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VH-1
the
Hi-Fi Voigt horn
(We will not go into detail, but
this design is really a hybrid between a ”tempered quarter wave
pipe” and a horn. It expands like a horn, and its length is a
quarter of the speakers resonance wavelength. We prefer the shorter
expression, horn. Yes, we could also write TQWP but except for the
experts it might be just confusing. AND – the Voigt design is
not just any quarter wave pipe. It is one of the most intelligent
hybrids between the pipe and horn ideas. It is an old idea, from the
1930´s, but the combination of this old idea and modern
loudspeaker elements will produce a sound very few Hifi owners
normally can afford.)
A
well designed horn speaker will make a good recording sound like a
live performance. But they are often very, very expensive. There are
horns as expensive as some cars.
Build
the VH-1 horns yourself, and save a small fortune!
One
Hifi enthusiast described the typical horn sound this way:
”...Horns
will definitely not sound laid back! The music will jump at you
rather than shyly hiding some place far behind the speakers.”
The
VH-1´s are no exception. The increased presence will put the
musicians right inside your room, which at the same time will sound
bigger and more ”airy” due to the open cabinet
design.
Close your eyes, and you can easily imagine that you are
sitting in the front row at a concert with live musicians playing
right in front of you. This applies not only to the VH-1´s but
is a rather common feeling when listening to horn loudspeakers. It
sounds BIG and close at the same time.
Read
email from owners of the VH-1 (and VH-2),
built using the original
speaker kit. Click here.
...and
here you will find email and a nice picture of a pair of VH-2´s
built by Tony Morgan in Canada. He really did a good job!
The
VH-1´s (using the original HSV-1E speaker kit) deliver both a
high level of presence, and a ”concert hall feeling”
ordinary speakers will not.
A gunshot or thunder in a DVD movie
can make you jump out of your seat. But the same speakers can also
reproduce the fine details of a soft human voice in close-up song
recordings as well as separating different bass sounds playing at the
same time.
The Voigt design keeps the speaker coil inside its
linear response area even at high sound preassure levels. Even at
high bass levels, the mid-frequencies are detailed, crisp and
open-sounding.
The
no-compromise original
loudspeaker kit, HSV-1E.
The
perfect match for the VH-1.
(The
VH-1 cabinet was originally designed using exactly these
components)
Click here.
How
much have you spent on loudspeakers so far?
Building
your VH-1´s will be a long-time investment.
We
designed and built the first VH-1´s in 1986.
After more
than 16 years, when the picture above was taken (January 1, 2003),
the sound was still better than those commercial loudspeakers our
friends and acquaintances had bought and replaced over and over again
during that period.
The
drawing, list of materials and building instructions are completely
free for personal use. Click here to get them. Then
print them on your printer, and you are ready to go.
You
can test different bass drivers yourself, but it won´t be easy
to find drivers of this quality, so we strongly recommend the
no-compromise original loudspeaker kit, HSV-1E (click here).
It´s a complete kit for one stereo pair.
After
listening to the VH-1 / HSV-1E combination, you will not want to go
back to the ”boxed in” sound of ordinary speakers!
*Copyright
notice: You are not allowed to copy our material for any other
purpose than to build your own speakers. Publication of our drawings
is a violation of copyright laws. However, it is allowed
to put a LINK to this page (www.valutronic.se/vh1e.html) or even
directly to the drawing (www.valutronic.se/VH1_drawing.html).
We
plan to keep this site up and going as long as these loudspeakers
exist. We have our own domain name, so the address won´t change
even if we would choose to change ISP. Putting a link to this site on
your own page is safe.
We will search the web
once in a while, and may take legal action without prior notice if we
find any copy of our drawings on other sites on the web, be it
personal or corporative sites. The VH-1 and VH-2 are our own designs,
and we will keep them that way.
What
are the special VH-1 features (using the original driver)?
1)
The sound is extremely lively. You don´t listen to a
recording. You listen to musicians.
