Horn based loudspeakers why the controversy?


As just another way to build a loudspeaker system why such disputes in forums when horns are mentioned?    They can solve many issues that plague standard designs but with all things have there own.  So why such hate?  As a loudspeaker designer I work with and can appreciate all transducer and loudspeaker types and I understand that we all have different needs budgets experiences tastes biases.  But if you dare suggest horns so many have a problem with that suggestion..why?
128x128johnk
I cannot believe the horn troll is still at it. Gee, maybe I should listen to her, and get rid of my modified Klipsch Lascalas. NOT !
Whatever Klipsch was thinking about when designing the current version of the Heresys, they got it right. I'm sensitive to coherence in speaker systems as that's the most important quality for my tastes, and these speakers are absolutely coherent, as well as having great dispersion qualities…better phase plugs? Better horn throat design? Better care in manufacturing as Hope, Arkansas wants to spread happiness everywhere? I've said before that the way speakers actually sound is important to me (!), and I'm picky about this stuff. 
Reminds me of the Rolling Stone review of a great Neil Young album years ago (I think it was "After the Gold Rush")…they utterly panned it but later it was recognized as brilliant and sold a zillion copies. Somebody wrote in and thanked the reviewer for saving him from wasting any more than the many hours he'd already spent enjoying the album. So yeah, sorry but those La Scalas gotta go man…they're an insult to all things Linkwitz.
@kosst_amojan --

Siegfried Linkwitz is the guy out there making foolishness out of all the "narrow dispersion is good" silliness. Maybe it's good in a PA, but not a living room. This crowd here deliberately avoids and ignores anything that disagrees with their OPINIONS. That's the source of this controversy.

You're trying to make factual a supposedly overriding sonic flaw with horn speakers with reference to their dispersive nature of directivity - because you heard all or some of them and suddenly finds it a compelling conclusion to deliver? Or, because it's a convenient (albeit irrelevant) theoretical stance that requires little on your part? Why is narrow dispersion a bad thing with speakers in domestic environments? Edge diffraction - does it occur with all horns, and to what extend does it really matter going by actual auditioning? Does any sought theoretical explanation correlate with your actual listening experience in this regard, or rather: how would it? Any other theory-laden straw man you care to pull from your magic hat?

There was a time when you indulged - to a limited extend, one might add - in this discussion from an outset of actual LISTENING experience (the only thing that matters, right?), or to give it a chance with a range of or certain horn speakers, which in fact always comes down to OPINION. So please, don't try and direct this to where the proponents of horn sound avoid the arguments of anyone in disagreement, but rather see it as a reaction to any want of equating horn sound as a whole with a factually based flaw - one based on theory, no less. This is becoming trite. Move on. 

kosst_amojan says:

"If you're listening to a pair of Klipsch, you're listening to a speaker that incorporates every failing he (Linkwitz) points out."

What Linkwitz doesn't point out is that in spite of all these failings, they sound damn good! It's frustrating when reality trumps science.