Posei­don Sound Sys­tem: Com­mand­ing The Sound Waves ;)

We want­ed to do some­thing a lit­tle dif­fer­ent from the audio­phile route — the design brief giv­en to young tal­ent Bosco Tay­lor was to have a sys­tem that was still up there for Hi-Fi lis­ten­ing but also great for live music with almost zero pow­er com­pres­sion over time due to the triple stacked coils, super low dis­tor­tion and as wide dis­per­sion as possible. 

We were keen to explore the newest tech­nol­o­gy rather than find­ing old com­po­nents- which is more in line with our for­ward think­ing approach to the venue. We set­tled on a design that uses the best com­po­nents avail­able today whilst not shy­ing away from DSP to tune them.

We’re extreme­ly hap­py with the sound stage, the def­i­n­i­tion and the dis­per­sion from hav­ing a hor­i­zon­tal horn design and hung from the ceil­ing, the tech­nol­o­gy is sim­i­lar to the Dan­ley Syn­er­gy Horn, how­ev­er the focus is not all out Sound Pres­sure Lev­el (SPL) but using the finest PA dri­vers avail­able in order to cre­ate a more HiFi sound but still be suit­able for live music with excel­lent impulse response characteristics.

In our test­ing we tried some valve colour­ing but it sound­ed bet­ter with­out, due to the clar­i­ty of the dri­vers. We are cur­rent­ly test­ing Lin­ear Research amps along­side offer­ings from Lab Grup­pen and Pow­er­soft to begin with. As with any sys­tem we will refine over time and test new com­po­nents but even with the cur­rent ampli­fi­ca­tion the sys­tem shines.

Their high fideli­ty also suits high qual­i­ty mix­ers such as the Iso­noe 420 and real­ly expos­es the qual­i­ty of phono pre­amps which is some­thing we are con­tin­u­ing to explore.

Tops — Uni­ty horn loaded with dual 15″ tetra­coils (18 sound) and a co-axi­al 1.4 B&C DCX

Subs — 18 Sound 18” tetracoil

It was our third iter­a­tion, after attempt­ing a unique fibre­glass mould­ing (as seen below) that unfor­tu­nate­ly didn’t have the den­si­ty to reduce vibra­tions with such a large horn. We end­ed up with birch ply due to its supe­ri­or res­o­nance char­ac­ter­is­tics. We will be paint­ing them Klein blue with a spe­cial hand paint­ed design on the horns :)

We chose horn-led for a num­ber of rea­sons, one of the main one’s being for a super wide stereo image and dis­per­sion, where we focus on more peo­ple in the venue being in the sweet spot for our ​‘demo­c­ra­t­ic sound’

A bet­ter phase coherence

When all sound sources orig­i­nate from the same point, the sound waves main­tain bet­ter phase align­ment, which can improve the clar­i­ty and detail of the sound, espe­cial­ly at the crossover point between the speak­ers and the dri­ver.

Improved Dis­per­sion

A sin­gle horn can con­trol the dis­per­sion of sound waves from both the 15-inch speak­ers and the com­pres­sion dri­ver, result­ing in more con­sis­tent cov­er­age across the fre­quen­cy range. This enhances the ​‘sweet spot’ of the stereo image, pro­vid­ing a bet­ter lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ence across a wider area.

Reduced Inter­fer­ence

With all sound sources orig­i­nat­ing from the same point, there’s less chance for sound waves to inter­fere with each oth­er, which can some­times hap­pen when sep­a­rate speak­ers are used.

Stream­lined Design

A sin­gle, uni­fied horn offers a much clean­er look and uses less mate­r­i­al and less space, also mak­ing it eas­i­er to trans­port.

Reduced Dis­tor­tion

The horn can help man­age the load on the speak­ers, reduc­ing dis­tor­tion and allow­ing for high­er vol­ume lev­els with­out com­pro­mis­ing sound qual­i­ty and keep­ing con­sis­tent clar­i­ty (think being able to hear some­one talk when it’s loud)

We’re super hap­py with them, but we’ll be con­sis­tent­ly mak­ing improve­ments to the venue, acoustics etc as it’s a major pas­sion for us, in fact it’s why we want­ed to open a venue in the first place.