I have been running this blog since 2019 and have since examined a wide variety of horn types, reprogrammed historical design algorithms from scratch, developed innovative enhancements, and made them available to the community from time to time. In addition, completely new ground-breaking horn types have been developed.
Tag Archives: ALO
Acoustic Loading Optimized Final Generation Horns – ALOV2
Most readers of my blog should already be familiar with the special optimization technique for my acoustic loading horns which I have called Acoustic Loading Optimized (ALO) horns. The main focus is to get very good acoustic loading horns together with excellent and even directivity control. Almost all horns that are based solely on acoustic loading optimized profile fail in this regard because they more or less strongly focus the sound toward high frequencies.
Over the past years, I have learned a lot about acoustic horns and have continuously developed and significantly improved my inventions in this field. The results are my final generation acoustic horns, which I will be presenting in detail in the near future. The first step is the presentation of the improvement of the ALO procedure to ALOV2.
DrBA Test Bench: WN300ALO (William Neile Acoustic Loading Optimized fc 300Hz Horn)
In this article I would like to share some measurement results for my new WN300ALO plywood horn. Based on the PLA prototype described here
https://sphericalhorns.net/2022/09/20/acoustic-loading-optimized-william-neile-horns-part-2/
some initial measurements were already done and a preliminary passive crossover network was designed for use in my existing speaker system. This way it was possible to immediately have a listening session when the horns arrived at my home. The measurement results for the PLA horn have not been published because of my concerns about using PLA for such a large horn mainly because of inherent self resonances. And indeed some pronounced and distinct resonances were present in all the measurement data. This has been also verified by spectral analysis when knocking on the horn at different regions. But the results were still good enough for designing a crossover network knowing the problematic resonance frequencies. Maybe it is possible to change the the outer shape of the PLA horn providing better damping. In total contrast to the PLA version the full block plywood version has exceptional good internal damping properties which was one of the main reasons to choose this material and the overall shape of the horn.
Basically it was planned to have a reference setup to compare to so we first listened to the my existing speaker system with 18sound ND3SN@TH4001 fin horn which was my primary choice since a longer time. The TH4001 was a big improvement compared to round Tractrix or any CD horn I tested in my system except for some missing depth of the 3D soundstage. After some songs with the TH4001 in place we mounted the WN300ALO and also changed the readily prepared HF part for the crossover network. What happened with the sound reproduction by switching to the new WN300ALO horn surpassed my highest expectations.
