It is not necessarily restricted to horns/compression drivers...Different types of designs exist in the pro sphere (concentrics, line arrays, etc).
High sensitivity is largely a free lunch, detail and harmonics became easier to perceive, not to mention the unlimited dynamics, slam, sound power, etc from that class of speakers. Even the vintage klipsches with poor execution had such a following because some of the positive attributes overshadowed the shortcomings, w.r.t the "live" sound pursuit. Japanese audiophiles, for example, seem to run almost exclusively with that class of speaker.
The 86db li’l oinkydoinky bookshelf speaker guys have steep hills to climb before they got anywhere.
On a related note, there are lots of homes (at least in the midwest, where i’m at) with rooms larger than or the same size of smaller venues, bars whatever, i.e., dudes set up in large semi finished house basement spaces in my metro area. Take a look at the hometheater forums, for example, guys sitting around with arrays of huge JTR horns..
It is not exactly a black or white with venue size these days.
Again, the weak link in the pro sphere is the high powered class D sht (the crown barf)....the R2R comeback, higher fidelity class A/AB with some modest watts, etc paired to that class of speaker combines the best of both worlds.
The gist of all this and in reference to OP’s post is that horns are hard to beat if you are looking for a more "live" musical experience. Probably why Klipsch has such a core of devoted followers.