@daledeee1 --
I personally like immediacy, dynamics, clear, effortless sound. Set up properly, horns are quite smooth and relaxing to listen to.
Indeed, completely agree. Good horn-loaded speakers are both uninhibitedly present and relaxed sounding. There’s this effortless, liquid flow to the music, even.
Are people saying shouty meaning forward?
In my book "shouty" would/should be a way to address the sonic outcome of horn modes that obtrusively sticks out in a particular frequency band, typically perhaps in the upper midrange for the, at least to some ears, worst effect. There are quite a few horns though that avoid these modes in most of their band, so I can only assume the more or less consistent impression of horns sounding "shouty," to whom this may concern, is being at odds with the characteristics of a horn qua horn, which is to say a sound with a higher ratio of direct vs. reflected sound compared to, perhaps paradoxically by name, direct radiating speakers. Horn speakers as acoustic transformers with their narrower and more controlled dispersion effectively aims the sound at the listener more prominently, and thus the more direct, vivid, present and visceral sonic imprinting this usually leads to, no doubt aided by the use of highly efficient compression drivers, may strike some as a shouty character.
