Horn based loudspeakers why the controversy?


As just another way to build a loudspeaker system why such disputes in forums when horns are mentioned?    They can solve many issues that plague standard designs but with all things have there own.  So why such hate?  As a loudspeaker designer I work with and can appreciate all transducer and loudspeaker types and I understand that we all have different needs budgets experiences tastes biases.  But if you dare suggest horns so many have a problem with that suggestion..why?
128x128johnk
@kosst_amojan --

Siegfried Linkwitz is the guy out there making foolishness out of all the "narrow dispersion is good" silliness. Maybe it's good in a PA, but not a living room. This crowd here deliberately avoids and ignores anything that disagrees with their OPINIONS. That's the source of this controversy.

You're trying to make factual a supposedly overriding sonic flaw with horn speakers with reference to their dispersive nature of directivity - because you heard all or some of them and suddenly finds it a compelling conclusion to deliver? Or, because it's a convenient (albeit irrelevant) theoretical stance that requires little on your part? Why is narrow dispersion a bad thing with speakers in domestic environments? Edge diffraction - does it occur with all horns, and to what extend does it really matter going by actual auditioning? Does any sought theoretical explanation correlate with your actual listening experience in this regard, or rather: how would it? Any other theory-laden straw man you care to pull from your magic hat?

There was a time when you indulged - to a limited extend, one might add - in this discussion from an outset of actual LISTENING experience (the only thing that matters, right?), or to give it a chance with a range of or certain horn speakers, which in fact always comes down to OPINION. So please, don't try and direct this to where the proponents of horn sound avoid the arguments of anyone in disagreement, but rather see it as a reaction to any want of equating horn sound as a whole with a factually based flaw - one based on theory, no less. This is becoming trite. Move on. 

kosst_amojan says:

"If you're listening to a pair of Klipsch, you're listening to a speaker that incorporates every failing he (Linkwitz) points out."

What Linkwitz doesn't point out is that in spite of all these failings, they sound damn good! It's frustrating when reality trumps science. 

I challenge you to get a pair of Linkwitz Orions or LX521s, or Legacy Audio Aeris’s and see if science is not, indeed, reality!

bassdude,

I'm in no way trying to say that those and many other similar speakers aren't world-class. I am just poking fun at the silliness of using science based arguments to prove that something,(in this case, speakers) isn't good when in actual use, it really is.

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