Horn speakers with Imaging?

My previous Klipsch Forte 3's imaged very well. The Cornwall 4's that replace them were not imaging quite as well until I began tweaking the audio equipment driving them with brass spike and cup style supports. You might notice that the thinner speakers tend to image better than wider speakers right out of the box.

Wow, seeing this thread pop up is a trip down memory lane.

Eighteen years ago I wrote the first reply of this thread, and then-unnamed prototype speaker I mentioned was the magnificent Summa by Earl Geddes. Earl ended up selling his designs direct and mostly as kits, and has since retired. And about a year after that 2005 post I became a speaker manufacturer too, with my designs all drawing on things I learned from Earl.

Duke

@audiokinesis . I was reading this thread thinking about how well your Jazz Modules did with imaging and soundstage with the directional waveguide (I guess it qualifies as a horn?). Nice surprise to see your post when I got to the end of it!

Nice seeing S.P. Tech (by Bob Smith) mentioned by @audiokinesis, although back in ’05 now. I owned a pair of their Timepiece MkIII model around 2010. Two friends of mine still use the Revelation model in their respective setups, one running the Rev’s full-range and passively configured, the other fully actively and subs-augmented (with the Rev’s high-passed). Bob worked on a Grand Rev model with dual 10" Seas woofers (same as used in the Rev’s, just bigger) and an oval waveguide, a behemoth of a speaker, but it never got to see the day of light before SP Tech went under. Especially the subs-augmented and actively configured Rev’s of my friend image really, really well, and are somewhat more resolved and transiently clean than their passive counterpart (which are a fiendishly heavy load to most amps; they were developed with the Crown Studio Ref. I’s). It’s one of the few setups I’ve heard that can make a well-recorded large symphony orchestra come fairly authentically to life, even organ concerts, which is no small feat, though not least a testament to my friend’s ability to actively implement and tweak a setup in the extreme. That said they sound bottlenecked compared to my own, also actively configured setup with very different speakers for pro cinema use and Tapped Horn subs.

I've owned some really good mini monitors as well as floorstanders known for good imaging, and none have been better, or even as food as my Klipsch Epic CF 4 speakers. They have a more complete soundfield than the others. In other words, instead of left, center right, there is no dropout between the three. The soundfield is more continuous as well as larger and taller.