Why not horns?

06-26-10: Learsfool
Unsound, you are definitely mistaken - many, if not most of the greatest symphonic recordings of the "golden age" were monitored with horns. To name the most famous example, the Mercury people most often used Altec A7's, driven by MacIntosh electronics. A great many orchestral musicians are of the opinion that horns come the closest to recreating the sound of a live orchestra. Electrostats come close as well, but do not have the dynamic range of horns in either extreme. I also agree with Atmasphere and Johnk that horns can image as well or better than any other type, something which indeed is very important for classical music.

We:
Hello Learsfool,
Could you give me the name of one of those horns, My requirements are :

1. Good dynamics
2. Images well
3. Sounds natural

I would love to give them a listen ............

Regards,

Hi Weseixas - you yourself listed several in one of your previous posts, and I already mentioned the Altec A7's, which I happened to hear again today as a matter of fact (my uncle owns a pair). Properly set up and driven with tube electronics, they cannot be beat for dynamic range, not only on the loud end but also and in fact particularly on the soft end; they image wonderfully, and most definitely come closest to a life-like presentation when we are talking about trying to reproduce the sound of an orchestra in a great hall. If that is not your cup of tea, that's cool with me. There are many fine speaker designs, some of which sound better for certain things than others, and one's taste in music will heavily influence your choice. As I said, a great many professional orchestral musicians who are also audiophiles feel that the old-school approach has never been equalled for reproducing the sound of an orchestra, let alone bettered. Much of it has to do with your third priority, "sounds natural." Horns driven by tubes do an astounding job of recreating acoustic instrumental timbres, and also do a damn fine job on the human voice as well. Altec, JBL, Klipsch - even if they are not your cup of tea, you have to admit they are extremely successful designs that have survived longer than pretty much anything else in the audio world.

Unsound:
While the 3.5's can sound a bit hard on occasion (and this is very dependent on the recording),

Unsound, are you blaming the music for the hardness you are hearing occasionally? Please can you name the recording/s or artist/s?
Its an easy cop out to blame the humble cd or vinyl IMHO for dodgy quality of sound, I am talking on a hi-fi wide scale and not about any particular make or model of speaker.
Good speakers enhance the music regardless of how well or badly the music is engineered, once again all IMHO.
I mean why spend shed loads of the folding stuff if one is unhappy with certain recordings?
The object after all and why we are hi-fi enthusiasts is to get maximum enjoyment from our chosen music and speakers, no?!.
WE: what speakers do you use for your listening enjoyment?
Maggies are good speakers, as are many boxed speakers.
One man's meat is another man's poison.
No sea near me, so off to Aspen for some snowboarding,lol.

Thank you Weseixas. For taken the time to list the horn systems. In audio we should be happy if we find what we enjoy. No right or wrong. Take care and happy listening.

Weseixas, if you want to quote someone, you use the brackets around the word 'quote'. Once you are done with the quote, you use the brackets again, this time around the word '/quote'

I can even quote myself:

like this

Sometimes its difficult to see what you are saying, since its hard to know if you are quoting someone or not.