Keith G wrote:

main role in returning the cone to its rest position, and
the one on the periphery is there mainly to stop that end
from drooping or flopping about sideways.


Which, of course can happen when some speakers get old and
which can be fixed to some extent by turning the speaker
180 degrees.

I guess...but I've never had an old speaker in my house.

OTOH, doesn't a horn rather slow things down?


Oh dear, that is usually a cue for one or two here to drag
the old 'it's not a proper horn' chestnut out but no,
quite the opposite.

(I have Ruarks and Tannoys on the go here and B&Ws in the
loft- which may be fetched down this afternoon!)

I rather expected a broadside along the lines of "what does
this idiot think he means by slow...".

A long time
ago, I used to play an E-flat bass, and it took so long
for a note to get out that to play anything fast I had to
block its sound out of my mind otherwise I got confused
between what I was playing and what I played a little
while ago. It also carried on playing after I stopped
blowing. That's why they are restricted to umpah, umpah.
French horn players in orchestras must be really clever
to play their more complex passages ahead of time.


No idea about any of that.


Actually I think what happens is that it takes a while for a
big tuba to cultivate a low note and, once it gets it
together, it takes just as long for it to die away. Unlike a
speaker horn, the musical instrument relies on resonance. If
you try to hurry it through a sequence of notes, it gets
faint and farty because there's not enough time to develop
each one. To some extent this is true for most acoustic bass
instruments I suppose.

I guess it takes some practise to get the bottom note out of
one of these before you run out of breath:

http://k53.pbase.com/u42/mardoli/lar....Alpenhorn.jpg

One interesting train of thought might be to wonder why
"fast bass" might be a desirable feature of a speaker, if
instruments don't make fast bass in the first place without
getting lost in a woofely blur. Maybe bass drums can be
quick, and I suppose an ensemble can play a fast passage if
they work in sequence.

How does modern "drum and bass" sound on your Lowthers? I
guess it's a musical form facilitated by speakers that
utilise modern materials technology for suspension and
cones.

Ian