# Horns and the MS-Gr8



## toysoldier3646 (Jan 25, 2010)

Who here has experience with horns and the MS-8? Does using a center channel help with any problems? I've read a couple installs using horns and the MS-8, but I want more info since I'm considering them for my Ram.


edit: also give the horn and driver combo your experience comes from


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## DanMan (Jul 18, 2008)

Matt B. of ID messed around with the center channel and horns. His conclusion is that it is not needed with horns. Check ID's forum. There are several posts you should find helpful.


*I just realized that sending people over to ID's forum is not helping this new sub-forum at all.


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## atsaubrey (Jan 10, 2007)

Matt B with ID seems to like the MS8 and Matt doesnt like anything. lol


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## mattyjman (Aug 6, 2009)

i had it with and without the center, also with rears. technically the stage was correct. the sound on the other hand.... I would never recommend the ms8 with horns. in multiple occurances, the ms8 has stood to disappoint avid horn users. (not just me) even Andy W posted elsewhere that he's not surprised that the ms8 doesn't work well, as the unit is designed to work with the problems of reflected sound, and the horns have a controlled directivity. 

one user described the sound as coming through narrow tubes... i would completely concur. i don't mean to disappoint or state negative commentary, but it's the truth...


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## toysoldier3646 (Jan 25, 2010)

mattyjman said:


> i had it with and without the center, also with rears. technically the stage was correct. the sound on the other hand.... I would never recommend the ms8 with horns. in multiple occurances, the ms8 has stood to disappoint avid horn users. (not just me) even Andy W posted elsewhere that he's not surprised that the ms8 doesn't work well, as the unit is designed to work with the problems of reflected sound, and the horns have a controlled directivity.
> 
> one user described the sound as coming through narrow tubes... i would completely concur. i don't mean to disappoint or state negative commentary, but it's the truth...


you were one of the installs i've read that had issues with the sound....hence the topic. 

all good info so far, keep it comin


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## TREETOP (Feb 11, 2009)

mattyjman said:


> i had it with and without the center, also with rears. technically the stage was correct. the sound on the other hand.... I would never recommend the ms8 with horns. in multiple occurances, the ms8 has stood to disappoint avid horn users. (not just me) even Andy W posted elsewhere that he's not surprised that the ms8 doesn't work well, as the unit is designed to work with the problems of reflected sound, and the horns have a controlled directivity.
> 
> one user described the sound as coming through narrow tubes... i would completely concur. i don't mean to disappoint or state negative commentary, but it's the truth...


Same experience here. I tried all the tips and tricks, and more, to no avail. The MS-8 is probably a great unit for conventional speakers, but had way too many issues in my setup to even continue trying. I went back to a manually-tuned processor and got my smile back.


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## Mic10is (Aug 20, 2007)

I thought Tonally mine sounded pretty damn good with horns and Ms8.
I ran it for awhile w/out center then with a center. It was definitely better with a center.
my problem was it seemed to use an excessive amount of time correction and one side, depending on which side you were sitting, was louder than the other. So from driver seat, the pass side always seemed louder. reverse for pass side.
If you measured output, the output was the same side to side, so it was obvious it was a time problem.

The only way I was able to fix the issue was to run calibration while I straddled my center console...but then I had no width...and a really stiff neck from the awkward position of straddling my center console....

Eventually I just got sick of trying to manipulate and come up with ways to "trick" the processor into doing something it should already be doing.
dumped the MS8. put the H-700 back in--won MECA finals....


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## toysoldier3646 (Jan 25, 2010)

I should have added to mention the horn and driver combo you were running. There may be some relation to different experiences


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## OnlyShawn (Jan 1, 2011)

Dammit, and I was all set on using my horns. Screw you all.


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## veleno (Sep 16, 2006)

OnlyShawn said:


> Dammit, and I was all set on using my horns. Screw you all.


With the MS-8? Do it, then if for some reason you don't like it you know what to do


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## mikey7182 (Jan 16, 2008)

I had the same experience as Matt and TREETOP. I was running Illusion Audio CH-1 with B&C DE500 compression drivers, and JBL 2118H for mids. The tune resulted in a very hollow sound with almost no midbass.


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## OnlyShawn (Jan 1, 2011)

**fingers in ears**lululumattlikesthemlululu**


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## adrianp89 (Oct 14, 2007)

You have to be picky with your gains when tuning the horns with a MS8. I kept my horns almost at no gain then turned them up after to my pleasing. MS8 really tamed the horns, and I still had shredding mid-bass. I'm very happy, but yet again I am no expert.


