Change to Horns or stay Dynamic

Try to listen to Tactrix horns or LeCleach profiles too, new profiles, implementations and time alignment clean out the tipical horn sound, I had a lot of Vintage horns from Altec Valencias to Hartsfield toploaders and the newer versions are way more sophisticated and better sounding.

A waveguide is generally shallow and has a wide throat with no compression chamber. A horn loaded driver uses a compression driver mounted behind a deeper horn.

A waveguide can control dispersion and allow for a much better match between drivers - it is very useful and completely underestimated by most designers.

As a conventional woofer driver starts to beam at the top of its useful range then you can limit the dispersion of the tweeter with a waveguide to get a completely smooth transition.

Another trick is to extend the useful LF range of a driver a little in order to get a better crossover point and a device that will give 6db higher output without distortion at is lower opertaing range (where Xmax starts to be an issue).

Waveguides are essential to good speaker design, IMHO...

Interestingly B&W go completely against this philosphy with their baffleless tweeters mounted on top...inevitably the transition between midrange and tweeter is most evident in the off axis response which often shows a discontinuity that is distinctly audible but also regarded as pleasurable by B&W owners. IMHO, depedning on the room setup, it can make one all too aware of the fact you are hearing sound from three or more drivers...

Hi All

I am Earl Geddes and I do think that Waveguides are unique from horns. To me they are not the same thing. The theories behind them are completely different.

I'd be happy to expound in more detail on the differences, but that's best done through questions than my just writing a monogram on the subject.

On my website www.gedlee.com there is a letter to Audio Express which outlines the general ideas. That's worth reading as a start.

And as far as my website goes, I am a scientist not a web designer. My web designs are better than a web designers speaker designs - thats about all I can say.