Regarding Klipsch, some people just can’t take horns.
There are good horns and bad horns.
I’d say that, Regarding Klipsch, some people haven’t heard a pair (of Klipschorns, for example) properly set up and installed in the right room with high ceilings, sealed to good corners, and with good equipment (tubes) and a good source.
These speakers take no prisoners—including the listener.
I'm all in on horn speakers, but my experience with Klipsch speakers has been uneven, at best. My first experience was with a Pair of Klipsch H-700 Heresy that I rescued from a job site about 17 years ago. I had heard great things about the brand and understood that the speaker had legendary status. Plugging them into a late 90's totl Marantz AVR, I was unimpressed, to say the least. I'd previously had speakers from Infinity and JBL and more recently had been using a pair of Peavey 2-way PA monitors, as I was in between speakers for my Hi-Fi at home. The H700 were tinny and anemic and not at all what I had expected (granted, I had no idea what to expect, other than people told me they were great speakers.) I ultimately tried to give them away to a buddy, only to have them return a few years ago, like a bad penny. I put them in my carriage house and cursed them every time they were in my way and had to be moved. Summer of '22, I had to move them and the thought strongly crossed my mind that I should just set them on the curb, as they were in really rough shape:
I'd just been given a receiver from my boss, after living with a series of cheap bluetooth speakers and a Bose wave radio for the previous decade after living a semi-nomadic life as a freelance journalist. I'd gotten back into woodworking for my job and it occurred to me that instead of tossing them, I should restore them, instead. I recapped the crossover, replaced the woofers and refinished the boxes. Surely, with fresh components, they would sound better, right?
nope! They were as unimpressive as ever. The aluminium mid horns resonated something awful and both they and the tweeters were sibilant and harsh. Also, where was the f@¢£ing bass?! They were the definition of fatiguing, but they at least looked halfway decent. Not wanting to give up a pair of free speakers, I fired up the google machine and found a bunch of solutions: I braced the insides of the cabinets and damped them with foam. I replaced the gaskets between the mid horns and drivers and covered the mid wave guides with a layer of rope caulk to tame the resonances. It was an improvement, but there was still the dearth of low-end frequencies to deal with, not to mention the tweeter that threatened to wake up all of the dogs in my neighborhood, every time I fired them up. I was starting to come to the conclusion that maybe horns weren't for me when I stumbled upon the Super Heresy mods, replacing the woofers and tweeters & adding a port in the rear. Since my initial investment was low, I decided to give it a last ditch try. I replaced the woofers with Eminence Delta Pro 12A, added a B-52 4" x 4-1/2" port in new rear panels (in case I wanted to return them to stock) and picked up a pair of
@Daveintn 's sMAHL tweeters.
the end result made me a believer. Incredible dynamic range, amazing transient response and a significantly more robust low end response. That inspired me to return them to stock and build a set of clones to house the modifications. It also set me on the DIY path in search of better sound. I played with bigger horns, larger enclosures before ultimately building the LaScala clones in my profile pic that measure +/- 3db from 23Hz to 20kHz that I designed, using knowledge that I'd gained along the way in the past year.
I firmly believe that people who say they don't like horns, simply haven't heard good ones.
.... that's how I discovered the meaning anyway.
Ceilings were only 9' though, but still great.
