Lowther drivers, front horn or back loaded horn?

Front horns are much better than back loaded horns, BLH are IMHO boring, they dont do anything bad, but nothing real good either.
Front horns are the king of low level detail and dinamics, and thats were the fun is!
With both setups you will need a subwoofer!
Lowther in front horns becomes softer sounding.
Lowther in a Back loaded horn is "funny" sounding, if you go BLH get Fostex better.

As long as we are just thinking about it, do look into compression drivers, they do everything Lowthers do but better, after a lot of listening to Lowther I developed an aversion against whizzer highs, so I went on to compression drivers.
Azura can make a smaller throat horn for compression drivers, maybe get a pair of Altec, GFA, Beyma or TAD drivers. Then a JBL bass reflex box will do just fine up to say 500 hz, (pushing it, try a 12" woofer here).

Hola Alanbrain,

Compression drivers are much more detailed and dynamic, with the wrong horn they can be punchy and have horn colorations, I am sure the 340 Azura horn will make the sound nice and full, the tone will come from the horn and the diaphragm.
Presence I would think is a combination of detail, tone and dynamics, so compression driver have these in spades.
With a 340 hz horn you will want to go as low as possible, I am sure you can get away going down to 500 hz, which is pretty low. If you want no trouble shoot for 700hz. Start loading up on capacitors to play around with Xover freq.
The most dificult part IMHO about a horn loaded system is Bass integration, go for a driver that will go up to 3khz or higher!!! Bass horns are really complicated...
Going down to 500hz limits the amount of drivers you can use but aids at bass integration, that low the usual suspects are JBL 2440 and gang, Altec 288 or GFA new ones, Beyma 800 series, Big radian maybe, TAD and of course GOTO and ALE, how much you want to spend? I think a good start is Altec or Beyma 700 series IMHO. Ask Martin from Azura to recommend a driver he knows works best with his horn!

There is always a trade off..
General recipe for horns systems are cut from 500 to 800hz , you will need a tweeter at around 5k to 8 khz, and a 15 inch woofer from 500hz to 40hz. Depending an the drivers chosen.

I have tried a bunch of drivers horn loaded from 150-180hz Lowthers loose authority at 150hz but have a beautiful tone in a front horn, Fostex do get down to 150 hz nice but sound less dynamic and transparent than lowther
(I didnt try the F200, its in my list of things to do!)
The thing about this IMHO is that you get the whizzer highs... If you cut the Lowther at 1 or 2khz or higher over to a tweeter or a compression driver, then you fix that but you have a cut right there in the middle, which is worst? You decide based on listening tests. You can try the smaller Lowther...
You can get a GOTO driver specified from 100hz to 8khz, but GOTO recommends smaller freq. spans.
Or you can try a Phenolic Diaphragm Altec or Great Plains Audio compression driver that goes down to 300hz up to 5khz on the Azura 340 horn and stay away as posible from the human voice freq. range (this driver was designed for the human voice freq. range) Of course you will need a tweeter but the bass integration will be easier, then again you are cutting the compression driver too close to the freq. rate of the mouth and that induces colorations, which is worst? Lets try them.
A good compromise was found a long time ago with the general recipe, what I dont like about that is the tone of the 15 inch driver at 800hz, it sounds dull, that is why a lot of people are trying to get their compression drivers to go lower, maybe loosing definition in highs (depending on the driver) that is why I recommend a bass driver that goes up to 3khz, so that bass at 800hz has the same dynamic taste and detail as the compression driver and you dont get a "step" in performance...then we need to find a really sensitive bass driver, maybe two!

Well a bass horn for 30hz is a monster, better go Bass reflex!!

If you are going for that BMS driver better try to get the 340 azura horn or even the 160 and cut driver down to 300hz, it has a coaxial tweeter...I heard mixed things about BMS...

Up to 300hz the JBL 15" driver will do fine.

For 800hz I would get something like this:
http://www.usspeaker.com/beyma%2012BR70-1.htm

Th combination is a success, the Orphean horn from DB is doing according to Bert even better than the Oris, It seems to be a hard Xover to get right. Remember the horn only loads around 3 octaves.

Horns are great for low level listening, you get full sound at lower levels.