To horn or not to horn

At various times my main speakers were Bose 901s, Series 1. Magnepan IIAs, Acoustat 2+2s and three way d'Appolito Dynaudio towers.  When it  comes to the realistic portrayal of music of all scales and types none of those systems could hold a candle to my present fully horn loaded, DSP controlled, tri-amplified DIY speakers.  Properly executed horns can be splendid.

I heard the big JBL’s once, they went for almost 50K for the pair.  If I could afford them and had the room to support them, I would have bought them in a heartbeat.  Nothing beats the dynamics of good horn speakers, but the good ones are very expensive.  

I have had some Ref 3A de Capos in my main system for 10 years. stand mount 2 way speakers no crossover. Love the sound.
A few years ago we bought a cabin in the mountains and i needed to put a second system together. I had just bought a 2/6 watt tube amp so needed some hi eff speakers. Had a choice of some wonderful Cornscalas (99db) or some Klipsch Quartets (97.5db). Both horns. heard them on Quicksilver minis and both were great and the Quartets were $400 in the box with crites upgraded crossover and Ti tweeters and about $600 less. Very different sound than I was use to, much more shouty. I like to think of the difference with my setup as the de Capos give a more recorded sound and the Quartets a more live sound. They both work just different. Now I wish I had bought those Cornscalas.....

Let’s assume you find two pairs of speakers you like enough to buy, one pair horns.

Horn’s high efficiency sets you up for SUCCESSFUL lower power needs. That saves money, and the amp size/weight goes down, thus location flexibility increases.

High efficiency, horns or not, are always my recommendation to allow an easier entry into tubes, when lower power size truly saves money, size, weight, heat output.

Generally, if horns, the midrange horn size usually leads to a bigger woofer, thus less need for a subwoofer. That protects bass imaging, so, that could be considered a related advantage of horns. Of course, larger enclosures only work in certain spaces, and want to be out away from rear and side walls. I go for heavy enclosure on 3 wheels (3 wheels always wobble free and more pounds per wheel), push back for more circulation space, pull out for dedicated listening.

Horns can be as smooth and transparent as any speaker made. Like any other kind of speaker technology there are bad examples and excellent examples as Duke pointed out earlier.


Horns don't have to be all that big. For example you can have a quarter wave rear loaded horn in a small floor standing cabinet, that can go down to 50-60Hz. At that point its easy to set up a subwoofer system (keeping it below the critical-to-human-hearing 80Hz), which is not a bad idea anyway if you don't like standing waves messing with the bass at the listening chair. One of the best distributed bass array systems is the Swarm made by Audiokinesis; if set up with a quarter wave horn as I just mentioned, you can have a compact and efficient system without sacrifice of sound quality compared to much larger systems.