Fri Sep 18, 2009 4:27 pm
There's some heavy math involved in accoustical engineering, and it's all way above my head. I do have friends who are educated in that, and they go on for hours explaining the properties of horns. The smallest mistake could cause the horn to resonate wrong, and cancel it's effect or even reduce the sound level. In a nut shell, as it was explained to me, the waves have to be able to hit one side of the horn, and bounce off to hit the opposite side, and at exactly the right time and space from the beginning of the horn to the end. An analogy would be when you drive a car on a concrete road, paved in sections with seams crossing the road each (so-many) feet, you can feel a strong, increasing rhythm at a certain speed, and again at a multiple of that speed, etc. But if you drive a car with a slightly longer or shorted distance between the front and back wheels, the speeds and the tone of the rhythm will be all different. And if the wheels are a certain distance front to rear, it can completely cancel the rhythm and be smooth.
Charles
Yes, that's a real 500-lb Federal SD-10 I'm holding (braggart!)