@mrdecibel --
" Throw ". Some listeners do not get it, unfortunately. Most of the larger horn speakers ( google Klipsch Pro; a grand scale example : Klipsch KPT-CINEMA GRANDEUR ), would require an extremely large room, and ime, for sure, a great distance, between them, and the listener. A few folks I know of ( many here on the Gon ) would have no problem, listening to them, from 8 - 12 ft away. As much as I would happily own a pair, along with the associated gear to run them, they would not work in my current room, a room, that my Lascalas, work, very well. Lascalas, can fill a stage, albeit, on a smaller scale. YMMV
Of course going by the very biggest pro cinema speakers out there (used in actual movie theaters) would have one dealing with +7’ tall behemoths, and is something like trying to fit a Big Block Chevy V8 engine into an older Fiat 500 - at least if typically sized domestic environments are thought of. Proper summation of the sound would likely need distances that extend beyond one’s interior (and exterior) surfaces..
Fortunately pro cinema speakers come in different sizes depending on the number of seats that needs to be reached effortlessly, and the ones that will see their way into my set-up are 2-way with 2 x 15" bass drivers per cab and a single compression driver-fitted 90x40 coverage horn on top. Bigger auditoriums would see a similar speaker package fitted with an additional and dedicated, big midrange horn, with the biggest auditoriums needing additional capacity from the mid-bass bins as well.
Pro cinema speakers, not least used, hold potential bargains, and can function very well in domestic milieus. They’re not beauty queens, and even the smaller ones are still big, but if that’s an acceptable factor there are good results to be potentially had with a wide performance envelope, including both sound quality and prodigious headroom (mine will be high-passed and augmented by my tapped horn subs from ~80Hz down).
To me it’s an experiment, also for trying out a fully active configuration, and the particular cinema speakers I’ve acquired (should arrive later this week) use excellent drivers that in a hifi-ish package would cost ungodly amounts of money. We’ll see - hopefully I’ll be able to integrate them well.
