Calling all Horn lovers

Latest AK speakers seemed to get very good buzz as I read it at recent RMAF, including at least one or two mentions I read as among the best in show. Didn't surprise me at all.

"In my experience, good engineering is a necessary starting point but what distinguishes a good from a great sounding component is the musical sensitivity of its designer."

Based on my experiences, I think there is a lot of truth to that when applied to speaker design in particular.

In addition to being MIT educated, the guy who designs my favorite speakers also runs an arts coalition in NYC and has indicated that he "voices" his speakers using what he hears in Carnegie Hall as a reference.

I've been to Carnegie Hall, and what I've heard there did in fact remind me a lot of what I hear at home (but on a larger scale, of course).

Playing music through very high efficiency horns is the musical equivalent of looking through a microscope. Every minute detail will be more apparent, be it the music, noise, whatever. So lots of tweaks both large and small in scope may be needed to get things just right. I have heard a few horn based systems get it mostly right, and they are quite impressive! But not for those who just want to put something in place easily and be done with it in order to just spend time listening.

Expectations for horns these days with "high end" home audio users are much different than when they were first conceived out of necessity many years ago in the early days of "home" audio.

Due to their efficiency, horns are still a necessity for many commercial audio applications in larger venues. However higher efficiency and higher quality Class D amps impact even that these days. My gym uses commercial horn loaded speakers and newer commercial Class D amps for their group exercise programs. The horns are overkill IMHO for this application even in that the highly efficient and compact Class D amps do not require or even benefit from horn loaded speakers as did their earlier larger and less efficient Class A/B predecessors.


So horns are not for the faint of heart, but personally I still love them and would love to own a good pair someday.

Also note that good full range hi efficiency horn systems will tend to be large and often quite expensive. But if you have the room to set them up well and the patience needed to get things integrated and set up just right, they are one of the ultimate and most unique statements, FWIW, that can be made in High end audio IMHO.

Duke,

I heard some of the bigger better CAR speakers at CAF 2012, with the field coil drivers as well, I think. Very nice, though the room was way too small to do full justice I am sure.

Your AK speakers are high on my want to hear list, but has not happened yet.

I'd be curious to know your opinion of how close your designs come? Would one one need to have a particularly large high quality listening space for the differences to be apparent? How about in smaller more common listening spaces like those most people have? You seem to place more of a focus on value and optimizing designs for certain more common listening scenarios that most are more likely to find themselves in, so in those cases, I'm thinking the "gap" could be pretty minor?