opinions on modern horn speakers

BD DESIGNS WEB SITE ,The pics are under John Kalinowsky first pic .They do look better in person.Thanks for the responces .JK

If you are near Ohio, you might want to try attending the Midwest AudioFest in Lima, OH which seems to be held each year in the spring. There are lots of horns and high sensitivity/efficiency systems on display there. Then you can draw your own conclusions. I went this spring. I have been wondering about these types of designs for a while. I would seem that many audiophiles start out with dynamic box speakers or planars but end up (later in life) turning to horns and SETs. I had wondered if that was perhaps because of one of two things.

1. They know something that I don't.
2. They have become senile.

My impression of most of the horn (and compression horn) designs is that -

1. There is no sound stage
2. Many of the systems will try to split your skull open
3. I still prefer planars.

Except for the Omega room and the Venus HiFi room I did not like any of the systems on display. Both of these two rooms used single driver speakers with the fostex drivers. The latter was the Cain & Cain "Abbey" using a Voigt pipe design driven by an Audio note integrated 300B amp (M3 ??) and a Audiomeca Obsession (?) CD player. but you mileagemay vary. And I encourage you to see for youself even if I did not care for them.

over 99% of all music recorded from 1960 through today was(and is) played back, mixed,and mastered using push pull amplification and conventional dynamic drivers. the idea of an artist, engineer or producer spending hour,days,and weeks listening to music through a horn, powered by a 3 watt amp is always going to be something best left to a faction of audiofiles seaching for musical enjoyment...and theres certainly nothing wrong with that.

JRD .I do quite a bit of work in studios .Alot have horns for main monitoring or at least the tweeters are horns .Also horns use dynamic drivers .FYI

Aroc ,owned the abby, nice speaker for $1500. I helped U.V.A. become a cain dealer ,but they are weak in the bass and highs . Dont know what you mean by split your skull open .Maybe they have too much dynamic range for you or where demo to loud [happens alot at shows].No sound stage??? My horns sound so real the artists are right in front of you if thats where the producer mixed them .I have a solid 19ft sound stage on most recordings way better than my martin logans ,sound labs or maggies could do .Still perfer planars. I used too till I purchased good horns .Also senile ?? Iam only 38, hope its not happening allready .lol.Thxs for your reply