What does one purchase after owning horns?

" but only horns have the uncompressed sound that many want and are willing to make sacrifices in other areas to get . "

Genelec and ATC replaced horn (Altec604, Westlake, etc) main monitors in high-end recording studios starting in the mid 80's. Main monitors are used to impress the clients (rock stars like Police, INXS, Peter Gabriel,Pink Floyd etc etc. would hear themselves on these designs and modern rock stars still do so today)

So while as a generality it is true that nothing sounds dynamic like horns, you can find dynamic uncompressed sound that is on par with horns in a few select cases. Studio managers did not take a step backward when they replaced older horns - in fact the newer designs performed at similar SPL and dynamics with better integration of bass and without the inherent distortion that you get from horns at elevated levels (non-linear compression drive effects).

I would add that it is advances in technology that allowed conventional drivers to compete with horns in terms of dynamics: ferrofluid in tweeters, massive voice coils and high powered solid state electronics. In order to compete with horn inherent high SPL and dynamics, the newer systems were often actively powered with outboard individual Crown high power amplifiers dedicated to each driver. Modern active speaker systems have evolved so that the multiple driver dedicated amplifiers are built directly in to the speaker.

Here is a history

Main Monitors

Horn systems have also improved and modern Westlake's with TAD drivers are amazingly good too as are JBL's or Meyers. My comments here are not to bash horns at all! Just mentioning alternatives - that is all. Although I would add that you can do far far better than an Altec 604 these days. Altec 604 is no longer competitive IMHO.

Atmasphere , thanks for the response, i will make every attempt to hear such ...

Regards,

Shadorne,

surely if that were the case every recording studio would have electrostatic speakers. Advancements have been made in all areas in of hifi since those days. Many studios have compromised monitors for good reason. Anyone remember the NS 10?