Why not horns?

Actually, despite their huge differences in design, I suspect a good set of horns might be fine tuned in a manner to not sound all that different, but I doubt that this would be the case if left to chance.

I also think the horns could be tuned to sound like many other different sounding designs as well, like Harbeth, if that is the intent.

I believe that the sensitivity of horns can be either their bigbest strength or their achilles' heel. Its all in the overall sonic recipe. A little too much salt or pepper can have a magnified effect.

I always go back to thinking of horns (done well) as putting the sound under a microscope, for better or for worse. Otherwise minor differences in signal can now produce major differences in resulting sound.

To me, you better have a love or fascination with horns if you are going to voluntarily deal with them. If you do not have the desire to do what is needed (which may be a lot) to get things right, better off staying away.

That to me (along with size requirements) is probably the best answer to the question "why not horns?".

05-29-10: Herman
Macro, you are a bit off base on that one. It is one of the common misconceptions in audio. Your description of being physically aligned is correct but your description of phase and polarity isn't.

A difference in phase means a difference in time. A difference in polarity means one signal is going positive while the other goes negative. Phase and polarity are two entirely different things.

It is confusing because if you reverse the wires on one speaker (black to red) in a stereo pair then everybody says the speakers are out of phase. That is technically incorrect. The correct phrase is you have reversed the polarity to one speaker. One will be going in while the other is going out. They still happen at the same time so they are in phase but they move in opposite directions so they have opposite polarities. Unfortunately it is common practice to describe it as the speakers are out of phase, and it is awkward to say that one has its polarity reversed, so we are stuck with a phrase that is technically incorrect.

Same situation with balanced cables. While one line is going positive the other is going negative. Some people incorrectly say they are out of phase but actually one has inverted polarity.

If the speakers aren’t time aligned then there is indeed a phase shift, a difference in time.
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Huh?

Herman,

Phase is an relationship , when you reverse the polarity of one speaker you change the phase , hence they are no longer in phase. This is of course completely different from acoustic phase, as you described , but considered electrical phase....

Regards,

All that we are talking about with horns is mechanical amplification. As with electronic amplification, it can be good or bad, clear or distorted. Would you condemn all amplifiers as honky, distorted or shrill just because you heard one that deserves that description?
In many respects horns are in their infancy. I believe that many of the objections, particularly size and price, can be mitigated by motivated entrepreneurial experimentation and careful research. This being done on a small somewhat random and utterly uncooperative scale by isolated hobbyist/inventor types. A few, like Bill Woods, have made it their life work. Perhaps, if serious efforts were made by established firms like Klipsch and JBL
we would see real progress in this area. However, what is to motivate them if we continue to tell them we want poor sounding, slim compromised sculptures? If we can emerge from our self-imposed darkness and begin to learn about the potential hidden promise of horns, then there is no telling where it might lead us.

Well they are not my kind of speaker and have not listen to one in quite sometime. I do get the opportunity to do so this weekend and with custom amplification to boot!

Stay tuned!

Re phase and polarity, I believe the reason for the ambiguity and inconsistent use of the term "phase" is that a delay or phase shift mechanism can be either phase dispersive (affecting the phase of different frequencies differently), or phase non-dispersive (affecting the phase of all frequencies equally).

A polarity inversion is the same thing as a 180 degree non-dispersive phase shift. An arrival time difference caused by multiple drivers whose physical placement is not time-aligned relative to one another would be a dispersive phase shift.

Regards,
-- Al