I've been getting my feet wet in the world of horns and wanted to share my initial experiments here- I hope any readers out there will find it mildly interesting and perhaps be able to give me some advice as well! I would describe what I'm doing as "bumbling around" and entirely welcome any questions or pointers people might be willing to put forth.
Horns actually first caught my attention as potential woodworking projects... I'm pretty new to the hi-fi hobby and a lot of the enjoyment I've gotten from it has been with tinkering around with different components, making parts and pieces and whatnot. I really like the aesthetic of the vintage conical wooden horns but alas, I live in a tiny apartment with no space for such things. Researching the wooden horns led me into the realm of 3D printed horns, and I happen to work a job that involves working with large format 3D printers so it was a pretty quick change of direction to go from wood to plastic.
I'm sure none of you will be surprised to hear that I got to talking with Trieu on here, and reading a bunch of his threads with his various experiments with modeling and printing different horns. He has been an invaluable resource introducing me to the world of horns and we came to an arrangement allowing me to print some horns using one of his expertly modeled CAD files- the WP12024. If you want to read up more on other's experiences with this particular horn you can find it in thread "Matrix multicell horns..."
A few details for anybody who dabbles in 3D printing... I work developing and testing large format, pellet-driven extruder heads. The prototype horn that I printed to test with my setup was printed with PETG and a 2.5mm nozzle, 2 mm layer height. The whole assembly is actually 4 modular pieces, the six cells are split into three pieces each having two cells, and a throat adaptor that connects to all of them. The print quality is somewhat reduced with a 2.5mm nozzle but the prints complete very quickly so I chose to go this route for the initial prototype and then print "keepers" with a smaller (1.5mm) nozzle. I also skimmed the finished printed horns with a coat of epoxy as an experimental resonance damper / base for applying wood veneer. With the drivers mounted they are impressively heavy.
The adaptor is sized for drivers with 1" throat openings- I was fortunate to catch a pair of 802g drivers (blessed and cursed to have entered this hobby as an Altec enthusiast) for sale here on the Emporium which I grabbed to play around with these horns. Future plans are to try to source some woofers (414 is most likely candidate) to build my own cabinets to pair with a finished set of horns. At the moment for trialing the horns I'm just running them side-by-side with my Altec Boleros to fill in the bass. The 406 is the little brother to the 414 so it seems to have a decent logic to it, though for the purpose of my test print audition I've just had them hooked up A+B on my Sansui 7070 with a cheap 800 hz high pass filter to protect the 802g drivers... somewhat uncouth. I'd like to play around with making my own crossovers for the 802g drivers once I've settled on some final bass woofers to pair with them and would happily take any and all advice in this realm. I'm confident with my soldering skills but have only basic theoretical knowledge of making crossovers.
Anyway that is a lot of words... here is my listening impressions so far! Keep in mind this is a fairly unrefined audition setup- I only printed one horn so far so have been doing my listening in mono, and I need to at least wire in an independent volume control for the horn because it outperforms the Bolero cabinet in the sensitivity department.
The Wp12024 with the 802g definitely provides a very detailed listening experience. The first album I put on was "Not Our First Goat Rodeo" w/ Chris Thile, Yo-yo Ma, etc. which has become a recent favorite reference for system tweaks. I felt like I could hear more "textures" than before, small details like the sound of the bow on the violin strings. On crescendos the violin sounded harsh, which from what I gather is sort of a characteristic of horns in general. Of course, everything is relative to what we get used to and if I listen to an entire album with the horn included then turn it off my Boleros on their own sound much more laidback or "polite" but lacking a certain liveliness.... if I'm listening to just the Boleros when I first kick on the horn the immediate impression is of harshness. Proper balancing would hopefully create the middle ground between these two flavors.
I was surprised to find that my expectations of what albums would sound good on the horn were totally incorrect. I thought I would like hearing jazz, bluegrass, classical type stuff on them - but I ended up really enjoying stuff like Courtney Barnett, Waxahatchee, and of course I had to play Quadrophenia. Nothing like a french horn on a horn! I was also pleasantly surprised to find that while feminine voices sounded as good as I expected, the deep rumble of Gregg Brown's vocals also gained a little extra something coming out of the WP12024.
The horn ended up being larger than I imagined and probably not the best pairing for my small listening room where I am usually sitting quite close to the speakers. It doesn't really come into its own until you put a certain amount of volume into it, but there isn't much of an in between from quiet to blow your ears off - I have yet to put more than 1/2 a watt of volume to them which definitely gets you to "concert for the neighbors". Until I have a larger place to live I might have to keep some sort of A/B setup where I can selectively play the horns at appropriate times because if they were on all the time my wife might leave me.
I suppose this thread will serve as a sort of project diary moving forward - I'm not sure if my next move will be to print a second horn so I can listen to the WP12024 in stereo or wait until I've sourced a pair of woofers to make some cabinets with (Eyeing a pair of 414z on auction right now). I will likely do some more experimenting with variables in the signal path with the current test setup as well, first order being some way to pad down the volume on the horn. I've searched around here and found some schematics for crossovers for the 802s, but it isn't clear to me if I could essentially just use the HF half of the two way on its own for the horn. Any advice here would be greatly appreciated, and let me know if you have any questions about the prints!
