The Horn from The Horn Shoppe
I have the Art Audio PX-25 mono amps. I bought the amps used on Audiogon to match with the future purchase of Zu Definition or Avantgarde Duo Omega speakers. The amp / Duo combo was per the recommendation of the current East Coast distributor of Avantgarde speakers. After reading the 6moon reviews of The Horn and realizing that it was a quick drive from Charlotte, I decided to go down for a listen.
Ed is one very interesting guy and knows a lot about speakers. But his success in solving the Rubicks Cube of speaker design apparently came from decades of trial and error. His wife was there to attest to that.
After hanging out with Ed listening to his speakers for an afternoon I decided that $850 was nothing to pay for a pair of these babies and that even if they proved to be a future novelty or a second or third system speaker, that there was really no downside.
So once I got them home, the Audio Gods played a trick on me as one of the tubes in my PX-25s went down. So I decided to break in The Horns with a McIntosh 2505 and an iPod on shuffle for a couple of days before my new tubes came I normally only listen to vinyl in my listening room. I want out to check on things later that evening and got sucked into listening to my iPod for five hours the longest listening session I have had since college.
So Joe at Art Audio sent me some nice sounding tubes and I bought some Telefunken CCa and things came together in an unbelievable way. The speakers sound amazing with the PX-25s / CCa combo and my system sounds as good as any system I have ever heard. My system now has a fat thick soundstage with nimble and quick detail. Paradise. I will still audition other speakers for a future potential big purchase but I have to say that I am not in a hurry to do so.
Final note, I read last night in one of the 6moon reviews for a different Art Audio amp, that the SET / single driver combo in their tests worked very well. I agree, it makes for a truly realistic reproduction on even poorly recorded LPs and yes they have more than enough bass. They sound like live music at any volume.
