When someone comes in and asks a basic question, I like to give them any help I can without making them feel uncomfortable. When I have a moment to reply, I try to do so. Sometimes it's just a matter of looking up something in the archives and making a link. I don't want people to feel stupid when asking a question. After all, a person with a PhD in medicine may not know Ohms law, so it is understandable if they don't know how to calculate electrical things. So it's nice to lend a hand.

I also like it when experts can kick ideas around. It's especially nice because I feel like people here listen to one another, as opposed to trying to trip each other up in order to win an argument. So in that way, we really do have a nice way to address both needs, helping the new guy with a hobby project or system, and allowing experts to discuss the finer details of audio and sometimes even break new ground together.

So you see that the only meaningful thing that I can answer with is the answer that I know to be the right one even if this does just blow past the reader. To do otherwise is really just a waste of time. The Floyd Toole article is a classic example. His article was aimed at the common understanding not at the current state-of-the-art thinking. But then I always get follow on questions and critics that my answers don't agree with "the experts" of "common understanding/knowledge".

I understand where you might want both answers on your site, but I will probably never answer with the "common" answer. So when you see one of my answers you can probably expect it to be contrary to the common one.

Something with decent BL,preferbaly high cone angle for strength and moderate Fs. ALot of typical prosound drivers that are strong with powerful magnets and low Qes specs. High Xmax is nice too...Flux shorting rings to reduce midrange distortion are bonuses.

Designing the horn is easy-its putting it into practise thats difficult!

an 18" or two like this perhaps...

18LW1400 - eighteensound

• 18sound

1) THD and IMD indicate perceived distortion - wrong! In a widely quoted subjective test we showed that there is no correlation between THD or IMD and the perception of distortion in an audio system.

2) Compression drivers have too much distortion for quality sound - wrong! In a recent, as yet unpublished, psychoacoustics study of compression drivers no one, out of 45 subjects, could detect any level of nonlinear distortion in any of three different makes of compression drivers - all the way up to the thermal limit of these high end pro units. There is NO perceptable nonlinear distortion in a compression driver - none!

3) Horns and compression drivers cannot be made with "audiophile" caliber sound quality because of their distortion - wrong! In a double blind subjective study of my designs using a waveguide and a compression driver, 15 subjects rated this system equal to or better than a high end "audiophile" system using audiophile "Danish" components. (And costing $4500 each I might add!)

I have long held the belief that small rooms should be very live - completely contrary to popular opinions. I point my speakers in board - I don't listen on-axis.

Basically, I have come to at least question every "common knowledge" aspect of audio until it has been proven through statistically significant double blind psychoacoustic tests. So I may not disagree with everything but I accept nothing based on "experince", measurements, etc. If it ain't been proven in a valid double blind test it ain't necessarily so.

TAD was my prefered driver - until recently. I wanted to test whether or not the TAD drivers could really out class a lessor expensive set of drivers in a well designed system. A subjective test was run with 16 subjects comparing TAD's to B&C's in identical systems (optimized crossovers of course). The results did not indicate that the TAD's were worth the extra cost. In fact they even indicated the opposite although there was not enough data to be sure of that conclusion.

So now I believe that once one has a truely good system design, the actual components, as long as they are of good quality, don't really enter into the equation.

This is once again not the prevailing philosophy, and until recently was not even mine. But I am not going to ignore the mounds of data that have accumulated indicating otherwise.

Some did attempt to argue that ABX testing is flawed,but Ive yet to see proof or reason why.

To me abit of sanity[reason] in the audio world,is like an oasis in the desert!

Cheers
Mike.e