Why not horns?

El. he had a headache after the show. Pinning the cause down to a single room at the show seems a bit of a stretch to me.

Prez, that still doesn't mean he had it optimized, and it isn't anywhere near the same place as a horn no matter how many you stack up.

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"Pinning the cause down to a single room at the show seems a bit of a stretch to me."

No, it was definitely the room with the loud + dynamic horns. I was in there for over an hour just before leaving and no other rooms (including those with other horns) were anywhere near that intense.

Intense in a good way, but intense nonetheless, ie loud and dynamic albeit very clean with no noticeable distortion or breakup and most pleasant to listen to.

So if your goal is to reproduce the close up dynamics of a live orchestral event, I would say that system did it as well as any system I have heard. But I would have concerns about listening to anything that intense for too long or too often because it can definitely accelerate hearing loss.

BTW, my system at home and most very good suitable powered systems I have heard would have much the same result if listened to similarly. That is what music can sound like, but its effects on ones hearing if exposed too much to it should be an area of caution.

Oh, I meant to speak to the meticulous set up in a purpose built room. I once went to audition an amp and the guy had a purpose built room to the point of having non parallel walls and reinforced floors. He had a $75,000 Ongonku amp and their silver step up connected to his reference turntable, whatever Fremmer was using at the time. Room tweaked to nth degree and no expense spared.

He was surprised when I pointed out his speakers were out of phase. My point being if a supposed audiophile can miss something so glaringly obvious it is extremely easy to miss some fine point in the set up that takes it from sounding very good to making it sound right.

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Also, I complimented the designer of the horns on how well they were setup. The room was only about 14X18 feet or so with high ceilings. The event was in a quite exquisite 19th century mansion with lots of hard surfaces, ie wood, marble brass,etc. This particular room was in the rear of teh first floor and seemed to be a very elegantly appointed den, study or similar room. The horns were perfectly balanced and set up for this room I would say, delivering a lot of sound but never seeming to overpower the room in any way, which I thought was quite an accomplishment. I do not think it possible to squeeze any more good lifelike sound into a room that size without driving people from it, yet most of the listeners who popped in stayed for a long time and did not want to leave, which is always the best sign.

Okay, then let me put it this way.....
Between himself, myself, and at least one other professional there is 60+ years of collective experience in the overall set-up of that room and system.
I'm confident my own 20+ years of professional experience is enough to say that he has those horns as "optimized" as they will ever be.

And, yes, in this case three pairs of basshorns does come close. And I have the data to prove it.
Like I said, they are not full horns but they are horns non-the-less. Between the triple stack and the very high sensitivity of the 6 individual woofers per channel, well, I'd like anyone to show me a "horn" that goes all the way down to 20Hz thats better! (And fits inside even a generous listening room.)