Why not horns?

Actually I have a decent size house yet parted with my Maggies due to lack of room to set them up correctly without being intrusive, so Maggies are not really a good example of a room friendly speaker design.

The OHMs with the Walsh drivers solved the problem. Big speaker sound in a fairly small footprint that is reasonably room friendly.

I would like to try horns someday, but practically I doubt I would ever get any more serious than dabbling with some smaller designs with a SET amp or something along those lines.

Proud owner of Klipschorns since 1988 and wouldn't consider any other speaker at this time. No "honky" sounds as described by some others here. My wife keeps bugging me to rip out the carpeting and put in wood floors- now this could be a problem for the Khorns.

I think the old Klipsch are a great starting point...easy to upgrade, easy to find cheap, easy to sell, and not bad sound at all.

I started with Kg4's ($165)....bought upgraded Forte next (($550), and now I'm thinking bigger Klipsch...or maybe Altec 19's.

My Klipsch don't honk, very nice for the price.

Dave

Funny... If I am not mistaken, not one person, has

really explained "What they don't like about horn speakers"?

Just said, "hate, loathe,", oh and this is rich...

a violin sounding like a horn? And a comment regarding a distortion figure.
As far as noise? I squashed that notion, as I said,

even with your ear next to the Horn, it is QUIET!

Knowledge, is Power, stay in school.

The more you read, the more informed you will be.

Then perhaps, we may All benefit from actual "responses".

The Horn speaker, is as a "microphone", what ever is

recorded, will be played back, JUST as it was heard.

What specifically, is the problem?

I dislike Volkswagen "Things", because they look ugly.

They are slugs, get the idea?

"Hate, loathe" etc... why? be specific...

Because they sound Better than ANYTHING else!

Because they make your non-horn speakers sound like junk.

Because now your CD's sound "Alive!"

Okay?

I don't really care, I am just making a point.

Horns Sound "REAL", if You don't like "REAL"

Music, buy Bose.

I Love Music!

I do not have extensive experience with horns, but I do have some. I had heard several sets of horns and found them to be ok, but not great. The last three years I have gone to the Audiokarma show in Detroit and listened to every speaker I could. I paid particular attention to the horns. Granted, many of the rooms were not optimal. However, the room for Classic Audio Reproductions had people that should have known how to set them up. Each year they had speaker systems of 20k and higher with the set this year at 36k. The mids and treble were very nice but the bass was just plain bad. There was a resonance in the upper bass that made them not listenable for me. I am not sure what was causing it, but it sure sounded like a lively cabinet. I could not believe that a speaker of that price was producing it. Every year I have left their room thinking that if this is the best that horns have to offer, I could not do it. It certainly was not because of cheap electronics on any occasion.
Despite all of that, I purchased a new pair of the Emerald Physics CS2's. The decision was based partly on buzz the product had been receiving and partly because I really like open baffle bass. I burned them in for about 500 hours. At that time I was using a Classe CP60 pre, an Upgrade Company modified Denon 3910. Amplification was a pair of Aragon Palladium 2 monos on the bass section and a Pass Aleph 30 on the tweeter. Ridge Street Audio cables were used through out. I could never warm up to the sound of them. There was a resonance in the mids that would occur that sounded like talking thru a megaphone. It did not happen all of the time, but it was enough to be musically distracting and I found it to be unacceptable. Another thing I did not like about them was that the soundstage was 2 dimensional. That could have been due to my set up, but they were set up per manufaturer instructions even including phone conversations with Clayton Shaw. The 2 dimensional aspect also contributed to the fact that they sounded like a very good PA system, but not what I am looking for when I listen at home. I did listen to the CS3's at AK fest 2009 and found them to be an improvement, but not enough for me to buy them. With my somewhat limited experience, it will take some major convincing to get me to go down that path again.