Horn Speakers
I had listened to horn speakers only once, some 20 years ago at a demo of
Avantgarde Acoustic. We listened to the
Trio Classic, a system consisting of 3 horns speakers and a traditional boxed active subwoofer with two 12" chassis (both per channel). I was fascinated by the dynamics of this system, both fine and coarse. But you have to keep in mind that I was used to magnetostatic speakers which have bad dynamic behaviour (I just didn't knew it back then). At last we auditioned a classical tenor and here the high mids were almost unbearable, and I knew that I could never live with horn speakers even if I had the money to buy them (which I didn't, the system was twice as expensive as my car).
Therefore one of the tasks for Highend 2019 was auditioning of horn speakers, to find out whether the situation has changed. There were 2 surprises:
- With one exception no horn speaker had unbearable high mids. But: it is well possible that the ability of my ears to hear high mids has deteriorated so far that a peak in the frequency response is no problem any longer. For example I had no problem with the 6 kHz peak in my HD800. After I used EQ to get rid of it I noticed a smoother sound but I could still live without EQ.
- The dynamics of all horn speakers was not better as I had expected. But now I am used to listen to active speakers which are also well known for very good dynamics. The good point here is that active speakers are many times cheaper than horn speakers.
This is what I had a chance to see and hear:
Avantgarde Acoustic: good SQ but not outstanding
Stein Music TopLine Bob XL: good SQ but not outstanding
ESD Acoustic Phoenix: they played kind of a DJ track which first was very grainy. This must have been the recording because then the track changed and became very clean and
very loud.
Living Voice R25: not accurate but really charming
hORNS: SQ not good