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## Aaron'z 2.5RS/WRX (Oct 24, 2007)

OnlyShawn said:


> **fingers in ears**lululumattlikesthemlululu**


Bwahahahahahahahahaha


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## fredswain (Jan 19, 2011)

I have never used the MS-8 so my view on what it does may or may not be valid so bear with me. At the very least you'll see my train of thought.

Back when I was in car audio in the 90's, I learned lots about tuning from Matt Borgardt. It was pretty easy to do considering we worked together. I also saw what many other competitors did and saw what questions newer people asked. A common question was what type of curve did we run? In other words what did it look like on an RTA. This was something that many people tried to keep quiet about and wouldn't reveal. Will Adcock (who I later worked with) at Expressive Audio was one of these people. 

I forget which year it was but I spent the weekend in Waco tuning Joanna Duncan's car. She had Focal mids and highs in kickpanels that Matt had built and had dual 31 band eq's. That car sounded awesome when I finished tuning it. In my opinion it was the best that car ever sounded, before or since. The "curve" was basically totally flat from about 200 hz to 10K hz. Below 200 it tapered up smoothly and above 10K it tapered down smoothly. At Texas Heat Wave that weekend she scored a perfect 40 on RTA, won her class, and won best of show.

For some dumb reason she was pursuaded to change the kickpanels again. This time she took the car to Gary Biggs at Cartoys in Tulsa. Now instead of the kicks firing up towards the middle of the car, they fired straight across with the tweeter mounted coaxially but aimed out. It also had Focal Utopia components at this point. IASCA finals that year were in Greenville, SC and she was in it. On her way out, she stopped by my house in Houston to have me tune it with the new setup. I started with crossover points and worked my way to the RTA. I did everything the exact same way as I had earlier in the year. I even dialed in the same RTA "curve". It didn't work. It didn't sound the same. It wasn't nearly as nice. So much for the "curve" being the most important thing. With the old setup I had set it up based on a greater amount of direct energy. With the new kicks I was tuning around more reflected energy. The curve may have scored just as well on paper but it sounded horrible. This is a problem I think many soundoff cars have. Some of the highest scoring cars sound dry, dull, and boring which is a nice way of saying bad. I never had enough time to get her car dialed in with that new setup as I only had one evening to work on it. She had Cartoys do more tuning on it at finals. She didn't even place.

At a guess, which may be wrong, I think the MS-8 was designed around certain assumptions. It was designed to make an average car with average speaker locations that are almost always off axis to the listener sound a certain way. It is trying to dial in a certain curve to get that sound. The problem is that this same curve may not work with some configurations, specifically something with lots of on axis energy such as horns. I think the people that are having bad results with it are suffering from the same issues I had in Joanna's car and that was the assumption that there is a magical frequency curve that works best. This just isn't true. In some cars the MS8 may work wonderfully. In others it may be less than spectacular. 

I have always been of the opinion that you should make the speaker combo, location, enclosures, dampening, etc, work as good as they can on their own and then only use EQ to fix the areas that good choices couldn't quite fix based on the car interior. I have never liked the idea of letting a processor determine for me what something should sound like when it doesn't know anything other than what it hears. It doesn't know if it is direct energy or reflected. How can it optimize something it doesn't know about?

Again, maybe I'm off on what I think it does and some magical piece of engineering has actually happened. I'm sure it has it's place but I think many people are under the impression is that all they need to do is to install one of these and suddenly it is going to give them a world class sound system. I just don't see this as being possible when even it is based on assumptions.

Now saying all this since I know it sounds like a bash against it, I have no doubt that the MS8 has it's place. I'm sure there are some things that it can do very well and I'm sure it makes some things much easier. It probably does things that simple eq just can't do so don't think I think it's a waste of money. You can always go back and tweak it's settings so even for the very best tuner out there this may at the very least get them started and decently close to their intended result which means less work in the end. My fear about this is that many people are going to get dependent on it thinking it is the magical cure for all of their problems. I don't see how it can be. It may do what most users need it to though which makes it a good thing. It may correct many things that aren't easy to correct otherwise. I just hope people learn how to use it as a tuning tool rather than take it's results as pure gospel. People were forced to learn more when they had to do more to get a good result.


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## mattyjman (Aug 6, 2009)

^ great post and perfectly explains the horns/ms8 experience


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## Midwestrider (Aug 10, 2007)

To those that have used the MS-8 with horns and have had a "so-so" experience with it. What would be sugguested to someone new to horns for tuning? Not to take away from the OP but I'm in the same boat. I'm looking at a set of ID full bodies w/ ultra drivers and has looking at the MS-8 or opting for the Pioneer P99RS HU. 

