Radial Horn Flares

On the issue of directivity; I believe the OS waveguides are quite good at giving even responses through their rated coverage angles. Otherwise Tony's trick of using a turntable, pink noise and trials has worked and always worked. I find response off axis in CD horns is sometimes overlooked when manufacturers make spec sheets...especially when the CD horns aren't the nice ones that do have nice off axis measurements at HF.

@Lev

I was referring to the terralec radial; simon asked for radials and well, that's a radial (however cheap and crappy it may be [img]smileys/smiley36.gif[/img]).

jsg wrote: I've used Eminence TI2000 which looks pretty simialr to the p.audio. Does fine with the BMS 4590 but single-diapragm 2" units might show noticable HF rolloff since the horn is CD. You could always add an APT as a supertweeter.

Also, 60 degrees is a bit narrow unless you have more than one per side and can splay them.

Intended 2x super tweeters for each 2".

Someone also told me if you are gonna splay mid tops, best to use 60 degree narrower horns, otherwise you are more prone to comb filtering with splayed, wider CD horns.

Dont know how accurate this is ?

For what it's worth, I think that the later horns lack a presence, or clarity, which is something like the difference between valve and transistor sound that HI-FI buffs will bang on about. I might be viewing things through rose tinted specs, but I liked the open-ness of theradial sound. The biggest drawback that I can see though, isas Tony pointed out, that the radial designs do dropat 45 degrees off axis,especiallyat the higher frequencies. To counter this, most of the professional rigs around in the early seventies would use a three way top end, 2" up to around 4.5k, 1" on top, up to around 12k?, and bullits or slots above. Very expensive, and those flares wereextremely heavy!. I've humped enough of them around to know. I just wondered what the concensus of opinion was, and whether anyone is 100% satisfied with the sound they get from their top end. Or if anyone has used, or is currently using some old radials, how does the sound compare?. As I said on another thread, I'm looking for something to fit the bill at the top end of my system, and I just haven't heard anything quite good enough yet. I was, and I still am considering making some grp flares of my own,but to commit to the pattern making process for the moulds again at this stage, I would need to know if enough people would be interested in some new radials. Whay say you gents?.

Simon, If you have your own ideas about horns you should do the pattern anyway. If you can make your basic main frame, you could have most of the work done in a day.
I think that a lot of people would not consider the difference between radials and CD, because a lot of younger members, any one under forty, may not have used radials at all CD has been with us commercially for 25 years.
Another thing to consider with radials is that because the fall off at HF is different to CD horns, The coupling and phase situations are completely different. In a lot of cases the radials would not be as troublesome as modern systems can be.
Radials in recording studios that only have to point one way into a narrow field were always good. for accuracy. Bring back the Radial, thats what I say.

Radials sound great IMO when done properly, though there's some newer HF horns that also sound brilliant (usual disclaimer, as you may have seen in some of my posts, it's the cause for my disposition towards the OS waveguide)...

www.audioheritage.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=16207
That link gives you some calculators, and advice on making one out of wood. Means no almost no nasty resonances as well, they're made out of solid blocks.