Peter Noerbaek (PBN)'s new flagship is a horn... and ime it’s an absolutely magnificent speaker. It uses the horn and compression driver from JBL’s M2 studio monitor, with TWO of the same woofers that the JBL uses. To the best of my knowledge this is Peter’s first home audio horn speaker, and he has a LOT of experience building excellent large, high-output loudspeakers. Unfortunately most audiophiles listen with their eyes, and so Peter’s magnificent M2!5’s are still under-the-radar.
In the high-end studio main monitor world, performance is what counts the most. Recording engineers don’t listen with their eyes, and in that world horns are much more widely accepted. Augspurger, Westlake, TAD, JBL and Kinoshita come to mind off the top of my head, and many if not most companies that use direct radiators in their high-end mains use waveguides (a type of horn) for their midrange and tweeter drivers.
By the way, coaxials like the Tannoys and KEFs and Spatial Audios are horns. The midwoofer’s cone is the horn for the coaxial tweeter. Last I heard, people had nice things to say about the imaging from these designs.
Not all horns are created equal, just as not all cone-n-dome speakers are created equal. But ime "horns done right" have greater potential than the cone-n-dome format, which is why you see horns showing up in flagship speakers from companies whose other designs are mostly if not entirely direct radiators.
Duke
