[Harry Lavo]

"Bret L" wrote in message
...
After listening to both commercially manufactured and homebrew/kit/
DIY-design small speakers for some time, going back to good BIG horn
speakers is a definite ear-opener. They have an immediacy and punch
that is simply in a different league from even the finest box
speakers, particularly small ones. Larger systems like Wilson Audio
and the larger Genelec active systems (and not to say the two are
identical, indeed, quite different) have man fine qualities but they
never give the effortless, seemingly infinitely powerful midrange and
treble of a good horn system. The small ones don't even compete with
the bigger box systems.

The best horn systems are simply not available as a completed,
turnkey product. Bruce Edgar never did achieve the status of a regular
manufacturer, and he was probably the leading light in the market for
clean-sheet-of-paper designs in the modern era.

The SOTA seems to be with the Klipsch modifiers, who fit best-of-
breed drivers and rework crossovers to the classic klipsch bass
sections for the most part. Other designs are available-the JBL
Hartsfield, is reproduced in several forms by a couple of small
vendors, and Tannoy makes its excellent Dual Concentrics in a
stunningly overpriced line of horn cabinets intended for the Oriental
markets. But the Klipsches are sort of the small block Chevys of horn
speakers.

My dad had a chain of electronic / hi-fi stores back in the early fifties,
and as a result I grew up with the very largest (pre-Hartsfield) JBL corner
horn driven by a 25w Newcomb power amp (with umbilecal preamp). Dad was
friends with Emory Cook ("Sounds of Our Times") one of the very first
"audiophile" record labels (the AUDIOPHILE label was the other....we had
both in abundance). These records on his system sounded as real/realer than
any system I have heard since. Red Nichols and his Five Pennies playing
dixieland sounded more "in the room" than anything I have heard since, with
only a few exceptions. A really good horn system was a really good system,
period.