horn or line array?

The very best sounding systems I've heard were horn-based systems either using original Western Electric drivers or G.I.P. reproductions of such drivers.  This means truly ancient technology, basically, early 1930s drivers.  Most of the systems were modern assemblies using these ancient parts (or replicas of these ancient parts).  The big downside is the size of these systems. 

For one of them, each speaker was about nine feet tall, almost five feet wide, and about five feet deep.  The drivers were new G.I.P. drivers that retail for about $120,000.  On top of that would be the fees for designing and building, the very expensive crossover utilizing original Western Electric parts, the wiring (I believe the wires were a mix of Western Electric wire and Audio Note Sogon (meaning wiring well north of $20k), and the custom-built power supplies for the field coil magnets of these drivers.  

My much more modest horn-based system has only one horn component, a midrange compression driver and a sectoral horn.  I don't have horn-loaded bass drivers, my bass drivers are modern, but old school alnico magnet drivers with pleated paper surrounds (12" drivers), with two bass drivers per channel in an Onken bass reflex cabinet.  My tweeters are bullet tweeters (horn waveguide, but not a compression driver).

But, I have also heard very nice speakers of all sorts of types, including very good panel and line array speakers.  The giant Sound Labs electrostatic panel speakers are quite good.  Likewise, the Arion Acoustics line array speakers, while quite pricey, are terrific too.  For more realistically priced line array speakers, I like Maggies, such as the 3.7.  

Horns!

Always my all time favorite even in car audio which I have done quite successfully a couple of times. Currently remodeling our full time RV, added 1.5 ft to the length for more room for the system. I will test my beloved and highly modified Edgarhorn Slimline, Building some XDS open baffle to test as well and have some small KEF line arrays we used for years in RV's.  A tough challenge to make anything work well in the RV but going to make a go of it and hope the EH work as Doc Edgar was a freind of mine.

Rick

I have plenty of good drivers to build some test sealed or ported box speakers, subs, etc and doing a lot of room treatment and DIY cables. I wired two separate dedicated and fully shielded AC lines and moved the breakers around to put all the noisy stuff on the opposite leg.

Just pointing out I am dedicated to make this the best RV system I possibly can, not spend a fortune on it, not needed when done right and I know the limitations I face but also I have had incredible success in vehicles much smaller than this so hope to make the HORNS work:)

A line array of bass horns is what I'm using - four horns stacked on top each other to the ceiling in each corner. That can get you truly horn loaded down below 30Hz.

I'm a horn lover but I can understand why some people aren't. You'll have to do some listening for yourself to decide which you prefer.  

I have had both and once I purchased a good horn speaker I will never go back to anything else.  The soundstage is wider, easily driven, most realistic sound for me.