Posted by Wayne Parham [ 71.153.185.72 ] on May 04, 2009 at 12:55:18:
In Reply to: Re: Converting 3 Pi to 4 Pi posted by Wayne-o on May 03, 2009 at 15:21:37:
Injection molding is an expensive process, feasable only for fairly large production runs. I'd really need to expect about 1000 units to be sold to make it worthwhile, so I'd have inventory for a few years. That's something I would consider, but I'm not at all displeased with the H290.
The H290 is a pretty good part. I'm not sure how much attention was paid during its design, if it was on purpose or accident, but whatever the case it does a surprisingly good job in terms of directionality and smoothness of response. It's perfect for this application. From what I've seen, it's better than most of the so called waveguides out there.
The wood horn is only slightly better acoustically, mostly in the vertical. Its larger size helps a great deal reducing mouth reflection when used as a stand-alone horn, not mounted on a baffle. That's its intended use, so it was important to make sure it worked well when sitting on top of a cabinet instead of mounted flush on a baffle. It was designed to be a beautiful piece of art that also worked well acoustically. We make it from wood with interesting grains and cut graceful lines on a CNC machine. It really is a work of art as much as anything else.
You lose the aesthetic appeal when doing an injection mold. I suppose it could work if the whole cabinet was painted. A highly polished paint job, something like a piano finish, perhaps. That could be a good look. But the whole point is that for baffle mounting - where I see an injection molded horn being used - the baffle helps horn loading and it doesn't need the larger mouth for this frequency range. The H290 is a fine horn for baffle mounting.
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