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What does one purchase after owning horns?

I have owned Avantgarde Uno's and sold them because of the lack of bass to horn integration. I loved the dynamics, the midrange and highs. Now faced with a new speaker purchase, I demo speakers and they sound lifeless and contrived. The drama and beauty of live music and even the sound of percussion insturments like a piano are not at all convincing. I have an $8k budget for speakers give or take a thousand. My room is 13'X26' firing down the length. Any good ideas will be appreciated. My music prefrences are jazz/jazz vocalist.
renmeister
paulfolbrecht
603 posts
 
No, I did not tweak my Klipsches. I know they can be made better. Thought they were great on some music but could be almost painful at other times.

In some ways the humble Forte really was the favorite.
duomike
76 posts
 
regarding distortions of horns I remember a very old stereophile review of the original duo's from '97.
martin collums measured THD at 110 db! the midhorn had only around 0,1% THD and the tweeter 0,3%. I doubt even a speaker like wilson's alexandria could compete with that.
of course the build in sub had much higher distortions at that level.
believe many planars would get fried when attempting to measure their distortions at that level!
shadorne's avatar
shadorne
7,491 posts
 
martin collums measured THD at 110 db! the midhorn had only around 0,1% THD and the tweeter 0,3%. I doubt even a speaker like wilson's alexandria could compete with that.

That is exceptional compared to most conventional speakers. It suggests they got the horn design well optimized. Is there a link to the article?
mapman's avatar
mapman
22,979 posts
 
"martin collums measured THD at 110 db"

For those kinds of volumes, except perhaps in the case of smaller rooms, good horns in particular, like Avantgarde should shine and be a safe choice.

Again, the advantage is efficiency and the ability to GO LOUD as a result IF DONE WELL.

Of course there are many forms of distortion. THD is just the most common standard measure applied.

I should measure how loud I listen. I think it is pretty loud sometimes but does not ever approach 110db, so that might be overkill.
duomike
76 posts
 
I think it was measured at 1 m distance, at a typical distance of 3 meters the volume would be down by a few db so the measurement was not that unrealistic. Guess he had to crank the volume up that much to get any thd to measure.
IMHO horns even played at peaks of 90 db only (which even a decent planar can reach) sound more dynamic than other speakers. they just seem to be able to follow the volume swings of dynamic music more correctly. one reason might be that because of their inherent efficiency the voice coil never sees large currents and heats up.
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