By: Jeff Bailie, Founder of Basscouch

I have had the pleasure of listening to many large name-brand sound systems – Turbosound, Funktion One, Meyer Sound, and, L-Acoustics – to name a few. One thing that was in common with all of the sound systems were their massive bass cabinets. These systems all had deep, effortless amounts of bass – and they all sounded so clean. Most of these high-end sound systems had horn-loaded bass cabinets.

In the summer of 2006, I attended a small festival in the mountains of Colorado. It was at this festival that I first had a chance to hear the handcrafted Labhorn.  The name “Labhorn” stands for “Live Audio Board Horn” and  was based off of a project on Pro Sound Web. The project was headed by Tom Danley of  Danley Sound Labs and a team of audio scientists. The Labhorn project had a few major goals. Mainly, the team’s goal was to design a horn-loaded subwoofer cabinet that would rival the industry’s most powerful subwoofers – one that you could build in your own small woodshop, and one that would cost a fraction of the price of any of the competing subs to build.

….And how they pulled it off! A small stack of these horn-loaded subwoofers blew my mind! Six Labhorns seemed to be outputting as much power as the largest systems I had ever experienced. Some of these competing systems were in excess of 100,000 watts…. and somehow, the point source of these collection Labhorns was even greater. I had to find out why.

All I had to learn was that simple physics have everything to do with this outstanding amount of Bass.

After researching the Labhorn project, I found that the speakers inside were inexpensive. These subs only utilize a pair of 12 inch speakers, and they’re not all that powerful in themselves. I thought, “How could this be? There was so much air blasting out of those six cabinets…”

In the end it comes down to energy. Like all energy, the output of these subwoofers is subject to a grouping effect. After listening to just one Labhorn by itself, I realized how exponential the effect is. One Labhorn on its own is weak. The cumulative effect of pairing just two together is amazing. Paired, they go lower in frequency and gain higher volume. Grouping four together, and then six… eventually you realize how a system like Basscouch is possible.

The Labhorn, by design, is a folded horn. It is shaped like a seashell, like the shell of a Nautilus. There are two 12 inch speakers (called drivers) in each Labhorn. If you were to measure the distance from the internal speakers to the mouth of the horn, you would realize that air travels over ten feet! It is this depth that makes these subwoofers sound so clean. As an audio wave travels away from the drivers, it bounces off the walls of the horn, creating a natural compression that our ears enjoy. The depth of the horn also dictates the frequency depth to which the cabinet can extend. The shorter the horn, the higher the frequency necessary to load it. Labhorns have a bandwidth of about 30 hertz to 100 hertz.

Most people assume that a horn throws the sound, like a trumpet. This is not true; a horn loaded speaker does not throw sound any further than a non-horn loaded speaker. In horn-loaded sound systems, the horns are a tapered sound guide, designed to provide an acoustic impedance match between a sound source and free air. This maximizes the efficiency with which sound waves from the particular source are transferred to the air.

A horn does, however, minimize the unwanted volume levels behind the cabinets. This leads to less sound bleed onto the stage than non-horn-loaded systems. This aspect is great for performers – they can hear themselves from the monitors clearer and it helps minimize the effects of microphone feedback.

Horn-loading also naturally increases the efficiency of the drivers. A horn-loaded speaker gains 1.5 decibels of gain per every reflection. In this way, the bent walls of the Labhorn naturally amplify the sound coming out of the speakers by 6 decibels.

This is why the Basscouch sound system was assembled using primarily horn-loaded cabinetry. If you would like to experience the effortless power of horn loaded sound, please contact us to hear what you’ve been missing.