To horn or not to horn

mozartfan,

Do you read what your write? If so, does this make sense to you? If you have anything to contribute please present your information in such a way as to not render it meaningless as it floats off your keyboard. Reading your posts makes me very uncomfortable as does the thought of you doing day to day (normal) things like driving. 

audition_audio,
That's nothing new with him. Don't let it bother you.

@Mozartfan ---you found my horn thread from the past and quoted me above.  In my quest for speakers I listened to Maggies, Wilson Sonus Faber, Eggleston, Stenheim, Rockport, Focal, Meridien, Joseph Audio, Vivid, Vandersteen, Evolution Acoustic, Tekton, and YG Acoustic before deciding on a horn.  I  owned Wilson Audio Duette 2's and Sonus Faber Amati Tradition Homage speakers.  I will take my 98db Viking Acoustic Dual Horn speakers over any of them.

Prior to deciding on the GV's, I considered, hORN Universum ( my second choice), JBL, Deja Vu, Aer, Charney, AvanteGarde, BD Design, PureAudioProject and Cessaro.  

My system is totally tube driven with Canary Audio Grand Reference 300B mono amps, C1800 Pre-amp and a Lampi Pacific DAC.  I could not be happier with my sound and it will get even better when my Lucas Audio LMDS music server arrives.  Unless I upgrade ( and I don't see a need to) in the Viking speaker line-up, I will be happy for the rest of my life with my Horn Speakers.  An added bonus is that my wife loves the way they look!!!!!

The term "horn" speaker actually covers a pretty wide range of speaker types.  When I think of horn speakers, I usually think of systems with compression midrange drivers attached to a horn waveguide.  But, like the Viking speakers mentioned above, the drivers could be conventional drivers with a horn waveguide (a wide range driver in the case of the Viking).  I suppose purist would insist that even the bass driver be horn-loaded as well to qualify as a "horn" system.

My system if a horn system only in that it has a compression driver and horn waveguide.  I run a Western Electric 713b compression driver into a Western Electric 12025 horn.  This is one of my absolute favorite midrange driver setup.  The woofers are twin 12" alnico magnet paper cone drivers with pleated paper surrounds mounted in an onken bass reflex cabinet.  The tweeters are Fostex bullet tweeters.

As with any speaker design, when I say I really like the sound of horn speakers, I am of course speaking about certain horn speakers, not all of them.  For one thing, many speakers that are described as horn systems are not particularly efficient and easy to drive, which means that they may not be a great match to the kinds of amplifiers I like which are all low in output power.  All systems have some form of tonal coloration, and we all have our preferences/tolerance to particular tonal qualities which makes particular preferences personal.  That is why, when someone says they "hate" horn systems, that is not particularly enlightening; it would help to know which particular systems they heard and did not like.  The most commonly heard systems, like Klipsch and Altec, hardly represent all horn systems.

For horn systems not based on compression drivers, I liked some systems using full/wide range drivers with quarter-wave backloaded horn configuration.  I have also heard such wide/full range drivers used with a horn waveguide which makes me interested in the VIking system mentioned by Willgolf.  There are MANY different implementations of horn-based systems to explore.  

+1 for "good" horns. Efficiency is a big plus for audio in general.