Why not horns?

Reproduced sound is merely an approximation of the original sound. How faithful that reproduction is depends on many facets and parameters. Trading better performance in one area for somehow compromised performance in another is what we mean when we talk about trade-offs. For some, the trade-offs in utilizing digital rather than analog might prove attractive. And it is very possible that the diminishment we see as factually inevitable may be practically absent.

Yes, Microjack. Exactly. It is all about trade-offs. I have heard my system using both digital and analog active line level crossovers. There is no question things change differently with the two approaches. I don't like what I hear with a digital filter in the signal path, others may be perfectly happy with it. All I wish to get across is that there is more than one way, just as there is more than one way to design a horn that performs very well.

Macrojack, you had me up until the DSP part. I've spent a lot of time with digital (using both DSP and plain vanilla) and analog recording systems. We use both in our recording studio. While digital falls flat on its face using the master files against the same thing on analog, DSP can only hope to make it worse, in the process of whatever its doing: EQ, compression, decompression, whatever.

I'm happy to keep an open mind but the DSP thing is really going to have to work at it to win me over.

Based on what Duke has imparted I would really like to try a conical horn, combined with a proper field-coil driver and crossover. It really **does** seem as if the potential of horns is still untapped.

So Ralph, I take it you aren't seeing the untapped potential of DSP.

One thing I have always found interesting about Bill's horn is the cast flange. This would seem to give the best control in the critical throat area. Now that I think about it some more, this is also why I have put off trying a proto. I think I could get the cone pretty close but there is no way I could do justice to that throat piece. :-)

Wish I had the price of admission to the field coil drivers. Chris Brady told me that those drivers really impressed him, and that wasn't taking anything away from the Cogents, and Bill's conical. It was his Edgarhorn Titans that got me hooked on horns. I had heard some good ones before that, but his DIY pair really hit home with me. I didn't buy his 'table but I really liked the sound of his horns. :-)