# Anyone make their own waveguides?



## Eastman474 (Jan 8, 2010)

I've heard of people making their own waveguides and being new to horns obviously I never have... How hard is it? Post pics if you have


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## rawdawg (Apr 27, 2007)

Search Patrick Bateman's posts. He's the resident Waveguide making madman...


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## Patrick Bateman (Sep 11, 2006)

Eastman474 said:


> I've heard of people making their own waveguides and being new to horns obviously I never have... How hard is it? Post pics if you have


Making your own waveguides is quite a hassle. I've built at least a dozen out of fiberglass, and way more than that out of wood.

Unless you're a glutton for punishment, I generally recommend using the cheap and readily available waveguides from QSC. They're about $12.

When I use them, I tend to buy four or six at a time, because you have to chop 'em down to use them in the car.

We can get away with this because it's possible to chop a waveguide down to a much smaller size if you're willing to tweak the crossover points while you're doing it.

If you just want to learn how to build a waveguide, or you need a strange shape that isn't being sold, I've posted threads on how to build them.


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## Eastman474 (Jan 8, 2010)

Patrick Bateman said:


> Making your own waveguides is quite a hassle. I've built at least a dozen out of fiberglass, and way more than that out of wood.
> 
> Unless you're a glutton for punishment, I generally recommend using the cheap and readily available waveguides from QSC. They're about $12.
> 
> ...


As of right now I own a set of I'd mini bodies and b&c de500, just thought it might be fun to try building them, thanks!


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## SSSnake (Mar 8, 2007)

Hopefully by the end of this weekend I will have something to post on this subject. I am taking a pair of existing waveguides and hacking them to fit a car underdash application. Part of the fun is going to be getting some polars of these both before and after the hack and compared to the ID full bodies (all using the same non ID compression driver). All measurement will be done outside the car (at least this weekends' measurements). 

I'm really NOT looking for a high gain horn just a pattern control waveguide. I think that I will end up with a little of both. If things work out well feel free to copy. It should be a very cheap but somewhat time consuming alternative to the current commercially available car audio horns.


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## Patrick Bateman (Sep 11, 2006)

Eastman474 said:


> As of right now I own a set of I'd mini bodies and b&c de500, just thought it might be fun to try building them, thanks!


I threw together some thoughts on various options. Check it out here:

Audio Psychosis • View topic - Alternatives to Image Dynamics


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## Veebee (Nov 14, 2010)

Im currently in the process of designing an straight entry adapter for a veritas horn. 

http://www.diymobileaudio.com/forum/hlcd/101697-straight-through-horn-adaptor.html

Next project is going to be to design a full horn that utilizes all the under dash space that i have, in the hope of getting more control at lower frequencies. The plan is to design it in cad and CNC it out of aluminium. It will also include some of PB's improvements as part of the design like round overs on the edges etc.


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## eggyhustles (Sep 18, 2008)

The thought has crossed my mind, but living in an apartment sort of makes this impossible.

Since ID is gone, are horn bodies gonna be hard to find?


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## Horsemanwill (Jun 1, 2008)

no they should be easy to find. the "company" ID isn't gone. but eric and matt aren't there. with that said the horn design is Eric's and he'll be starting a different line soon, just not fast enough . so expect some more horns to be made under a different name.


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## Eastman474 (Jan 8, 2010)

Patrick Bateman said:


> I threw together some thoughts on various options. Check it out here:
> 
> Audio Psychosis • View topic - Alternatives to Image Dynamics


Cool idea's. 


Horsemanwill said:


> no they should be easy to find. the "company" ID isn't gone. but eric and matt aren't there. with that said the horn design is Eric's and he'll be starting a different line soon, just not fast enough . so expect some more horns to be made under a different name.


Still is such a bummer and of course his new line will be great, but after all the work he had in ID. Can't wait to see what his new line will be like though


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## Patrick Bateman (Sep 11, 2006)

Veebee said:


> Im currently in the process of designing an straight entry adapter for a veritas horn.
> 
> http://www.diymobileaudio.com/forum/hlcd/101697-straight-through-horn-adaptor.html
> 
> Next project is going to be to design a full horn that utilizes all the under dash space that i have, in the hope of getting more control at lower frequencies. The plan is to design it in cad and CNC it out of aluminium. It will also include some of PB's improvements as part of the design like round overs on the edges etc.


Veebee, I've built a pile of horns that are larger than the Image Dynamics horns, and all of them were a bit of a disappointment. (This is one of the reasons I keep putting waveguides up on the dash.)

Here's why they were disappointing:

Both horns and waveguides are impedance transformers. _We all know that sound travels better in high density materials than in low density materials, and in a speaker system, the diaphragm is the high density (high impedance) medium and air is the low density (low impedance) medium. The horn assists the solid-air impedance transformation by acting as an intermediate transition medium.*_

Ideally, the Image Dynamics horns would use a mouth which is much larger. This improves things in two ways. First, it would smooth the frequency response. Second, it would improve the group delay, particularly at low frequency.

We can fix frequency response with EQ. But we can't fix group delay.

*This is why car audio horns often sound wonky in the lowest octave, and why getting a car audio horn to blend with a midbass is so challenging.*

To lower the crossover point even HALF an octave you have to DOUBLE the size of the horn!

Take a minute and think about that one - that is a seriously big horn.

So that is why I am generally dubious about attempts to improve the Image Dynamics horns. Eric, Bruce Edgar, all those guys know what they're doing. About the only real improvements which can be made are the ones we already know about. (The Geddes foam that I've documented, and the straight-entry that Winslow uses.)

If you REALLY want to get a low xover point, I think that you have to consider using the ENTIRE cavity under the dash. Basically create a very shallow waveguide, and place the horn in a location where the entire area around the kickpanel is horn loading the loudsepaker.

It would likely look a lot like Biggs car.









In the bottom left, you can see the kick panels from Biggs' car. The entire cavity under the dash will horn load the midrange and the tweeter. To make the effect even more pronounced you could move the drivers into the corner of the dash. The down side of doing that is that the 'lobe' of the drivers would be pointed down.

Biggs probably put them here because it raised the soundstage higher than corner loading them.

In a nutshell, using boundaries for horn loading is quite effective.

* Stolen from here: introduction - brief discussion of horns, pros and cons - Audio Voice Acoustics


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