What does one purchase after owning horns?

lrsky,
I always heard the discontinuity in my omega duos between the horns and the built in subs. one problem is the dynamic discontinuity and the other one is the time alignment (the horns are 2-3 ms ahead of the subs) solved that problem by employing very efficient corner subs and by applying delay on the horns.

I agree people need to listen to unamplified acoustic music to hear what dynamics are!! even a good horns system can't completely reproduce the dynamic range of an orchestra but it gets so much closer than anything else.
the difference between reproduced music at home and live unamplified music is mainly dynamic range!

macrojack,

using one of the cheapest nokia phones. don't need a smart phone. got a computer with internet connectiuon at home

Macrojack, this is a cat that can be skinned more than one way.

At first glance, it looks like a crossover of 350 Hz between a fairly narrow-pattern horn and a direct-radiator woofer would not have a good radiation pattern matchup, and I think is probably the case (though the horn may be unloading somewhat down that low, resulting in some pattern widening). But it may not matter if the crossover is done right.

You see, below 500 Hz in most rooms, the ear is not very good at hearing radiation pattern discrepancies as long as the power response is good (this is my understanding of Earl Geddes on the subject). Bill Woods knows far more tricks of the trade than I do (he has many fine prosound designs to his credit, some of which show up in home audio systems because they're so darn good). So I'm sure he has this transition worked out very well.

Turning now to the realm of dynamic matching, Bill uses woofers that have excellent dynamic capabilities and so their thermal compression will be negligible at any SPL remotely likely in a home audio setting, thus matching the compression driver in that regard.

Duke

Lrsky, I am primarily centering on horns with compression drivers, such as GoTo and old Altec systems. But I am talking about what I heard when I first heard horns. The were Klipsch corner horns sitting in the storage room in a dealer's shop. I sat on a stool as he prepared to demonstrate them with a Stereo 70 amp. He put on a snare drum recording. The volume was pretty high, but the first impact about blew me off the stool. I have always recalled that experience, especially listening to recordings with drums. My grandson is a drummer. I asked him if he had ever heard an accurate recording of a drum. He simply said, no.

I don't have compression horns now, so I could not tell him to listen to drums on them. I don't think they would equal to real, but a hell of a lot closer to real than any other speakers. I think pianos are another example. Yes, I am a leading edge freak.

Duke why the midbass horn is so important to a proper horn loaded design. And probably the hardest of all to get right.

This is an interesting thread with a lot of good information. For me, whatever the shortcomings of horn systems may be, and they surely have shortcomings as all speaker systems do, the (relatively) greater dynamic freedom gives the music a sense of reality that is missing when you listen to many otherwise good non-horn loaded speakers. I am just glad to see that the stigma is being lifted from horn based designs in the last 10 years or so, and that the technology is advancing.