Home Speaker Asylum

General speaker questions for audio and home theater.

RE: Planars vs. Horns Discussion

After my CES 2010 coverage I made two best of lists. The 5 best rooms under $10k (based on speaker price) and 5 best above $10k.

I had King Sound Electrostats, Silbatone Aporia full range horn, Acapella High Viloncello II (pseudo horn), Trenner and Freidl Ra Box horn and perhaps I'm forgetting something.

And Quad sounded good too.

The panels have a low colouration factor that people can't live without and they seem not to notice the lack of dynamics or tha ability to load a room to get instruments to sound like they have any real presence (no matter the amp). On the other hand they're as clear and holographic as can be and soundstage like mad.

Horns do the scale macro-dynamics and spittyness you can almost feel coming out of the trumpet. Big loud jazz bands and it's difficult to beat even if one complains about box colouration or whatever to me it's the old I want 95% of the music with 5% distortion than 80% of the music with 0.001% distortion if I had to choose.

I didn't much care for the old Quads - the ESL 63 I heard in Vancouver as a trade-in and I was not at all impressed - IMO the new ones are much better - Kind Sound has more drive and bass for half the price which is why I like them. Soundlabs is good but too big and too expensive for what you get IMO. If you listen to rock pop trance jazz with horn instruments for a significant portion of your listening I go horns. If you listen to symphnies heavy on strings, woodwinds or opera with moving singers panning left to right at modest levels - panels.

If you listen to both like me then you buy something else.


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  • RE: Planars vs. Horns Discussion - RGA 17:25:40 06/24/12 (0)

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