@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?"
