To horn or not to horn

stereo53,768 posts04-21-2020 8:43amI heard the big JBL’s once, they went for almost 50K for the pair.  If I could afford them and had the room to support them, I would have bought them in a heartbeat.

Same here, I was in the Oakland Hills after the rebuild. The trees were still pretty small. Everest Dd6600 or 6700, filled the whole hillside with this wonderful highland music, bagpipes, and pan flutes. I thought I was in heaven, really heaven. Inside was 7th heaven, just sublime, all Krell 
and JBL. Oddball was the turntable, no idea who made it.

I got to work there for 2 months. Wonderful perk.., guy loved to show it off,, along with his pair of 100,000.00 dollar shotguns..... LOL

Regards

I love all loudspeakers types horns just do more things performance-wise that I prefer sure they may not be for an amateur but if done right horns are one of the better ways to great sound. But the sad thing is audiophile products are not the best place to search for performance in horns the good ones are costly as a home and most are so hamstrung by bean counters and lifestyle design to be not worthy of consideration. Most who say they hate horns have very little experience with horns in a home setting and I can see why not many available of quality for home use and ones that are are rare and costly. If one wants horns and high performance you will need to educate yourself and may have to do a bit of setup at the least. With horns, full horn loading is the best way but its also the largest way. If the horn speaker has a woofer in a box under it you have not heard a horn system at all. 

ozzy62,
You said it. I have nothing to add.

@oldhvymec captures a couple of really nice sentiments when he says:

• Horns, you can spend your life trying to get there.

With capable commercial horn system being for most intents and purposes an oxymoron, I think you’d better be someone who enjoys the process, if not a desperate struggle. Someone who is unnaturally drawn to long odds against. Someone who can tease out bits of potential in the midst of heavy uncertainty, if not chaos. Someone who can see tiny specs of light at the end of very long tunnels. An unreasonable optimist. Because much of the time, you’ll be responding to the skepticism (both yours and others’) with some form of, “sure—but do you know how good it COULD sound?!” Maybe most horn systems are not good enough; but, I know that the best are as good as it gets.

• Horn people, are horn people.

Horns bite hard, and I don’t think there’s an antidote. In particular, once you get a taste of honest-to-God horn-loaded (mid-) bass [check in with @phusis above]—and you come to realize its fundamental correctness—a qualitative shift occurs and a door closes behind you. @needlebrush asks about a move to horns, “are you glad you switched?” To which I think the answer is, “nah, son, horns switch you.” You can’t un-experience this, and so you have to deal with it—in all of its impracticality and complexity. It’s amazing the number of problems you never knew you had once you take on horns. In all their glory, they were never meant for your living room; but what was meant for your living room is no longer fulfilling. So, what to do? Well, you become a “horn person,” I guess.

"If one wants horns and high performance you will need to educate yourself and may have to do a bit of setup at the least. With horns, full horn loading is the best way but its also the largest way. If the horn speaker has a woofer in a box under it you have not heard a horn system at all. "
I very much agree with johnnk's statement quoted above.  Horn mids and highs with ported or sealed bass go together like coffee and spoiled milk.  My DIY tri-amplified horn speakers use Bill Fitzmaurice designed HT Tuba 1/8 wave 25 Hz folded corner horns crossed over at 200 Hz with a roll off of 100 dB/octave provided by a DEQX DSP.  The impact and realism of bass heavy instruments, especially drums, bass guitar, pipe organ, etc. must be heard to be believed.  Also the continuity and coherence of the sound from very low bass to the very high highs is truly excellent.  This is not just my opinion but is also an opinion voiced by numerous audiophile friends who have heard the system at length on .repeated ocassions.

As equalized by the DEQX DSP my horn speaker's output at 25 Hz is identical to the output at the 1kHz reference tone.  The HT Tuba bass horns are only 18 cubic feet in volume.