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About them horns

Paul's Posts — 26 November 2011

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About them horns

A lot of people love the sound of horns.  I am not one of them.

I do love some of the qualities they present: high efficiency, terrific dynamic range, dynamic contrasts and great transient speed.

I do not love their tonal characteristics.  Cup your hands around your mouth and speak – this is what horns do to the tonal balance of music.

So the question for me comes down to a matter of compromises – what am I willing to compromise to gain something else?

I’ll tell you a story.  The first time I ever heard a horn was a pair of the very expensive Avante Garde loudspeakers driven with a state of the art amplification system and powered by a Power Plant.  Couldn’t ask for a better setup.  The first thing we played was a solo piano piece – which I believe was Robert Silverman on the John Atkinson Stereophile recordings (excellent work).

The piano sounded as if it were live and in the room.  On one instance Silverman hit a single note and almost startled me out of my seat – so real and full of speed and transient quickness was the sound.  I simply had never heard anything like it.  I was stunned.

The next track was a female vocalist.  I was equally stunned because this sounded so unnatural as to be unnerving.

How is it we can go from perfection to head shaking in a matter of only a few moments?

Clearly the benefits of the horn were many but distortions in tonal balance were so off the charts that I simply could not live with it.

The question then is what level of compromise are you willing to accept to get something amazing?  I, for one, can’t get over the tonal aspects to gain the speed and dynamics.  In the same way, I could never live with electrostats because their lack of dynamics – in trade for transient speed – isn’t worth the price asked of me.

Considering there are no perfect anythings – where will you draw the line?

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About Author

Paul McGowan

Paul McGowan is the CEO and co-founder of PS Audio Inc. a Boulder Colorado design and manufacturing company of high-end audio products and services. McGowan has been designing and building high-end products for nearly 40 years. Hobbies include skiing, music, hiking, artisan bread baking, kick boxing and cooking. He lives in Boulder Colorado with his wife Terri and his 4 sons.

(12) Readers Comments

  1. mtakeda

    November 26, 2011 at 5:06 am

    In all respect to your expert hearing I do not think it is not fair to consider the weakness of the horn system by Avante Garde alone. For your information I use TAD driver with the horn. I never felt cup around mouth effect.

    • November 26, 2011 at 7:05 am

      Horn speakers, like any kind of speaker, have many different versions and models, some probably don’t have these issues. The point of the article wasn’t to bash horns but to try and point out every speakers system has compromises we have to choose from. Where do you draw the line?

  2. Frank LaFond

    November 26, 2011 at 11:21 am

    Paul, I had the exact same experience with the Avante Gardes at a dealer showroom – both pro and con. Their colorations were so bad it is hard to believe they’re commercially viable. Yet at the recent RMAF, the JBL 1400 Array didn’t sound horn-y at all. I once owned the original Quads – amazing speakers, but talk about no dynamics… At the same RMAF show I heard the Sanders Sound Model 11 (an electrostatic hybrid), which was one of the most dynamic speakers of any type I’ve listened to (plus all the electrostatic goodness). This all made me think of your recent Once and forever! post.

    Any engineering endeavor requires tradeoffs, but generally products that balance the major parameters will enjoy more success than those that turn up some parameters to “11″ while letting others drop around “0″. A great design has fewer tradeoffs in general – many “8″s and “9″s with no parameters dropping below say “5″. With all that said, each person has their own set of priorities. I look for speakers that optimize parameters important to me while doing “pretty well” at everything else. That is usually where I get into trouble – underestimating the long-term importance of “everything else”. Within the relatively short span of an evaluation, it is easy for me to get focused on my priorities and neglect the other parameters. Over time though those shortcomings start to wear on me. It wasn’t that I didn’t hear the problems initially – it’s that I undervalued how much they’d bother me. Then for a time I listen mostly to music that favors the speakers’ strengths. For example, with my original Quads I listened to a lot of choral music. With that they had Amazing Grace. But how long do you want your system to dictate what kind of music you listen to?

    • Staff

      November 27, 2011 at 12:07 pm

      Agreed – I really like my system to neutral enough to allow me to enjoy any and all music – it’s not always that way though.

  3. BryRohr

    November 26, 2011 at 2:21 pm

    Great picture to accompany the article Paul.
    But seriously, the Avantgarde Acoustic horns were the FIRST horn speakers you ever heard!
    Seriously?
    Had you never been to a concert before, attended a live theatrical performance or even gone to a public movie theater? Or are you just younger than you appear at somewhere around
    10 years old?
    Seriously?
    How could one go through life being a music lover and had so few experiences with horn speakers?
    WOW.

    • November 26, 2011 at 3:02 pm

      Mentally or physically? :) Good point, as every theater and concert uses horns. Most concerts sound dreadful but a lot of theaters are OK. As I mentioned, the point of the article was all about trade-offs and compromises and where you draw the line that we must inevitably draw.

