Why not horns?

Mapman - My curiosity got the best of me so I checked out the GP website. The Unicorn does look fascinating. The efficiency is strangely low for a horn system and the power handling modest but I'm sure anything from that company has merit. Alas, I can't afford them.

My understanding is the Unicorn is GPs attempt to make a full range speaker using only their DDD Walsh driver. They accomplish it via horn loading the driver to provide the low end that would otherwise not be there in lieu of a separate driver.

I've never seen a Walsh driver that could be considered efficient and there is no horn loading of most of its frequency range possible (due to its omni nature) to help make it so . I suspect that accounts for low efficiency of these compared to many horns.

Macrojack,
The bass is horn-loaded. The upper frequencies are omnidirectional because of the driver construction. It is "low" efficiency. I find the GP Unikorns can sound sublime in the right room.

For more fun, take a look at the Duevel Bella Luna. It is a very interesting implementation. The top of the line is the Duevel Sirius, which both goes lower and is more efficient. But it ain't cheap.

T-bone - I don't look anymore. I don't want to be tempted. My horns are good enough. State of the art is way too expensive to contemplate. They've finally moved the carrot so far ahead that I can no longer see it.

Anything appreciably better than what I have retails for a year's worth of my Social Security.

Diffraction effects. That's why. Now I haven't heard Avantdgarde Audio Classico speakers ($80,000) but that sounds promising. I assume you horn guys are Avantgarde owners...

I'm just a lowlife planar speaker fan.