - only for the top studios.

 

The most popular studio speaker of all time is the Yamaha NS10. No contest, as *every* studio in the world has at least one pair of these.

 

Yamaha have stopped making them now which I'm sure will annoy a lot of producers / engineers - they were the one familiar thing one could expect to find everywhere.

Tony.

 

Thanks...