Help me understand about "frequency response" aspects please?

[Hugh Robjohns]

...and chasing more top end to compensate will just make it happen sooner.

And it will potentially alienate anyone with reasonably normal hearing who will find your 'lovely and sparkly' top end excruciating!

[mikehende]

* Now a cautionary note... I'm also guessing that you listen to quite a lot of loud music, and that you are 40+ years old? I'm 67 and listened to a moderate amount of loud music over the years, my hearing is pretty shot over about 12kHz, it is likely that your hearing is deteriorating at the top end (it does so simply due to the effects of getting older regardless of the loud music/noises we all encounter in day to day life). Prolonged exposure to loud music will accelerate the decline and chasing more top end to compensate will just make it happen sooner.

Well no, I don't like loud music, just like getting both vocals and good crisp clean highs coming from a horn which is why I prefer a horn over a tweeter but if there is no horn which can give the highs of a tweeter then.....

I am closing in on 60 btw so yes my ears might not be once it once was. I like to hear clean "wind chimes" notes coming from a horn but I guess you would get those only in audiophile speakers and not DJ speakers?

[Sam Spoons]

If you want accurate sound at moderate volume then a decent pair of HiFi or monitor speakers would probably be better, but of you like the sound off horn tweeters then accurate may not be what you need. If the EAW's don't work out I'd try to get a listen to a pair of Yamaha DXR or DSR 10" or 12"s. IIRC you already have a sub (and a Drive Rack?) so the 10"* would be ideal, DXR10's cost £699 each from Sweetwater just now. I have three for monitors in my PA rig and they sound very good for PA speakers.

12" two way speakers usually sound quite a lot better for vocals than 15", 10"s a little better still. The 'clean top end' you perceive is probably around 1-3 kHz which is where the crossover on typical two way PA speakers falls, the horn has a limit to how low it can go so the crossover is usually at around 2kHz and a 15" driver is not good at that relatively high frequency, 12" or 10" LF drivers are better so produce a 'cleaner' top end than 15" cabs.

[mikehende]

Thx yeah, a guy who has both the JF260 and MK series 12" says the JF struggles in the hf range so he prefers the MK series. I too believe in 10 or 12" for vocals/mids.

[James Perrett]

If you like the sound of horn loaded tweeters then take a look at the Tannoy dual concentric speakers. They've greatly refined the design over the years and, at one time, they were the most popular monitor in UK studios. They also sell PA versions - I know someone who uses the older Wildcat range and they sound great.

There is an awful lot of theory involved in designing horn loaded speakers which isn't necessarily obvious. This article seems to cover the horn design theory...

https://volvotreter.de/downloads/Dinsdale_Horns_1.pdf

[Hugh Robjohns]

...and Phil goes into horn loading in some detail in his review of the Ocean Way HR5s monitors in the current issue:

https://www.soundonsound.com/reviews/ocean-way-hr5

[Sam Spoons]

If you like the sound of horn loaded tweeters then take a look at the Tannoy dual concentric speakers. They've greatly refined the design over the years and, at one time, they were the most popular monitor in UK studios. They also sell PA versions - I know someone who uses the older Wildcat range and they sound great.

What a good suggestion. Tannoy were one of the few (possibly the only) speaker manufacturers who's systems were used for HiFi, studio monitoring and PA duties (sometimes with exactly the same driver, Tannoy Reds turned up everywhere). Definitely worth investigating dual concentric speakers...

[mikehende]

Yeah guys but one issue, those are audiophile speakers like Klipsh and Meyer, not DJ speakers really. I guess Meyer or Danley would be better suited for DJ Rigs but expensive!

[Sam Spoons]

I don't understand the difference between DJ speakers and PA speakers (ignoring audiophile/HiFi speakers). Once you get out of the budget ranges all speakers have a broadly similar function, to reproduce the signal supplied to the amp inputs more or less faithfully but louder. at a given price point PA/DJ speakers compromise the sound quality for volume/efficiency and projection, Hifi/monitor speakers compromise volume for accuracy (and, occasionally, impressiveness), those old Tannoys did everything.

[James Perrett]

Yeah guys but one issue, those are audiophile speakers like Klipsh and Meyer, not DJ speakers really. I guess Meyer or Danley would be better suited for DJ Rigs but expensive!

