Horn based loudspeakers why the controversy?

There's nothing wrong with horns that a little effort can't fix.

Altec A-7 VOTTs can be made to sound good, same with Altec Valencias, JBL L300s etc., but they do need work, better crossovers, bracing, damping etc..

Vintage horn systems with folded bass horns, like Klipschorns, Vitavox and EV Klipschorns and JBL Hartsfields, can sound very very good especially in big rooms.

My old Hartsfields even sounded great in my very small front room. Powered by a 2w/ch set45 amp they had excellent bass... but they were not not the last word as far as audiophile stuff, detail, imaging etc..

I use dipole bass speakers in my big-room horn system - four 15" woofers in open back boxes go deeper and sound more realistic than folded horns like Hartsfields do in the same room.

Throw in field coil drivers on conical mid horns and my horn system sounds good. Really good. Like super high end studio monitors, but better. I wouldn't trade my DIY horns for TOTL Magicos.

(I would definitely trade my system for Magico's mega horn system. Not that they would fit in my house.)

One advantage of horns suitable for home listening is narrow dispersion.

Wide dispersion is not good for center-chair listening. Horns beam like lasers, and to me this is a good thing, fewer nasty sidewall reflections.

I am not into wide-dispersion party speakers. 

My DIY 3.5-way hybrid dipole-conical horn+ field coil driver system images better than ANY conventional 'wide-dispersion' speakers, narrow or wide baffle, single driver or multiway I've ever heard.

My hybrid-horn system does spooky 3-D realistic imaging. Extreme low level detail retreival. Startling dynamic contrast. All the audiophile goodies.

Seems to me you've never heard a really good horn system. Too bad.

 I could be wrong but a bit of research shows klipsch and jbl to be 4th and 5th in US speaker sales num. 

The post above was meant for kosst_amojen, in reply to his comments about dispersion on page 3 `zbeing necessary for good imaging. Don't know why it didn't post on the same page.

Anyhow, wide dispersion don't help imaging. At all.