Horns vs Ribbons vs Dyanamic

My ribbons are wonderful. No "reverberation" or "ambience", just pinpoint sound staging, beautiful tone and very realistic music. Certain ribbons provide very ample and articulate bass, but you have to pay for it by buying very large ribbons.

Once I heard Apogees and ribbons I could never go back. I'm own my second pair now after selling my first pair quite a while ago during a divorce.

planar - quick fast detailed, large projection
only trade off - some lack low bass and pinpoint imaging

electrostatic - a form of planar speaker

Electrostatic speakers do not sound the same as Planar speakers, for example I have Innersound Eros speakers but they are not in my sytem now, when I went to demo other speakers I heard a Magnepan 3.6 wich sounded like a bed sheet was over it compared to the Innersounds.
Now dont get me wrong I am not saying that is a bad thing just that Planar speakers are not as clear as Electrostat's
also Electrostat speakers do have good imaging but in a very narrow many times undesirably small sweetspot. Just wanting point out that these two technologies are not the same as has been implied a couple times here, they both have strengths and weakness....nothing is perfect.

Dynamic drivers = a driver where a coil -that carries the audio signal- moves in a magnetic field -due to the alternating current of the audio signal- a diaphram. In a 'traditional' cone spraker the diaphram is usually conically shaped and made of paper, metal, ceramic, plastic or some combination of these materials.

Plannar drivers are large sheets of usually mylar that have a conductive surface which carries the audio signal, and is placed betwwen two field arrays of magnets - the alternating current moved the membrane back and forth creating sound very similar to the dynamic driver above.

Electrostatics: a membrane with a conductive coating/layer that carried the audio signal mounted in between two High Voltage screenes one positivly charged, the other negativly charged and the AC of the audio signal causes the membrane to move etc... The voltage on the screen varries by design and manufacturer, the old AcuStats were in the 5Kv range, Beveridge 2 and 3 were in the 1.5Kv range.

As has been stated above, Horns usually refer to an enclosure. Some of the most common are, Altec Voice of the Theatre, Klipsch (old) and Avant Garde (new). There are drivers called 'Compression drivers' that were designed to be used in a Horn enclosure; however they are just dynamic drivers designed to work in a Horn enclosure.

As to the efficiency, Horns are the highest Klipsch and Altec VoT can be run to LOUD levels by a walkman/discman, Electrostatics are at the other end, with a max SPL of some in the 88dB range.

Sound - well that is why they make vanilla. Some have staunch adherents that decry anything else, and then there are people who have speaker systems that have elements of all three.

The inefficient units tend to be harder on amps, and some can have wide impedance ranges.

Plasma speakers are a different breed all together. Plasma speakers are designed to displace air to make sound by generating a gass stream (usually from a point source - read omnidirectional radiation pattern) into the listening environment. They are not widely manufactured or sold, and there are some hair-raising stories told about some of the more infamous units - some thing about ozone build up and a fire, but I digress.

As has been stated above, Horn enclosures are usually designed to take advantage of the strength of, or to correct a weekness in a driver design. The use of Voit Pipes and folded horns arround full-range drivers is one example.

Having said all of this, for my system, I chose spealers that could be driven well by my amp and revealed more that others but were within my range ($$). I have lived with ESLs, Beveridges (2SW), Maggies, Altec, Klipschs and have settled on some old ProAcs, Shahanians, Celestions and JM labs, all Dynamic units in the end.

Happy listening

No "reverberation" or "ambience", just pinpoint sound staging, beautiful tone and very realistic music.

Well I am not sure what design you have. There always seem to be exceptions. You must have the rare type of ribbon with a backing that reduces the raditaion pattern. Most ribbons tend to send signals in a dipole pattern which increases the ambience or reverberation from sounds filling the room (compared to most dynamic box speakers that radiate only in a forward direction except in bass frequencies).

This goes to show that generalizations ony go so far...

I'm a bit partial at the moment to ribbons. I very recently received a new pair of full-range speakers that include ribbon tweeter and ribbon midrange. My first real in-depth or analytical experience with ribbons.

There is a substantial improvement in the mid and higher frequencies. The amount of musical information is just so much more than what I'm used to hearing thru dome tweeters and dynamic midrange drivers. Horns, strigs, and vocals just sound far more natural, full, and complete. A tremendous refinement that is irreplaceable. There also appears to be little to no loss of dynamics. In fact, the two most difficult types of music to reproduce (opera and choral) now sound so clear and dynamic without any apparent leveling off or breakup.

As explained to me the dynamic drivers and domes are supposed to be somewhat sufficient for certain jazz and rock where dynamics are ever present. But the fact that a dynamic driver is in essence a piston, it simply cannot handle certain notes that are sustained over longer periods of time (like an opera singer's voice). According to my source that is what causes the dynamic driver to start breaking up.

But now that I've been on the on greener side of the fence, and with horns, strings, and vocals in all kinds of music, I think my source may give dynamic tweeters/midrange drivers too much credit. Right now it's hard for me to phathom how anybody could label a speaker with a domed/dynamic tweeter as SOTA because this just might be an oxymoron.

At CES 2008 we must have evaluated about 70 pairs of speakers using a certain test cd. All of the dome tweeters failed, some miserably. The only two speakers that did not fail and in fact soared to new heights had ribbon tweeter.

I realize there's more to such comparisons but it's not likely the above conclusion or results were coincidental.

-IMO