I am interested in the properties of short horn subs such as the funktion one 218 or the turbosound thl 828. I have read that true horns (min 5') sound weird at close range and only really apply well pointed into huge crowds out doors, but a stack of reflex cabs for a small indoor venue looks weird. Are these short horn designs the best of both worlds? Or are they also better for wide open spaces? My market is to put insane amounts of bass into small crowds. Any thoughts?
I have not read anything on how the horn or the "turbo device" actually works.
The horn attached to it is a short horn-but the "throat area" is not at all like other folded or straight horns.
Basically a short horn will not provide horn loading to a low freq.
So it can get loud at higher freq, but the lower freq will not be as loud.
If you operate a horn (just like a reflex/ported cabinet) below where it is intended to be operated-there is a really good chance you can damage the drivers without overpowering them.
This is called over excursion-and basically the driver is just "flopping around" and beats itself to death.
The basics are that in order to produce lower freq-the horn needs to be longer.
There is a "price to be paid" for getting the extra bass.
The "penalty" is around 9dB/octave.
There is an advantage to a short horn with minimal "turns". They can go higher in freq than a horn with a lot of turns or a few sharp turns.
Whether that matters-depends on what the rest of the system is and how low the full range cabinets go.
So (all other things being equal) a horn that can do 45Hz is going to be 9dB quieter than one that can do 90Hz in a given size cabinet.
When you say "insane amounts of bass", what does that REALLY mean?
Do you consider anything 70Hz to be "Bass" or do you consider 30Hz to be "bass".
When you hear 30Hz produced clean and loud, it is a completely different experience than just listening to the harmonics (distortion) of a system trying to reproduce 30Hz.
Loud and low are VERY different things. YOU and only YOU have to define what is more important to you and YOUR music needs.
I wonder what you mean in that horns sound weird up close?
Plenty of people use horns in smaller areas just fine.
You cannot just groups "all horns" together as being the same.
Some are better than others-some are louder than others-some go lower than others and so forth.
As usual-YOU have to accurately define what really want/need in order to get usable results.