How come Horn + woofer designs are not more popular?


A couple guys on my audio discord really love the JBL synthesis 4367 and feel that all traditional 3 way tower speakers suck because they have poor bass response and are generally shy sounding. What I wonder is how come the majority of speaker makes do floor standers that are 3 way as oppose to the Horn +woofer design of JBL?

Is there any downsides to the horn + woofer design? Can a horn convey microdetail as well as a Be tweeter like say from magic A or S line? They claim 3 way floor standers are just trendy. But is there anything more to it then that?
smodtactical

Showing 1 response by sns

My highly modified Klipschorns have an uncanny sense of the breath of life about them. This sense  mostly emanates from the incredible micro dynamics I've not yet experienced from dynamic drivers. Add high levels of detail, and transparency and you get a highly involving experience.


I do think horns can be somewhat problematic with timbre and soundstaging. Hard panned images tend to attach themselves to wide horns, narrow baffle compression driver speakers tend to disappear to a greater extent.  Timbre issues have been resolved by my Klipschorn mods, SET amplification, room treatments and just recently added lithium ion batteries to power my entire front end.

I've found that getting satisfactory sound from horns has required a major investment of time and funds. There have been a number of times when I began to doubt I would ever love the Klipschorns, but after a year and a half of optimization its highly doubtful I'll ever go back to compression driver speakers.