+1 for "good" horns. Efficiency is a big plus for audio in general.
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I happily lived with Harbeth Super HL5+ for close to 6 years, then--on a whim--I picked up a pair of inexpensive Klipsch Forte II on Craigslist. They turned out to be a gateway drug. I liked the horn sound so much that I ended up getting rid of the SHL5+ and ultimately settled on CW IV. As much as a loved the Harbeth, I don’t miss them. With the CW IV, I appreciate the dynamics and enormous soundstage, oftentimes I listen for hours without any fatigue. I definitely like the flexibility with amps and have used both solid state and tubes (SET & PP). My favorites are a 2A3 and 300B amps from Triode Lab. If I hadn’t taken a chance of a pair of cheap horns from Craigslist, I probably wouldn’t have the CW IV in my system today. The moral of the story: hear them in your system and then decide if you love them or hate them. |
@larryi -- The term "horn" speaker actually covers a pretty wide range of speaker types. When I think of horn speakers, I usually think of systems with compression midrange drivers attached to a horn waveguide. But, like the Viking speakers mentioned above, the drivers could be conventional drivers with a horn waveguide (a wide range driver in the case of the Viking). I suppose purist would insist that even the bass driver be horn-loaded as well to qualify as a "horn" system. Exactly. As an outset we’d be at least technically enlightened knowing whether a claimed "horn" speaker system is a horn hybrid in a particular variation or a fully horn-loaded ditto - again in one form or another. This makes a difference, certainly upholding a general schism between horn hybrids and fully horn loaded speakers, even when both groups hold a variety of combinatory forms that have sonic implications. Not that many people have heard all-horn speakers, and the ones that have would usually refer to a Klipsch iteration (i.e.: La Scala’s, Belle’s and Khorn) or in some rarer cases Altec’s VoTT’s - hardly an exhaustive representation, as you point to. The one frequency span that arguably carries the most important imprinting of a speaker’s sound is the "power region," or the upper bass to lower midrange - which is to say some 150 to 650Hz. Horn-loading this frequency range has significant impact in how it differs from a direct radiating solution, certainly when the latter sports smaller drivers below 10-12," lower efficiency at that. When you know, by experience, how this difference pans out you’re keenly aware of making the distinction clear whether low eff. direct radiation or high eff. horn-loading is used in this area. I can only assume that since most refer to horn speakers in a generalizing fashion as outlined above, experience is quite limited. My system if a horn system only in that it has a compression driver and horn waveguide. I run a Western Electric 713b compression driver into a Western Electric 12025 horn. This is one of my absolute favorite midrange driver setup. The woofers are twin 12" alnico magnet paper cone drivers with pleated paper surrounds mounted in an onken bass reflex cabinet. The tweeters are Fostex bullet tweeters. That sounds like a great set-up. What’s the efficiency range here? My speakers are Electro-Voice’s cinema speaker continuation of Altec’s A10/MR945A: https://community.klipsch.com/index.php?/topic/59344-hollywood-back-lot/&do=findComment&comm... https://community.klipsch.com/index.php?/topic/59344-hollywood-back-lot/&do=findComment&comm... |
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