That's why I specifically mentioned the Tannoy Wildcat range - they make good DJ speakers. They also have more recent dual concentric PA speakers too. In fact I've also seen Little Red Monitors being used as PA speakers. Some artists also expect realistic audio levels from the monitors in a proper studio and 15" Tannoys are certainly fine with high levels (and you don't need a particularly big amplifier to get those levels).

[MarkPAman]

It's 20+years since I stopped working for the UK's biggest Peavey dealer, but there's a few things I still remember about their horns.

Almost all the PA speakers used the exact same HF driver (22a?), and it needed quite a bit of correction applied to get it anywhere near flat. Used in a speaker with a passive crossover, filtering was built into the crossover network - not very efficient, but sort of worked.

Driven by their own amp, in a bi/tri amped system, the filtering was supplied at first by a (physical) plug-in eq on the back of the amp, or later built into the amp. Or if used with a Peavey crossover it was supplied there. If used bi-amped without the correct filter somewhere, they sound terrible.

A cab such as the SP2 would have passive filtering when used with the full range input, but none if using the bi-amp inputs.

The HDH system James mentioned needed to be used with a dedicated controller with active sensing of the amp's outputs built in. Note that the top end of these was 4 of these HF drivers attached to the one horn, and needed careful adjustment to get them all in phase with each other - once done though, it worked well.

[mikehende]

Yes, seems I had made 2 mistakes, first, I using other drivers instead of the original 22a and also not running them horns through my crossover. Luckily I spoke to a friend yesterday who has the 22a who is going to send one to me in the next week or two.

When received I will set the crossover to the recommended points and run a side by side comparison with the current JBL and the 22a and will report back.

[Sam Spoons]

You always need a crossover on multiple driver speaker systems

[mikehende]

Yeah I had thought Equing it would have been doing the same thing.

btw, can you guys advise on the proper settings for the crossover please according to the specs here? I am confused mainly about the "db" part.

https://assets.peavey.com/literature/ma ... 301017.pdf

[Sam Spoons]

Mark has covered most of it.

But, EQ is rarely able to provide a steep enough slope. You could try setting the Drive Rack mid/high crossover frequency at 600Hz and the slop at 12dB/8ve for the mid and HF power amps, but the horn rolls of pretty dramatically above 10kHz so it is going to lack top end up where I can just about still hear it so probably more so for you and especially your son.

[James Perrett]

Treat the MFX as a midrange horn with crossover points set so that it handles the frequency range around 1kHz-5kHz and use something else for 5kHz upwards. Even adding a couple of cheap Piezo horns would be better than trying to get the MFX to work at high frequencies in my opinion.

[mikehende]

But, EQ is rarely able to provide a steep enough slope. You could try setting the Drive Rack mid/high crossover frequency at 600Hz and the slop at 12dB/8ve for the mid and HF power amps, but the horn rolls of pretty dramatically above 10kHz so it is going to lack top end up where I can just about still hear it so probably more so for you and especially your son.

Does that mean it can run at 10k continuously and that is the highest level of highs I will be able to get?

[James Perrett]

Does that mean it can run at 10k continuously and that is the highest level of highs I will be able to get?

From the frequency response it would appear that you only get around half the level that you should at 10k (compared to 2k) and the response drops rapidly after that. However, you'll still get something at 15kHz but nothing like as much as you should. This is a separate issue to power handling - MarkPAMan is probably more experienced than most with those 22A drivers so could probably tell you the optimum size amp to use with them.

[mikehende]

It's 20+years since I stopped working for the UK's biggest Peavey dealer, but there's a few things I still remember about their horns

What James said Mark, if you can advise me on how to properly optimize the 22A driver when I get it would be nice? Also, I was told that "Peavy made a near copy of the JBL 2404", would you happened to know what model of Peavey that was please?

[James Perrett]

It's 20+years since I stopped working for the UK's biggest Peavey dealer, but there's a few things I still remember about their horns./quote]

What James said Mark, if you can advise me on how to properly optimize the 22A driver when I get it would be nice? Also, I was told that "Peavy made a near copy of the JBL 2404", would you happened to know what model of Peavey that was please?

I have a vague memory that the people Mark worked for used a CS400 amp for the highs on smaller systems like yours with the plug-in crossover modules but I could easily be wrong. I used to help them out occasionally but we're talking 25-30 years ago here.