Change to Horns or stay Dynamic

I suspect what people are pointing out is that there are horns and there are horns => short throw and long throw horns and everything in between. If you make the leap then perhaps the jump to long throw horns like Cessara Beta horns might be to much room/sweetspot challenging compared to your existing setup. Perhaps you should start auditioning a shorter throw horn design to see if you can get that resolution and something with a wider sweetspot.

After hearing some incredible horn systems

What have you heard and can you describe what it is you like about horns viz a viz your current setup?

As far as I can see you have plenty of bass already - so is it more dynamics or forwardness of just greater loudness in the midrange - is that where you are at?

Well you can't beat horns for distortion levels that will compete with headphones - so you are on the right track for detail - but can you live with that kind of directivity. Room issues/setup/sweetspot may become a bigger challenge.

by their very nature, deep bass notes can be somewhat 'fat' and slower sounding.

Jaybo may be on to something. Masking is an important issue in what you hear. More plundering of the bass depths can be the pleasureable result of ported designs/bass extended designs and some boomy room modes that they excite. There is probably nothing more impressive than plundering the depths in the bass.

However more bass and higher group delay can actually mask some of the midrange detail when listening. Take out the thunderous bass and boom from room modes and you may hear things you never heard before.

Could Jaybo/Dave be on to something - speaker setup?

Dgad,

Based on your comments you might try to audition ATC also - at least before taking the plunge - SCM100asl and upwards (depending on room size). In essence these are one of only very few conventional box speakers that sound as dynamic as the most "you are there" horns. The wide dispersion will make placement and adaptability to various rooms much easier than a horn - making what you hear in a demo more likely to be achievable at home and over a wide sweetspot. Anyway don't take my word for it though -see this review.

If clarity, transparency, detail and dynamics is what excites you about horns then these conventional speakers are worth checking out (along with good horns of course).

Paul dynamics can not equal the dynamic range of a front horn no mater how much power you feed them. It just isnt going to happen

Completely agree. In fact for sound reinforcement and for stadiums really horns are the only way to go. The narrower dispersion can also be a huge benefit in these applications in getting a good soundstage to different sections of the audience (Haas effect).

As I mentioned above there are very few conventional box speakers that can compete dynamically and even then we are talking about domestic spaces. I would also be wary of horns with excessively high compression ratio - extreme high efficiency - as you will get harmonic distortion in the treble at higher SPLs. I would also avoid long throws (narrow dispersion) as this will make room/placement and synergy with the bass much tougher. But I fully agree that good horns are going to sound great - just in the way you describe - the "you are there" dynamic factor and nothing else really competes.

Dgad, ATC are used at Disney Concert Hall - that is a stereo set of speakers with three midrange domes per channel. I think this picture tells you that they do indeed play dynamically even if they are not a horn. One of the few speakers if not the only conventional speaker that can compete.

Dgad,

Excessively high compression ratio :You get non-linearities in air compression in the compression chamber at extreme compression (high efficiencies). It creates harmonic distortion. I would not think you need to worry about this with hi-fi designs - however it is worth asking about. Bear in mind, the higher the compression and the greater the efficiency the overall more difficult and precise the design - phase plugs and such in the throat can be tricky and tolerances become very important. I guess I am saying don't just aim for the highest efficiency you can find - like something you can rock the whole neighbourhood with on a mere 1 watt amp!

Avoid long throws (narrow dispersion): This is easier to explain. The Bass radiates in all directions - so it uniformly fills your room in every direction. A long throw narrow dispersion horn is going to "beam" energy in a narrow path towards the listener. The hard part is where do you sit and how is it voiced and does this match your room and listening position. There is a danger that your brain interpretes the two very different soundfields separately. This effect was studied by Dr Floyd Toole at NRC labs in Canada in the 70's. Since then it has been the general consensus that the dispersion in the midrange and treble needs to be very wide horizontally in order to provide a pleasing "natural" sound field (i.e the reverberant energy from the room matches what you would expect to hear across the entire frequency range if you replaced your stereo by real musicians). If you look at the modern Klipsch and JBL designs you will see that they tend to respect this by using short throw horns with wider dispersion.

If you look at the modern Klipsch and JBL designs you will see that they tend to respect this by using short throw horns with wider dispersion

And I would add - that they sound great!

Why the talk of stadiums and pro sound? Who cares?

Sorry if I confused everyone. I was just trying to explain that long throw horns with narrow dispersion tend to be used to direct coverage over a small narrow area and work extremely well in stadiums where you have multiple sets of speakers cover section of the crowd just like "spotlights". I guess it was not clear but this "spotlight" feature which is ideal in stadium and hall applications are generally more diffuclt to set up in a room.The "long and short" of it is that shorter wider dispersion horns are what I would tend to focus on for domestic settings (in the mid range and treble of course).

"You can listen at 100db and not even know you are listening so loud. No distortion etc. And everything remains stable in space with a transparency that is hard to believe."

ATC, PMC will do it and so will some horns and several other high end designs but you are basically getting into the realms of professional main studio monitors (Westlake, Meyer, custom Augspergers with Tad drivers - take your pick). If you sit 4 meters back (large room like I do) then you are talking 112 db SPL capability at 1 meter continuous to get your 100 db spl at the listening position (and remember that headroom up to 122 db SPL may be required to be handle this cleanly on some music).

