Jan, Great paper,pdf. http://www.nutshellhifi.com/library/...er_Theater.pdf although there seems to be a page or two missing from the writings. Had to copy this one. Thanks :thankU: Regards ~ John
Originally Posted by Horn Savant
If we are talking about the folded horn box, that is a classic horn
Somewhere down about 50 hz cutoff, they were popular in Sound reinforcement in the 70's
WE called them RCA bins, much of the design is credited to RCA's Harry Olson who was part of the Shearer project
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Your neighbors called. They like your music.
Glad you enjoyed it.
There's several copies of that paper floating around on the net,
one of the other versions might be more complete.
It's taken from a book "Motion Picture Sound Engineering" from 1938.
The book is easy to get.
cheers
Jan
??? 30K in the 40s? That would be like $300K today. 1947 to today is about 10:1 price ratio.
250 hz crossover ! cool ! Would have sounded Fantastic ! A big serious spkr.
When W.E. gear was finally for sale after antitrust, it didn't come cheap.
I suppose big movie houses had big budgets back then like big Clubs in Miami/Las Vegas today where they spend $1M on equip.
Reviving an old thread here with some new information. Despite my obsession with Jim Lansing for the past twenty years, I had never heard one of his big theatre systems until the other day. I was fortunate to visit a friend who is now running a single, somewhat Shearer type system. It uses a repro WE Mirrophonic bass horn loaded with two Lansing field coil woofers. This box was originally built for two ERPI 18" drivers, but the sub-baffle board was replaced by one configured for two 15s. There are four front horn paths coming more or less straight out at various angles rather than the W folding of the Shearer bin. One can look down the horns and see the woofer cones.
The high frequency section utilizes a circa 1936 803 multicellular horn driven by a Lansing 285 field coil compression driver.
My friend wanted help in setting up this system, setting polarities etc. Once we had both woofers working and all drivers in proper polarity, the sound was just mind blowing great! Words are inadequate to describe the clarity, punch and transparency of the bass, and the utter naturalness from top to bottom. This is a large system firing into a large space as intended, and the results are just glorious. The frequency response as measured on a small handheld device looked great, flat down to at least 40 Hz. and gently downsloping from 3 or 4 kHz. up, with just a single dip at 300 Hz. Almost any decent old recording sounded dynamic, relaxed and wonderful, even 78s, the single exception being a recent Adele LP that was strident and horribly compressed. Modern mix engineers need to study history a bit, and listen to their work on something with the resolving power of this system!
I want to hear on of these systems one day too. It sounds like it was an awesome experience. Part of an audiophile "bucket" list.
It was indeed an awesome experience, Elitopus1. It also creates some ambivalence in me; I'm joyful that they had this sound (except for the software...) in the 1930s, but distressed at our lack of progress since then. Things should be much better by now! The disruption in audio progress presented by WWII was one factor, as was the drive to build smaller/cheaper/ easier to build/cheaper in recent decades. Also, lack of perspective contributes. When I took a Lansing field coil compression driver to JBL years ago, the transducer engineers gathered 'round, as they had never seen one before! Hardly anyone practicing today has heard a prewar system, so how would they know how their current work stacks up sonically?
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