Why not horns?


I've owned a lot of speakers over the years but I have never experienced anything like the midrange reproduction from my horns. With a frequency response of 300 Hz. up to 14 Khz. from a single distortionless driver, it seems like a no-brainer that everyone would want this performance. Why don't you use horns?
macrojack
O.K. Macrojack, I don't like horns because to my sensibilities the are honky, screechy, shouty, have a cupped coloration, are too big, can be so sensitive that they amplify every minutia of noise and distortion, are ugly, require a ridiculous amount of of space, get in the way of themselves in such a manner that time aligning them is next to impossible without the added expense of digital manipulation, image poorly, and due to the the exra needed labor to manufacture, the huge size, unusual shape and extra weight cost more than competing designs. IMHO, all told, horns offer an ugly sound for a very high price.

I offer my apologies for wandering off topic and mentioning other brands of speakers that don't offer horns. In my defense it was in response to other contributors that brought up the fact that current technology allows horns to now be time and phase coherent, something that was previously next to impossible to do. I applaud the effort. Another poster suggested that only one other very different speaker technology was capable of that. The inference was that horns are no worse than most in that regard. I thought it appropriate to point out that various other speaker designs offer that capability. Some of us find that important.
Unsound, I appreciate your last comment. It is where I was for many years, and to this day (and I expect for years to come) I still run into horn designs that are guilty of everything you mention in your first paragraph. When horns suck, they really suck. But like any technology, its all in the execution, and when you encounter good horns, they will lack most of the objections you have except size and maybe what it means to be ugly.

A special point with regards to
so sensitive that they amplify every minutia of noise and distortion
Really, every speaker must play every minutia of noise and distortion to be a good speaker, but the noise/distortion floor of electronics is definitely an issue with horns. When we first encountered customers with horns, I think we failed pretty badly on this point because our reference speakers at the time were 89 db. This forced us to really figure out how to get our noise and low level distortion floors down with the end result that we now build a much better product. That revealing nature is thus a boon to progress, but a bane if you have problems in the electronics.
Well, alrighty then. Would anyone like a biscuit with their tea? I found the weather a little disagreeable this morning.
Unsound please name the horns you've owned heard etc that are honky, screechy, shouty, have a cupped coloration