How About This?? Long & Short Horns

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CDBPDX
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How About This?? Long & Short Horns

Post by CDBPDX »

I have experimented with 2 channel recordings, phase shifting the 2 channels by several milliseconds seems to add depth to the sound. Some early phonographs achieved the same effect by arranging 2 reproducers milliseconds apart on playback.

What if the sound was split, like the re-entrant horns, and one 'channel' went through a 4' or longer horn and the other 'channel' through a very short horn? Wouldn't that have the same effect? Has anybody done that?

The longer horn would have to be channeled/curved, maybe spiral around the shorter horn?

Food for thought.

Cliff
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Re: How About This?? Long & Short Horns

Post by gramophone-georg »

CDBPDX wrote:I have experimented with 2 channel recordings, phase shifting the 2 channels by several milliseconds seems to add depth to the sound. Some early phonographs achieved the same effect by arranging 2 reproducers milliseconds apart on playback.

What if the sound was split, like the re-entrant horns, and one 'channel' went through a 4' or longer horn and the other 'channel' through a very short horn? Wouldn't that have the same effect? Has anybody done that?

The longer horn would have to be channeled/curved, maybe spiral around the shorter horn?

Food for thought.

Cliff
It might give you a "tweeter and woofer" effect as well.
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Re: How About This?? Long & Short Horns

Post by CDBPDX »

gramophone-georg wrote:It might give you a "tweeter and woofer" effect as well.
Yes, the longer horn would be the woofer, the shorter the tweeter. That's Hi Fidelity, right?
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Re: How About This?? Long & Short Horns

Post by startgroove »

Here are a couple of links which address the subject:

https://ia801702.us.archive.org/BookRea ... 4&rotate=0

http://forum.talkingmachine.info/viewto ... =2&t=21104

On the second one scroll down to the Add-a-Tone reproducer on a Victor with a large horn.

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Re: How About This?? Long & Short Horns

Post by CDBPDX »

startgroove wrote:Here are a couple of links which address the subject:

https://ia801702.us.archive.org/BookRea ... 4&rotate=0

http://forum.talkingmachine.info/viewto ... =2&t=21104

On the second one scroll down to the Add-a-Tone reproducer on a Victor with a large horn.
Thanks! Exactly what I was looking for. I would really like to hear the first machine play. With an Orthophonic reproducer, that should really be amazing! Seems that didn't catch on, though, as I have never seen one of them.

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Re: How About This?? Long & Short Horns

Post by startgroove »

Twenty some years ago, I looked at a machine which had two horns of unequal length. I think it was either a prototype, or a home made device. It had a ferris wheel arrangement which played eight records similar to the way a Seeburg Audiophone works. If my memory is accurate, there was one reproducer and the sound tunnel was divided by a "Y" near the base of the tone arm. One arm went to a large and long horn that had a fairly continuous taper, while the other arm went into a trombone line arrangement with a constant diameter terminating in a flared horn. I couldn't hear it, since it was not playable. The estate knew nothing about it, so there is no other information available. I don't know what its purpose was or what has happened to it. Russie

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Re: How About This?? Long & Short Horns

Post by RolandVV-360 »

startgroove wrote:Twenty some years ago, I looked at a machine which had two horns of unequal length. I think it was either a prototype, or a home made device. It had a ferris wheel arrangement which played eight records similar to the way a Seeburg Audiophone works. If my memory is accurate, there was one reproducer and the sound tunnel was divided by a "Y" near the base of the tone arm. One arm went to a large and long horn that had a fairly continuous taper, while the other arm went into a trombone line arrangement with a constant diameter terminating in a flared horn. I couldn't hear it, since it was not playable. The estate knew nothing about it, so there is no other information available. I don't know what its purpose was or what has happened to it. Russie
Could it have been a modified Hexaphone?
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Re: How About This?? Long & Short Horns

Post by startgroove »

It appeared to be a uniquely made machine which played discs. I wish I had a cell phone camera back then.

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Re: How About This?? Long & Short Horns

Post by Marco Gilardetti »

CDBPDX wrote:
gramophone-georg wrote:It might give you a "tweeter and woofer" effect as well.
Yes, the longer horn would be the woofer, the shorter the tweeter. That's Hi Fidelity, right?
I know you were just joking, but High Fidelity consists also in trying to keep the sound message as "in phase" and less scattered as possible. Intentionally introducing phase shifts and delays may perhaps lead to an amusing effect, pleasant to listen to but very very far from High Fidelity.

Coming to twin-horn gramophones, they are quite nonsense in my opinion as - supposed that they were correctly calculated so that the frequencies were actually split rather than the wave front thoughtlessly destroyed, which I strongly doubt - the smaller horn would basically reinforce the mid-high spectrum of sound, which needs everything but being reinforced, as a gramophone with "too much bass" never existed on this world, unfortunately. So I'm really not surprised that they had no success: they could do nothing more than emphasize what is the most evident flaw of all gramophones, the lack of bass.

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