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Mike Jordan

The re-furbished Denman Horn has just gone on display at The Science Museum.

I would have thought that part of the success was due to the improved frequency response of the transducer feeding the horn.

I remember when I was doing PA at school, we had several of the big round horns with screw-on transducers at the end.

Dave Plowman

“…Today’s scientists can cram tiny speakers into wafer thin televisions and tablets …”

They may be able to do that, but not make then sound other than sh**e. It’s one of the few things in electronics which can’t be miniaturised, and follow the same laws of physics understood about a hundred years ago.  

Getting back to BBC matters, I’ve a feeling the ubiquitous HF 1300 tweeter found on so many BBC speaker designs of the 1960s etc started off life as a horn driver.  

Patrick Heigham

A friend demonstrated his Bose mini Bluetooth speaker to me.  No more larger than two paperbacks, I was immediately sceptical, but ‘WOW’: I couldn’t believe the bass response from such a small enclosure.

John Howell (2)

The advent of neodymium magnets in loudspeakers has led to amazing  increases of efficiency. In their iphone dock (the one that looks like a  doughnut on edge) JBL use a bass driver that appears capable of a cone  displacement of nearly 3/4 of an Inch, and is only 2.25 inches  diameter!  A carefully designed bass reflex port helps to give an  amazing bass response.

One price to pay is that the case has to be, for the most part, glued together otherwise it would shake itself to bits, or at the very least  rattle a lot! Thus these devices do not appear to be mendable.

Alasdair Lawrance

It is true that Loudspeaker technology has improved beyond measure, but I miss the attack on the little Bose radio I have.  The base is there, but only ‘eventually’, as it were.  I saw Bruce Springsteen recently in the Ricoh in Coventry, and was most impressed by the sound.  There’s no substitute for size, honest.

I’m still very fond of my KEF 104s, partly because they’re not too toppy.  A result of listening to discs, I suspect.