What does one purchase after owning horns?


I have owned Avantgarde Uno's and sold them because of the lack of bass to horn integration. I loved the dynamics, the midrange and highs. Now faced with a new speaker purchase, I demo speakers and they sound lifeless and contrived. The drama and beauty of live music and even the sound of percussion insturments like a piano are not at all convincing. I have an $8k budget for speakers give or take a thousand. My room is 13'X26' firing down the length. Any good ideas will be appreciated. My music prefrences are jazz/jazz vocalist.
renmeister

Showing 2 responses by paulfolbrecht

Klipsch uses non-aggressive horns? Huh? Only the humble Forte uses a tractrix flare. IME (I have owned K-horns and LaScala) these speakers have far more audible horn coloration than the AGs.

Conical mid horns with proper (thick, non-resonant) construction and the bit of necessary EQ have virtually no horn coloration - none.

But there's still a substantial downside - no mid horn can go lower than a couple hundred cycles at the very best and so you are always going to have an xover in a pretty critical region. Not that it can't be made perhaps close to inaudible, or at least non-objectionable. But this and other trade-offs will always remain.
No, I did not tweak my Klipsches. I know they can be made better. Thought they were great on some music but could be almost painful at other times.

In some ways the humble Forte really was the favorite.