The horn sound- benefits, shortcomings

[Brett a]

Instruments lack body and warmth. I can hear an acoustic guitar, but get no visceral connection of the resonance of wood it's made from.

This can be at least partially a product of the non-horn loaded portion of the speaker system.

This is interesting. I was assuming this lack of richness was due to the speaker not producing the frequencies/interactions to provide it; that it was a fault of omission. But if I'm inferring correctly, you're suggesting it's a fault of commission (or inclusion). That they are there, but being masked or cancelled by other interactions.

 

[Bkphoto]

I've tried, When i listen to music a lot of the time its for long periods...and sooner or later my head starts to hurt...

can't do it...

 

[frperdurabo]

Done well, horns have the ultra-low distortion and detail of ribbons or electrostats, in an efficient, easy to drive package. I'm not a huge fan of vintage Klipsch, but current JBL and Tannoy (the tweeter in the dual concentric driver is a horn) and older Ureis are pretty darn nice. I also owned the KLH-17 Econowave varient, and while the bass had issues, the compression driver/constant directivity wave guide worked extremely well.

 

[Tom Brennan]

Judging horns in general having listened to only a few is like judging cone-domes after only hearing a few. I don't expect Harbeths to sound like the KLHs at Costco.

 

[dnewma04]

This is interesting. I was assuming this lack of richness was due to the speaker not producing the frequencies/interactions to provide it; that it was a fault of omission. But if I'm inferring correctly, you're suggesting it's a fault of commission (or inclusion). That they are there, but being masked or cancelled by other interactions.

I've often found that poor crossover integration in systems result in those sort of problems. I can't tell you how many times I corrected a problem described as a lack of bass, one note bass, or a lack of weight to instruments by fixing a problem a few octaves up in the frequency response.

 

[Zonker92]

Judging horns in general having listened to only a few is like judging cone-domes after only hearing a few. I don't expect Harbeths to sound like the KLHs at Costco.

Quoted for truth. As with so many things, generalizing about horns is unproductive. I find the horns in my 4430s to sound excellent, Yet I cringe at the sound of some PA systems. Saying "horns give me headaches" is no more informative than saying "dome tweeters give me headaches." It just makes me ask, "Which horns?"

I have heard people say PAs usually sound lousy, and PAs usually have horns, ergo all horns sound lousy, but the logic of that reasoning escapes me. PAs also have woofers. By that logic, the existence of some lousy-sounding PA with woofers must mean that all woofers suck, too.

 

[Brett a]

Judging horns in general having listened to only a few is like judging cone-domes after only hearing a few.

Most of the folks in this thread haven't stated how many different horn-based speakers they've heard, but they still seem to really love them. I think there may be some validity to their generalizations, simply because of the consistency of reporting. No one has yet come along to deny that there is actually a "horn sound", so there's something here.

 

[Zonker92]

I just take anecdotal statements like that with a huge grain of salt; ditto "tube sound," "vinyl sound," etc. I went from direct radiators (JBL L250 / 250Ti hybrids) to horns (JBL 4430), and played them against each other, and did not detect anything that I would call a "horn sound," even though the two speakers did not sound identical to each other.

 

[Adda]

Well I have tried my GAMMA VLD-12's with and without horn.
The horn doesn't change the sound much, it does change the dispersion and efficiency though.
6dB increase in efficiency and a fairly narrow dispersion pattern (enabling crazy driver parings), while without, they have an extremely wide dispersion pattern.

As for sound, without horn they sound more or less the same regardless of listening angle, with horn they sound best when you can actually see all of the ribbon at the bottom of the horn.
With horn they have a sweet spot where they sound better then without horn.

 

[dnewma04]

To me, if there is a characteristic sound of horns, it's simply the dynamics. It's about hearing things sound live and real for the first time. There are a number of other "sounds" that you encounter, some that aren't so good that drive people away, but at it's core, there is a unique attribute in the sound that comes from extremely low power compression and when you get the bug, there aren't cone/dome speakers that can approach them. It's all about minimizing the bad stuff or reducing it to a tolerable level in many cases.

I used to be a devout horn hater until I heard Unity Horns and, later, modern waveguide based horn systems. I then heard horn systems with the smoothness of a good dome tweeter with all of the dynamic benefits, to boot.