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RE: I'm Curious... The West and Horns ...

In the 70's i had a VOTT in my home :) , the first Klipsh i ever heard was their folded horn when i was 15ys old, playing thru Marantz toobs, even then it was rare to see them, my neighbor had that one , i may have heard that model only 5 times in over 40 yrs, so still not common to see.

Back in the early 70's it was not unusual to see horns in homes, but they were still not main stream , the masses bought regular type box speakers , most of us with horns moved to stats in the early 80's and later apogee's , Panel speakers were the rage during the 80's , Horns disappeared off the radar completely until recently.

Personally i could never get over their coloration and honk , even today. The best ones are better with timbre, but still some honk, I'm sure some philes find Honk to be dynamics , but it sounds unusual and unnatural to to me. In that case i prefer large scale ribbons and dynamic speakers, they have to be large and multi -driver to get the thd down on dynamics, philes buying 70,80,150,400K single point source drivers looks like madness to me , big speaker small sound compressed dynamics in the mid-high area. I can see someone living with one of those jumping to horns..

Horns really , really sound good to me on SET's and SET's only and only if the SET is driving everything, the magic with SET's is the bass/midbass area , they get this right compared to most amplfiers, this is where they have their jump, listen to a speaker system not setup for an SET amp and it's sounds wrong and bi-amping is the worst , as it kills the SET advantage. SET coupled to class-D = most wrong ..

On acoustic instruments , Horns can be the best, they capture the percussive energy in the mids/high better than other speaker types, if what you listen to, is mostly acoustic instruments and small ensembles , et al, then very hard to beat a top horn SET combination..

A good horn and a 5 watt SET can do the deal.

Recently a dealer who sells horn speakers, also mentioned to me they are a hard sell here in the states. The Surge in audio during the 70/80's went away when non audiophiles stop buying and went into HT. Asia is much more into 2 ch and has been for at least 3-4 decades now.

Sales there is a must ...




Regards..


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  • RE: I'm Curious... The West and Horns ... - A.Wayne 08:58:24 12/20/16 (0)

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