Horn Speaker Recommendations

Curious, then why don’t speaker manufacturers do this? Wouldn’t they want their gear to sound the best possible?

@rockadanny

Honestly, I think they are pushing to go 4 ohms and lower to give the appearance of the speaker being easy to drive because generally speaking, as impedance goes down, sensitivity (as a measurement) goes up. The problem is sensitivity isn’t the same thing as efficiency, and with tube amps in particular efficiency is a much more usable specification/measurement! Beyond that, my opinion is they often haven’t made the connection between distortion on the spec sheet vs. what they hear. That increased distortion is audible as increased brightness and harshness.

Quite easy to understand. The OP has a modern aesthetic house - Voltis don't come near to fitting in with that decor. Same issue with Classic Audio, etc.

@keithr @blindjim

We're doing mid-century modern in our house and the Classic Audio Loudspeakers fit in quite nicely.

but will they fit the budget at no more than $40k (question aimed at @atmasphere )

Sure! That is why I mentioned the T-3. Optioned quite nicely, its well under that price.

^^ Duke has always made excellent speakers- IMO/IME part of being excellent is being easy to drive! Amps just make less distortion when things are easy :)

 Consequently, a true horn will not fit our decor.  That means Klipsch, JBL and any big box vintage looking speakers are out.  

So if that means I would not be getting a true horn so be it.  At the end of the day if i buy a hybrid horn and I love the sound then I will be totally happy.  

@willgolf  In that case you really owe it to yourself to check out the Classic Audio Loudspeakers. They tick all the boxes nicely!http://classicaudioloudspeakers.com

Providing the big hall sound does mean a tradeoff. Pinpoint imaging is sacrificed along with the single position ultimate sweet spot.

My system does not seem to have that tradeoff. I get pinpoint imaging along with a huge soundstage- the bigger the room, the better.

I like to play King Crimson's Islands at shows- the string bass in the first track is very natural and the bass drum later in that same track is quite visceral. The shimmer of the cymbals in ELP's self titled first LP is wonderful- I have a Pink Island copy which is a bit smoother and more lively than the US vinyl. The guitar sound on Yes' The Yes Album (plum label UK Atlantic) is just like the amp is sitting right in front of you.

Meanwhile EMI made some impressive classical recordings about the same time- one of them, The Wand of Youth I like to play as a demo of depth, detail and dynamic range (Wild Bears track). So when its a 70s recording, is that just rock or is classical included? Does it matter if its Kraut Rock, British or American?

The fact of the matter is speakers have no taste of their own and a good speaker is equally good at rock or jazz as it is classical or folk. The idea that a speaker is especially suited for a certain period or genre of music seems to be one of the bigger myths that exists in audio.

JBL Monitors are the obvious choice to get the "70's" sound if thats what your after. These were the speakers used in almost every studio to create the albums from that time period...hence the term "Studio Monitors". So THIS is the sound as was intended at the time of the creation of the music. How do you get more truthful and accurate as that?

Sorry, this is nonsense. That was the sound that might have been possible in the recording studio at the time, but rest assured if they had better equipment like we have now, they would have used it. Having run a studio in the 1970s (and still run one now) I was only too well aware of how limited JBL monitors were at the time. So we did a lot of headphone listening to get around the limitation of the monitors, and often took the recordings to better systems to see what they actually sounded like.


Its never been my experience that any of the LPs of that period sound better when played only on a particular speaker, especially one made in the 1970s. Most speakers of that era had significant breakups and aren't that nice to listen to at volume. The more **neutral** your speaker, the better those 70s LPs sound. I play lots of vinyl from the 1970s at audio shows and they sound great on horn speakers made in the 21st century, no worries. 

Right now I have Mola Mola Kaluga mono amps which will deliver more power than I could possible need.

@willgolf You might want to consider that the characteristics of an amplifier like the Mola Mola may not be right for many horn designs. The reason is that when you have the efficiency of a horn, you don’t need a lot of amplifier power, so its possible to run low power tube amps (like SETs) that often don’t run any feedback. Horn speaker designers know this and expect such amps to be used with their speakers.


The way such an amplifier behaves on a load is different from how an amplifier using a lot of feedback (and thus having a really low output impedance) acts! An amp with a lot of feedback (like the Mola Mola) typically behaves as a voltage source, meaning its voltage output is invariant with load, which also means (if solid state) that its output power doubles as the load is halved.


