How much of High End Audio is Horn Speakers?
An audio friend of mine had been discussing my future speaker purchase. We discussed, Harbeth, Devore, Spendor, Audio Note and other more traditional speaker brands. A week or two later he called an asked me what speakers I had purchased. When I told him Klipsch, there was a little silence on the other end of the line. Our call probably ended a little sooner then usual. I could tell he was disappointed in my purchase. Is it the Klipsch name that illicits this type of response or is it Horn speakers in general? After thinking about some of the other Audiophiles in town, a good deal of them are on the low power high efficiency speaker route and more than a few I know are using Horns. Does anyone know how the high end market share is divided? Is there a stigma associated with certain lower cost Horn speakers? Or is this just Klipsch? I now own a pair of Klipsch Cornwalls and am enjoying the journey associated with tweaking the sound to my taste. Is there an unwritten rule that friends don’t let friends buy Klipsch?
Plenty of people enjoy their horns stock, others enjoy modded. Now, what exactly is wrong with horns, seems like all these people are satisfied. Unless we're all masochist and only fooling ourselves.
Perhaps the ease with which horns are amenable to diy or off the shelf mods is part of the appeal.
By the way, I've modded box speakers, open baffle and horns, I like my speakers to fit my exact needs. Nothing inherently wrong with any of these designs.
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I have had horn speakers in my life from the very first purchase and now as possibly the last in my systems and loved them. I started as a kid in 1976 with a pair of B.I.C. Venturi. For $79.95 and now have JBL Array 1400s. Super happy with them! The accents horns give to vocals and guitar music’ richness is second to none, IMHO. These are very non-fatiguing to me, can listen to for hours. I traded my B&W 802s for these and haven’t looked back since. They are super unique looking, and are very neutral in most music. I power them with a Mac SS power plant, and Mac tube Pre which adds to the non-fatiguing effect. They ran me about $6k used which is half of retail and they were only a couple years old, so I felt it was a steal. The guy who I bought them from was jonesing for the JBL K2s, so he wanted more horns to replace them. Even though the midrange and tweeters look like horns they are actually compression drivers with horns for dispersion, and they do an excellent job of that. I don’t think you made a mistake with your Cornwalls though…if I bought Klipsch, those would be for me. Enjoy your purchase no matter what people say… |
Nice write-up @cohicks4 , but I’m a little confused:
Most horn mids and tweets I know of ARE compression drivers. I think you may be thinking of horn loaded bass cabinets as a "true" horn speaker, but in my experience, both are considered true horn speakers. Just different drivers attached. I wouldn’t say "even though ... look like horns..." because they really are horn speakers. If they lacked the compression driver they might be called "wave guides" instead, but potato potatoe. Using compression drivers attached to a horn is 100% pro horn speaker construction. Nothing illegitimate about it. |
