Why not horns?

I disagree with Duke, cant always agree ;) While complex steep slope designs do have there place. If driver alignments correct and transducers horns etc are a match in other aspects. Than a low parts count simple network can have a sonic advantage[subjective since many times they measure worse]. If mating horns to standard woofer than Dukes correct. Pretty sure Old Doc Edgar would agree with me on that thought I just read a post on audioasylum where he mentioned such and Ive experimented for over 14 years with this. And Duke you would be surprised at the short listening distance Ive achieved great integration at with massive horns. Hybrid horn designs have been used in such a way in studios for decades does surprise me that many still stand by the large distance for horns since this isn't so unless loudspeaker design calls for this distance to integrate. Much easier cheaper to just say sit 10-15ft away then to attend to why this is so and optimize design. Horns can and have and continue to be designed and used for near field or monitoring use. Small rooms have and continue to be used by Japanese horn types. I could and did use my Altec A7s at 6ft distance after horns where adjusted at full angle. Worked very well. I listen to a massive 4 way front horn in my office as I type this I'm only 7ft from them. This is where I converged them to sound best. And its not shouting honking colored, trebles world class,bass pressures are present even at low levels with out bloat and full of bass detail lost to conventional designs. This isn't rocket science if some yahoo research designer in WI can pull it off. I'm sure it can be done by others. But I know WAF, large profits, hard to sell loudspeakers or other items that are not similar to others in design and appearance, this gets in the way of proper design and end performance and can handy cap most consumer products,the more mass-market the more similar,the more compromised. This is well known to any product designers and affects audio design as much as anything else.

I suppose if one wasn't interested in waveform integrity, then driver integration would be less of an issue.

phase shift via non-dispersive polarity inversion

I'm going to remember that so I can completely confuse somebody the next time this topic comes up :>)

Johnk, you're more than welcome to disagree with me. If we always agreed, one of us would be redundant!

In my experience (which is of course limited), it simply isn't feasible to use a minimalist high-pass filter topology with a constant-directivity horn because of the equalization requirement imposed by such horns. A tractrix is not a constant-directivity horn so a minimalist crossover is more likely to be feasible with it, but even then it probably calls for just the right compression driver.

To get more specific regarding driver integration with horn speakers, in my experience problems can arise when you have a high crossover (3 kHz or higher) between midhorn and tweethorn, and the midhorn is large enough that there's a significant distance between the throats of the two horns. The ear's ability to judge the height of a sound source is pretty good at short wavelengths, but poor at long wavelengths. So driver vertical integration is a function of not only vertical separation, but also the crossover frequency (and maybe crossover slope, but I'm not sure about that). In many cases a two-way horn system has a definite advantage here.

Unsound, regarding waveform fidelity, that goes to the ever-present issue of juggling tradeoffs, and my understanding of human auditory perception places other things higher in priority. Our nerves simply cannot fire fast enough to trace out a waveform, so the ear de-constructs the incoming sound based on energy distrubutions rather than waveforms. On the other hand, the ear can readily detect a broad hump in frequency response even if the height of the hump is only 1/2 decibel. So I prefer to juggle tradeoffs in favor of what I believe to matter most, namely frequency response, with particular emphasis on the off-axis frequency response because that's where the most opportunity for improvement exists (in my opinion, anyway). Now I will readily admit that the ideal would be waveform fidelity without tradeoffs in the frequency response domain, in which case the tradeoffs shift into the monetary domain.

In his landmark book "Sound Reproduction", Floyd Toole lists five measurements that have been experimentally shown to correlate well with subjective preference. Four of the five have to do with off-axis frequency response, and the fifth is the on-axis frequency response.

Duke, as I have said before, it would appear to me that some people seem to be more sensitive to wave form integrity than others. Of course those people who might not be as sensitive to wave form integrity, might be more sensitive to other aspects of sound reproduction. Though I don't have any hard statistical research to support this, the market seems to bear it out. There are many successful speaker manufactures that don't prioritize wave form integrity, and very few that do. The few that do, seem to garner consistent positive reviews, a loyal following, and enough sales to make them most successful in this highly competitive industry.