opinions on modern horn speakers


Hello kind souls on the gon ,Do any of you have any opinions on the sound of some of the new horns on the market? Like the oris , avantgard or ?I have owned most types of speaker systems, many very pricy and popular,All sounded souless compared to a good horn on a SET amplifier .Have any of you experanced the same? Or the oposite?.Many people say that horns are in your face or honky sounding .I have only heard this out of antique horns and PA gear .Just wondering if others have a opinion on this .Thxs for your time .JK
128x128johnk
JRD ,My oris trihorn can play old rock ,punk and poor recordings .Sounds better on old tunes then any system I have owned, SET amps are very forgiving and if its good music it will be real fun to listen too .Thats one of the reasons I went horns is so I dont have to play audiophile recordings to get great musicality .Take care and happy listening
Richardmr,vons are great speakers and sensitivity is one of the best ways to get great sound .Right now Iam building a 100db speaker based on a ribbon tweeter and PHL mids and woofers .Prototype sounds great, woofers will be 100db so all will run on 1 amp.Will cost arround $2500 just for parts and build so retail would be arround $4000,So vons not so far off on the price on the DB100S after all .Have you tried a 300b set or 845 ,They would run your speaker fine [depending on room size] .And sound better in the mids than a push pull.Take care and happy listening
My horns sound great on all music no need to switch .I have a friend who wants to trade his avolon edilons for my horns thought about it but I would sell the edilon to build a new pair so...
BD DESIGNS WEB SITE ,The pics are under John Kalinowsky first pic .They do look better in person.Thanks for the responces .JK
If you are near Ohio, you might want to try attending the Midwest AudioFest in Lima, OH which seems to be held each year in the spring. There are lots of horns and high sensitivity/efficiency systems on display there. Then you can draw your own conclusions. I went this spring. I have been wondering about these types of designs for a while. I would seem that many audiophiles start out with dynamic box speakers or planars but end up (later in life) turning to horns and SETs. I had wondered if that was perhaps because of one of two things.

1. They know something that I don't.
2. They have become senile.

My impression of most of the horn (and compression horn) designs is that -

1. There is no sound stage
2. Many of the systems will try to split your skull open
3. I still prefer planars.

Except for the Omega room and the Venus HiFi room I did not like any of the systems on display. Both of these two rooms used single driver speakers with the fostex drivers. The latter was the Cain & Cain "Abbey" using a Voigt pipe design driven by an Audio note integrated 300B amp (M3 ??) and a Audiomeca Obsession (?) CD player. but you mileagemay vary. And I encourage you to see for youself even if I did not care for them.