CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

[Spanky Ham]

I don't think I have mentioned this over here, but Zaph(John Krutke) came out with his own driver and designed a speaker kit lineup around it. You can buy either the raw driver or the kits at Madisound. Based on John's previous designs and from user feedback, these should be a very good system for a lot of guys here. The price to build a two way should be around $100 a speaker. With the crossovers being pre-assembled by Madisound, all one has to do is build the box.
http://www.zaphaudio.com/ZA5/
http://www.madisound.com/catalog/advanced_search_result.php?keywords=zaph

[dvh99]

late response but thanks for the link, the 2 1/2 way looks nice, i like them big.

[greg_mitch]

If you like em big you could do this for $126 plus box per speaker.

[perisoft]

Here's a question - what are the specs on, and does anyone run actual *theater* speakers? So, peoples' rooms are much smaller than actual theaters; does that make it impossible to use them? It seems like you could just turn them down, as they're a point source.

What's the quality level of them? I'm kind of curious - the sound in theaters is usually much better relative to my HT than the image (though often that's possibly because they leave so many damn lights on that a full black screen is usually 20IRE off real black....).

[greg_mitch]

[Spanky Ham]

Peri,
Horns are great and are more needed for large rooms. Smaller rooms are fine with regular drivers.

[greg_mitch]

[jask]

I like horns but in a small room even with great treatment I think horns can be fatiguing.

[Wombat]

I think horns are great for smaller rooms if you like low powered amps. Axisymmetric horns should sound best, but they'd have to be aimed correctly, and there'd probably be only a handful of seats in the "sweet spot".

[greg_mitch]

[greg_mitch]

[JustGreg]

Apologies are in order for a little topic segue.

Apologies to the audiophiles also. I know bupkus about the science of loudspeaker design. I have a simple subjective observation with an associated question.

I have tinnitus that lives in the range required to 'hear a blade of grass being stepped on' so therefore have treble cranked to the max in a feeble attempt to overcome this limitation. I'm still not happy with this approach, especially when listening to music. I can't hear the frequencies I remember hearing and miss the sound of a cymbal or highhat being brushed gently. And forget about recorded lead electric guitar runs...it's so muddy I don't even bother trying to just sit and close my eyes and enjoy like I used to. My mains and surrounds both use Pyramid TW18 3-3/4" bullet horn tweeters but they're very anemic (to me). When treble is cranked they get very harsh.

It seems to me our individual ability to hear 'correctly' actually defines the audio portion of our HT's. What's great for the person dialing it in may not be great for others. So that said, I'll never be able to hear music as it was intended but would like to dial in my system (low level but respectable gear) for others? Does a standard exist for any given frequenciesy/instruments? I've recently begun to consider adding horns to achieve my personal goal but don't want to damage the hearing of others in the process.

Not sure if I worded all this correctly but I think you know what I mean. Thanks!

EDIT:I forgot the most important thing...does anyone have any suggestions for better tweets at a reasonable price? The Pyramids are cheap crap I admit but at the time I built these things my hearing was better and they were 'OK'.

[WanMan]

Jgreg, you offer a point I've been offering for a decade. We are not the first to realize this, and yet apparently it is [conveniently] ignored by a lot to justify their high-dollar purchases. And the analogy exists for video, too.