Today we join Herb Reichert on his quest for an ultra-fi horn system. We are reading Casual Reactions, from sound practices issue 4. In it Herb introduces some exotic Japanese and European horn systems and components. Next: introducing the Edgar midrange horn. Herb ends with thoughts on integrating this midrange in a system. Then also Joe Roberts chips in with his experience of the then hot new Edgar midrange horn.
teaser quote: ‘Only a small handful of American enthusiasts have heard the kind of carefully engineered and lovingly installed triode-powered horn systems that the French and Japanese have been listening to. I have been lucky; my French and Japanese friends have helped me to develop a system of this kind. Building it was one of my most rewarding audio projects ever.’
On the next two pages there is Classic Designs: The Onken Enclosures. Here Joe Introduces the Onken company and the Hiraga/L’Audiophile connection. Next is the heritage of the regular and the Petite Onken enclosures. After some construction tips, Joe closes with what one can expect of an Onken low-end.
teaser quote: ‘Unlike the many Japanese super-mania creations which go completely unrecognized outside the local audio community, Onken was to enjoy an international destiny.’
my take
Some familiar themes here: that most people have written off horns; last week’s Altec A7 low-end; Altec high-frequency horns and drivers; the third recommendation in a row to bi-amp—instead of padding drivers down with resistors.
But new is the more exotic stuff. The complete Onken low-frequency range is there, with the mighty ‘double’ W on the first page, and the regular and the Petite ready for building. I still have fond memories of the double W, from different French demonstration systems. The sonority—yeah, that is the word—of the fundament is puts under a complete horn system is impressive. However, if you have to ask if your living room is big enough for a bass system like this, then… But let that not discourage you. The Japanese seem to be able to make a 4-way Onken horn system, including a double W, work in a 20 square meter house.
Then there is the Edgar midrange horn, that got both Herb and Joe fired up with it’s ‘unsettling’ midrange purity. You see they both immediately wanted more of that, especially extending it in the mid-bass range. Edgar’s work of resurrecting the tractrix has spawned quite a few DIY and commercial horns using that expansion. One correction however: people who can really do the horn math quickly pointed out that the tractrix is not ‘the only flare which provides a spherical wavefront.’ In fact a whole family of expansion equations can be solved for the spherical wavefront condition and that is what people like Jean-Michel Le Cléac'h started doing. This enables them to arrive at nice long horn solutions (remember from the last 2 weeks?), the tractrix is quite a short horn.
So are these these horns the ‘reference standard’? Well, I will tell you next week what their fatal flaw is and why Joe Roberts is not listening to them anymore.
Now go and read the articles, see you next week.
bonus tracks
Read Bruce Edgar’s articles about the midrange, show and monolith horns that were referenced in Herb’s article. Also there the Edgar interview can be found, which has a lot of interesting background and historical info.
No comments:
Post a Comment