Bang & Olufsen - Horn speakers revisited?

I have been reading a lot about horn speakers and the technology seems to have advanced considerably. There are quite a few manufacturers of serious audio horn speakers like Cessaro, Avantgarde, JBL, Vitavox, Klipsch. The best I've ever heard was a Cessaro Liszt and they sounded very impressive. They had no hint of horn honk or squawking, very dynamic, great detail and tone with amazing directivity. TAD, a world leader along with likes of Scanspeak, have made some brilliant drive units. In the Cessaro Chopin, using TAD compression driver, was the first time I heard the multiple strings the vibrate when a single key is struck in the piano. The detail was deeply impressive but the speaker was in great deficit with regards to bass and failed to energise the room like a real piano would. The advantages are supposedly 'better dynamics' and one can use small amplifiers. The single ended triode gang love them. I also noticed that B&O had seriously been toying with the idea of using horn or compression horn. I wonder why they revisited horns and why they ultimately abandoned them.

I've been reading up on horn speakers following your original post. I'd not come across them before. So interesting and thought provoking.

First impressions are that I've yet to see a pair that aren't pretty ugly. Perhaps even B&Os design team would struggle.

I can't comment on the sound as I've never heard a pair but it doesn't take much googling to find yourself in "gold plated cables suspended off the floor by acoustically neutral pixies" territory.

Duels:

First impressions are that I've yet to see a pair that aren't pretty ugly. Perhaps even B&Os design team would struggle.

I concur, though I have to admit that these, from Magico are slightly visually tolerable -- at least when viewed from the front. LOL

B&O horns !

Some years ago I got to visit the B&O factory in Struer and got a sighseeing by Ronny Kaas Mortensen... In one of the building where the prototypes were stored there were some speakers... horn speakers... probably 40yers old or so.. 'They were really loud" was his comment :P

 

BOFA,  Bang & Olufsen  cinema division, has made some very impressive speaker systems for cinema's including some horn units.

Here you van see a speaker with the " small " H6 horn.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next one is with a double magnet H10 horn.

 

 

 Here's some more info on BOFA cinema systems.

http://www.biografmuseet.dk/nyheder/2010/bofahistorie/index.htm

Rudy

One wonders why they revisited this technology and led what the pros/cons were. Am surprised they considered horn technology for their flagship.

seethroughyou:

Am surprised they considered horn technology for their flagship.

Did they really do that?

Or should I rather say - they considered a h*lll lot of different stuff during that process.

MM