I helped my nephew diy a 3 way horn on a recent weekend. He’s got a active crossover used klipsch heritage running on a cheap behringer dcx2496 i gave him at some point...I guess it made him feel he’s a horn guy.
Had to deal with something like this for a bit....
https://www.tiktok.com/@northvalleygrp/video/7525237586105863454?lang=en My daughter could have built it for him with her eyes closed.
Eminence 12 inch woofer
JBL selenium driver and some cheap PRV compression drivers
Cabinet with a single woofer in a ~ 2ft by ~2ft by ~13 inch sealed mdf box and bracing, extension down to around 40hz. Mid and High drivers screwed on to jbl horns, open baffle above the box...Approx, 650 dollars in parts....With the active crossover dialed in, it started to sound like it could put a hell lotta speakers out of business .
I would wager that he won’t be missing any qualios and voltis and whatever anytime soon...
Interestingly, for my build, I also went three-way active. I did not try to do the cabinets myself. Woodworking is not already my hobby and I could not do a good enough (solid and robust and visually accurate) job myself without first putting in years of effort. It was still not cheap, as the Purifi drivers cost a pretty amount. In some ways I got the active crossovers for free. But first I had to pay for BACCH4Mac software, that happens to have an active crossover module built in. It is only fourth-order. But I have drivers that have pretty wide frequency overlaps. So it is fine. The 10-inch cross to the 6.5-inch around 200Hz. The 6.5-inch to the tweeters around 2500Hz. So the 6.5-inchers really cover the imaging.
I considered using broadbands with no tweeters. But when playing very loud in tests, I found broadbands to get stressed.
That said, there are some pieces that sound simply phenomenal with a broadband surrounded with a horn. With what I “saved”, maybe I can afford another system with horns for when they are better.