Horn Speakers - Is it me or.......

[Frank Dernie]

@March Audio similar impressions here. Admittedly, I have NOT done blind, level matched comparisons.

I've heard Le Cle'ach horns on several occasions (mostly at a few ETF meetings) and they did not sway me. I kept escaping to rooms with things like Quad ESLs...

IME some of the strengths and weaknesses of horns and Quad ESLs are similar.
Both have low distortion, a "slow" waterfall response full of resonances and are very directional.
I actually like them both, the ESLs I heard most recently are a stacked pair of ESL57s

 

[Frank Dernie]

How different do the Animas sound compared to the Goldmunds.
The Cessaro’s aren’t too coloured compared to anything with a long ( snail shell ) horn, but more coloured than my monitors
Keith

How long is a piece of string? I have no metric for coloured to give you a value.
I find the Goldmunds "clearer" but don't know whether this is colouration, frequency response of something to do with the directivity. They go about an octave lower in the bass.
I haven't listened to all that many horns, in fact.
JBL 9800, Avante Garde Duo at friend's houses, otherwise shortish listens at shows and dealers (your Cessaros). The most coloured were Klipsch La Scala last week, they had an uneven frequency response too.
Some of the home built ones at Scalford were impressive others not so much.
I haven't heard the vintage ones Silbatone brought to Munich to massive acclaim (maybe because of their vertiginous price). What did you think of those?
I am sure DSP conventional driver speakers with enough power will be better, the Kii with BXT was impressive at Epsom, though they didn't play any music I like. The Goldmund DSP speakers were the best I heard at Epsom, though at £75k one could probably find B&O Beolab 90 which may be better, I haven't heard them.
I did consider looking into changing everything for B&O Beolab 90s myself but as a cantankerous old bloke decided it was too irritating to connect to use the way I want.
I have enough repairable stuff here that sounds good enough to me to not bother with anything more new...

 

[Purité Audio]

I suppose I compare everything I have here, Kii, D&D, Grimm ,as I have recently with Hedd, with anything new that arrives and try and arrive at a consensus, all of those four sound pretty similar compared to speakers I tried and rejected, LANSCHE, AvantGarde, Sony, T&F and some I won’t name, in fact all the studio monitors sound pretty similar Genelec, Geithain, PSI , Manger the horns definitely sound coloured in comparison, didn’t like the backloaded bass either it the lack of bass for that matter.
Oh the WE stuff is very coloured, fine for Bela Lugosi.
Keith

 

[Sal1950]

If you want to discover what serious audiophile system means, have a look to the description of the system created by Marcel Roggero, who is living in Provence.

Listening such a system is a fascinating experience...

http://zero-distortion.org/diy-horns/

Dominique

The dedication it took to build those systems is just incredible! I would love to hear Marcel's system, I can only imagine the bass detail and power is beyond words. Those are some serious audiophiles!
Thanks for the link Dominique, I'm speechless.

By comparison, conventional speakers are toys...

Agreed!

 

[Dominique-T]

I have taken my "toy" B&W 805s and Dynaudio S40s to Dominique’s place on different occasions, he also also had a very nice pair of LS3/5a for a while. The comparisons were very interesting but one thing that did not emerge was any kind of coloration between voice sounds. In fact the LS3/5a sounded like a perfect slice of the horn’s frequency spectrum, as far as the voices were concerned. I would also confirm no obvious directivity issues either with his segmented horns, unlike something we both heard at a show a month ago:
View attachment 37649

Hi Tony,
As we both noticed, these circular horns are very often directives, and sometime on purpose. This is why my favorite horns are the multicellulars, and in second position, the folded horns, which are much more difficult to integrate in a system (and the listening room).
Dominique

 

[Sal1950]

That's not what I refer to as a horn speaker.

Why?

"Up top, you may think there is a single horn-loaded driver but there is a second, smaller one in the upper lip of the large horn. The larger, midrange/high frequency driver is a 2-inch AquaPlas-coated titanium diaphragm mated to a 90 by 60 degree BiRadial horn. Above it is a 0.75-inch pure-titanium high-frequency compression driver that operates into a 60 by 30 degree BiRadial horn."

Couldn't find a crossover freq but it must be fairly low to be handled by that 15" driver.
We all know the problems of going low with a horn, takes something like Marcel's room to do it right.

 

[Frank Dernie]

Couldn't find a crossover freq but it must be fairly low to be handled by that 15" driver.

800Hz so more than half the frequency range is horn.

 

[March Audio]

Sorry guys but I have never heard a good one. From your comments they exist but all the ones I have heard over the years have the same problems and clearly from others comments in this thread I'm not alone.