Horns actually first caught my attention as potential woodworking projects... I'm pretty new to the hi-fi hobby and a lot of the enjoyment I've gotten from it has been with tinkering around with different components, making parts and pieces and whatnot. I really like the aesthetic of the vintage conical wooden horns but alas, I live in a tiny apartment with no space for such things. Researching the wooden horns led me into the realm of 3D printed horns, and I happen to work a job that involves working with large format 3D printers so it was a pretty quick change of direction to go from wood to plastic.
I'm sure none of you will be surprised to hear that I got to talking with Trieu on here, and reading a bunch of his threads with his various experiments with modeling and printing different horns. He has been an invaluable resource introducing me to the world of horns and we came to an arrangement allowing me to print some horns using one of his expertly modeled CAD files- the WP12024. If you want to read up more on other's experiences with this particular horn you can find it in thread "Matrix multicell horns..."
A few details for anybody who dabbles in 3D printing... I work developing and testing large format, pellet-driven extruder heads. The prototype horn that I printed to test with my setup was printed with PETG and a 2.5mm nozzle, 2 mm layer height. The whole assembly is actually 4 modular pieces, the six cells are split into three pieces each having two cells, and a throat adaptor that connects to all of them. The print quality is somewhat reduced with a 2.5mm nozzle but the prints complete very quickly so I chose to go this route for the initial prototype and then print "keepers" with a smaller (1.5mm) nozzle. I also skimmed the finished printed horns with a coat of epoxy as an experimental resonance damper / base for applying wood veneer. With the drivers mounted they are impressively heavy.
The adaptor is sized for drivers with 1" throat openings- I was fortunate to catch a pair of 802g drivers (blessed and cursed to have entered this hobby as an Altec enthusiast) for sale here on the Emporium which I grabbed to play around with these horns. Future plans are to try to source some woofers (414 is most likely candidate) to build my own cabinets to pair with a finished set of horns. At the moment for trialing the horns I'm just running them side-by-side with my Altec Boleros to fill in the bass. The 406 is the little brother to the 414 so it seems to have a decent logic to it, though for the purpose of my test print audition I've just had them hooked up A+B on my Sansui 7070 with a cheap 800 hz high pass filter to protect the 802g drivers... somewhat uncouth. I'd like to play around with making my own crossovers for the 802g drivers once I've settled on some final bass woofers to pair with them and would happily take any and all advice in this realm. I'm confident with my soldering skills but have only basic theoretical knowledge of making crossovers.
Anyway that is a lot of words... here is my listening impressions so far! Keep in mind this is a fairly unrefined audition setup- I only printed one horn so far so have been doing my listening in mono, and I need to at least wire in an independent volume control for the horn because it outperforms the Bolero cabinet in the sensitivity department.
The Wp12024 with the 802g definitely provides a very detailed listening experience. The first album I put on was "Not Our First Goat Rodeo" w/ Chris Thile, Yo-yo Ma, etc. which has become a recent favorite reference for system tweaks. I felt like I could hear more "textures" than before, small details like the sound of the bow on the violin strings. On crescendos the violin sounded harsh, which from what I gather is sort of a characteristic of horns in general. Of course, everything is relative to what we get used to and if I listen to an entire album with the horn included then turn it off my Boleros on their own sound much more laidback or "polite" but lacking a certain liveliness.... if I'm listening to just the Boleros when I first kick on the horn the immediate impression is of harshness. Proper balancing would hopefully create the middle ground between these two flavors.
I was surprised to find that my expectations of what albums would sound good on the horn were totally incorrect. I thought I would like hearing jazz, bluegrass, classical type stuff on them - but I ended up really enjoying stuff like Courtney Barnett, Waxahatchee, and of course I had to play Quadrophenia. Nothing like a french horn on a horn! I was also pleasantly surprised to find that while feminine voices sounded as good as I expected, the deep rumble of Gregg Brown's vocals also gained a little extra something coming out of the WP12024.
The horn ended up being larger than I imagined and probably not the best pairing for my small listening room where I am usually sitting quite close to the speakers. It doesn't really come into its own until you put a certain amount of volume into it, but there isn't much of an in between from quiet to blow your ears off - I have yet to put more than 1/2 a watt of volume to them which definitely gets you to "concert for the neighbors". Until I have a larger place to live I might have to keep some sort of A/B setup where I can selectively play the horns at appropriate times because if they were on all the time my wife might leave me.
I suppose this thread will serve as a sort of project diary moving forward - I'm not sure if my next move will be to print a second horn so I can listen to the WP12024 in stereo or wait until I've sourced a pair of woofers to make some cabinets with (Eyeing a pair of 414z on auction right now). I will likely do some more experimenting with variables in the signal path with the current test setup as well, first order being some way to pad down the volume on the horn. I've searched around here and found some schematics for crossovers for the 802s, but it isn't clear to me if I could essentially just use the HF half of the two way on its own for the horn. Any advice here would be greatly appreciated, and let me know if you have any questions about the prints!