2)
They can be compared to much more expensive speakers. One young
person who built them using the HSV-1E speakers wrote us an email
saying:
”I got the speakers
yesterday and was mighty impressed with the sound... completely in
the same league as daddy´s 10000 kr (1100 Euro / 1350 USD) Polk
Audio” and when we asked him if we could print his
email where he compared the VH-1´s to his fathers several times
more expensive speakers, he wrote: ”Sure,
that´s completely excellent... in fact, he was so impressed
that he is thinking about building his own.”
3)
The VH-1 with the original speaker kit delivers a sound quality that
brings new life to your old recordings. One customer wrote:
”I
am sitting right now listening to the Esbjoern Svensson trio, and the
grand piano sounds simply wonderfully clean and clear, and the snare
drum and cymbal are stingy, yet at the same time full of air and
clarity!”
4)
The drivers are placed high up.
Your furniture won´t block the high frequencies reaching your
ears when sitting in your favourite armchair or sofa enjoying your
music.
5)
The VH-1 is easy to assemble. Exponential horns are almost impossible
to get right if you are an amateur, and many other horn designs use
lots of small bits and pieces, sometimes even made from different
materials.
The VH-1 only has rectangular pieces, all cut out from
the same material and thickness, they are easily glued together in a
very short time. Start on a sunday morning, and you will be ready by
lunch.
6)
The VH-1 is not a compromise. We didn´t have to make any
changes to the original idea. Many ”Voigt” horns are
re-designed to fit speakers with other data, leaving the original
concept (and sound!) behind.
We went the other way. Before
designing the cabinet we decided to search for a bass speaker with
the correct charachteristics. A no-compromise speaker. It took quite
some time, but finally we found one. Then we could finally design a
Voigt horn using the original concept:
Closed
end area = active area of the speaker cone
Length = ¼
resonance wavelength of the speaker
Expansion = linear all the
way
Open end area (mouth) = 3x closed end area
Position of
center of bass/midrange speaker: 1/3 from closed end of the horn
We
have already sold hundreds of speaker kits, and the customers who
have emailed us after building the VH-1´s with the HSV-1E
speaker elements, no matter what music taste, have congratulated us
on a brilliant design.
But
to be honest, we shouldn´t take the credit. Voigt did his
extensive research in the 1930´s, and we just followed his
design principles. Our part of the work was to find the perfect
speaker elements, and design the cabinet so that it would be easy to
build and still fit into most homes.
More comments: In
2001 a big ”DIY(Do it yourself)-blast” was held in
Sweden, and many different home made loudspeakers were tested. The
VH-1, built with Valutronic´s original speaker kits, was one of
them:
”Ljudmässigt
hade dessa högtalare inga som helst problem att fylla den
relativt stora lokalen, lättdrivna med ett mäktigt ljud,
bra och snabb bas, även om Lennart berättade att han hemma
dessutom har en Subwoofer till.
(Här tar man lunchpaus,
varefter lyssnandet fortsätter.)
Lennarts
VH-1: bra pondus i basen och bra separation mellan bastrumma och
elbas. En given kommentar efter första låten som demats på
VH-1:orna: -inte behöver dom där nåt basstöd! ”
You
don´t understand swedish? Here is a translation:
”Sound-wise
these loudspeakers had no problems whatsoever to fill the relatively
big premises, easily driven with a powerful sound, good and quick
bass, even if Lennart told us that he at home also used a
subwoofer.
(Here there is a lunch break, after which the listening
continues)
Lennart´s VH-1: Good authority in the bass and
good separation between bass drum and electrical bass guitar. An
obvious comment after the first tune demonstrated on the VH-1´s:
those certainly don´t need any bass support! ”
The
whole test (in swedish):
http://www.diyforum.net/blasten/reportage1.htm
(This link should
work, at least it did on the 15th of march 2005 when this
page was edited.)
Do
you like the more exclusive loudspeaker design to the left? One of
our customers built the VH-1, and then added his own outside design.
Nice work! This page is in Swedish, but you can probably see
how he did just by looking at the pictures.
...And
this is not all.
Click here to see a selection of VH-1
cabinet designs that our customers have made. (This page is in
english.)