Why not horns?

The above two posts come from two of the leading lights in American loudspeaker development. Both refer to Bill Woods of Acoustic Horn Company in Hastings, Ontario. Even though I own and love his horns I was unaware that Bill stands alone in horn design as they both suggest. While very impressed with what I own, I was a bit naive, I guess, in that I did not realize that my horns are not so typical of better horn design. Duke and Jonathan are very well traveled and accomplished manufacturers of small scale cutting edge loudspeakers so praise from them carries the weight of validation. For my part, I don't get out much. I don't go to shows and there are no interesting dealers anywhere near here. Hence, I approached this thread with a belief that my horns were somewhat more typical than these guys seem to think. OOPS!!!
Bill has been my guide in pursuit of owning quality horns. Now I learn that he may be the world leader. How nice. But how foolish I must look. Maybe other horns do honk. Maybe they all fall apart when playing loud. Mine sure don't.

I just read my above post and discovered some very poor wording. I said that Duke and Jonathan are manufacturers of small scale loudspeakers. What I should have indicated is that they are limited production, not small scale. From what I've read, they both are well regarded, well received and quite popular state of the art options.

You can have my horns when you pry my cold, dead hands off of them. :-)

So many generalized statements about horns, kind of like the ones we horn guys make about monkey coffins and other boxes.
Maybe someone should start a thread about why people settle for cone and dome boxes.

Let's not be adversarial about this. Any speaker is a legitimate option. Horns are being rediscovered after years in P.A. oblivion. The process has been slow because of bias born of popular myth and actual poor performance. Now there are legitimate contenders for best available sound honors to be found in the horn community. My effort here is to open the door to consideration for horn designs among the broader audiophile membership. Those who choose to ignore the invitation to consider horns have their reasons. That's fine. Some of them may reconsider, however, if they see intelligent conversation endorsing the choice. That is what I hope we are doing with our comments.

Did I mention that horns will bring a level of excitement to movies that conventional audiophile speaker designs cannot ever match? It's true. That's why movie theaters still use horns even though they have the technology and budget available to install any other type they might want.

If you are getting a little bit bored these days, if your last few system changes just haven't lit you up, then maybe you are tired of your speakers' limitations. That's what I've heard from several guys I've talked with recently. It happened to me too. Check out the horn speakers a lot more carefully next time you attend an audio show. Maybe you're fun will come back to you through a megaphone.

Herman... My thoughts are along the lines cited by Apollo66.

Sorry, I can't give you a list of all the horns I have heard. And, since 1958 I never owned one. (It was then that I discovered their performance with horn music Dixieland Jazz). Based on what I did hear along the way I never saw any reason to do further investigation of horns.

Perhaps the new generation of horns are different. However they are too expensive. A technology that requires such cost is inferior.

To cover the full spectrum...
I can't stand horns.
Ported box speakers make good bird houses.
Acoustic suspension speakers are OK.
Line array speakers are good
Planar speakers are the best.

Have I failed to insult anyone out there? :-)