Horn based loudspeakers why the controversy?

Well, I may have an age edge here worth commenting.  My dad was one of the early pioneers of retail high end audio, and we had a JBL C31 corner horn in our living room (two 15" horn-loaded woofers, an "Acoustic Lens" midrange-treble horn for the remainder of the audio spectrum.  To this day I've heard no speakers (and I've owned many) that come even close to the sound of that old mono speaker, driven by an (at that time) huge 24wpc Williamson tube power amp and preamp made by Newcomb.

To me, conceptually, it is fairly simple: moving air.  Musicians move a lot of air; speakers other than horns and planars do not. Not only are they more efficient, but driven by tubes they have the advantage of low power/low distortion at any reasonable listening volume.  The rest is a matter of design .... JBL's were incredibly well designed ... horns and crossovers.  That is why they outshown the Jensens, the Utahs, and the ElectroVoices of their day.  But even some of those sounded good ... I built a corner horn and installed a 15" Jensen Triax in it to use in college, driven by an Eico HF-20 tube amplifier, and was often unable to get dressed for dinner because of the party going on in our room.  That speaker introduced me to Monk, to Ahmad Jamal, to Coleman Hawkins, etc.  I could walk a few blcks to a club for live performances by these same musicians while in graduate school in Chicago.  To this day, for me that is the acid test.  When I close my eyes at the clubs (I usually do) and do the same at home, does the music transport me?  I learned at an early age that horns are perfectly capable of doing that for hours on end.

Tried many set-ups, over the last 15 yrs, but what I have been enjoying very very much the last 2 yrs is my upgraded Klipsch La Scalas, driven by an upgraded Dynaco Tube  amp.

I have three systems and five pairs of speakers. I bought the Klipsch KLF-20's brand new back in the day of their last year and never regretted it. They are my only horn speaker and are currently hooked up in one of my systems and I will never ever sell them as they are that good. I have been thinking of getting new speakers but every time I audition the new speakers I end up liking mine the best.

exron,
It's really interesting for me to see another listener whose journey has been similar to my own. I've been through many fine speakers; ProAc response 1s, which were known for their precise imaging, and Spendor SP100s which were known for their mid range neutrality, just to name two. There have been many others. My Klipsch Epic CF-4 speakers have stayed with me longer than any of them. Huge though they are, they disappear when playing music (on Sistrun SP 101 stands) and image as well as the little ProAcs, and have a beautiful mid range like the spendors, all the while having far better efficiency and dynamics than either. They're not perfect, but they are overall more satisfying than any speaker I have ever owned. I think part of the secret is that the majority of the music is reproduced by that single 2 inch horn loaded compression driver. I makes for a very coherent presentation.

It's true that they have higher distortion when they are run at anywhere near the rated power but they also have vanishing low distortion if they are run at about 10% of full power. So when you hear them coupled with  horns usually you're not hearing the amps distort.   Solid-state is the opposite at about 10% of its full power it will have quite a bit higher distortion  then the SET amp at 10%.

+1  I think most people don't understand this simple fact about SETs and thus don't get to hear what they really do!

Try Everest DD66000, K2 S7500, S3100, K2 S9900, M2.. etc.

I have a customer with K2s- powered by our largest amp, the MA-3. They are amazing and does not hurt to have that kind of power behind them (our amps haver very low distortion at low power levels unlike most push-pull amps; I think that is why he gets away with this).