To horn or not to horn

"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.

I'm a fan.....   

Horns for sure! I have the Charney Audio Companion and have no need for a sub or tweeters. If you like to be engaged with what the artist is doing than a good horn set up is the way to go! No filters (crossover) to muck up the sound! 
http://charneyaudio.com/

I think that we need to distinguish the difference here between front loaded compression drivers and back loaded full range drivers as the two couldn't be more different.  

After years of never owning horns, I just bought a pair.

Like many have said here, I never ever thought I would like horns and never listened to many because of the feedback of others.

I bought a pair of Heresy II for $320 locally (yup, a steal) and have fallen in love!  Last pair of speakers I bought had a vifa ring tweeter and an electrostat 8" mid and now they sound dead and flat in comparison to the Heresy.

They are so airy and not overly bright as I had assumed.  Don't seem to be as temperamental to my room and setup either.  I am also wondering if with getting into my mid 40's that my hearing is the other issue, am I naturally rolling off the highs because I'm getting old?  ;)