Change to Horns or stay Dynamic

This loudspeaker also uses pro-drivers made by TAD and Beyma. See a trend here?

Sadly - the use of pro drivers is all but ignored - however a nice shiny aluminium driver with stunning shiny copper phase plug => that will catch the eye everytime and have audiophiles reaching for their credit card everytime - especially when the listener is reminded about how fast these small lightweight woofers are and how plodding the old dumb sound reinforcement dated big woofers of the 70's JBL crowd are....

Furthermore a big ugly black paper Volt woofer with massive 3 inch voice coil and a massive frontal ribbed heat sink which is also ugly black to help dissipate heat and reduce thermal compression and as used on PMC speakers...no that is butt ugly and so out of place among those tall slender veneered beauties...forget it...most dealers won't even carry this kind of monster!

As Jaybo puts is so well - some audiophiles hear what they see!

I done horns, planners and dynamic speakers - some a couple of times. It was fun, painful and rewarding. Each time I settled on a speaker type I had changed out other components to better match that speaker type. So figure that in too, because it will happen. Now i got off that merry-go-round and picked dynamics, third time, for better all around performance (IMHO). You may decide something else. My only advice is get the dealer support you deserve. Insist on it.

How many responses on these thread where from dealers? Bet there are a few and that's good. Why not sept up to providing a home demo, free or not, of some of these expensive horns? This might be difficult to arrange, but once you narrowed down your preferred horns to three. Find dealers that will do that home demo.

To Gerrum6
You are right about "merry-go-round"

Horns, dynamics, planars are like cars. How can you compare Lamborgini to a Hummer? People tend to replace SUVs with Corvette for no reason. Is there a need for a car to drive 200 mph?

Is there a need for an audio system to produce 120 db peak?

Symphony orchestra is playing one flute, but in the next second the orchestra barks with the whole power.
Most of the brass instruments can alone produce 120 db. There are 120 or so different instrumens in the orchestra.

You are sitting at row 20, a flute is about 40-45 db. The orchestra BARKS. It is about 120 db at the row 20.
The difference is 80 db.
CD can record 90 db of a difference (called dynamic range). Recording engineer has to compress the sound. Some engineers can hide compression better though, but all sounds are too BIG to fit on CD.
No matter what it is, Jazz you name it. I bet to record a girl with the guitar some 6 db of compression is still needed.

Thanks for the mention Manga, and the clarification, Kana813. The ones that got the award are indeed bipolar, kinda like their designer....

The subject of fullrange horns came up. Well, the Edgarhorn (with Seismic sub) and Classic Audio Reproductions Hartsfield are in my opinion excellent examples of fullrange horn systems. And I bet JohnK has some highly competitive offerings of his own in this arena.

As one who builds hybrid horn systems, my vote on "dynamics vs horns" is totally predictable - but probably not for the reason you'd think.

In my opinion the single most important benefit of a good horn is not increased dynamic contrast, but improved radiation pattern control (though it's nice to have both). The radiation pattern of most loudspeakers narrows and blooms and narrows again very significantly across the spectrum. The result is that the reverberant energy - mostly composed of off-axis radiation - has a different tonal balance from the on-axis sound. Since the ear/brain system is constantly analyzing incoming sounds as either first-arrivals or reflections, and using spectral contant to do so, a large discrepancy in the spectral balance of the first-arrival and reverberant sound makes correct classification more difficult for the ear/brain system; in effect, CPU usage goes up. Often the the result over a half-hour or so is listening fatigue - literally, a head-ache because the ear/brain system is having to work harder to correctly classify the reverberant energy whose spectral balance is unnatural.

But, don't get the idea that reflections are bad - early ones often are, but late-arriving ones are usually beneficial. A dense, late-arriving, highly diffuse, slowly decaying, spectrally correct reverberant field is what makes a good concert or recital hall sound so delicious. Indeed, much of the appeal of a good omni or quasi-omni or dipolar system is because of the relatively large amount of beneficial reverberant energy such a system puts out into the room when set up properly.

Some people talk about a good horn system as having a natural-sounding tone, and when you consider that most of the sound that reaches your ears is actually reverberant energy, a good horn's superior off-axis (reverberant field) performance starts to seem like a good idea.

Duke
dealer/manufacturer

GerryM5,

I am curious what horns you have tried that lead you to your conclusions. I wouldn't say all are equal. That would apply to most speakers. You and I are in a similar place but mybe coming on different paths but I would love to know more. I have heard many a horn that didn't do it. But a few that did.

AudioKinesis,

I am a little confused about horns. Do they actually have a more diffuse reverberant field than dynamic speakers? Does this apply to all horns or to some? I would love a bit more of an explanation in terms of design and what the different benefits are. Thanks.