Why not horns?

Horns have greater potential than any other approach. Designers who move into using horns do not go back unless they need the money they can make producing yet another boring rendition of the 3-way.

Dan-ed,

Those other issues you mention are some of the reasons why physical amplification (ie horns), which is one of the older audio technologies out there, have largely fallen out of popular favor and been replaced by other approaches. Isn't that pretty much what outdated means?

Tubes versus SS amplification is not a relevant analogy because the pros and cons of each of those approaches are totally different than those associated with electronic versus physical amplification in general.

06-03-10: Almarg
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.
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Hello Al,

All true , but the word Phase describes a relationship it can be applied to anything really.

regards,

Macrojack, why would "Horns have a greater potential than any other approach."?

No, horns are THE OLDEST form of amplification. ;-) I'm not sure if they ever were all that popular in home audio. It can be argued that they were somewhat of a necessity before we had better amps. And the first electric amplification was with tubes so that technology, while ages younger than mechanical amplification, is considered outdated by many people today. But that is only their opinion. Both of these technologies do still work, and work well.

The average audiophile will not consider pro-audio anything because of a bias instilled by countless years of reading audio magazines. Horns seem to get lumped in with pro-audio, even though there are many horn designs that don't use pro drivers. No, I don't think the shift is due to outdated technology. There are quite a few designers today who use horns.