Accoustic horns - design based on Edison Phonographs Horns, this are made of papier mache/applique for a greater sound 

The origins of the sound amplification by horn reaches an early prehistoric time where the physical properties of a hollow animal horn has been used to amplify sound. The physics and mathematics of horn were developed for many years. The earliest apperance of the horn in connection to the sound was published in the Times in 1786. In 1877 Thomas Alvea Edison used the horn speaker to amplify the sound produced from phonographs where the saphire stylus moved on the cylinder record and created vibration in a small diaphragm that acted as a driver for the horn. The phonograph horn gave a voice to the cylinder recording even though the volume and fidelity were greatly reduced, but the success in recording sound and being able to do playback was greater than quality of the sound, but not for long as time and development moved along. It was believed that the designs of the shape of the horn increase the efficiency of converting the mechanical vibrations from driver into sound waves and effectively amplifying the sound output. This was achived by matching the impendance of the driver to the impendance of the air, allowing more efficient sound radiation, sound pressure level (loudness) and this amplification was purely mechanical.

Until 1905 most of the cylinder playing phonographs were supplied with a small horn, customers often bought larger ones to make their phonographs sound better. These large horns which were usually trumpet shaped either all brass or with black body or brass bell. After 1905, flower horns, called morning glory horns were popular and available in variety of colours with added decorations.

Edison was usually supplying large morning glory horns with its phonographs and by 1909 the cygnet horn had appeared with Edison Fireside from grain painted to resemble oak as a rare option to plain black .

Further development showes that the horns are not only to direct the sound but his main purpose is to match the characteristics of the sound wave from narrow tonearm into the large open area of listening room and the diaphragm has a big impact on sound and created preasure fibrations.

Victor phonographs also used an external horn attached directly to the sound box housing and they were moving along the record when was played. To improve audio volume the horn became bigger and bigger and the increasing weight became a problem to the wearing out records. However the external horns were evolving as more was learnet about acoustic energy to the surrounding room, Music was changing too and people's demands for a better reproduction on offered phonographs/gramophones was increasing.

Improvement on tonearms and soundboxes leads to fundamental phonograph design of Victrola were the orthophonic horn was mounted inside the cabinet based on the mathematical equations and it has great improvemend of sound reproduction. These exponantional horns alowed the sound waves to gradually transist from the small tonearm to the listening room resulting in more acoustic energy being transmitted to the room rather than being reflected back to the tone arm as it was at earlier designs. A lot of companies picked on this development producing horns for a better sound, but to get the greates reproduction it was more factors to it, that just the horn and when in 1925 electric reproduction came along the mechanical era was dumped down, even though there were still people who wanted to carry on with an early sound reproduction, we talk about EMG and Expert who put a great work to a research of the technology, materials, physics, mathematics and theories to give the best acoustic amplification from gramophones were the sound that is heard in live conditions is vivid, colourful and easy to identify as being natural. 

According to the acoustic experts Paper is hard enought and dense enough to reflect most sounds above 1000 Hz. The sound must easily move with its pressure of the design, material has to be rigid and smooth so it could gives strong sound reflection.

Like a lot of people, we also got  fascinated by the old technology we decided to make samples of horns based on small research and take inspiration from the experts and bring experience to the light.

The conical shaped horns are the simplest acoustic amplifiers, they describe a perfect sphere of radiated sound, they have no phase or distortion of the wavefront. The small cone horns used in phonographs were not long enough to reproduce the law frequencies in an early music, they had high cut off frequency which reduced the bottom two octaves of sound spectrum giving characteristic tinny sound. Their acoustics shows insufficiency at low frequency, but they were still  great for a voice reproduction. Our papier mache conical horns are giving very loud sound, but very sharp , they are great for voice recording.

The Exponentional horn equations essentially predict the most efficient transfer of acoustic energy by determining the internal horn taper as a function of the horn's dimentions like throat, length, mouth,etc.  They efficiently transfering sound energy maximazing acoustic impendace from the driver to the open air  gradually transforming high and low frequencies and minimazing reflection of the sound. Exponentional horns attributed to the sound but it must be remembered that they are only a part of the sound reproduction and amplification, the soundbox playes a key role in the overall sound quality of any acoustic phonograph.

Work in progress, 3d printed sections of the horn, the moulds finished with a filler paint