Post by Owen Y on Jan 25, 2021 13:38:31 GMT 12
Dr Bruce Edgar passed away, last week I heard.
Those who have an interest in horn speakers & loudspeaker DIY in general, will likely know of Bruce Edgar.
In modern advancement of horn speaker design circles, he is spoken of in the same breath as the likes of Paul Klipsch.
Bruce Edgar held PhD & Post Doc degrees in Electrical Engineering from Stanford & other Unis. His career was at Aerospace Corp., up until the downturn of the aerospace spending in the mid 90s, when he started his own business called Edgarhorn, designing & building horn speakers.
Bruce Edgar is probably best known in audio circles for his articles on horn speaker design, published in Speaker Builder magazine.
Horn speaker theory had not advanced greatly for quite a few decades & Edgar's approach using his maths & engineering expertise, re-examined & modernised horn loudspeaker design theory.
eg. To my (basic) knowledge:
- He made the acquaintance of high efficiency loudspeaker & horn speaker pioneer, Paul Voigt (innovator of the Lowther original drivers) & promoted Voigt's 'Tractrix' horn contour.
- He undertook modern research into optimum driver parameters for horn-loaded loudspeakers.
- He examined & developed ways to use driver 'backchamber' loading in minimise 'throat reactance' (one of the reasons why horn speakers stop short of achieving theoretical low-end response).
- He built modern designs of High-frequency, Tractrix midrange & bass horns.
- He assembled full multi-way Edgarhorn systems which were shown at CES & such shows..
I was lucky enough to meet Bruce Edgar in Los Angeles in around '97-'98. He kindly drove across town (no mean feat in LA), take us (me & Jeremy) to his small workshop in Torrance & afterwards show us some sights down at nearby Huntingdon Beach.
At the time, Edgar was doing some contract work using a pair of Lowther drivers, which arrived faulty, Fortuitously, I had recently re-centred voice coils on my own Lowthers at home & with the aid of Bruce's nice HP test equipment, I was able to repay his kindness with some assistance fixing his Lowthers.
Another reason for thinking of Bruce again soon will be when I try to change & optimise the backchamber volume of my DIY horn speakers again & I'll be swotting up on Bruce's 'reactance-annulling' technique..
Some links to interesting articles about / by Dr Bruce Edgar:
- An Interview with Dr Bruce Edgar (POSITIVE FEEDBACK 1996)
- The Edgar Midrange Horn (SPEAKER BUILDER 1986)
- The Show Horn (SPEAKER BUILDER 1990)
- The Monolith Horn (SPEAKER BUILDER 1993)
Those who have an interest in horn speakers & loudspeaker DIY in general, will likely know of Bruce Edgar.
In modern advancement of horn speaker design circles, he is spoken of in the same breath as the likes of Paul Klipsch.
Bruce Edgar held PhD & Post Doc degrees in Electrical Engineering from Stanford & other Unis. His career was at Aerospace Corp., up until the downturn of the aerospace spending in the mid 90s, when he started his own business called Edgarhorn, designing & building horn speakers.
Bruce Edgar is probably best known in audio circles for his articles on horn speaker design, published in Speaker Builder magazine.
Horn speaker theory had not advanced greatly for quite a few decades & Edgar's approach using his maths & engineering expertise, re-examined & modernised horn loudspeaker design theory.
eg. To my (basic) knowledge:
- He made the acquaintance of high efficiency loudspeaker & horn speaker pioneer, Paul Voigt (innovator of the Lowther original drivers) & promoted Voigt's 'Tractrix' horn contour.
- He undertook modern research into optimum driver parameters for horn-loaded loudspeakers.
- He examined & developed ways to use driver 'backchamber' loading in minimise 'throat reactance' (one of the reasons why horn speakers stop short of achieving theoretical low-end response).
- He built modern designs of High-frequency, Tractrix midrange & bass horns.
- He assembled full multi-way Edgarhorn systems which were shown at CES & such shows..
I was lucky enough to meet Bruce Edgar in Los Angeles in around '97-'98. He kindly drove across town (no mean feat in LA), take us (me & Jeremy) to his small workshop in Torrance & afterwards show us some sights down at nearby Huntingdon Beach.
At the time, Edgar was doing some contract work using a pair of Lowther drivers, which arrived faulty, Fortuitously, I had recently re-centred voice coils on my own Lowthers at home & with the aid of Bruce's nice HP test equipment, I was able to repay his kindness with some assistance fixing his Lowthers.
Another reason for thinking of Bruce again soon will be when I try to change & optimise the backchamber volume of my DIY horn speakers again & I'll be swotting up on Bruce's 'reactance-annulling' technique..
Some links to interesting articles about / by Dr Bruce Edgar:
- An Interview with Dr Bruce Edgar (POSITIVE FEEDBACK 1996)
- The Edgar Midrange Horn (SPEAKER BUILDER 1986)
- The Show Horn (SPEAKER BUILDER 1990)
- The Monolith Horn (SPEAKER BUILDER 1993)
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