Moving to Horn speakers

So long as one uses a reasonable amount of caution, too much power in an amp is typically not as much of a problem as not enough power. Having said that, my thoughts are that Lowther's are more fragile than most "hi-fi" type drivers, so treat them with a little more respect than you might normally bestow on a bigger, more rugged beast.

As far as power amps go, so long as speed, bandwidth, linearity, stability and class of operation ( bias level ) remain consistent, the amp with more power will typically sound better and work in a wider variety of situations. When one of the factors that i mentioned differs between comparable models, what you like best is strictly a matter of personal preference.

Twl: When you mention 108 dB peaks, are you talking at 1 meter, at a random listening position X feet away from the pair of speakers, etc... ? Sean
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Yes, Sean, that is based on the 1 meter testing position, on peak. They start to suffer from compression above that level. They may have some compression below that also, but not real noticeable. Of course, SPL drops off as you get further away.

Which Lowther drivers are these and what are they rated at in terms of 1w / 1m in stock form ? Sean
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Why not look into oris horns? voight pipes are nice but not a real horn also look into other drivers AER ,PHY ,Fostex, lowthers do have there own character so..also smaller amps work best on horns. Later you may want to try a SET .Happy listening .JK

Sean, these are the EX3 drivers which are rated at 98db at 1w/1meter, and in a suitable enclosure, they gain about 2db, which puts them at about 100db/1w/1m. With 2 watts, they do about 103db and with 4 they do about 106db. At 8 watts they are hitting about as high as they will go before some noticeable compression, due to to 8" driver size. They are rated to take 100w, but it really just doesn't make any sense to give them more than about 6 or 8 watts max. These are peak figures for music applications. They are not average SPL figures, nor are these figures relevant at the listening position. The much more expensive EX4 driver is rated at 99.5db/1w/1m and should do a little better, but it will still enter compression around the same point, because it is still an 8" driver, and starts to lose the ability to move enough air at around the same point. These are not long-throw drivers.

Also, it should be noted that these speakers don't go below 40 Hz, so there is not as much air for them to move at the frequencies they produce.In addition, the typical rear-horn enclosure will augment the bass response to help the driver out, when the freq's get lower. And, it should be noted that if the cabinet is narrow, the baffle-step losses will cause a 5db shelving-down at the 375Hz point, or thereabouts, depending on the width of the cabinet. This is why I added the mod to my Voigt Pipes. Many designers will just put in an electronic baffle-step compensating network and cut 5db off everything above 375Hz, but I didn't have the power to lose that 5db of efficiency, so I acoustically reinforced the frequencies below 375Hz with a wider, swinging baffle to keep the 1/2-space radiation much further down into the bass. I was a little concerned about edge-diffraction problems, but with the swinging baffle-extensions angled slightly backward, it doesn't seem to be any problem at all. So, I managed to squeeze all the efficiency of the drivers out of them, all the way down to about 48Hz, where much of the sound is coming out of the port mouth at the bottom, and has floor reinforcement. Simple and quite effective.

When these speakers are loaded into a front horn, then they can produce higher SPL, if the horn is properly designed, and they also generally have multiple drivers in these applications, due to the unacceptable size of bass horn cabinets. The Oris Horns mentioned above are good ones which provide about 104.5db/1w/1m, if I remember correctly. They use a powered subwoofer to handle the freq's below 150Hz.

Lowther claims the most efficient drivers in the world, but I think that there are a few others that can match them, and Loth-X is supposed to have one that is more efficient.