Why are horns "in your face"?

[BLSamuel]

Live music is not laid back. You can hardly read anything with some else playing the violin or the piano in the same room. The sound of live instrument is too much ... in your face

Best explanation ever.

Very good explanation Magus. I thought you posted your English wasn't so good? I was trying to think of something like that but couldn't think of a way to put it that well with so few words.

[Tom Mayer]

Live music is not laid back. You can hardly read anything with some
else playing the violin or the piano in the same room. The sound of
live instrument is too much ... in your face.

It
depends, All I listen to are Live DVD concerts, with a pair of
LaScalas and Cornwalls hooked up in 2 channel mode.

When
people comment on my stereo, they say, Man it is like being there .
That said does that mean all live shows are in your face.

Yes if you have ACDC cranked , then hell yes it is in your face as it should be.

<>But i also listen to many unplugged shows that sound warm and full. Also a lot depends on the MIX. As
for Horn versus , I have owned many
different types of Speakers and I allways come back to Klipsch ,
but I would not want Klipsch to be the only speakers people can choose
from.

<> But your right about one thing , when I am playing
a concert No one is reading anything. They just sit there and enjoy.

[jacksonbart]

perhaps your face is too close to the horn?

[seti]

perhaps your face is too close to the horn?

You are likely correct. Coytee step back from the 402. It is so big you could fall in.

[Coytee]

You are likely correct. Coytee step back from the 402. It is so big you could fall in.

I'm simply trying to get closer to Marie.... [^o)]

By the way... if anyone cares, I put the same question to the forum at AudioKarma. I asked here first since I figured I'd get a handful of idiotic answers there by people who never heard horns. I'm still not sure that I got the question answered any better over there than above when Magus said "Live music is not laid back. You can hardly read anything with some else playing the violin or the piano in the same room. The sound of live instrument is too much ... in your face"

That is sort of where I was hoping they'd go... to simply state that "good horns are simply too overwhelming to me and I prefer a more watered down sound by speakers "X")

I don't know that's the case, I just wonder.Anyways, here's the link at AK if anyone wants to see their comments.

http://www.audiokarma.org/forums/showthread.php?t=193683

[colterphoto1]

Horns, being efficient, have less 'power compression' than other speaker types. Because thespeaker element is operating at a fraction of it's usable output, the voice coil tends to not overheat, which can cause a loss of dynamics. Dynamics are heard as being 'louder' and therefore more 'in your face', so it's quite true that horn speakers preserve the dynamics of a live concert experience more.

For those who prefer music to be more of a background to life instead of an event to concentrate on, might find horn loudspeakers not to their liking, especially if they have a lifetime of listening to compressed music over less-than-dynamic loudspeakers.

[magus]

Live music is not laid back. You can hardly read anything with some
else playing the violin or the piano in the same room. The sound of
live instrument is too much ... in your face.

It
depends, All I listen to are Live DVD concerts, with a pair of
LaScalas and Cornwalls hooked up in 2 channel mode.

When
people comment on my stereo, they say, Man it is like being there .
That said does that mean all live shows are in your face.

Well..... when i said "live" I meant straight live and not "live played back through a great system"

So your daughter standing next to you and playing violin (assuming you got daughter and she has the instrument, skills irrelevant ) will be live, yet when you record her performance (even with best quality possible) and play it back through your LaScalas it won't be live anymore (although it may be as good as live - never heard LaScalas )

Coytee,

As to the conversation on AK and some comments on Heresies. Actually, they are the only Klipsches I have heard so far [:$] . And my and my friends' experience is that electronics aside (which is crucial in my opinion), their placement is also critical. I mean they are not normal height floorstanders and there is a confusion concerning their set-up. For example, those Heresies I heard in order to sound right had to have their fronts raised a little (they didn't have the raisers), or they would lack higher midrange and treble. We figured it quite soon. Yet a friend of mine had a hard time he first got Heresies home. At the beginning he said "they are OK, but nothing to rave about". Then he realized they should be placed on the floor and not on a kind of stands he had put them on. But then they sounded.... too much in your face . When I asked him what he meant by that he said "Vocals are not pleasant at all. They give you a headache". Well, hard to argue with this. But then he experimented with the set-up a little more and all of a sudden he wrote on the forum "Wow! Now it's just wonderful. What can I tell you? It's just pure music. It makes no sense to dicuss frequencies and other sound aspects audiophiles love to talk about for hours. I just can "see" the instruments and that's where all the talking ends". So what happend? He did the simplest thing in the world: put them flat on the floor. It was just counter-intuitive, as he expected the sound would go on his legs (instead of the face ).

