Re: Horns

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: Hello Chris, : Thank you for the positive comments on th eRat system. : When looking a HF horns there are several things to take into account: : Sound Quality : Dispersion : Efficiency : Structural Integrity : and : Type : are what comes to mind. : I will briefly cover each area and hopefully give enough info to answer your questions. : Sound Quality -Here you are looking for a horn that serves your purpose and does not sound "honky" and or have walls that resonate and color the sound. Cheap plastic horns cand have issues with this as well as undamped aluminum horns. Typically, mounting the horn in a box solves resonance in small to mid sized aluminum horns : Dispersion or coverage of a horn is critical. The key is to use a horn that covers evenly throughout the frequncy range you are using it. This is one of the most challenging issues for a horn. : Efficiency or 'how loud' a horn is. Typically this is directly related to size. Bigger is louder. : Structural intergrity. Horn drivers are often heavy so a strongly built horn will be less likely to break and/or save cost/time on driver support. : TYPE - now this is a big one. Exponential, Wave guide, constant directivity and line source are just a few of the myriad of horn 'types'. : Most horns are some sort of 'flare' that attempts to control the dispersion and/or increase the volume output of a horn driver. There are many designs with many positive and negative aspects. : The Line Array horn is a special case horn that is quite diferent. The goal of the Line array horn is to have sound exit all points of the horn at the exact same time and to have the exit be vertically tall and horizontally narrow. : I posted something a while ago that goes into more detail as well as the lacoustics web site has some good info on the why's and how's. : : Dave Rat

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