Why not horns?

@ Almarg/Herman........
Well, a couple things are certain here.
1) first and foremost, it was classless to get personal and call names with Herman. My sincere apologies on that.
2) I've become completely lost in what has been said by me, by others. What hasn't been said, yadda yadda yadda. I know I have a habit of letting my thoughts move faster than my fingers and too often key words such as "maximum", "maybe", etc etc. get left out and totally screw up the intended meaning.
3) I've fallen prey to remembering particular specs incorrectly and assuming the numbers were correct without going back and verifying by actual math.
4) I just don't care anymore.

Herman, you asked me to stop. At first I was acting on emotion and didn't want to. But I calmed down and decided to stop. But I keep coming back to read more about horns and keep seeing new posts directed at me. Posts filled with animosity, deservedly so. To a point. Is it okay to state at this time that you've more than made your point? I'm stopping. Done. I made a few mistakes along the way. You're not the idiot I too quickly assumed. Admitted. Done.

One last attempt at an amiable contribution on BAT amplifier power.......
Um, well, you guys figured out where the 26dB gain number came from. The 400W was a partial guestimate based on (incorrect) memory, partially from a chart taken from an older Music Fidelity paper. Had nothing to do with actually running the numbers, not knowing actual input sensitivity.

I could have sworn a VK-600 was the same as a pair of VK-250 in one chasis. Nope, remembered that wrong too. Slight differences there.
But I found this for you guys to chew on and play with. (since it seems you're kind of 'into' figuring this out.)
BAT has an old page of specs that can still be accessed directly. http://www.balanced.com/products/amp/specs.O.shtml
Obviously the simple act of paralleling doesn't DOUBLE (definitely wrong there) but the power does go up. Interesting.......
Compare the charts for the VK-250 and VK-250M. Same gain. Same input sensitivity. 50W difference at 8ohm. Note also the VK-500 and VK-1000. Same gain. Same input sensitivity. 100W difference at 8ohms.
I point these out for you to play with because I KNOW (no really, I mean I REALLY know this time) that the only difference in these two comparisons is the internal paralleling of the inputs and outputs. No switches to be flipped. No changing rails. In fact you could take either stereo unit and convert it to mono without ever opening the chasis.

FWIW

P.S. forgot to mention....... (yet again)
On the chart, a VK-1000 is just a monobloc version of the VK-500.

Are properly implemented horns that rare? Perhaps, but I would argue that properly implemented high end systems are rare. I've seen a lot of systems in peoples homes that despite their best efforts just don't sound all that good. Most people don't understand the interaction of the different components and selecting input and output impedances that work well together, picking the right amp for a particular speaker, how to integrate it all into the room, and the list goes on. It's not easy. I think it would be very easy to audition a number of horn systems and come away blaming poor performance on a particular aspect of the system when it was actually something else.

Like I've said before, it is a shame everybody can't get a chance to audition everybody else's system. These threads are fun but they settle nothing until you can hear what the person is talking about.

Herman, well said.

Unsound, Herman and I agree on something :)

Herman, The reason the Trios and probably Duos have such an impedance curve has to do with the way the crossover works. Let's use the Duo as an example, but this is only an example, my experience with the Duo (even though a lot more of our customers use them than Trios) is limited.

So we have the main horn and let's assume that it is 8 ohms. Then there is the tweeter horn and it is 8 ohms too. Now if there is a cap to keep lows out of the tweeter, what happens is that at low frequencies the amp sees the 8 ohms of the main horn. Since there is no choke to keep highs out of the horn, the main horn will be in parallel with the tweeter at tweeter frequencies. So the impedance drops to four ohms because the amp has to drive the main horn and the tweeter too. The Trio uses an expanded 3-way version of this scenario.

If there is a crossover offered that has more than caps in it I think it will be a big step forward for that speaker!