How come Horn + woofer designs are not more popular?

For many years, most every Radio Shack store across the country had a pair of Realistic Mach model horn speakers playing in the front of the store. Big and impressive looking but the worst sounding shoutiest Radio Shack Realistic brand speakers ever. I could not stand them no matter how hard I might try to like them. This alone gave horns a bad name for me and many "audiophiles" I suspect. That and the many commercial setups out there that are mediocre at best by "audiophile" standards. I still hear one of those at my gym most every day.

Mass exposure to bad horns has biased many I suspect. Gives the good ones a bad name.

Maybe those Realistic horns would have sounded better with a tube amp.....

Also did I mention that this kind of speaker tends to be big and heavy and most likely fewer people than ever want to have to deal with them these days?

I’m not saying they are bad.....some these days like the newer Klipsch are quite good and even reasonably affordable, just pointing out the reasons why they are not "popular" as asked. One could even argue that the entire modern Klipsch line IS pretty popular. You see them everywhere possible these days and they get a fair amount of press coverage.....just not here.

Also I gotta point out that most products popular here are NOT very popular as a whole....very few people overall own most of the products that get a lot of attention here. High end is "high end".....not "popular" in general.  Klipsch Heritage line might be one exception to that.

Two words: too big.

If not for tube amplifiers there would probably be little need for this typically high efficiency design in most homes. High efficiency potential is the key advantage. Pro audio involving larger spaces is a different story.