 

[Dominique-T]

Kedar doesn't do or believe in measurements.
He has been to my house 3 times to listen. The first time before he discovered LPs and he wanted to listen to my Tune Audio Anima horns which he had liked at Munich show, the second after he discovered LPs and wanted to listen to my Goldmund Reference TT, the third after he started collecting LPs and had some highly regarded recordings he wished to hear on my system.
One of these recordings happened to be one I also had, probably bought about 40+ years ago and only played using a good quality carefully set up record player. His copy did not sound as good as mine. Maybe it was a bit worn.
I don't agree with his approach but he doesn't agree with me either.
He left rather abruptly on the last occasion, whether it was my copy of the record sounding better than his or my assuring him that I had not found some gadget he brought the last time to work whilst he was sure I had.
Anyway I haven't heard from him since.
I think he is genuine but wrong, personally.
He travels all over the place listening to amazing kit but doesn't realise that comparison on that basis is fraught with error.

He also came home for a listening session. Interesting character... I tend to share your opinion.

 

[Purité Audio]

Ked demonstrated Shun Mook ‘resonators’ to me, unfortunately he has fallen in a dirty pool.
Keith

 

[SIY]

Sorry guys but I have never heard a good one. From your comments they exist but all the ones I have heard over the years have the same problems and clearly from others comments in this thread I'm not alone.

I have heard the same thing over the years. "Wait until you hear THIS one!" And every time... sounds like horns.

I confess that I am curious to hear the Drew Daniels design.

 

[UliBru]

Sorry guys but I have never heard a good one. From your comments they exist but all the ones I have heard over the years have the same problems and clearly from others comments in this thread I'm not alone.

Alan,
unfortunately you need to travel a big distance to have a listening session. If you will ever come close to my region ...

 

[watchnerd]

This is my understanding as well. I suppose if you listen to horn speakers like those at Best Buy, sure they likely don't sound outstanding. However, a properly designed horn speaker hooked to a signal chain that can match the dynamic range of the speakers can sound absolutely incredible and world class.

I am very objective, but I have no problem saying that my setup sounds and measures better than 99.9% of the systems out there. It just sounds real and fully transparent. Of course, I do a lot of things most people don't like full active tri-amping using FIR filters, cross to 5 time aligned subs using a low order bessel filter, bass traps, sound absorption panels, etc...

I have shown my setup to one member here and a bunch of friends (including musicians and audiophiles). They were all in total disbelief when they heard it. This includes a really nice professional installer I met who sells 5 and 6 figure whole home audio and HA systems. He said he'd have no problem selling a system per week that sounds like mine to his wealthy clients.

The horns sound honky statement is a myth in my book. Usually the same people say horns sound harsh, then hear my setup and say the have no listening fatigue at all. A lot of it has to do with the signal chain and room treatments is what I have concluded.

View attachment 37541

Did you yank the passive crossovers out of the Klipsch es?

 

[watchnerd]

My conclusion is that the better dynamics of horns is mostly caused by less negative influence of the crossover. With much less power required for normal listening SPL there is less compression of electrical signals by the crossover (e.g. in non air inductances). Since active speakers have no passive crossover such compression effects cannot occur.

This is an interesting hypothesis about the crossovers. Passive crossovers obviously have downsides in terms of phase, but I'd never heard about compression.

How would one measure this? And what would one look for?

 

[LTig]

This is an interesting hypothesis about the crossovers. Passive crossovers obviously have downsides in terms of phase, but I'd never heard about compression.

How would one measure this? And what would one look for?

Compare input voltage to output voltage within the pass band at different voltage levels. Compression is when the output voltage no longer follows the input voltage in a linear fashion at higher voltages.

 

[pos]

People that have never heard any of the recent JBL horn systems ("recent" being 30 years old and up !...) or any legacy TAD horn loudspeakers would be hard pressed to condemn horn loudspeakers...

waveguide vs horn is a semantic issue. What matters is directivity control and matching.

 

[watchnerd]

Compare input voltage to output voltage within the pass band at different voltage levels. Compression is when the output voltage no longer follows the input voltage in a linear fashion at higher voltages.

Interesting.

I don't think I've ever seen such a test posted / published anywhere.

 

[LTig]

Interesting.

I don't think I've ever seen such a test posted / published anywhere.

The German audio mag Stereoplay tests for THD which also shows compression. They measure FR and distortion of the speaker at different SPLs (85/90/95/100 dB SPL). You can see compression when the FR curves are no longer 5 dB apart. This is accompanied by high distortion.

In the November 2019 edition is a test of the Audiodata Art Two, a stand mount 2-way speaker with a coax chassis. Below 50 Hz the FRs are no longer 5 dB apart.

On one test of a small active speaker (could've been the Kef LS50 wireless or LSX) one could see that the FR of the highest SPL went down in the bass region until it nearly touched the FR of the next lower SPL. Here of course the compression was done intentially by a DSP to protect the speaker.

 

[watchnerd]

The German audio mag Stereoplay tests for THD which also shows compression. They measure FR and distortion of the speaker at different SPLs (85/90/95/100 dB SPL). You can see compression when the FR curves are no longer 5 dB apart. This is accompanied by high distortion.

In the November 2019 edition is a test of the Audiodata Art Two, a stand mount 2-way speaker with a coax chassis. Below 50 Hz the FRs are no longer 5 dB apart.

But how much of this is thermal compression in the driver itself vs the crossover?

 

[LTig]

But how much of this is thermal compression in the driver itself vs the crossover?

No idea, it could also be limit of excursion.