John Crabbe - A Concrete Horn Loudspeaker

I recently found this articles as a collection separate JPG images. It was published originally in Hi-Fi News in October and November 1967. Since I did not find this article on DIYAudio I converted it to PDF and post it here for general interest.

This is the site I found the article: http://www.saturn-sound.com/history/hi-fi, diy projects.htm
 

Attachments

Thanks very much for gathering those pages together in a pdf.

That was the era when I was beginning to get into hi-fi in a serious way.

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John Crabbe was editor of Hi-Fi News magazine from 1965 to 1982, and author of the book 'hi-fi in the home'.

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Here, he reflects on the advances in audio between 1956 and 1977: https://www.hifinews.com/content/hi-fi-news-21-month-june-1977
 
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Concrete and horn words... when I read the thread title remains to me something in audio:
A friend of mine, Maurício Deconto from Curitiba, Paraná, Brazil, made a real huge correct exponentail horn for near 20Hz with concrete. ~7m of lenght. Not the John's project, but one from himself. The thing in common is the huge size and integration with the room (is part of it). It not have the advantage of the John's one, of folding and compacting, but it's efficiency is monstruous.
Some people in Youtube made videos about him.
So, if someone have the courage to make something that big, it can serve as inspiration if one wants to make one (myself included...)
The clean low distortion and efficiency of these things is difficult to describe. Is worth if one can make it.

BTW: my avatar is a little photo of it's rear. But before he reformed it.

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Thanks for the Burwen mention. I am always getting him mixed up with Heyser! Lots of wisdom in that article. Had to read it again.

Have to agree with MrKlinky - last thing I want in my listening room is blinking lights. No doubt an extraordinary fellow.
 
When i worked at Sound Hounds inthe late 70s one of my clients had a system inspired by this article. His bass horns were straight, and they were outside the house with mouths taking up teh walls (his description, sadly i never saw it, he lived on one of the harde to get to islands.

As an aside to MrKinky’s comment, these kinds of systems really benifit from the time delay available when using s DSP XO.

dave
 
When the article was first published his choices in gear were surprising.

Maybe Bob Carver is right and you can EQ an amplifier into sounding good?

If only it was possible ... if possible the EQ device would probably cost more than a good front end.

What I got out of that was the importance of as unconstrained as possible dynamic range. At that point in my audio life it had not occurred to me how hard that is to do. I was a very dumb young music kook at that time. With much left to learn and not that much time!