My advice on horn loaded single driver speaker design

[@roy7602]

Fully agree! Went the Voigt-Pipe route with the TangBand W8 1772, they're ~2m high. They've got me hooked and next I want to try a folded Voigt-Pipe that's ~2m high and see how that turns out.

[@raynerstuelgalid]

Can you share the design of the VP for this Tang Band, please?

[@bobstenerson3276]

FYI, I went to the Munich audio show and saw the massive ESD horn speaker. My friend who owns an audio store is good friends with one of the insiders of the company. He told us that the son of the company studied 4 years under Bruce Edgar before he passed away. Did not get into details about what he learned or incorporated into his design. But it sure was interesting to hear.

[@realworldaudio]

Thank you Bob for sharing that! I hope he brought in a lot of ideas and conmcepts. I'm glad his legacy lives on!

[@nicktube3904]

Dear Janos, Thanks for wanting to dedicate an episode to this topic/my question. The highest priority for the design of my loudspeaker is "narrow directivity" for two reasons. One is the relatively small listening space I have, the other reason is that I want to experiment with crosstalk cancellation technology, which only comes into its own with as few reflections and as much direct sound as possible. I do not like electrostats or magneto= but do have a love for high efficiency, paper drivers and fullrange driver. Problem is that usually fullrange drivers have a very wide dispersion pattern. Hence I was thinking of a large horn for good directvity, preferably with fullrange driver. But with compression drivers would also be possible. I am also open to multiple small horns, if you get better directivity. But I'm afraid this will only get more complex, especially since I'm realtively close to the speaker. This was another reason why a single driver in a horn seemed right for me. Do you maybe have any suggestions for me? I myself thought this design was interesting by Jospeh Crowe no-1548 (By the way, Jospeh (Troy) is very talented in loudspeaker design) All the best! Nick :)

[@realworldaudio]

Goodness Nick, 11mo!! Video response coming tomorrow :)

[@nicktube3904]

@@realworldaudioit’s okay my friend, no worries! I have changed my plans for my diy project. I think it’s a really interesting design with allot of advantages and it’s called a synergy horn aka multiple entry horn. It’s a full range hornloaded and acts as a point source! If you find this interesting there’s a really nice thread with good information on this subject on the ‘whatsbestforum’ the thread is called ‘Why synergy horns?’ by a respected audiophile Sebastian Schlager. In this thread you will find how remarkable this design is. :)

[@SteveWille]

This is outside my lane, so take it for what it is worth… Decware has a new single, full-range driver, rear horn loaded design that might be interesting to look at called the DFH 10 “Lii HeadWrecker” (😁). Steve Deckert has recently posted a pile of KZbin videos about it on the Decware channel including some of them being constructed.

[@realworldaudio]

Thank you Steve for the link! My impression from the YT sound sample (both through LaGrande and headphones) is consistent with my experience of how rear loaded single driver horns sound: lively, fresh sound with a lot of speed, attack and bite, coupled with loads of clarity. Nice execution, and beautiful craftsmanship! The downside is very little midbass and low bass. With break-in the midbass and low bass improves quite significantly, but never catches up the level of BR / other designs. So, if one has the problem that there's already too much midbass in the room, this is a very good choice, and you will experience clear deep end without room overload. On the other hand if you want more midbass than now, this is not it - as you will get even less. Very good quality though, but leveled much lower than the norm, much below the bass hearing threshold of most people. If you have acute hearing in the bass region, this loudspeaker will be a welcome change! However, about 99% of audiophiles have lost their ability to hear well in bass - that's why everyone is cranking it up usually much more than it should be. Dr Bruce Edgar's Lowther horn was the only one that had exceptional midbass AND deep bass level with the rest of the sound spectrum. In addition to the otherwise excellent upper bass though highs region that is characteristic of such fullrangers. To me the level of midbass it provided was exemplary for classical music, but my friend eventually moved on after several years to a full blown big Altec as he wanted that clarity at a higher midbass level.

[@EddyTeetree]

Hey Steve. Decware are the infinite baffle guys im taking queues from for my next speakers . Have they changed their designs strategy?

[@SteveWille]

@@EddyTeetree Decware seems to still have all manner of off-beat speaker designs. I ordered the basic SET amp, Zen Triode, and went to Peoria IL to pick it up when it was finally done, what a blast. Steve Deckert was very generous with his time; we hung out for a couple hours in his listening room listening to his speakers driven by my 2.3 watt amp. I thought the 15” open baffles sounded outstanding (though be warned since this was my first and only OB experience).

