Why aren't more of you guys using horns?

[krouchchocolate 10+ year member]

Be careful with the XS69 tho. They are deep speakers. I had a hard time fitting them in my doors. =(

 

[Horsemanwill 10+ year member]

the need 3.6" of depth on the x69

 

[treylittlefield 10+ year member]

the need 3.6" of depth on the x69

i'm prob gonna stick wit the 6.5's and put them in the kicks....

 

[Patrick Bateman 10+ year member]

what do you guys think about this horn driver?http://www.usspeaker.com/bms%204540-1.htm

i wish there was a way to fit it into the ID horn bodies

are there any other 1in horns that you guys think would get loud, sound good, and have good frequency extension?

does anyone else make a horn body that is sorta like the ID in a 2in?

I tried half a dozen different compression drivers, and I've never found anything that can rival the BMS 4540ND in the car. I will be very very sad if I ever break one, because you can't get the ones I'm using in the US anymore. It is the ultimate car tweeter IMHO. (you can still get the 8ohm from US Speaker.)

I have some adapters arriving from Parts Express today. In the meantime, I made a couple.

One of them used an MCM waveguide which I chopped up to make an adapter. Here's a pic:

It wasn't much work, took all of fifteen minutes. It's the same MCM waveguide that John Krutke users over at zaphaudio. I am too lazy to look up the part number. It's six dollars.

The other adapter simply uses a piece of 1.5" PVC pipe, with a hunk of modeling clay to secure the compression driver. You could use latex caulk too, but the modeling clay is easier to remove.

Whatever you do, don't use glue, too messy.

HTH

 

[Patrick Bateman 10+ year member]

Unity Horn FTMFW
http://www.diymobileaudio.com/forum/diy-mobile-audio/60146-creating-perfect-soundstage-3.html#post761588

Good luck finding the space though.

They're not that big at all!

Here's the MCM waveguide used by John Krutke, installed in my car, with a baffle and a BMS 4540ND:

Here's the Unity waveguide made by yours truly, installed in my car, with a baffle and a BMS 4540ND:

Painting it made a world of difference.

 

[Patrick Bateman 10+ year member]

if you ad horns you are going to want some sort of a processor so a new active capable headunit is your best bet there. then you will want to find the horns you want, and a nice set of mids. feed them some decent power and they should sound pretty good.
there is more to it than that but you should get the idea

to properly run horns you are going to be dropping a pretty good penny, hence why i never have been able to run them //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/frown.gif.a3531fa0534503350665a1e957861287.gif

The designs that I've published are on the lunatic fringe, but if you want something that's modest and inexpensive, it's definitely possible. The reason that the USD and Image Dynamics horns require EQ is that the horn is a funky shape. If you use a simple waveguide, you won't need EQ.

Here's is the response of a BMS 4540ND on an elliptical OS waveguide, on the dash of a car, with no EQ.

The crossover that I am using for these, right now, is two resistors and a capacitor. That's it!

Because the response rises slowly and predictably, a single capacitor is all you need.

You could do it with an electronic crossover too, with shallow slopes.

This isn't possible with the USD and the Image Dynamics horns, because of the weird shape. In my car, they have a dip and a peak which needs EQ. Again, that wouldn't be there if they didn't use such strange dimensions. There's nothing they can do to fix that, short of EQ. In the pic below, the upper trace is a measurement of a commercial waveguide, in the same car.

Anyways, long story short, you could put together a nice set of waveguides for under $100 per side with an OS waveguide. Very very simple.

 

[Patrick Bateman 10+ year member]

It drives me mad, people will make fibergalss kicks, fibergalss A pillars and what not cause horns are too hard! WTF! 3 plumber straps and paying attention and you can eliminate all that work. A simple 2 way can and will sound as good as a three way set up. Here's the basics. Get the horns as deep under the dash as possible, get them as wide as possible, get them perfectly horizontal and vertical. THATS IT, how hard is it?

If there was a decent amount of interest, I would be willing to throw together a waveguide that people could use instead of tweeters. Basically a waveguide which wouldn't require an equalizer, wouldn't require any fiberglass work, and would work with a conventional midrange.

Basically I would trade efficiency for bandwidth, and create something with an efficiency of around 100db and very very small. Smaller than the ones in my car.

My waveguides have an efficiency of about 105DB.

If you used the 18Sound HD125 you could get the cost under $300 a set. And that driver is a big step up from the nasty piezo drivers that were in cheap sets back in the day. Also, it doesn't use a titanium diaphragm. (to my ears, aluminum, beryllium and mylar sound sweeter than titanium.)

Here's the specs:

http://www.loudspeakersplus.com/html/18sound_hd-hf.html

I think Faital sells this one too.

The only "gotcha" is that you'd have to cut the baffle to fit your car. My waveguides use the windshield and the dash to extend the curve, so if they don't fit in the corner, they don't work.

But you do that with a hand saw and some sandpaper. Piece-o-cake.

 

[Image Dynamics 10+ year member]

i'm prob gonna stick wit the 6.5's and put them in the kicks....

Trey,

Use the X69, the difference in the midbass is incredible. I put a set in the kicks of a Scion Xa and I have a manual ****** (ie: clutch pedal) and hardly lost any foot room. I also have a set of CDULTRAMH's under the dash. The sound stage and imaging is incredible. I am using the Audio Control DQS for eq'ing.

Here are some links to pics of the build.

http://www.imagedynamicsusa.com/forum/index.php?app=gallery&module=images&section=viewimage&img=2248

http://www.imagedynamicsusa.com/forum/index.php?app=gallery&module=images&section=viewimage&img=2305

Here's a pic of the kicks finished:

So 6x9 not so hard to SQUEEZE into a kickpanel.

 

[ironchef b 10+ year member]

I'm pleasantly suprised that you're now a member here, patrick bateman. Why the move? I've read a few of your threads at diyma.com and i'm glad you're here to school us.

 

[Patrick Bateman 10+ year member]

I'm pleasantly suprised that you're now a member here, patrick bateman. Why the move? I've read a few of your threads at diyma.com and i'm glad you're here to school us.

I'm on a crusade to get everyone to put waveguides in their cars //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/wink.gif.608e3ea05f1a9f98611af0861652f8fb.gif

 

[ninjawhiteboy12 10+ year member]

interesting

 

[firefighter1225 10+ year member]

I also was looking at doing a 3way front stage with horns and this is what I have lying around, let me know what you think. I've been reading a lot about horns and was going to try this as a winter project. Looking for some advice from horn users, I have all this equipment so I'm not looking to buy anything else besides an EQ.

1. USD Audio horn bodies w/ Selenium D220Ti drivers, 1200hz/12db fed with 31w per side.

2. 4-4" Polk Audio Mobile Monitors, 250-1200hz/24db/12db fed with 125 watts per side.

3. 2-8" Polk Audio DB's, 65/70-250/24db/24db fed with 175w per side.

4. For the subs I have 2-12" Type R's from 20-65/70/24db with 700 per side.

 

[RAM_Designs 5,000+ posts]

One of the main points in using horns is the ability to run a 2-way with a beefier midbass, utilizing the lower crossover point of the horn to make it easy for an 8" woofer to entend high enough to mate with the horn without worrying that much about beaming. It seems like doing a 3-way with a horn is just defeating the purpose when you could use a 3-4" mid/fullrange to cover the 250-whatever range, keeping the vocals on one set of speakers. But to each his own, do whatever interests you and see if you like it.

 

[Horsemanwill 10+ year member]

most ppl that add soemthing to a horn install add a super tweeter to try and cover the 20k range.