If you are near Ohio, you might want to try attending the Midwest AudioFest in Lima, OH which seems to be held each year in the spring. There are lots of horns and high sensitivity/efficiency systems on display there. Then you can draw your own conclusions. I went this spring. I have been wondering about these types of designs for a while. I would seem that many audiophiles start out with dynamic box speakers or planars but end up (later in life) turning to horns and SETs. I had wondered if that was perhaps because of one of two things.
1. They know something that I don't.
2. They have become senile.
My impression of most of the horn (and compression horn) designs is that -
1. There is no sound stage
2. Many of the systems will try to split your skull open
3. I still prefer planars.
Except for the Omega room and the Venus HiFi room I did not like any of the systems on display. Both of these two rooms used single driver speakers with the fostex drivers. The latter was the Cain & Cain "Abbey" using a Voigt pipe design driven by an Audio note integrated 300B amp (M3 ??) and a Audiomeca Obsession (?) CD player. but you mileagemay vary. And I encourage you to see for youself even if I did not care for them.
1. They know something that I don't.
2. They have become senile.
My impression of most of the horn (and compression horn) designs is that -
1. There is no sound stage
2. Many of the systems will try to split your skull open
3. I still prefer planars.
Except for the Omega room and the Venus HiFi room I did not like any of the systems on display. Both of these two rooms used single driver speakers with the fostex drivers. The latter was the Cain & Cain "Abbey" using a Voigt pipe design driven by an Audio note integrated 300B amp (M3 ??) and a Audiomeca Obsession (?) CD player. but you mileagemay vary. And I encourage you to see for youself even if I did not care for them.