What are the Top Horn Speakers in the World Today? Vox Olympian vs Avantgarde Trio vs ???

[LL21]

As I have stated previously, while I have not heard the Symphonia's and am sure they are special, the Destination Audio Vista's treated me to a truly unforgettable musical experience. A must hear in top end horn systems.

Most intrigued by reading/posting with Fred Crane about the Destination Audio Malta Horn Loudspeaker. Looks magnificent.

 

[Willgolf]

I went on the Distribution Audio Website to look for specs and pricing of the Vista's and could not find any. Any idea on size and MSRP?

 

[Argonaut]

Owned the Avantgarde Trio LE26 with 4x Bass Horn and changed to Aries Cerat Symphonia LE just recently.
In 30+ years in this hobby, i haven´t heard anything that performs in the High/Mid/Mid bass like the Symphonia´s do. The level of realism coming out of these beauties is simply mind bending.

A few images of your recently acquired Symphonia’s would be much appreciated @Yakamozan .

 

[Yakamozan]

A few images of your recently acquired Symphonia’s would be much appreciated @Yakamozan .

et voila
they are in hibernation mode right now
Will send you some images once the system is up and running again.

 

[Argonaut]

Gorgeous … the nature of the techniques used by Stavros in crafting the finish of the mid and tweeter horns make each pair of Symphonia’s truly individual and unique

 

[Bjorn]

Hope it's ok to share a teaser of horn speaker we plan to release this year.

 

[morricab]

Hope it's ok to share a teaser of horn speaker we plan to release this year.
View attachment 102879

Looks Cinema ready

 

[Gregadd]

Personally, if I were going all out on horns I would do it myself. Hire a cabinet maker and design something beautiful. Ditto on my SET.

 

[Solypsa]

Personally, if I were going all out on horns I would do it myself. Hire a cabinet maker and design something beautiful. Ditto on my SET.

Why only horns and sets? Could do same for pretty much any topology ?

 

[bonzo75]

Why only horns and sets? Could do same for pretty much any topology ?

With horns and SETs there is decades of material publicly available. You can have your own choice of drivers, cabinet, and crossover, all known. So you don't really need to invent anything. If you want to design a cone, the best of the cones today are proprietary designs, so you will have to be pretty inventive to beat them. For horns and SETs, all you need to do is listen to something good that has a publicly available design and know someone who can replicate it, or do it yourself if you have the skillset. But you don't necessarily need to invent, unless you want to go commercial, you need to then make a tweak to call it your own, and that is where problems start which is why so few modern horns are any good.

 

[Solypsa]

OK point taken. I might be inclined to give a bit less credit to 'proprietary designs' for cones than some, but I hear you.

 

[Joao@altheamusica]

Hope it's ok to share a teaser of horn speaker we plan to release this year.
View attachment 102879

Hell Björn,
looks very interesting.... my apologies! Any more detailed info...
Greatings

 

[Gregadd]

Why only horns and sets? Could do same for pretty much any topology ?

I could not. OTOH I saw a video where a man took a spade and literally carved an apartment into the ground

 

[Solypsa]

I only responded as I did because in some circles cone transducer technology also reached a peak in the same era as did horn technology. Tweeters seemed to reach a peak later but still possibly3 or 4 decades back...

 

[bonzo75]

I only responded as I did because in some circles cone transducer technology also reached a peak in the same era as did horn technology. Tweeters seemed to reach a peak later but still possibly3 or 4 decades back...

which are the good old cones, drivers and schematics available?

 

[Solypsa]

Klangfilm / Siemens 60 + years old

Altec 50 + years old

Tannoy 50 + years old

TAD 40 + years ago

Etc

I am not saying modern designs are bad. I am specifically responding to the DIY comment I originally referred to.

 

[PeterA]

Klangfilm / Siemens 60 + years old

Altec 50 + years old

Tannoy 50 + years old

TAD 40 + years ago

Etc

I am not saying modern designs are bad. I am specifically responding to the DIY comment I originally referred to.

Perhaps the title of the thread should be: “what are the top horn speakers made today and how do they compare to the top horn speakers made in the past?”

 

[Bjorn]

Hell Björn,
looks very interesting.... my apologies! Any more detailed info...
Greatings

Thanks for the interest. It's probably not the right thread to share much, but I'll give some snippets and more information will be presented in dedicated thread when time is right. Measurements will also be eventually shown, including polar plots.

2-way horn with a midrange/treble horn and a midbass horn sold either with or without a separate bass solution, making it 3-way system. Compression driver with beryllium diaphragm. Dimension is: 126 cm width (49.6"), 172 cm height (67.7") and depth I think is around 122 cm (48").

Exceptional uniform directivity. Horizontally the directivity of approximately 85° is uniform between 200 Hz and 18 kHz. Vertically the directivity of approximately 55° is constant between 500 Hz and 12500 Hz.

The midbass horn is designed to minimize the floor bounce, achieving a more even response in the important midbass area with a fuller representation.