Tube amps with no feedback tend to behave as power sources, meaning they try to make constant power with respect to load rather than constant voltage. You can read more about this at this link:
http://www.atma-sphere.com/Resources/Paradigms_in_Amplifier_Design.php
Now most horn designers are expecting the user to use a lower powered tube amplifier. Although the Mola Mola is a good amp, because of its near-zero output impedance on many horn systems the crossover won’t work right; as an example may cross the woofer over at a different frequency than intended. The reason for this is as I explained- many of these speakers are designed for amps that are Power Paradigm devices (having an output impedance that might be several Ohms) rather than Voltage Paradigm. Any time you attempt to mix the two technologies you can expect a tonal aberration that says nothing about the quality of the equipment involved, despite the fact that both can be quite neutral if used correctly.

BTW in case its not clear, loop feedback typically used in most solid state and class D amps introduces higher ordered harmonic distortions of its own while suppressing the distortion of the amp otherwise. Because these are higher ordered harmonics, they are extremely audible as brightness and harshness (a coloration) since the ear uses these harmonics to sense sound pressure- and on that account has to be extremely sensitive in this way. This fact is a bit inconvenient, as it often means that amps with really low distortion figures might not sound as good as amps with considerably ’worse’ numbers! If the audio industry weighted the various harmonics we would have a better understanding of this fact, but they don’t so while the 2nd harmonic is recognized as less harmful than the 7th or 13th, they don’t break those numbers down to anything meaningful on the spec sheets. Horns can exacerbate issues like this, so you have to be careful.


Put more simply, the equipment matching becomes more critical when dealing with horn systems so you will want to audition your amps with the speakers you’re auditioning as well to see if you are really getting what you expect!

2 more things...the PureAudioProject requires about 5 hours of assembly (super easy!!!), they will totally FILL your 20x 30 foot room, they are 96 dB efficient, and you can drive them with as little as a 3 -8 watt tube amp... which is what they were demonstrated with at the recent Munich Audio Show. Was that more than 2 more things?

This is a very nice speaker (I've heard it- very tube friendly), but an amp of that power will not be able to work with a room that large with that speaker- you'll run it out of gas. You'll need about 100 watts or so to really do that right. I heard it with a very nice 2A3-based SET, which was obviously running out of power when playing Porcupine Tree in a room only about 15 feet deep.

Duke's speakers (Audiokinesis) have similar efficiency (96dB) and are often higher impedance (8 or 16 ohms) and are excellent. Duke seems to also have them very fairly priced!
A word about impedance- if high end best quality sound is your goal, your amplifier investment dollar will be best served by a speaker of 16 ohms rather than 8 or 4. All tube amps will have wider bandwidth, lower distortion and and greater power driving 16 ohms (most solid state amps have lower distortion into 16 ohms as well). The distortion issue is important since the increased distortion that results into lower impedances contains higher ordered harmonics which are used by the ear to sense sound pressure- IOW the ear is keenly sensitive to these harmonics- we describe them as brightness and harshness. 

@willgolf  The Classic Audio Loudspeakers model T-3 or T-1 is something at which you might want to take a look.
They are hybrid- using 15" woofers in a bass reflex cabinet, going down to 20Hz. The mids and highs are horns; overall the speaker is 98dB 1 watt/1 meter and 16 ohms. I've used them in rooms about 3 times your size (a ballroom at RMAF) and they produced a very expansive and precise sound stage. We had a lot of fun playing Roger Water's 'Amused to Death'; the sounds from the side like the carriage were spooky!
What's nice about this speaker is the first breakup occurs at about 35KHz, so its very smooth. Due to its field coil operation, its also as fast as any ESL; the result is a very cohesive, detailed and relaxed presentation. In that room we had 140 watts/channel (our MA-1 OTLs) and pretty much had unlimited power. Since they go to 20Hz, no need for a sub or subwoofer crossover- one amp can handle the speaker full range so no integration issues. The speaker is easy to set up in most rooms; I've operated them for years with only a few inches behind the speaker to the wall and yet gotten a very convincing sound stage. This of course is one of the advantages of the controlled radiation pattern of a horn. 

You can find plenty of images on them on line. I've shown at shows with CAL a lot and we've gotten plenty of accolades (Best Sound at Show, that sort of thing) from many publications.

At home my room is not nearly the size of the one you have planned; I use our little S-30 OTL and it shakes the house when the really deep bass notes show up. Yet its easy to listen to all day and can play delicate material with the same ease as bombastic stuff. I've not found a recording that has shown a weakness in the speaker- its good with everything I throw at it.