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Designing a horn for the Rockford Fosgate T3S2-19


nerdoldnerdith

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I am the owner of Rockford Fosgate T3S2-19 drivers that were reviewed very well here. Currently they are just being used in 100L enclosures. This is a nice setup, but I feel like I am not making good use of the drivers given how powerful they are. They aren't very efficient when used this way.

Josh mentioned that they should work well for horn loading when he reviewed them, but I am still trying to figure out exactly how. The only horn that uses them to my knowledge is the Maul, which is a simple slot design.

I tried modeling them in various ported and horn enclosures, and it seems like every ported enclosure gives a peaky response, and the usual suspects for horns like the Devastator, Skram, Othorn, etc. don't work very well with the drivers. Peaky peaky peaky. However, when I model them in the Gjallarhorn, it looks like they are actually a pretty good match. Unfortunately the drivers won't fit in the Gjallarhorn.

So I messed with the Gjallarhorn parameters a bit in Hornresp to get an idea of how a tapped horn could be designed to work with the T3S2-19. By playing with a few things I got an even better response than the Gjallarhorn for this driver.

The one problem is that in order to get this response the compression ratio has to be very high. Whenever I try to use a lower compression ratio and a larger opening everything goes to hell and I get a peaky response. Additionally, the drivers stick out 3" from where they are mounted. In order to get that level of compression they would have to be mounted with the screws going up through the frame or some kind of phase plug would have to be used. Also, I think such a high compression ratio can cause damage to the driver, no?

Any advice designing a horn for these pesky drivers would be much appreciated. I would like it to be a tapped horn or bandpass horn with extension down to around 20Hz that don't have a really peaky and annoying response.

Here is what I came up with in Hornresp.

T3S2-19 tapped horn output.jpg

T3S2-19 tapped horn parameters.jpg

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That is the problem with using these drivers horn loaded. They want a compression ratio that is quite high and the drivers themselves are huge with a massive frame and surround . Typically back mounting is used for horns but these do not have a frame designed for back mounting. Logistically it isn't feasible to use the drivers like this. This is part of the reason that I didn't pursue a horn for this driver myself. You could try a compression chamber...Or a bandpass which the MAUL already is sort of. 

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I have tried to make it work in a lot of configurations. Nothing I do seems to work. This tapped horn is the best design I have so far.

I tried to design a compression chamber to get the same compression ratio. When I do that I get a huge null at 60-80Hz I can't seem to fix no matter what I do. I don't know how to do a real compression chamber with a tapped horn in Hornresp though. The schematic doesn't make a lot of sense to me. 

I realized that I could reduce the area of the entry chamber by layering pieces of wood so that the cutout for the driver is recessed by a couple inches. That would allow me to get the height required while still maintaining enough clearance for the driver.

This is a truly pathological driver. It seems like it should work in a horn, but it doesn't ever work as well as you want it to work.

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