[@nicktube3904]

Dear Janos, Thanks for wanting to dedicate an episode to this topic/my question. The highest priority for the design of my loudspeaker is "narrow directivity" for two reasons. One is the relatively small listening space I have, the other reason is that I want to experiment with crosstalk cancellation technology, which only comes into its own with as few reflections and as much direct sound as possible. I do not like electrostats or magneto= but do have a love for high efficiency, paper drivers and fullrange driver. Problem is that usually fullrange drivers have a very wide dispersion pattern. Hence I was thinking of a large horn for good directvity, preferably with fullrange driver. But with compression drivers would also be possible. I am also open to multiple small horns, if you get better directivity. But I'm afraid this will only get more complex, especially since I'm realtively close to the speaker. This was another reason why a single driver in a horn seemed right for me. Do you maybe have any suggestions for me? I myself thought this design was interesting by Jospeh Crowe no-1548 (By the way, Jospeh (Troy) is very talented in loudspeaker design) All the best! Nick :)

[@georgkessler2564]

Hi Janos, how i can calc. a vogit pipe, i would like to use TangBand W8 1772, the second best speaker on yt, is providing drawing but the port dimesions are missing.

[@realworldaudio]

Hi Georg, the Voigt pipe is quite a versatile speaker, there is no specific formula to calculate it - wedge shape, driver about half the height, and mouth in the bottom. There's no right and wrong with it, changing ratios, sizes, mouth size will affect how it will match your room. I know that speaker design, and I would just use an approximate port size that looks about as big as the one seen in the video. Don't recall what it was, but about 10-15cm tall mouth / port will work fine. Also, if you are interested, I have my Voigt pipe dimensions in one of my videos: kzbin.info/www/bejne/gJmzfaOcrbGln7ssi=wwvN_Wpk5do0kCh4 You probably already know it, but I have a Voigt pipe playlist on my channel, if you are interested in Voigt pipes I can recommend checking it out. I go into quite a detail on the port size / matching to room etc issues and aspects of the Voigt pipes, and differences in various builds and approaches. Have fun with your build! Cheers, Janos

[@asadabbasmirza9519]

What's the name of Edgar enclosures.?

[@HarpBaldfellow]

Hi Janos, I have some questions and observations about Voigt Pipes, any help you can provide in answering them would be much appreciated. I didn't know which video would be best to put this against though! I have built recently a pair of speakers called "frugal horns", these are fairly small speakers using a single driver, in my case Markaudio MS7. The speakers sound really good, but are in a very small room, just 7 feet by 13 feet. My wife is so impressed that she wants the speakers moved to our main living room, which is much larger, approx 20 feet by 18 feet, but has a central chimney. I think the speakers I made would be too small for the space and am thinking instead to build Voigt Pipes, rather than larger horn based speakers. The design of the speakers I made include a curve to form the rear facing horn. I wonder if rather than using a straight back of the Voigt Pipes, I could curve that too, and would a curved back improve the sound at all? I could imagine that a curved back Voigt Pipe would have less standing waves and would mean any internally reflected waves could dissipate more cleanly as any reflections from the curved surface would change direction based on the tangent of the curve at the point of reflection which varies in angle along the curve. Of course it would be much more work to shape the back and to cut curved sides. Do you think there is any advantage, and if so, is the advantage sufficiently attractive to mitigate the extra work involved? There's a couple of ways I can think of to make the curved back. One is to use several layers of thin (i.e. flexible) plywood (or other woods), another would be to use "kerfing" on a single thicker piece. I would expect any resonances of the back would be lost as I would think both methods would damp the back panel: for your "live panel" design that would be a bad thing I think, though I've seen others recommend adding damping to the panels. The drivers I'm considering are the Lii Song Fast 8, an approx 7inch driver with a Vas of 69 litres; a Markaudio Alpair 11MS, approx 5.5inch driver with a Vas of just 17 litres; or a Markaudio 12p, approx 6.5inch driver with a Vas of 43 litres. Of these, and based on the manufacturers' specifications, the Lii Song has the best performance curve, very good from 50Hz to 20kHz with a slow drop off at the lower end. Is there something specific I should look for in the specs that would make the "best fit" driver for the Voigt Pipe? Prices vary for these here in the UK, from about £180 to £250 (for a pair). To go "up market" to Cube Audio would raise the cost to at least 6 times that for their lowest cost driver, I don't want to spend so much, £250 is about the limit I would spend: the drivers for my Frugal Horns were just £120 (pair). Any help you can provide greatly appreciated.

[@EduardBroekman]

Mmm, a Voight is also a back loaded horn..?

[@sc0or]

Voigt pipe for a FR driver sounds like Edison's wax machine. I mean you will want to listen to the very first records. And I didn't get what's a problem to make a cabinet two times wider and turn a horn around? A room size may be?

[@asadabbasmirza9519]

For PM series of lowther TP 1

[@asadabbasmirza9519]

Back loaded Dr. Adreas Mau.

[@Johnny-Too-Bad]

Voxativ has back loaded horn plans with their driver purchase

[@flex-cx9bi]

It's not that hard, but it take some knowledge. Several projects with plans around both from Lowther and some DIY designs. Voigt pipe is basically useless compared to a proper rear loaded horn single fullrange driver. To get the midrange right compression chamber should be in the 3-6 liter region. Bigger volume sounds way too coloured. Some examples. kzbin.info/www/bejne/lYqTkn1uapZ-m8U kzbin.info/www/bejne/hGW7kISdpL5lg6c

[@asadabbasmirza9519]

Mau horns?????..

[@asadabbasmirza9519]

Volf von langa