Horn based loudspeakers why the controversy?

One thing I do not particularly like (not that I hate it, but I find it swaying me not to buy) about most modern horn speakers is that the horns are so often made of some kind of plastic but that there is generally no attempt by the manufacturer whatsoever to damp them on the rear side. If you were to walk up to such a horn (the larger the horn the worse the effect) and flick it firmly with your fingernail then you’d instantly get a very good idea of what the horns are actually doing to the sound. I suspect most people are under the impression that the vowel characteristics that are often associated with horns are somehow coming from the shape of the curve or their dimensions, but I don’t think it’s so. I find it most often due to simply being that the horns typically go undamped in most designs.

The real rub for me here is that the reasoning that this effect can and should be dealt with in other aspects of design (crossover design, EQ, placement, or whatever) Completely misses the point. Properly, the vowel sound should be dialed out of the equation as much as possible from the start. You damp it out physically - no more vowel sound, no more problem, right? We don’t as a rule tolerate vowel sounds in box designs, in fact makers regularly go to great lengths to tout that they’ve removed them with careful attention to the cabinets, don’t they? So why are so many makers of horn speakers so seemingly silent on the subject of audible horn resonances - especially as it relates to horn material?

Just my 2 cents though.

But....I suppose makers of box designs may *claim* that they’ve gotten rid of their cabinet resonances by their sheer prowess in wood construction and so forth....only in fact to rely on a lot of help from their crossover design in the final result. So I guess why can’t a horn speaker manufacturer basically do the same really...I dunno.

I think all that is one reason why I eventually moved out of the speaker market and into DIY - once I went open baffle, I found it all much easier for me to get what I really want...and for far less.

@phusis 

Thanks for your comments and I definitely agree: the interest in horn material damping somehow appears MIA, yet too many manufacturers seem to be acting almost as if they are better off letting such sleeping dogs lie, rather than stepping in to educate the consumer on a sales point for which they see no real demand.

"As a general rule I believe horns are much more sensitive, so to speak, with regard to their implementation, manufacture and need of care to work really well compared to direct radiating speakers, but these are demands that doesn’t sit well in today’s manufacturing market, for obvious reasons (sad they are)."

Yes, and I could almost say that it seems like one of those sort of 'pet-peeve' speaker-building traditions of mine in general - that most speaker builders tend to be (relatively) clueless about fully and seriously investigating doing whatever it may happen to take to solve a given "audio" problem (i.e., evaluating how well the problem was fixed based on nothing more than how it actually Sounds) - most particularly the traditionally neglected kind - even if that best sounding solution happens to turn out to be rather more expensive than was anticipated.

In the end, most manufacturers seem much more comfortable building essentially by some sort of *common-sense* based, unconscious formula (the crossovers, or resonance control of a panel, or a horn or cabinets or whatever) should each cost no more than X. Maybe vaguely like when we as newer audiophiles tend to map out our systems planning with a budget first ("I'll spend X amount on speakers, Y on the source, etc), rather than asking the more seasoned question: "How much will it take for me to get the kind of sound I want?" Or for the manufacturers: "How much will it cost to solve the more basic, traditional and neglected audio problems and then work them all into a single, solid design?"