Attention Horn Owners

@earthbound --

Higher efficiency needn’t see the necessary use of horns. While I’m not sure there is a U.S. distrib for these, the Stage Accompany M57 speakers are excellent and not very well known around here. They’re 97dB sensitive in the passive version, and around 97/100dB actively (woofers and ribbon sensitivity respectively). Locally they retail in the vicinity of $15k/pair, which is very fair considering the competition from JBL and others - against which they compare favorably, I find. Ideally I’d pair them with higher eff. subs, actively all the way through and with the SA1205 woofers high-passed in the 80-100Hz region, but passively and unassisted they’re still a very neat package.

I like what’s basically a 2-way design in a main speaker, which the M57’s are. A higher efficiency solution with large air radiation area will typically grant you the opportunity to cross over lower to the woofer section, while maintaining HF-extension from a single driver element that takes over. Should augmentation be needed in the frequency extremes the crossover points here are usually outside of critical areas; that’s the case with my own setup that houses 2-way high eff. main speakers that are augmented at ~11.5kHz on up and ~85Hz on down. HF-augmentation is not needed with the M57’s from Stage Accompany, although the limited vertical dispersion of the SA8535 ribbon (and its very clean, lack of smear sonic properties) necessitates for one to sit with the ears level to them.

Joseph Crowe’s designs have been mentioned - they look very interesting, not least these. I have no personal experience with them, but they are made in the U.S. (not the drivers, which are mostly EU-based) and by all accounts should give you the benefits of (very) high efficiency - with excellent craftsmanship to boot. I’d love to listen to them, and paired with SET’s they’re no doubt very capable sounding.  

@earthbound wrote:

[...] Not set on horns but want efficient speakers with substantial bass. 

This (i.e.: the issue with the size of speakers needed to accommodate above quoted section, with reference to Hofmann's Iron Law) has been addressed already, but in continuation of my recommendation of the Stage Accompany speakers should include their bigger sibling, the M59's to give you more "substantial bass." Big speakers? Yes, but once you've said A what follows is B. 

@larryi wrote:

My number one pet peeve about speaker manufacturers is the lack of driver controls on multi-way speakers.  Do they really think the levels they chose are optimal for all listener preferences, all rooms, all locations of the speaker, all upstream equipment choices? [...]

Good point, and which is one of the reasons why outboard active speakers are so compelling; here, with a quality DSP, you can adjust the level of every driver section pre-amplification in 0.1-0.25dB increments from the listening position via your laptop/tablet (that's what you need to do anyway when level matching the driver sections actively). Not only that, but one can make small amplitude corrections/notches at a single frequency point with varying Q's in each of the driver bands. So, no post-amplification adjustments via tone control add-ons. 

Please note that what I'm referring to above isn't Digital Room Correction, but simply "equalization" measures done manually by the listener. When used this way that's what a DSP basically is, an equalizer, but as part of the digital crossover itself with many more options and, again, prior to amplification. So, not an extra measure post- or pre-amplification as you would in a passive speaker context.