Efficient speakers -- What was your journey from A to B to ?

I have had the gamut of speakers including magnepan, von schweikert, Wilson, and a host of others. Around 2013 a friend of mine brought over an early pair of Klipsch Heresy speakers. Like a crack dealer on the corner, he got me hooked.

I immediately sought out a pair of Cornwall II speakers which were about a two hour drive away. This put me on a path to horns. I strayed away a couple of times, but came back. Here is the list of what I would call high efficiency that I have owned.

Klipsch Cornwall II

Crites Cornscala C

GR Research Super V (around 95 db)

Klipsch Forte III

Klipschorn

Spatial Audio X3 (96 db)

Klipsch Cornwall IV

Klipsch Lascala II

I have landed with the LS II and an Aric Audio Super 300B SET. Once you get your system dialed in and speakers positioned in the room correctly, all those horn nasties that people go on and on about just disappear. I can’t see myself going back to speakers that require an arc welder to drive. Just something about the dynamics of high sensitivity speakers and the way they let the music flow into the room.

Be advised that even though the X3 from Spatial Audio is 96 db, I found that I could NOT drive it with the amp I had at the time, a Decware Torii II. Once I got into the 50-100 watt range, the speakers sounded pretty good. But the Decware (at 20 wpc) could not do it.

@benanders wrote:

Consider speaker design category (e.g. in your mention - K-horns) not just brand. Format of the driver arrangements can be a good predictor of efficiency, and past that it will matter if you like the way a given speaker model sounds.

+1

@hilde45 --

My "journey" in the high efficiency element of speakers has had the focus of maintaining good power response ("energy coherency"/dispersion pattern matching) at the crossover region from horn- or waveguide hybrid solutions, as well as the advantages offered from all-horn speakers. Main goal through it all, apart from other traits of high efficiency: better coherency via a more range uniform speaker-room interaction, and ultimately also less interference from the acoustic environment.

The important thing with all-horns and the very high efficiency they offer is trying to achieve proper size of the horns to actually have them act like horns in the entire frequency region they cover. This is not trivial for a variety of reasons, and when achieved will give the better outset to work from with this design choice. If size is an issue, and it usually is, a horn- or waveguide hybrid solution (i.e.: in conjunction with a direct radiating element) can be the preferred route, but here as well it is important to have proper dispersion pattern match at the crossover(s) for aided coherency, and depending on the overall physical stature of the speakers (and goals wrt. limiting and controlling overall dispersive nature) this can lead to quite large speakers.

Initially my going towards the high efficiency segment of speakers came from wanting to avoid dome tweeters to achieve better power response and overall coherency. Waveguide-fitted Amphion speakers were tried out, then S.P. Technology speakers (also waveguide), hORNS (w/OSWG waveguide), and ultimately very high efficiency all-horn speakers from Simon Mears to what I have now: a combination of large format mids/tweeter horns with large direct radiating woofer/mids and tapped horn-loaded subs. My ultimate goal would be ending up with a properly sized all-horn solution eventually.

As for speaker recommendation, this is more difficult to assess in relation to your taste and speaker history, not that your purchase history here should necessarily be any indication for what’s to come onwards. However I’m thinking used JBL K2 S9800(SE), which are very good speakers, or used JBL M2’s actively configured. For all-horns you could try out used Klipsch K-horns, which can be retrofitted with better mids and tweeter horn + drivers and crossover from Greg Roberts of Volti Audio. This would also make the use of lower powered amps more obvious with the K-horns’ very high eff. The JBL’s ideally should be fed with more power, I find, but here you could try out bi-amping and different amp combinations. The latest iteration Klipsch Cornwall speakers are popular. Oh, well - the list is long..

I’m running two amps (Pass Aleph 0s and Audio Note 300B). I have tried 2 models, Zu Soul Supremes which I found fatiguing (shrill, bright, glassy?) after a brief honeymoon period and Audio Note AN-J/LX which I am currently running and which I love. The right mix of detail, warmth, fullness, richness, realism for me and they have scaled surprisingly well with every upgrade I have made to my sources. 
 

I purchased most of my system used, so investment amounts are somewhat misleading, but at this point the speakers are probably only 10% of my total system cost (analog and digital sources). And yet they don’t feel like a bottleneck but rather bring out every upgrade to the sources. 

Consider speaker design category (e.g. in your mention - K-horns) not just brand. Format of the driver arrangements can be a good predictor of efficiency, and past that it will matter if you like the way a given speaker model sounds.

I don’t think any of the speakers in your list are line arrays, which can also be very efficient. Can be affordable to DIY (though “costly” in terms of learning curves/time); very expensive to buy ready-made.

I recommend you to attend Axpona 2024, if you can spare time.

It is always better to find out yourself.

I will look into several speaekers using field coil units over there.

Thomas

Charney Audio and Songer Audio make very good high efficiency speakers.  Of the brands already listed above, I also like the Spatial, Pure Audio Project, Volti, and Fyne speakers.  There are even large psnel speakers with powered woofers that qualify and sound quite good (e.g. Arion Acoustic speakers.  

I tried two, Zu Omen and the Klipsch Forte which also included sampling the Heresy and Cornwall.  I hated the Zu, and I don't think I'd like any single driver speakers for that matter.  It might be too much to ask a single driver to accurately recreate both high and low frequencies.  They got really raucous with rock or any tracks with multiple instruments and a broad frequency response. I tried a few of the Klipsch Heritage speakers and found that I love the way they sound.  The Forte was the sweet spot for me and sounded balanced between lows mids and highs.  It was a pretty short search actually, but this forum was really helpful narrowing down my list.  I'd also look into Caladan if Spatial is on your list, Volti is also interesting and should be similar to Klipsch.