• Martin King Horn Theory Article

Well ..... I posted my first set of write-ups on horn theory about a month ago. Then I went on a two week vacation with my family. I could not look at the horn articles any more after a year of working on them.

So I have been back in the rut since Labor day. I am still working on horn theory and the dual horn concept, but progress is slow. The following are the important tasks in my life right now in order of priority :

1) Three little kids back to school (just in time before I killed them!).
2) Two ballet lessons and one tap lesson for my two girls every week.
3) Piano lessons for my boy and older girl every week.
4) Swimming lessons at the Y for my youngest girl every week.
5) Keep wife happy (impossible!)
6) Fix bathroom sink (see item 5).
7) Outside yard work (see item 5).
8) Watch NY Giants with my boy on Sundays and yell at TV just like my Dad and I did for years when I was a kid (can't help it, been a fan since the 60's).
9) Full time engineering job, new boss who seems to think I can do a lot more work then they have asked for in the past (I can but he is still a jerk!).
10) Hobby (speaker design, listen to new Mosaic set of Art Farmer and Benny Golson, answer 5 to 10 e-mail questions a day, somethimes post on the one or two forums I read at work).

That is my life. You see that speaker design is number 10 on my list which means I get maybe an hour or two a couple nights a week and sometimes on the weekends.

I recently put the horn theory down for a few weeks and have been working on extending the MathCad worksheets into 3D. This is almost done and will provide an interesting article to be added to my site hopefully in the next month or two. Then it is back onto horns. First, I have to finish the room boundary impact on mouth impedance and size that is started and almost done. Then, I was going to tackle the front and back loaded horn speaker. My guess is that this will be finished and documented by the spring. I am also working with my growing collection of Lowther drivers and building another speaker system. I also try and sleep most nights. Too many interesting tasks and too few hours in the day. My Dad can't understand how I get everything done, I tell him that one boy and two girls is easier then the five boys he had. My brothers and I were bad kids, mine are very good easy nice kids.

I will continue writing articles for my site covering what I have learned but there will be no more free MathCad worksheets or free designs. People are starting to make money off my efforts, without remembering where the design tools came from, so I am going to leave what is already available on line but not add any new advanced MathCad tools.

I don't generally advertise new work added to my site on any of the forums. I assume interested people are on my mailing list. If you are really interested in keeping track of what I have made available, or where I am going next, you might consider joining the mailing list. There are about 150 members already, and more every week, and I send out updates about every month or two as blind carbon copies to keep everybody's e-mail address private.

Hope that helps,

Martin

I found the new release on the website a while back. The latest catalog came a couple of weeks ago and it featured this selection. I ordered it right away along with the Dizzy Reece set. It should arrive today or tomorrow.

I have most of the Mosaic sets in my collection and started buying from Mosaic not long after they came into existence. I have only been disappointed in one set. I did not buy the Duke Pearson set since I think I have several of the records already.

Martin

You probably found out more about my boring life then you really wanted to know. 8^)

Thanks for the positive feedback,

Martin

I answered your post once already but it seems to have disappeared.

Over the past couple of years, I have collected a lot of the significant papers writen by the recognized authors in the horn field and put them in my personal notes. I have also visited a lot of the Internet sites covering horn design downloaded the design methods and included them in my personal notes. But after reading all of this body of work I could not find a common method for designing a horn. Some of this is probably due to my inexperience. But in other cases I found several different methods for sizing the coupling volume. So I decided to make my own pass through the theory. This resulted in the series af articles I have recently added to my site. There are more articles to come as I look at different areas in more detail. My method for designing a horn is going to evolve more as I continue to learn.

You asked :

"I believe there have been papers published on horn design. Are you extending this work, borrowing from it, or starting from scratch to make up your own model?"

The answer to your three questions is :

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

I think that my MathCad quarter wavelength methods are going to allow me to look at various aspects of horn design and theory in more detail then what is included in all of the classic papaers.

Hope that helps,

Martin