      So to directly answer your question, that experience I describe was the first long-term serious listen to horns on a high end system in many years. My actual first introduction to high-end audio was on a pair of JBL corner horns and THAT experience got me hooked for a lifetime.

      Still couldn’t imagine myself owning a pair.

      • BryRohr

        November 27, 2011 at 10:48 am

        At nearly 50 years old now it’s a novel idea and science fiction dream to be 10 years old again but that is actually about the age at which I was first romanced by the immediacy of a horn speaker. I remember it being like a sonic beam of light opening up a window to a level of detail and dynamics I never knew existed. I actually collect old vintage gear and have in my collections many a pair of Altec 604′s, JBL and Klipsch compression drivers and the likes, but have to agree with you Paul. It seems every time I listen to a horn design my first impression is that of like seeing the brightest most vivid TV on display at the local big box store, but, shortly thereafter my ears (much like my eyes in the big box store) start to hurt and I have to give them a rest. It seems no matter how much EQ, “soft” amplification, room acoustics taming or gentle source material you throw at them, I too just cannot comfortably co-hab with them for even more than a few hours at a time. But you have to admit, they are the sonic equivalent of being broadsided by a Mac Truck from the first note played and if that doesn’t get ones attention and wake you the hell up from a listening point of view nothing will. They definitely have their place, just not in my 16×16 foot listening room. I have settled in with Martin Logan Electrostatic hybrids for nearly 15 years and simply love them. Especially with the advent of high resolution 24 bit music now available. For the first time ever I am hearing more detail and resolution in the same monitoring system than I ever thought imaginable!

        Thanks again for your interesting posts Paul.

        Bryan Rohr
        Asheville, NC.

        • Staff

          November 27, 2011 at 12:08 pm

          Thanks Bryan – I am with you. The last electrostats I owned were ML’s but I just couldn’t get over the head-in-a-vide deal.

          • BryRohr

            December 6, 2011 at 2:01 pm

            Believe me Paul, I know the “head in a vise” feeling all too well!
            Actually with electrostats, it’s more like “head balanced on the point of a safety pin”. Shift a little bit backwards, forwards, side to side, up, down or move in any direction and everything changes. But I am so detail conscience and spoiled by the resolution and depth that I hear in electrostats that I just can’t hardly listen to any other basic loudspeaker design without feeling immersed in the music. Plus I’m sort of a loner when it comes to serious listening most of the time anyhow so locking down for listening is not a big deal anymore. I guess I should stop being so blunt and quit asking my guests if they came over to listen to some music or to talk over the it. Shut up and listen and you might actually HEAR something! Sometimes I think the best thing to do in a listening room is to put up a curtain that hides all the gear so people aren’t distracted by all the pretty lights and spinning wheels.
            “Pretty lights and spinning wheels as opposed to great sound”. Maybe that could be a cool topic of discussion. LOL

            Take care Paul

  4. MountainSufi

    November 26, 2011 at 5:09 pm

    Howdy from Jackson Hole!

    Paul, thanks for explaining tonal balance, and why you don’t like horn speakers. I’d wondered what people meant by “horn-y” sound. In the past decade or less, Avantgarde re-engineered “innards” behind the large midrange horn (pricey upgrades are available for owners of previous models). Imaging became pin point laser sharp (when correctly set up); I strongly suspect you’d find them less “horn-y” now. Take some newer Avantgardes for a test drive and let us know what you think…

    I’ve got a pair of Avantegarde Uno Nano horn speakers in a small room and love the spaciousness they give the sound stage. If this is tonal coloration, I want to wrap it around me and snuggle up! So what if they aren’t scientifically “neutral”?; I’ve listened to highly reviewed yet boring speakers with an RIAA curve flat enuff to play pool on.

    My limitations? Well… I enjoy electrostatics, but dislike listening to a 12 foot long acoustic guitar (if you know what I mean). I enjoy headphones, but have never gotten completely comfortable with having even great sound in the center of my skull. I’d also miss the elegance of low power SET tubes.

    Having happily lived with my horns for 3 years, I’d rather not be chained to the “boxed in” sound of conventional loudspeakers. They often seem constrained, even “TV-ish”. It’s kinda like going to Utah and being forced to drink 3.2 beer. While supposedly beer, something vitally important is missing.

    Love my P10 Powerplant!
    Love them horns!

  5. oliver T. Finch

    November 26, 2011 at 8:23 pm

    The positive qualities you describe are the very qualities that characterize live music. No wonder you were startled. The cupped hands phenomenon has been ameliorated by the use of tractrix horns. Add to this the use of wood t.o make the horns and any colouration.added by the horn material is removed. Voices are produced so realistically it can be unbelievable. In fact direct radiators sound threadbare and bleached in comparison. Give it a try. You may be pleasantly surprised. I have tried them both.

    • November 27, 2011 at 12:11 pm

      While I agree with you that the amazing dynamic range is more like live music than most any speaker – it isn’t the horn it’s the efficiency of the speaker that makes it so. Now one could argue that it takes a horn to be that efficient but I might argue that it’s all that’s worked so far.

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