How do horn tweaters work?

[saftey]

How do horn tweaters work?Are they completly superior to dome tweaters?

 

[Jerboy]

Originally posted by: saftey
How do horn tweaters work?Are they completly superior to dome tweaters?

What's a "tweater" ?

 

[bizmark]

Most, if not all, horn tweeters work the same way as normal tweeters. A current passing through a wire loop suspended in a magnetic field causes motion in a solid diaphram which excites the air to make sound.

Most, if not all, horn tweeters are a normal tweeter with a horn in front of it. (This may be different with some professional loudspeakers... I'm talking about consumer audio here.) A horn just carries the sound forward in an efficient way, and in some designs, helps it disperse a certain way. It's the same as cupping your hands around your mouth when you yell at somebody. So horn loudspeakers tend to be more efficient than non-horn loudspeakers (meaning they play louder with the same input level), but the horn must be well designed to keep the frequency response flat, and for the speaker to have other desirable characteristics such as a good sweet spot etc.

 

[saftey]

thanks for the help 🙂!

 

[dkozloski]

As audio frequencies increase, the speakers tend to become directional like a flashlight. This effect can progress all the way to a system that can generate the equivilent of glints. With a lot of old audio systems you had to carefully position yourself in front of the speakers to get the proper stereo effect. Even though the highest frequencies don't contribute much to this effect, the presence or absence of them can greatly affect the listening experience. Engineering efforts to produce a smooth distribution of audio waves over a large area have produced all sorts of shapes and methods with the highest frequencies being the most difficult. The best way to sort them out is to listen to them in comparison.

 

[ShadowDJ]

If you want to see an amazing example of a horn at work, check out the Avantgarde Duo loudspeakers. That have some of the highest SNR ratios in the industry, above some headphones. That's what they do. 😀

 

[bizmark]

okay, so they all work like normal tweeters. I had the reservations above because I had heard of Compression Horn Tweeters but didn't know how they worked. But I just found a description of how Compression Horn tweeters work. They're basically the same as a normal tweeter but with a big thing projecting forward from the diaphragm to compress the air within the horn before it moves forward, producing louder output.

edit: the link also has some other general info on how horns work, and how Pioneer has found them well-suited to a car audio context.

 

[mastertech01]

Klipsch has been using horns for a long time... fantastic sound pressure levels.

 

[davesaudio]

a horn is an impedance transformer,
net effect superior coupling to the air plus concentrating the signal
into the arc defined by the horn

thats my story and I'm stickin to it....
😀

now the mechanical device generating the sound at the apex , thats another discussion