A question for Mark Seaton about the Unity Horn (1 Viewer)

[Jerry Parker]

I read a little bit about your unity horn device over on audioasylum and was wondering if you could explain some things to me. First, the horn is supposed to be completely time aligned, correct? How do you do that with two drivers in the same horn? Also, how is any low frequencies horn loaded with the same flare as high frequencies? Are their "multiple horns" one loading the bass and one loading the HF? Thanks.

 

[Mark Seaton]

Hi Jerry,
Sorry for the long delay in response, but I had typed out a long response when my computer decided to lock up and throw out the entire response!!! Thanks for asking about it here, I just hope you still swing by to see the response.
Over at AA there was a loooong exchange where I got our designer, and inventor of the Unity Summation Aperture, Tom Danley to jump in and give even more in depth responses. If you can read past Wayne's closed minded posts, there are some hugely informative posts by Tom Danley(aka tomservo). Here is the link:
Unity Patent Thread at AA
Pick through that as you have time and you will find some great posts and info there, particularly by Tom, myself, and John Hancock among others. I will answer some questions here and welcome any other questions. Fortunately this forum makes it much easier to follow the discussion.

Also, how is any low frequencies horn loaded with the same flare as high frequencies? Are their "multiple horns" one loading the bass and one loading the HF? Thanks.

Hmmm... There are a few ways to answer this, all correct from some perspective. Since you mention flare, I will start there in noting that a constant flare would be provided by a curved wall horn, where the area of the horn doubles every set distance. The higher the frequency flare, the shorter the set distance. Now, if we look at a conical flare (straight sided horn) we see that this flare rate actually changes as we move out from the throat, or apex. To be more specific, the distance it takes to double the area gets longer. This correlates to a lower frequency flare. What this means is that in a conical horn, we can actually select the flare rate we want by looking at different points along the horn's flare. The higher frequency flare is at the apex, with the flare moving to lower frequencies as you move towards the mouth.
So in essence, yes, there are multiple "segments" of the horn, and in fact there are an infinite number of flare rates to choose from over the range of the horn, but each driver benefits from and uses the entire horn for its operation. This also allows for only one end or termination which greatly reduces the reflections, as in a multi-horn speaker, each horn mouth has a set of reflections associated with its dimensions and angle.
I hope this makes some sense, and please feel free to follow up with any other questions.
Regards,

 

[Jerry Parker]

Thanks for replying, Mark, sorry it took so long for me to respond...

But yes, that is quite interesting that you can gain such good time alignment, you said within 1/4 wavelength over the entire audio spectrum, correct? Also, what about the frequency response, is it as flat as the time response? I also assume the system phase is very, very flat, right?

Regarding Wayne, what do you think of his designs? Have you heard any of them? He doesnot do FR measurements on them so I am wondering about the phase and frequency responses with his designs.

Thanks again.