If you know anything about horns, Step inside.....

[Sleeper-6]

Ok, I've been through a bunch of ideas on what to do with my front sound stage. So here's another one.

I took care of the bottom end with an Image Dynamics IDMAX in a sealed box, driven by a Memphis MC1000D amp.

While poking around the Image Dynamics website I cam across the horns they offer. After some reasearch they seem like the way to go. The Buick dash being nice and flat along the bottom seems to be begging for a set of these. I'm getting real tired of the cymbl and base kick effect I'm getting from the 3.5" in the dash and the sub in the back.

I listen to mostly classic rock and country. I'm looking for something that can crank out the beat of "Thunderstruck" and yet still capture all the detail in the "November Rain" or "The Dance", while maintaining some quality imaging. Would a set of horns with some nice mid-bass drivers in the kicks do this for me?

I'm open to suggestions and any info you guys can give me. I'll prob power them with the appropriate wattge Memphis amp, to be decided once I figure out what drivers I want. It seems that I'm going to have to spend some time tuning them if I go this way. The ID component system with the horns already incorperated into it seems like it may be the way to go. Thanks!

[6APPEAL]

Sleeper-6,
The CD-2 ID horns sound awesome, but stay away from the bottom basement CD-1E. They sound like cr@#. Very tinny and compressed sounding. I have not heard the CD-1PRO set, but since they are built on the same compression driver I would assume they sound just about the same. I noticed ID offers a mini horn in each of the series. I have only seen and heard the full size horns. The CD-2 horns seem to go quickly and for around $600 on ebay. You will not be able to fit the big 6 in the concert sound door panel. I don't think it will fit a kick panel, unless you get one custom built.

I use a Blues 6 1/2 in a custom door pod built by Audiowizard. I have a ID Chameleon 5 1/4 set in kick panels. Nice imaging and no holes in the frequency range. HTH
John

[zam70]

Horns do work great in the Regal -
I've used The Image Dynamics, Veritas and USD wave guides.
All worked well but did require some tuning (all horns do).
My Favorite so far has been the Veritas. I have found that the Driver used is more important than the horn itself.
Cheap driver = bad sound.
I found if you use the USD normaliztion network, it takes care of about 80% of the tuning....

You don't need much power either....a 2X50 watt amp is plenty.

Finding a good midbass to keep up is also another challenge.


I recently traded the USD waveguides to a guy but he might not want to keep them.
'i can point you his direction if you're interested.

[87grandnat]

November Rain rules!!!!!

[6APPEAL]

Zam70,
Shoot me a message is he doesn't keep the horns.
Thanks,
John

[HzEmall Regal]

Running horns in most cars can be pretty harsh on the ears sometimes so you will need a good EQ to be able to compensate for the natural harshness that compression drivers produce. The design of the driver is to be loud in a speaker bin for concert type speakers, they are not designed to be pleasant sounding to the ears. While they can sound good, the amount of work to do this is somet times not worth it, much easier to just do kick panels.

[WHITE T]

I agree with Xtant.

You need very good tuning devises, and the better the driver the better the horn. Many good drivers are very expensive, some of the best I have used are Altec 902 (small format), TAD 4002 (large format). To do it right it is damn expensive, for a quarter of the price you can use a set of good speakers in the kicks.

Just my 2 cents, I used to work in car audio for years and experimented and competed with a couple of horn cars. We used some trick stuff back in the day TAD drivers and modified Veritas horns, but I would not due it again for do to the expense.

P.S. you need a good 1/3 octive EQ! I have a bunch of new modified Rane stuff if you need it!

[Sleeper-6]

THanks for the imput guys, I'm prob not going to do this for a few more months, I don't want to hold anyone up on trades.

Zam70- What seried of the ID horns did you try? How was the install of the different brands, did they all fit ok? Were there any distinctive differences between the brands? Also, What is the "normalization network" is that USDs name for their crossover? I coulden't find any info on it.

WHITE T - I have never heard of Rane before. What do you have there, Fill me in. 1/3 octive EQs I assume?

Building custom kicks shoulen't be much of a problem. So I can custom fit them to whatever mids I choose. I should have access to a RTA to get them baselined and them be able to tweak from there. I'm going to keep an eye open for a used horn set to keep the costs down a little.

