What does one purchase after owning horns?

Lrsky, I am primarily centering on horns with compression drivers, such as GoTo and old Altec systems. But I am talking about what I heard when I first heard horns. The were Klipsch corner horns sitting in the storage room in a dealer's shop. I sat on a stool as he prepared to demonstrate them with a Stereo 70 amp. He put on a snare drum recording. The volume was pretty high, but the first impact about blew me off the stool. I have always recalled that experience, especially listening to recordings with drums. My grandson is a drummer. I asked him if he had ever heard an accurate recording of a drum. He simply said, no.

I don't have compression horns now, so I could not tell him to listen to drums on them. I don't think they would equal to real, but a hell of a lot closer to real than any other speakers. I think pianos are another example. Yes, I am a leading edge freak.

Duke why the midbass horn is so important to a proper horn loaded design. And probably the hardest of all to get right.

This is an interesting thread with a lot of good information. For me, whatever the shortcomings of horn systems may be, and they surely have shortcomings as all speaker systems do, the (relatively) greater dynamic freedom gives the music a sense of reality that is missing when you listen to many otherwise good non-horn loaded speakers. I am just glad to see that the stigma is being lifted from horn based designs in the last 10 years or so, and that the technology is advancing.

Duke - I started out with the JBL woofers that were native to my L-200 which are the LE15B. Bill suggested that I would get better efficiency and a lower XO point by switching to the RCF L15P530 drivers. These, by the way, were a nightmare to locate as they had already been discontinued by the time Bill recommended them to me. It turned out that they had been bought mostly for car stereo subs even though that is not what they were originally designed for. The replacement apparently was not as good according to Bill.

If I ever get to the point of selling my horns, I have a vintage pair of 12 inch drivers that I will use as single drivers in a simple cabinet - so I guess that's my answer to the original question.

Its use calls for a fairly complex crossover so it doesn't appeal to many purists, but if the designer does his job well, neither you nor your amplifier would ever guess that the crossover is complex.
Audiokinesis (Threads | Answers | This Thread)

You did your job well. At least from what I can hear. Of course I sit much further away now than last time you dropped by, but I've thought more than once about going back to that extreme near field set-up. There was something about it that just clicked.