Calling all Horn lovers

Larryi, just a FWIW, Classic Audio found that there was an error in the throat design of the TAD horn, which is why the TAD horns tend to sound a little edgier and why the Classic Audio horn, which looks nearly identical, is nice and smooth.

Near field listening eliminates the reflections often associated by room interaction. It is the ideal way to listen, but most of us live in a "living" environment, and might not be practical. Yes, the speaker plays a large part as well, as some do better than others. The best recording studios I have experience with are quite "dead" in the reflective category, and when you are making the recording, this is ideal. However, some of the best rooms I have designed have a balance between direct and reflective sound (Bose 901s,lol). It is all about achieving, as much as possible, the "live" recreation of the recordings, in our rooms. Again, to my ears, "good" horns do it best. Kiddman, I think we can both agree on this. Yippie ! MrD

The " good studio guys' usually have bad taste in music.

I have at least one customer who set up his hybrid horn speakers (waveguide-type horn on top, direct radiator woofer on bottom) in a nearfield setup so close that he could lean forward in his chair and touch them. I was skeptical, but heard it myself and yup it worked fine!

Further experimenting when I got back home indicated that, with my speakers at least, if you listen from very close (like arm's length), the height of your ears relative to the drivers became critical. With ears at the height of the center of the waveguide, the waveguide was the apparent sound source. With ears lower, at the midline between top of woofer and bottom of waveguide, the vertical discrepancy was audible and distracting.

So I don't know that this observation necessarily translates to other horn speakers, but it is possible that ear height is a factor in whether or nor the speaker sounds coherent at close range.

Atma-Sphere mentioned Classic Audio Reproductions... utterly magnificent speakers. Not cheap, but extremely refined and natural sounding, with stunning dynamics and impact, and no distracting little colorations. The current versions are among the finest speakers anywhere, and if their equals exist, I have yet to hear them.

Duke

Duke,

I heard some of the bigger better CAR speakers at CAF 2012, with the field coil drivers as well, I think. Very nice, though the room was way too small to do full justice I am sure.

Your AK speakers are high on my want to hear list, but has not happened yet.

I'd be curious to know your opinion of how close your designs come? Would one one need to have a particularly large high quality listening space for the differences to be apparent? How about in smaller more common listening spaces like those most people have? You seem to place more of a focus on value and optimizing designs for certain more common listening scenarios that most are more likely to find themselves in, so in those cases, I'm thinking the "gap" could be pretty minor?