Horns sound this way? Ribbons sound that way?

[anmpr1]

My understanding is that the preferred placement was on opposite side walls (when feasible), facing each other. The one time I heard Beveridges, set up by Harold's son Rick, this is how they were positioned.

What I meant. Thanks for clarifying.

 

[Wseaton]

Slightly differnt perspective on this. Horns or even accoustic guide assisted speakers are typically more efficient and often much more efficient than dome / ribbon tweeter based design. More efficient = less energy required to reach the same SPL. Just turn it up more, right? Nah, it's not quite linear like that. More efficient designs have always seemed more dynamic and detailed under lower volume levels. During the 90's silk domes were the thing with audiophiles, and my experience was you had to turn them up to stupidly high SPL levels to get any detail or life out of them. Same with a lot of ribbon designs. If you'ver ever heard apair of magnepans or electrostats next to a pair of decent horns it's a totally different experiece with neither being superior to the other but producing significantly different soundstage experiences.
Aso don't forget horns often have significantly differen crossover slopes and points than ribbons or domes. Most of our initial accoustic perception comes from the upper midrange where we are most sensitive, and this not something dictated by the tweeter but mid range driver and crossover.
Big reason I'm an advocate of multi driver / multi active module designs (like, many exist, eh) and put an end to archaic passive xovers and lesser of the evils radiation design.

 

[Sokel]

What kind of horns are we talking about?
'cause when it comes to horns only big ones make sense to me.

I'm very familiar with a pair of that kind (their total is close to 2 meters each and wide as wardrobe) and there 's nothing that can prepare you for that kind of sound no matter how many high-output (120db mark) set ups you have listened to.
And no,I'm NOT talking about level but there's something about high output stuff that makes them different even in low levels.

Nevertheless even those don't come close to big horns.It's like they built a scene of their own.
Measurements (warning,amateur ones,mine) just show a flattish FR and that stands at angles up to 30° without significant drop.

The thing is that are super expensive (ok,high out setups are no cheap in general),super ugly and they need a very big room (it's my best friend's setup,the room is surely more that 150m² and opens to stairs,etc)

(all the above exclude PA which is horrible in comparison)