Very few speakers can do this that are not specifically designed for this task....and they only sell handfuls of these kind of speakers - not tens of thousands like B&W's. Most people don't want or need this kind of eye watering capability - but it can be incredibly fun and exhilerating.

Dgad,

It is funny how ATC & PMC have not been as successful in the US as other companies.

You need to hear one of their "ugly" three ways playing Sheffield Labs drum tracks in order to immediately understand why pros go for them. They are definitely overkill for most peoples requirements. PMC have better marketing than ATC as ATC rarely if ever advertise.

Incidently, an astrophycist that uses PMC recently handed in his PHD. So if you go "active" you will be joining a rarified crowd along with Mark Knopfler, Pink Floyd etc ;-)

I dont feel active has any advantage in sound quality over well designed passive, you will get greater dynamics for you are running multiple amplifers with an active and a bit less insertion loss over passive but this is a nonissue if networks of proper design.

I agree that "well designed" is far and above more important than active or passive...good drivers and good drivers selection and implementation is fundamental starting point for a good speaker no matter how it is amplified...which is why I trust design to experts like yourself!

although....

How about eliminating IMD and higher order harmonic crossover distortion from an amplifier for a large bass woofer driving both a woofer and a tweeter?

Correcting for Phase?

How about using a Class AB for the woofer and pure class A for the tweeter?

Fundamentally there seems something at cross purposes in most passive designs where you hook up the same power source to something as delicate and sensitive as a tweeter (milli amps) AND to something as big and powerful and thunderous as a bass woofer (amps)...

Active Speaker Proponent

Thermal compression is real and one of the most important as well as overlooked parameters in loudspeaker performance.

Absolutely...northern european woofers with a voice coil the size of a mere tweeter and a metal phase plug to try and keep cool the pole and connected to a lightweight rigid driver work well up to mid 90's at 1 meter.

Great engineering for great sound at modest levels for low cost but far from realistic reproduction.

On the other hand - money saved from purchase of expensive drivers can go into woodwork and veneer to create a work of art...

Great point George!

For audiophile drivers cone size and voice coil size are of secondary importance. Contrast this with the pro drivers' big voice coils and oversized and vented magnetic cores that can sustain prolonged periods of abusive power (read 400-600 watts) with just maybe 2db of thermal compression while playing at around 120db average level. There really is no comparison!

Agreed - "there really is no comparison".

I'd re-iterate to try Shefield Labs Drum Tracks on a pro design speaker like (PMC, ATC, Meyer, Westlake, custom Augsperger and many other pro designs) and your audiophile ears are in certainly in for a big surprise...hey that actually sounds like a real drum set in the room!

(Bear in mind mastering engineers compress the crap out of what you mostly can buy in recorded music - so you won't always achieve realism except on recordings where dynamics have been deliberately preserved.)

This loudspeaker also uses pro-drivers made by TAD and Beyma. See a trend here?

Sadly - the use of pro drivers is all but ignored - however a nice shiny aluminium driver with stunning shiny copper phase plug => that will catch the eye everytime and have audiophiles reaching for their credit card everytime - especially when the listener is reminded about how fast these small lightweight woofers are and how plodding the old dumb sound reinforcement dated big woofers of the 70's JBL crowd are....

Furthermore a big ugly black paper Volt woofer with massive 3 inch voice coil and a massive frontal ribbed heat sink which is also ugly black to help dissipate heat and reduce thermal compression and as used on PMC speakers...no that is butt ugly and so out of place among those tall slender veneered beauties...forget it...most dealers won't even carry this kind of monster!

As Jaybo puts is so well - some audiophiles hear what they see!

the radiation pattern of horn speakers are just as important as their increased dynamic contrast

That was my point to Dgad early on.

Horns are great for dynamics/detail - especially with TAD drivers - just be careful of extremely long throw horns with tightly narrow dispersion as these will beam at you like a spotlight - get a "floodlight" design instead. If you look at pro studio horns (Westlake's, Augspergers and many others) - generally you will always find wide dispersive horns rather than long "victrola" type narrow designs - there is a good reason for this as Duke has pointed out => the reverbernat field needs to match the primary direct signal reaching your ears to a chieve a relaxed pleasing and natural sound. (as per Dr Floyd's many many listening tests that confirmed this in the 70's)

A waveguide is generally shallow and has a wide throat with no compression chamber. A horn loaded driver uses a compression driver mounted behind a deeper horn.

A waveguide can control dispersion and allow for a much better match between drivers - it is very useful and completely underestimated by most designers.

As a conventional woofer driver starts to beam at the top of its useful range then you can limit the dispersion of the tweeter with a waveguide to get a completely smooth transition.

Another trick is to extend the useful LF range of a driver a little in order to get a better crossover point and a device that will give 6db higher output without distortion at is lower opertaing range (where Xmax starts to be an issue).

Waveguides are essential to good speaker design, IMHO...

Interestingly B&W go completely against this philosphy with their baffleless tweeters mounted on top...inevitably the transition between midrange and tweeter is most evident in the off axis response which often shows a discontinuity that is distinctly audible but also regarded as pleasurable by B&W owners. IMHO, depedning on the room setup, it can make one all too aware of the fact you are hearing sound from three or more drivers...