Advice sought on Lowthers.

You could look at two sites for radically different uses of Lowther drivers: (1) www.welbornelabs.com, "Oris Page", and (2) Lowther America (not sure of site designation). The difference is between a front horn (plus supplemental woofer NOT subwoofer) and a folded horn, in which the Lowther driver supplies the bass. The latter design is acknowledged to be extremely tricky, and Dekay's comments are well taken. Proponents of the front horn approach don't like the folded horns, while proponents of that approach seem to really hate the front horns. I'm getting an Oris 150 horn myself, and will know in a few weeks what I think. But no one doubts the quality of the Lowther drivers and the advantages of their high efficiency, which pays off not only for low power amps. The voice coil doesn't have to move as far, and so can be faster and more accurate in its movements.

I just purchased a pair of Beauhorns, probably through the same "friend" that Mento mentions in his post. They are big, expensive and not without flaw, especially in their lack of bass - Mento is correct. You must use a quality subwoofer (I have 2 RELs). BUT, when if you get them even part way dialed in - after 2 days, I figure I'm about 1/2 way there, with much "tweaking to do" - you will hear immediately what all the fuss is about when it comes to high efficiency horn speakers coupled with low powered SET amps. There is a naturalness and ease of presentation that is absolutely captivating. As a part of the "naturalness", these speakers have the ability (well-almost) to the project the volume, scale and proportion of real performances without strain, well beyond normal-sized dynamic speakers. I suspect that the big planars (Magnapans, etc.), line arrays (Pipedreams), and dynamic giants (Wilson Wamm, JM Labs Utopias, etc.) can do the same and maybe more, but these speakers are much bigger still (and in most cases, much more expensive too). My previous speakers, Merlin VSM-SEs beat the Beauhorns in some respects that many may value very highly (I did and still do) - image focus and "palpability" come to mind; also frequency extension in the highs and ultimate transparency (which may be related) - so these Lowther based speakers may not be everyone's cup of tea. However, they are worth a look. Believe me.

When I mentioned the Lowthers to the engineer of my current loudspeakers his response, based on hearing them was,"didn't like'em, too much intermodulation distortion." This was all back about 2-1/2 years ago when I was shopping for the last system I would buy and I was pretty much polarized in my choices 1. go SET/horn or 2. modern high-power SS/conventinal multidriver electrodynamic transducer. There was even a hobbyist/dealer who carried the lowther only 2 to 3 hours from where I lived and I was going to audition. However, in the end I went with the latter system and have no regrets. The horn/set is different/pretty/funky, but I couldn't imagine it sounding better than what I have now. The dealer who carried them's url was something like http://fastrans.lowther... I don't know the rest. They were just outside ST. Loius and sold them in bass reflex designs.

horns have always intrigued me, since i heard the jadis eurythmie's at the '96 s'phile show in nyc, & more recently, the original wersion of the avantgarde duo's. i'm not yet ready to give up on my conwentional set-up, tho, 'til i get to try the newform research ribbons! ;~)

that said, i'd start here, and look at the oris 150, the oris 200, & the hedlund horn. also, i'd consider the aer drivers instead of the lowthers.

http://www.bd-design.nl/wwwpages/main.html

hope this helps, doug s.

thank you for the detailed responses. I have been looking into other high efficiency designs. I am most interested in getting the Moth audio 2ia3 amp and picking speakers to go with it. The Moth only has 3 watts per channel so speaker selection will be influenced heavily by power requirements.