Did anybody get horns figured with triodes ?

Thanks a mill.

I use three speakers with horn loaded upper ranges. Altec 19, JBL Apollo and Klipsch Cornwall. The Cornwalls are 100db sensitive, meaning that they will play at 100db with one watt input. So yes, they run easily in my big room with less than 5 watts. In fact they will run you out of that room with a 71A amp that outputs around a half watt.

But that gets to the other part of the equation. Large horn speakers need large rooms IMHO to sound good. Smaller horn speakers are better for small rooms.

There may be better setups for likelike presentation, depending on your definition of lifelike. Big electrostats and some mult-driver speakers can sound very lifelike, but without the jump factor of horns. Even some minis, like the KEF LS50 can get you there, but everything is scaled down a bit for a smaller room.

Viridian disagree with the large horns needing large space to sound right this is wrong from my findings. If properly set up a large horn doesn't require any more room than other designs just maybe a bit more floor space and even that's debatable since most horns can be used in corner or by wall unlike monitors that require stands and need to be away from room boundaries these designs actually require more floor space than a large horn. I've used quite a few massive horns as computer speakers in near field office system.

I like a bit of power available, even on horns. I use triodes exclusively and my amps have only one stage of gain. I don't use all the power that my amps have, but since their distortion drops to very low levels (unmeasurable) at normal listening levels, the result is a very relaxed presentation with lots of authority and detail.

If you are running SETs, the key to real success is to make sure you are running a speaker that has enough efficiency such that the amp never makes more than about 20% of full power. In that way the distortion will also fall to unmeasurable levels and that's when that great inner detail emerges. With most SETs, to do this means that horns are pretty much the only game in town.

I've had good success getting them to work in smaller rooms no worries.