Anyone with horns and a P99 care to comment?


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## mattyjman (Aug 6, 2009)

i used horns and the p01, and it worked fairly well. for someone new it should work great. however, the autotunes always have limited abilities. with that said, the best way to tune is to understand what you have and your system abilities, and use some of the tutorials that have been posted to help you tune your system to your own ears. I've never had an autotune that was "simply amazing".


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## Patrick Bateman (Sep 11, 2006)

fredswain said:


> I have never used the MS-8 so my view on what it does may or may not be valid so bear with me. At the very least you'll see my train of thought.
> 
> Back when I was in car audio in the 90's, I learned lots about tuning from Matt Borgardt. It was pretty easy to do considering we worked together. I also saw what many other competitors did and saw what questions newer people asked. A common question was what type of curve did we run? In other words what did it look like on an RTA. This was something that many people tried to keep quiet about and wouldn't reveal. Will Adcock (who I later worked with) at Expressive Audio was one of these people.
> 
> ...


If I had to hazard a guess, I think the MS-8 is eq'ing the response to a target curve for direct radiators. For instance, most car audio guys shelve the treble, otherwise dome tweeters sound too hot. But horns are different. Their directivity is narrower than a dome in the three octaves from 2khz to 16khz.

I posted some details on this here:

Audio Psychosis • View topic - Help! I Can't Get My Horns To Sound Correct!


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## 14642 (May 19, 2008)

There's no difference in EQ method for horns and non horns, since there's no way to equalize the on-axis sound without also equalizing the off axis sound. The difference is just the target curve. With horns, you probably want a different target curve than with conventional speakers. I'd hazard a guess that the high frequency attenuation that 's required for little tweeters in a reflective environment doesn't provide enough high frequency for horns, which are more directional at high frequencies (if they even play high frequencies). You ought to be able to correct this with the 31-band EQ by drawing an upward-slanting line starting at 1k and finishing at +6dB at 20K. 

If you're having trouble with time alignment and horns with MS-8, remember that the sound emanates from the mouth of the horn and that MS-8 looks for high frequencies to locate speakers. If there's a high-frequency reflection from the door panel adjacent to the horn MS-8 may locate it instead of the horn's mouth.


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## chevbowtie22 (Nov 23, 2008)

^^ So Andy are you saying the MS-8 could be made to work with horns as long as there aren't any reflections around the doors to confuse it? I'm set on horns in my vette and I'm looking at the MS-8 to replace my 360.2 but this thread has me second guessing that thought.


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## fredswain (Jan 19, 2011)

You don't want a different "target curve" with horns vs conventional speakers. I always tuned the same way regardless of what type of speakers are used with the exact same goals in mind. You want a different target curve based on vehicle and speaker location/aim. Type is irrelevant.


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## Horsemanwill (Jun 1, 2008)

the ms8 was already proven to work with horns according to matt he loves that lil gray box.


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## Patrick Bateman (Sep 11, 2006)

fredswain said:


> You don't want a different "target curve" with horns vs conventional speakers. I always tuned the same way regardless of what type of speakers are used with the exact same goals in mind. You want a different target curve based on vehicle and speaker location/aim. Type is irrelevant.


I'm with Andy. "With horns, you probably want a different target curve than with conventional speakers."

The power response of a direct radiator, a waveguide, a horn, and an array are all different.

Ideally, you'd want to tune the *power response*, not the *frequency response*.

But you can't do that with the MS-8 AFAIK, so that's why you want a different target curve.

(Also, this is why 90% of my frequency response plots show the on and off-axis response.)


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## fredswain (Jan 19, 2011)

When you are tuning, you are doing so at one volume level using pink noise so frequency response is all you've got. You should have already "power matched" everything by this point. You take different measurements from different locations and average them but it's still frequency based. Since reflections off of different surfaces plays a huge role, this is where the human ear comes in and makes the final judgement and adjustments. There is no one magical curve that works for every car or every speaker type. The actual car interior and speaker placement within it has a larger effect on the desired "curve" that what type of speaker is used. I know this to be true. Tuning for one curve with horns and then another with conventionals will yield a completely different type of sound as it should. It is no different than tuning to two completely different curves with two different conventional speaker equipped systems. With a good horn system that is well tuned, even the best ears have a hard time telling that they are horns. It just sounds like a very dynamic system. This assumes of course that the horns aren't of such a terrible design that you can hear horrible colorations from them. A well designed and well tuned horn disappears very well.

