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What does one purchase after owning horns?

I have owned Avantgarde Uno's and sold them because of the lack of bass to horn integration. I loved the dynamics, the midrange and highs. Now faced with a new speaker purchase, I demo speakers and they sound lifeless and contrived. The drama and beauty of live music and even the sound of percussion insturments like a piano are not at all convincing. I have an $8k budget for speakers give or take a thousand. My room is 13'X26' firing down the length. Any good ideas will be appreciated. My music prefrences are jazz/jazz vocalist.
renmeister
mrdecibel
2,904 posts
 
Weseixas, you are quite right about damping factor. Early on, with a pair of Gale 401 speakers I had once owned, a Dyna 400 I had laying around made these speakers mushy, slow and ill defined. My Ampzilla really took control of the 2 eight inch drivers in those air suspension cabinets. The amps sounded quite different in other areas, but because of the low damping factor on the Dyna, I could not listen to it for long.
mrdecibel
2,904 posts
 
Being this is a horn thread of sorts, has anyone noticed in the virtual reality system section of Audiogon, the system/room of Cuong Pham. Talk about a horn......Wow....
jax2
3,031 posts
 
Could you point us to examples of manufacturers or models that are well suited to a low damping factor amp (as a proud Atma-sphere S-30 owner I am quite interseted in your suggestions).

I've heard Ralph's amps sounding great with Classic Audio speakers (John Wolfe), on a few occasions. Oh my god, and they're horns too. I guess I need some Q-tips or a hearing aid, or else I'm just going to speaker hell (surrounded by horns of course).

Seriously - a fine combination with great synergy.
mrdecibel
2,904 posts
 
Jax2....Easy does it fella.....lol
audiokinesis
2,716 posts
 
The effect on a bass system of a low damping factor amplifier is the same as raising the electrical Q of the woofer. If the bass system is designed in anticipation of this higher electrical Q, then the result is proper bass response. If not, then "muddy bass" will likely result. So the fact that muddy bass is the result in some instances DOES NOT MEAN that such will be the case where the system is designed to work well with that type of amp.

Or to put it another way that may be more consistent with audiophile terminology, speaker/amplifier matching is important. And not just in the bass region - the interaction of the amplifier with the speaker's impedance curve has implications across the spectrum. But that's another topic for another thread.

Pryso, I did not mean to imply that a good horn system has a small sweet spot when set up properly. In fact, I believe that a good horn system is capable of having an exceptionally wide sweet spot if it's designed with that intention.
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