Why not horns?

Here is an article I found online that might be of interest to the more scientific amongst us. The math got over my head rather quickly.

http://sound.westhost.com/articles/waveguides1.htm

If it provides no other benefit to anyone here, it will at least demonstrate the complexity involved in horn design.

Horns have been around a while. I have to believe there are a good number of engineers out there who understand the key principles pretty well.

Now, do a search and try to find experts on Walsh driver theory and construction! The inventor (Lincoln Walsh) died before the first realized implementation, the OHM A, was constructed and as far as I know you can count on one hand the # of expert providers of Walsh driver technology these days!

Ha! My speakers are more complex (albeit also more boring looking) than your speakers!!!

Seriously, if not for Walsh driver technology, my interest in horns would surely increase in that I do not find many conventional designs, including planars, that can do what a Walsh driver can do.

WOW!! Just like in school. I propose a little independent reading and everybody runs for cover.

Mapaman - I don't know much more than what I've read in your posts about the Walsh driver. I was aware of it back in the 1970s along with the Heil and the Magnaplanars. All were interesting and radical and exotic at the time. For reasons that elude me, the Heil and Walsh seemed to flash and fade while the Maggies slowly developed a huge following. I suspect the magazines had something to do with that.

YEs, Magnepan has a dealer network while OHM/Walsh went factory direct only back in the 90s. I owned Maggies and older OHMs concurrently from 1985-2007. Then I realized that OHM was still around and providing upgrades for their old speakers. I decided to try this and ended up dumping the Maggies and a pair of nice B&Ws as a result.

The Walsh driver is more a different way of looking at how traditional drivers produce and propogate sound and the theory required to deliver optimal results using drivers in this different manner. I've read where in Lincoln Walsh's theory all pistonic drivers operate as Walsh drivers as well, just not very well. There are really only 3 flavors of marketable Walsh driver around today, those used by OHM in their CLS driver configuration, the German Physiks DDD driver, and "TLS" designs produced by a gentleman named Dale Harder which are modeled after the originals produced by OHM years ago, which were reknowned for their SOTA sound quality when working and their fagility which resulted in the original designs not being a viable long term consumer product, despite the stellar results under normal conditions.

BTW Dale Harder's TLS Walsh speakers can be seen in his posted system here which is also an audiogon "featured" system.