[6APPEAL]

I currently have a set of ID Cameleon 5 1/4 & tweet in the kicks. Nice sound, just looking for something different. Nice staging, but lacks a bit a depth. I'd like the sound stage to be deeper. Like the band is playing on the hood.

[WHITE T]

Hey Sleeper-6

They are pro audip 1/3 eq's that were converted to 12 volts for car use. They are a constant q rack mounted eq's.

They have been used for years in competition.

[Sleeper-6]

That would be great if I go with the horns. If you're not in a hurry to get rid of them, I'll contact you when I'm ready to do my install.

[zam70]

Well here's my take on things -
FIRST: Quality is a subjective opinion: This is mine

Horns are superior to conventional drivers IF the listener prefers a very dynamic "live" sound. For dynamics, horns are unrivaled.
Horns: easy to get a great stage and image.
Horns are very easy to install - typically no major cutting needed but a little finesse with a hammer and minor trimming is required in our cars.

Coventional drivers are superior in over all response. They sound more linear and overall, more pleasant but, unexciting.
Coventionals are tougher to get "right" but when they're right, they're GREAT (but still unexciting)

I was always a conventional driver guy.
I had worked with horns through the years in the install bay and didn't like them...in the end, I figured out that I was approaching things wrong when installing & tuning them and now that I have a handle on the installation & tuning of horns, I will never go back to conventional drivers.

A 1/3 octave EQ is not an absolute unless you are going into serious competition...

To address Sleeper-6 questions:

The ID horns I have are the CDpro minis. I have yet to really work with them yet, that is my next project...
The ones I have directly had in my car is the Veritas 44 and The USD 700A.
Both sound good but different. I personally preferred the Veritas but, I can't really say why...I just do
Both were fairly easy to install but the USD A700 has the rotomount design which simplified things.

The USD normalization gizmo is a premade notch filter (sort of like a passive preset multi point EQ) that takes care of ALOT of the tuning. It really tames down the harshness associated with horns...for a daily driver (non-comp) you can use just this and it will sound great. Plop an EQ w/ the normalization network...it's easy sailing.

[Joe Tiano]

a good horn will play from 400 cycles(24dbslope)..to 20,000.hz..there is no x over in the mid- hi frequency range to cause problems....the more drivers playing the same frequencys...the more problems... IMO..this is why a properly tuned horn will outprform a 2 speaker system

[WHITE T]

I have not seen any horns that were able to play 400-20,000. I know back in the day (early 90's) Jim adams was running a set of top loaded Veritas horns and was rumored to be playing around in the 500 range with VERY low power. These are 3" beryllium (sp?) throats, compared to your standard 1" throat horns. This was a rumour and with some general talks with Jim these were not the standard x-over points used in competition for him. Also due to the larger throats these drivers had problems on the high end and will fall off well before the 20k range. Competitors like Mark Eldridge actually used tweeters to help the high end in his vehicle. When using a standard small format car horn you will not be able to come close to the 400 range, I think USD recommeneded in the 800hz range. This will work fine as long as you are using good midbass location (kicks).

As stated before much of this debate is personal preference. I believe in order to make a horn system sound appealing and not harsh a 1/3 is needed. The compression driver has a very erratic frequency response at best. My thoughts are if you are going to spend the money and want the benifits of what the horns can do why skim out on the other components, your system will only be as strong as its weakest link. I believe this is why many of the lower end horns never really took off, it is hard to get these to sound really good on a budget.

Again these are some of the things I learned while using horns, it has been a good 5 years since I have been involved with car audio. I have used Veritas and ID horns (I prefer the Veritas over everything). I have always coupled my own drivers with Veritas horns. I have used Altec 902's, ID CD3 ultra's this was ID very high end horn that was discontinued years ago. These also used Altec 902's. I have also used TAD 4001's, these are amazing drivers, just very hard to package in any normal application (plus very expensive). I have also experimented with the original Altec 802, but they had power capability due to their diaphram design. The orig. design was discontinued.

[Joe Tiano]

Hmmm..unless the hi frequency knob on my rane AC23 was broken...it was set @400hz in the staging lanes @ the91 IASCA finals in OK(501-1000 amateur)..nuthing fancy.. an old set of usd waveguides..yes... I had a few spare diaphragms on hand