Are Horn Speakers good or bad or simply a complete joke?

Sean, you seem to have a lot of knowledge about speakers but when I e-mail you with links to a bunch of different drivers you never respond. What gives?

I agree 99% with johnk, although I go to shows TO mainly listen to horn speakers. Since I crossed over circa 1993 to horns they are the only speakers that I will let occupy one end of my room. The realism (IMHO) that horns can produce is just not there for my ears in conventional speakers, that is not say all a enclosed speakers are bad, Its just they are not for me. I am smitten with my Oris 150's. And as stated earlier they are upgradeable without the possible need to get on both knees in front of the bank manager.

Moderator, please let this go through.

I have heard several of Johnks speakers at his place and he is correct. Some of his horns were Duos and Phy etc. Many others at his place were his own designs.

I guess it matters which horns you hear!

I love horns.I own Edgarhorns and built back loaded horns.

They have a scale,richness and dynamic ease that is very musical.

Where they fail though is phase coherency. Compared to point source,planar or a really well designed dynamic speakers they can sound a bit diffuse and softly focussed.This seems to especially apply to large midrange horns where phase relationships due the physical placement of drivers relative to each other[a long way apart] is difficult to align.So you get a bit of a phasey sound.Things like voices can wander around a bit in the soundstage.
Of course placing a point source driver in a back and front loaded horn as Tannoy does overcomes this and still gives the horn magic.

im running an oris horn ultra setup, that consists of an oris 150 with aer bd3 driver on top, and an oris 150 with a fostex p38 15" driver on the bottom inside berts referance cabinet, amps are welborne 45 drd on top and rawsonte gainclones on bass, signal through a supratek chenin pre. source is a vpi tntwith a graham 1.5 arm and a lyra beta cart, crossover is a welborne revell set at 160hz , sound is nothing short of excellent, every person that enters my home and hears the system leaves with a new appreciation for sound, and horns............i will never go back