Change to Horns or stay Dynamic

Horns sure have their fans, but to my ears, they sound nasty. To each his own, YMV, etc.,etc..

Unsound,

I agree that horns can sound harsh and have colorations and just plain sound bad, but what loudspeaker technology doesn't have it's bad examples? Factors affecting horn performance include abrupt mouth termination, discontinuities in the profile (diffraction horns are notorious for this), forcing a horn to play outside of it's design bandwidth etc.

I am sensitive to horn artifacts and the main reason I originally brought up these two speakers is because by all accounts they do not have the traditional horn sound. Lynn Olson, a well known speaker designer and a person that by his own admission is very sensitive to horn honk, was impressed by the Jazz Module when he auditioned it at one of the shows. Keep in mind that both the Summa and the Jazz module use waveguides, that are shallower than wide with straight sided walls and have smooth round-overs at the mouth termination. As i mentioned earlier waveguides and the theory behind them, have been developed by Dr. Geddes who is also the one that coined their name. Suffice to say that there are key differences between waveguides and horns. This last statement does not of course preclude the fact that horns can sound good and some actually do so, namely some examples of the pro monitors mentioned by Shadorne.

George

Fair enough. I have heard most of the highly touted, and might I add fairly expensive horns, but not the Geddes "waveguides". I will try to remember to make an effort to do so. If the Geddes "waveguide" systems are indeed so different, perhaps they shouldn't be grouped with horns at all?

Try to listen to Tactrix horns or LeCleach profiles too, new profiles, implementations and time alignment clean out the tipical horn sound, I had a lot of Vintage horns from Altec Valencias to Hartsfield toploaders and the newer versions are way more sophisticated and better sounding.

A waveguide is generally shallow and has a wide throat with no compression chamber. A horn loaded driver uses a compression driver mounted behind a deeper horn.

A waveguide can control dispersion and allow for a much better match between drivers - it is very useful and completely underestimated by most designers.

As a conventional woofer driver starts to beam at the top of its useful range then you can limit the dispersion of the tweeter with a waveguide to get a completely smooth transition.

Another trick is to extend the useful LF range of a driver a little in order to get a better crossover point and a device that will give 6db higher output without distortion at is lower opertaing range (where Xmax starts to be an issue).

Waveguides are essential to good speaker design, IMHO...

Interestingly B&W go completely against this philosphy with their baffleless tweeters mounted on top...inevitably the transition between midrange and tweeter is most evident in the off axis response which often shows a discontinuity that is distinctly audible but also regarded as pleasurable by B&W owners. IMHO, depedning on the room setup, it can make one all too aware of the fact you are hearing sound from three or more drivers...

Hi All

I am Earl Geddes and I do think that Waveguides are unique from horns. To me they are not the same thing. The theories behind them are completely different.

I'd be happy to expound in more detail on the differences, but that's best done through questions than my just writing a monogram on the subject.

On my website www.gedlee.com there is a letter to Audio Express which outlines the general ideas. That's worth reading as a start.

And as far as my website goes, I am a scientist not a web designer. My web designs are better than a web designers speaker designs - thats about all I can say.