It's an active system that requires amplication of each driver. It will be sold together with a high quality DSP that will also function as DAC, Pre-amp and possibly also have streaming built in. Take note that we don't believe in applying a DSP for "room correction" other than tailoring the overall resonse and perhaps reduce some low frequenc peaks when treatment isn't possible. The DSP is primarily used as crossover, speaker correction of what's minimum phase behaviour and time alignment between drivers. We believe an active system has many advantages over passive. We use our own class D amps with extremely low noise and distortion. However, amps can be chosen by customer as desired, though setup becomes easier if the gain is the same.

Finish. The picture below shows the horn with matte American walnut veneer on the inside and black matte paint on the rear. We're open to customize finishes, including glossy paint as well.



Our bass solution is a subwoofer with dual 18" woofers in a sealed enclosure and which can take a lot of power. We chose this because we wanted a subwoofer that has the ability of both going very low in frequency and could be crossed over as high as 140 Hz area without making it too big and combined with high SPL that matches the horn system. A horn loaded subwoofer that can operate linear in such a wide frequency area would have become gigantic.

Our subwoofer still has some horn loading, but that's only in a limited frequency area above 100 Hz. A prototype is seen below.


As previously mentioned, it's possible to buy only the 2-way horn system and use it with a bass solution of own desire. The midbass horn should be crossed over at 80 Hz or higher.

Price: Not decided yet and also depends on what DSP we offer it with. Obviously this isn't going to be a low cost system. But it will cost considerably less than other large horn speakers (even including a high quality DSP/DAC/Preamp) since we are selling direct.

 

[abeidrov]

Loads has been written the AER Pnoe, maybe before you became active on the forum. The AER driver is probably the best driver, maybe Feastrex is great (which I havent't heard so I cannot say). I am not mentioning my favorite horns here because in some ways this is a pointless thread asking what are your favorite speakers, I have written about a lot of them. I was just responding to comments here on Trios and Tune Audio when they came up, but AER Pnoe is far superior

There is a very detailed thread on the AER on DIY audio by a Russian named Murat. He is one of the most methodical and sensible documenter I have come across on any forum, who went through a range of drivers from TAD, ALE, Goto, etc which he has detailed beautifully before landing on the AER highs with Goto bass. Another billionaire in Russia owned AER crossed over to Maxxonic woofers. I posted a lot of Murat's videos on the forum. He was well ahead of his time to document his research using accompanying videos.

Bill and I wrote about AER because we heard the General's system, which Ron later heard and wrote about it as the best system he had heard as well. I have heard the AER Pnoe in Genera'l's, in another place with some SETs, then obviously at Munich. At the General's It sounded better than almost all systems I have heard anywhere, while it sounded among the worst at Munich. Also, it was highly sensitive to any change anywhere in the chain. I later realized talking to those who have built speakers that this is due to being crossoverless - such speakers are like microscopes and very sensitive to changes. There are very few crossoverless speakers (I have heard the AER Pnoe, Loth MInistrel (stamm drivers), Yamamura). There were the Carfrae horns based on Lowther which might take the AER, and there is someone in NJ who makes some based on AER.

To me it indeed is the best commercial horn available and can be DIYed to the same, but it is a bit weird in terms of the fact that it is going to sound sh*t till you get it awesome, and even then it will be restricted to mainly classical and jazz. It is also the most sensitive speaker I have heard to showing differences between originals and reissues, and reissues sounded extremely poor. Just this week I was listening to a Fostex 3-way and the guy who had built it said while building he ran the Fostex midrange driver (which covers from just under 100hz all the way to 7khz) on its own for a while without a crossover, and it showed a massive variance to recordings until he put the crossovers in. Even then there was a difference but it was much less and it made reissues enjoyable. Fyi, best I heard reissues relative to originals were in DSPed systems.

But yes, if I had a lot of money today I could easily see myself loading up on original LPs first, then buying a Pnoe AER and running it with sub-5 watt amps on type 46, 45, 50, 2a3, and many other such valves, and the red sparrow on a linear tracker like Vyger.

That said, it is much easier to buy an AG trio, just plug it in to digital or low quality LPs, and get it sounding good right out of the box for all genres of music. Plus, it is much more widely distributed and serviced.

Below is the latest video of the AER-based system that Kedar mentioned. The guy has recently moved from Maxxonic woofers built into the wall to some ripole subwoofers. He mostly listens to tape and has the biggest tape collection in the country.

 

[bonzo75]

Below is the latest video of the AER-based system that Kedar mentioned. The guy has recently moved from Maxxonic woofers built into the wall to some ripole subwoofers. He mostly listens to tape and has the biggest tape collection in the country.

Just to clarify, these are videos the billionaire I mentioned with AER and Maxxonic, not Murat. This guy’s videos were clean sounding but I think he is using DRC based on video. I preferred Murat’s more. This is based on videos only no further insight.