What does one purchase after owning horns?

For a given size enclosure the basshorn will have lower distortion and better damping. Plus far less thermo compression in horn systems. A big positive for horn loaded designs. Controlled radiation pattern means better image with less room interference. I would say another benefit to large horns is they fill room with even SPL. With dynamic and other designs when you walk towards loudspeakers SPL greatly increases with horns room is filled with even SPL so you can stand next to a horn without the great increase in level, this to is a benefit of controlled radiation.

Mapman, let me be the first you tell if you find the field coil Walsh.

Johnk, I have never heard either a DIY horn system, nor one that was well integrated even in what I would call a large room. Horns don't have a bad reputation with me as they alone have the snap that characterizes some instruments. But....

Macrojack, I have read nothing by Weseixas, but certainly horns can have vibration issues, as do all speaker, but of course the horns are a big radiation area. In my experience a tractrix horn sounds best. How I wish I could have horn performance that got close to the size of my Tidal Contrivas. I still remember when I was looking through a friend's MJ magazine from Japan, seeing a compression drive horn system. The first picture was the guy using a broom inside the mouth of his twin subwoofers. The mouth must have been at least eight feet by eight feet. A later picture showed the area behind his house with a structure that got increasingly narrow as it went probably fifty feet up the hill behind his house. It contained the horns with the compression driver at the back end. How I would have love to hear that system.

Mapman, I've been involved with some field-coil driver design exercises in the last few years. It is true that you get greater efficiency with field coils, but if so it will only be by 1 or 2 db. The main thing that governs efficiency is precision gaps with focused magnetic fields.

What field coil offers is a magnetic field that won't sag, something that no permanent magnet can claim. Its like the electro-static principle in that regard. IOW I would not look to this approach so much for greater efficiency as I would as a way to make the driver faster and more transparent.

Atmasphere,

That's good information. Thanks!