Very few audiophiles have been "exposed" to the sound of horn-loaded subs (or their variants), not least for the reasons you outline as a MFR, which is a shame, because they deliver a very smooth, enveloping and effortless bass reproduction when carefully implemented - certainly audiophile qualities in bass reproduction to aspire to. Their ability to produce truly prodigious SPL’s is part of their perceived prowess here (and so not only about loudness per se), because significant headroom equates into cleaner/less distorted and more relaxed bass.
I too am running bass horns - front loaded folded bass horns loaded in the corners of the room, with four 18" drivers on each side. My friend designed and built these with me as his shop assistant and employer. There really is something to the effortlessness of that bass. My non audiophile friends have commented on the bass and that alone. They weren’t impressed with the horn mid and high frequency reproduction, and I think for good reason. Even the best direct radiator bass has a sound of grippy force and power, like something is working hard. One reviewer called it "Iron fisted" bass. I know what that is and it’s impressive in it’s own right. Horn loaded bass doesn’t require nearly as much power to produce plenty of volume and it comes across somehow as sublime. At a quite loud 30Hz those drivers are barely moving.
I heard a lot of good stuff at the Pacific Audiofest this year but I didn’t hear any great bass. Some of it was fairly good though.
At the present moment I’m in the process of moving in to a new place and it will be a while before I can get the bass horns back in action. for now I’m listening with 2 10" conventional subwoofers. They’re way better than not having them and it’s enjoyable - but nowhere near the same. Obviously it would be closer if I had 8 of them in the room stacked in the corners instead of just 2 and they were all 18" instead of 10", so yeah, not a fair comparison. But I think the point is cone excursion matters. The bass horns only had 160 watts total power distributed between the 8 drivers. More than enough - most of that was used to push them a bit lower than they want to go because of limited back chamber volume.