new living voice prototype horns

Nice website,new design looks pretty similar to old one, 'up periscope'.

 

Should have done too, wasn't it 'under construction' for longer than the Yangtze Dam?

 

yeah, the definitive one in particular was !!!

The living voice one was done, but now..

Anyway, I think they look great, a real pro-job.

 

They do look great.

When I have time I'll have to visit for a few hours on the pretext of buying something cheap, like a record brush.

 

does kondo make a record brush?

 

yes, with a silver wired handle,.

 

is anyone familiar with visaton horns:


http://www.visaton.com/en/bauvorschlaege/3_wege/845/index.html

it's a humble company, certainly not state of the art, but some of their speakers i've heard sounded better than expected - maybe i had a bad prejudice.

would be good to know if anyone had a chance to hear the above model.

 

for the lovers of pro-goes-home audio, here's an interesting product

danley sh-50

it's meant for pro use but it seems quite interesting as it has 1 conical horn with 7 drivers driving it at different positions depending on freqency.... judging from the pics the horn is not long enough for bass but it certainly gives a flavour

http://www.danleysoundlabs.com/SH50.html

here you can see the pics of 2 horns - ok they are not the prettiest....



http://svconline.com/enewsletters/Danley_Sound_SH50_11032005/

here is what the designer (Tom Danley) explained about the principle of working



"....Horns can be made to have a nearly constant directivity down to some frequency, which is governed, by the horn’s mouth dimension and wall angle.
Horns also can have a Zero degree acoustic phase which unlike an acoustically small direct radiator, can reproduce a complex input signal like a square wave or music.
If one stopped here, it would sound like horns are THE only choice.

On the down side, horns are much harder to design, have many more things to consider.
Horns are inherently a limited bandwidth device and the self interference which results from several horns (low, mid, high etc) and there larger physical size at crossover is much more pronounced than a comparatively tiny direct radiator.
Also, like other systems with conventional crossovers, there is a “time” issue which is not addressed.
Each range driver has an internal delay, each is driven by a crossover which has delay.

A solution I came up with was called a Unity Horn and more recently, its offspring, the Synergy horn (pat pend).
The idea here is that one uses a single large conical horn (which is constant directivity) but you drive it at different places depending on frequency.
The physical spacing of the drivers and the fact they all are coupled into a single acoustic passage (the horn), allow the outputs to combine into a single source.
The frequency ranges couple together at crossover within the horn, at a dimension less than ¼ wl so the addition is fully coherent and polar plots show a single CD source.
Generally, a passive networks can be used if the physical positions are right but DSP can be applied also.

The most recent one using this design is called an SH50 and was put on our web site this week if your interested.
http://www.danleysoundlabs.com/SH50.html

FWIW, the measurement needs to be re-done on a tower because of the floor bounce cancellation dip at the low end as well as the time delay re-set.
Cheers,

Tom Danley

Danley Sound Labs

 

Not tried the horns but have used their 2" fabric dome and they seem to be very well manufactured.

 

Just few days more and I will have a chance to compare it to my Avantgarde Trio. Do not let the size fool you, the bass is more than satisfying, one of the very best you can get from a horn speaker, very well integrated ... at least as I hope without hearing it in my room I am sure sometime around this time next week, you will be much better informed :MILD:

 

Today I moved the Trio sideways, put the Danleys just on the floor and later on an Ikea table to get it somehow ear level and switched it on. It is just wow. And wow and wow. With an extremely cheap speaker cable and with a very cheap banana to Speak-on converter it is just amazing, driven from a Macbook and a Naim Supernait with its internal DAC. Right out of the box it has no honkiness, no brightness, it does not shout, the replication of the original music event's venue is just unbelievable, no limit for the dynamics. It is the very first so called neutral, uncolored speaker in my life, which is really exciting! It seems not too sensitive on the placement it it is on ear level, the 50x50 dispersion characteristics can help a lot with tricky rooms. I easily can imagine it is one of the very best of PA speakers. As in our country there will be 3 days of holiday from tomorrow I will have a chance to play with it. You will hear about my experience for sure I am really excited.

 

I look forward to hearing more. Are you using them active or passive?

 

Passive, now with a Naim Supernait, but in the forthcoming days I will try them with an Altmann BYOB amp, a Yamamoto A-08s, a Leben CS300X and a professional MC2 Audio MC1250 A/B class 1250W amp and E25 switching power supply 750w amp as well. Just for having fun!

Actually with the Supernait it is something extra special even with some temporary extra cheap cables. It is inviting smooth and punchy when it is not driven hard, but if you want it loud it is just scary how lively and honest the sound will become. I am pretty sure, that in a domestic environment you can not push it even close to its limits, no way, in anykind of big room. You are set to forget all the preconceptions you may have about PA speakers.

 

how big is your room? i would expect it's an overkill for anything under 70-80m2.

 

a bit less than 40 sqm. I am sitting some 4 m from them, but even closer is not too bad.

 

A photo of the system:

http://www.audiocircle.com/gallery/displayimage.php?album=1848&pos=0

and another one:

http://www.audiocircle.com/gallery/displayimage.php?album=1848&pos=1

 

Very interesting, Ferenc. Care to tell us more about the speakers?

 

these seem even more advanced.

http://www.eaw.com/info/EAW/Loudspeaker_Product_Info/Current_Loudspeakers/AX396/AX396_SPECS_revB.pdf

i would be curious to know if the serve for home use.

 

I can give you more information after living with them for more than a week now of course, just let me know what aspects are interesting for you. I plan to write a kind of "review", but not until I have some more experience living with it in the next 2-3 weeks.

As I mentioned earlier, these are really amazing speakers. After living with an Avantgarde Trio for some 8 years, it is now a real eye-opener experience. Shaking my world really. I can not imagine, that there is anything wrong with them (apart size and look), can not imagine to criticize them for anything. They sound like the recording you are playing. Nothing more, nothing less, but they do it on a very entertaining and funny way where you are not forced to think of the "sound" of the speakers, because you can hear the "sound" of the music and the recording.

Very room friendly speakers, the only thing you need to be careful is the speaker stand. There is a quite big surface on the bottom of the speakers, which touches the top of the stand. If you are listening on a higher volume, the box is vibrating, just a little bit, this vibration "excites " the stand itself. So I do not know at the moment what kind of stand would be ideal: a metal thin stand, like the Mana stands were for the big ATC speakers or a more substantial. heavy real wood, like Yamaha were using for the legendary NS-1000. I think a metal stand would be better but will make an experiment with a wood one as well. I am using it on a top of the 50 cm high Ikea table, but a higher stand seems to be better I think, something like 60 - 65 cm high at least if your room is not higher than 2.6 - 2.9 m. These are marginal questions however, like what kind of tyres you need for your Ferrari Enzo

 

According to the .pdf they require a subwoofer to make them full range.