One of the advantages of ours being a hobby in senescence is that many here have been at it for a long time and have possibly largely answered for themselves (some exactly and for others in their essential directions) with the strategy of their preferred gear types.
The problem becomes when people get into active conversion mode trying to propagate their tailored solutions to others in other circumstances already largely convinced in their own preferences based on different needs and with different questions.
That idea that we are here looking for our own solutions to slightly varying (and possibly evolving) kinds of individual questions means we are actually just travelling in slightly parallel universes with just a bit too much spooky action perhaps still happening at a distance.
Funny, Mr.Tao, that you should mention the words "spooky" and "parallel" in the same sentence. It made me think of Eggleston's speakers. They descrbe their parallel isobaric low frequency cone drivers as capable of "spooky" realism.
I started my quest for good speakers from a professional studio monitor perspective. PSI in Switzerland was the early favorite. They sell no nonsense active boxes at reasonable prices. Some 85% are sold to to pros. Each speaker is individually calibrated in an echo free chamber -- thus their accuracy is proven. That's key if you are a recording engineer. You sit in your chair and face the speaker -- it's your commanding officer.
Audiophiles, perhaps, are looking for something more. More fun. Perhaps more music. Call it "sound stage". Call it vivid.
Eggelston has their roots in sound studios, but to chase more affluent buyers they have adjusted. At a recent show in Paris I heard them playing Karen Carpenter, the 1970s queen of easy listening. Maybe it was Karen's sad fate or the aforesaid "spooky" technology. Maybe the various other upscale advancements, including several Luxmans in the room. Her voice was oh so poignant. Like being touched by a ghost.
Nevertheless, I ended up buying horn speakers, a pair of Horning Eufrodites. These Danish hybrid speakers have a heavy magent horn driver, a dome tweeter, and an array of eight eight inch woofers in push pull isobaric. Dagogo published a review a few years ago. Unlike most reviews, the critic was not sure it was good product. His listening room was too small to judge. Nevertheless, the hybrid design he described turned me on. The horn fires front and back, the latter path blending with the woofer array. Push pull means excrusions of the woofers do not exceed 1 mm. Me thinks I need not worry too much about these cones' "thermal modulation", a problem discussed above in this thread. The designer, Tommy Horning, may or may not have hit the nail on the head. The speakers just arrived and are yet to be properly placed in my room. In the dealer's room, playing music through an MSB DAC and amp, the dynamics were impressive, the sound stage uncanny.
As others have stated, we will likely sit in our respective horn, cone and electrostatic camps.
Nevertheless, horns have several advantages. I wrote yesterday in the thread comparing Equi=Tech to PS powerplants about the advantages of horn efficiency. This point has been amplified (pardon the pun) in this thread. With efficiency comes better dynamics. A fifteen inch woofer in a Klipsch or Zingali has a lot of inertia. That would seem to make it hard to dance with a horn. Perhaps Tommy Horning has squared the circle.
One final note (ouch, another pun): horns bring soul to live classical and jazz music for a good reason.
Neil