What's the lesson? Don't jump to conclusions even if you are hit in your face

[SWL]

perhaps your face is too close to the horn?

Keep em coming JB.........reminds me of the "Pet Peeves" discussion where your comment was that you thought it was about Peavy speakers. []

.......You're battin' about 500. []

[Don Richard]

perhaps your face is too close to the horn?

[BLSamuel]

I think others have said pretty much the same things.

• They sound more like the real thing so can't be ignored
• They just don't allow the music to be "background"
• The dynamics as CP1 stated, the sound from horns just arrives with an ease and clearness that just doesn't happen as often with other types of transducers (a compression driver sounds less compressed if you will)
• They just can't admit the horn based speakers and system they've heard sounds closer to what they've been trying to achieve at many time the cost
• People don't want to be involved in the music

An example of the horn sound can't be ignored...

• Still using some speakers I slapped together in college (8" woofer, 1" soft dome with slapped together crossover) - the sound is OK, it's what we're used to (and hopefully to change soon...)
• Hooked up some Heresies for a couple of days we were transporting for a Klipsch Forum friend
• Put on a few tracks for James Taylor's Live At The Beacon Theatre DVD and The Eagles' Hell Freezes Over DVD the night before leaving for spring break
• My wife and daughters sat down and just watched and listened, took a break from packing to just enjoy the music - that is very significant - the day(s) and night(s) before a long trip around here we all get a bit stressed out - a perception at times that there's too much to do to do anything else - never done that with our normal speakers, not even while reading the paper

So maybe people are too buy, or think they're too busy, to just sit and listen to the music?

[seti]

I've never owned anything but horns most of my friends have horns. It is part of living in Klipsch territory. My ears are biased so maybe that is a factor. "In your face" is a phrase I've never associated with good horns unless I'm in a club and they are being abused. It is amazing how many clubs abuse sound systems. Thank god for ear plugs.

[magus]

blsamuel,

you are very right about this one - a lot of people do not really listen to music

it may sound cruel, even insulting, but this is my obsevation too

even if they do sit down and put other things away, they are rather looking for things they are familiar with (some tune, musical phrase or sounds they heard before and want to hear again)

therefore, it is so difficult for them to admit new things - new music, new musical arrangement, and finally new sound - because new is not old, and therefore unwelcome

but hey! let's not be so unforgiving! this is true with almost everebody, even with musicians themselves.

because, after all, how many Mileses Davises have there been around in the history of music?

[jdm56]

I define "in your face" sound as a forward, or prominent mid-range. My LS2's don't sound that way at all to me. They instead sound very neutral with regards to midrange placement or prominence, sounding neither forward or laid back. But they do have amazing clarity, so I think the "problem" of "in-your-face" sound has more to do with frequency response errors than with the controlled directivity aspect of horn performance. -my 2 cents worth

[garyrc]

There was a campaign against horns, starting with the advent of "Golden Ears" stores -- salons -- in the '70s. It was in such a store, in about 1979, that I first saw a sales person cup his hands in front of his mouth to produce what he thought was the inferior sound of horns (he didn't have any in his store, naturally). This technique for putting down the competition spread rapidly. I wonder how many of these hand cuppers ever heard a good horn with good program material.

I think the reasons people say these things are:

1) Good horns can be very revealing, and revealing of distortion in the source (e.g., overrecording, especially in digital, or the just barely noticeable onset of microphone diaphragm crashing) while domes, cones, and the like, may soften the attack, and slightly mask the music. This masking can sound smooth and pretty to some people.

2) PWK had some pictures of the spurious, extraneous frequencies produced by loudspeakers when they were fed pure, single tones. The horn loaded compression drivers shown produced very few of these sidebars and they were of low amplitude. The direct radiators shown produced significantly more sidebars of higher amplitude. If the sidebars are harmonically related in a pleasant way to the pure tones, that can prettify the music --- gild the lilly --in a way that good horns do not.

3) Social conditioning on the part of those who don't sell horns.

[BLSamuel]

I'll add one or two to Garyrc's list

4) Getting too close to the holy grail - proper horns (Klipsch) come closest to reproducing live sound more consistently IMVHO - the neurotic audiophile probably doesn't reallly want things to sound right - the search will end if one arrives at the holy grail or as close as one's going to get