Why not horns?

Weseixas, I find problems with the stock Lascala, mostly box resonance of the doghouse(a Klipsch forum term for woofer housing). I have completely eliminated this problem, which I can tell you is present in your friends units. The new Lascala II uses a beefier cabinet to get rid of this coloration. I talk about it in an earlier post. Tubes are from a by gone era, but look at the popularity and, resurgence, of the topology. The Heritage series was ahead of its time, and many designs have not caught up. Let me also say I have owned MLogans and have much experience with ESL63s. Nice sound. But they are congested in their dynamics, "at least to me ". Now what will they do at 100db and above? Once again, this is all based on my ears, then my heart...Thanks....

I can see and do agree that the Mods you listed would make a huge difference on that speaker. Also agree with your assessments of ML and the quads 63. Never heard an ML that i could take home , OK , But !!!

I did have a 63 with custom subs and upgraded power supply and they were not bad , actually pretty good dynamically but not a super speaker in the dynamic world. I would wager the 63's with the custom subs would walk all over the lascala, ear busting SPl's not withstanding..

Without the Subs and the a for mentioned Mods.. errr worthless IMO ...

Really good panel speakers or Dynamic speakers will give nothing up to horns in the SPL dept, in a conventional home environment IMO.

I do believe if you heard one done and setup correctly you would not go back to Horns! Of course if i ever hear a mega zolt Macumba horn system that blew my mind, I would be the first one here singing there songs of praises.

I do not speak of this lightly, I'm not biased to any topology , only to good sound. Just Last week i had the privilege to listen to a custom horn setup , fully active 3 way (BMS driver, no tubes) and i was very surprised of the clarity in the upper ranges (the top end was actually excellent) the overall sound and presentation was good on soft rock type music, but still found the presentation fatiguing and with poor perspective and tonal quality.

Another was the Acapella Acoustics, La campanella , better than the custom BMS setup IMO and I would have liked to play with them a bit, as these were not bad , but still no cigar..

I'm still waiting , listening and all ears .....

The only horn speaker that I honestly would change to, given my room dimensions, would be the Jadis Eurythmie. I was the chosen fellow, for 3 days doing the demos at the '96 Stereophile show in NY at the Waldorf. I also got to hear them for an extended time period in a home environment, properly set up. As far as the Quad /sub system you feel would walk all over the Lascalas, let me remind you I listen at over 100 db and peaks above regularly. I do not think the panels would handle it for long. I am enjoying our differences and respect your opinions. As you said earlier, this is a very personal topic. Let us all enjoy !

Hello Mr DB,

I'm very familiar with the Jadis Eurythmie and also attended the 96 show ! I also heard the Jadis setup at Lyric. I found that speaker to have a huge tonal balance issue and not to my liking and yes there were those that loved it , i guess if it is your thing , i thought the Audio Note setup was better, But this is Audio , enjoy the journey -)

When any system lacks energy and content(different from pushing high SPL) most tend to increase the volume , kinda drive the music home , in this manner they feel it is "live" not so ...

Music, especially recordings of live music has a lot of energy, micro and macro dynamics, this energy and dynamics is what drive the volume as it swells, the closer any system get's to correctly reproducing this is the more you will understand of what i speak, it is different from playing music " loud" it's the difference of it sounding real!

Horns will always sound like hi-fi, never real , they project sound in a manner where all instruments and voices have the same projection and size.
-----------------------------------------------------------

Utter tosh.