The one thing that has always remained true in audio is that the absolutely best sounding systems have been the simplest setups and have been tuned with a good set of human ears and not some computer. There is no magic curve or correct curve either for any type of speaker. Take a good speaker and get a perfect response in a field and then see what it's like in a car. Totally different and it will change with location and resonance within those places. Horns are the same way. Sure they have lots of direct energy. So do conventional kickpanel mounted speakers. Mount those horns under a seat pointing away from you and see what happens to tuning! In fact then compare it to conventional kick panel mounted speakers that will suddenly have more direct energy than the horns. It is not speaker type that matters when it comes to what it sounds like. It is aim and the influence of the surroundings. Notice I didn't say what matters in regards to creating a good soundstage. I believe stage and quality to be two indepedent things and terrible sounding cars that continuously win soundoffs are proof of this.

While Matt may like the MS8, I guarantee there is more to the story than that. He doesn't just hook it up, let it do it's thing, and then send it out the door. Working with him for a few years taught me that he has far more of an opinion that just yes or no. He probably likes it because it shortens the initial amount of time it takes to get the sound to a decent point but he most certainly goes back and tweaks it a fair amount from there. He probably likes it because it saves time, and not because it is perfect. I saw him get into cars that sounded quite nice and then tweak nearly everything in them even though he admitted the sound was already good.


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## SSSnake (Mar 8, 2007)

> the absolutely best sounding systems have been the simplest setups and have been tuned with a good set of human ears and not some computer


Times they are a-changin' - Dylan

Many competitors and hobbyists have had very good results with computer aided tuning.

I should be negative on the MS-8 given that I have been screwing around with this thing for around a year and still can't get it right (Andy is being extremely helpful). But I'm not. There are so many variables to human hearing that change from day to day that computer tuning - IMO - offers several distinct advantages. The primary advantage being low variability. How many times have you sat in your car tuning and got out and thought "this is it!". The be all, end all of tunes was just applied to this car only to get in the next day and go WTH was I thinking. Starting with a good base tune from a computer aided tool should minimize this.

Computer aided tuning is just a tool. Like all tools the results differ depending upon the capabilities of the person using the tool. Computer aided tuning is no different. My one complaint with the MS-8, when working correctly, is the lack of flexibility in the end user tuning. I would love to see the ability to tweak the TA, xover, and EQ settings after the computer finished doing its thing. I understand that I am in the vast minority and the additional cost required for this capability likely makes this feature a bridge too far for JBL. After all they do have to turn a profit and this means catering to the masses. 

The time saved by beginning with a computer aided tuning tool is, again IMO, too great to ignore. Your post reminds me of the argument against using processing in the car. Sure you can get there without processing but the benefits FAR outweigh the negative effects. Don't take this as a statement that says processing can fix everything. IT CANNOT. It can however take a decent system to the next level. 

BTW - I hope this did not come off as an attack. I am aware that computer aided tuning has been marketed or at least received by the car audio community as a cure all. I completely agree that it is not. However, in the hands of someone with at least some experience you can get very good sound in much less time than it takes without computer aided tuning. As someone who realizes they do not have a set of golden ears, I'll take all of the help I can get.


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## eviling (Apr 14, 2010)

SSSnake said:


> Times they are a-changin' - Dylan
> 
> only to get in the next day and go WTH was I thinking.



haha oh dear lord do I, i have very stail hearing so it takes me awhile to atune my self to properly tune a system, one of the reasons the MS-8 works great for me! as far as i'm concearned, FOR my application the system was an end all solution for me, I only had to go through the set up maybe 5 times, the first time i pretty much had it...but than i had to try to tweak it to see what i could do, i pretty much ended back where i origonaly set everything (i got lucky i guess) 


I can't speak of horns but i can tell you its a pretty smart system, and i come to this conclusion by how ive set it currently, i set it for active 2 way front, than used 2 of the channels (the tweet channels to be spacific) to my passive cross overs, and the other channels were dummies, my concearns being this would throw off T|A and the EQ, but when doing the calibration with the mic's, the system seems to of "figuired out" that their were no speakers really only those channels, so the results were still as good as when i had it in 1 way, except i was able to set my HPF for my cross over and tweak the slope, i had to this because my woofers on my 608's were getitng a bit to much power and needed to be pulled back and you can't set a curve or HPF on 1 way set up (something if ound odd, you should be able to set cross over points on coax's). 

in any case, this is my impression of the unit, and i'm not a pro by meaning of the word, but i do know what i like and I like the sound this unit has produced for me, and when i take my system active i'm certain i'll be even more pleased  in fact, i just bought a 3rd amp from a member on this forum


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