Well...I may have crossed over to the "other side". I've been here for about 2 decades now, dabbling mostly in vintage JBL home speakers (peaking with the 250Ti). I've never considered myself a horn guy all these years. The various Klipsch models have never really done it for me, and my own years spend in bands left me associating "Horn" with "PA System".

Well that's all out the window now :-)

Thanks to a new local member here who had been experimenting with various permutations of 4670 parts, I am now the owner of most of what he had. A very good (and strong) friend helped me get them all back to his basement man cave and we spent most of Saturday night spending equal amounts of time laughing at how good they were, and shaking our heads over all of the "audiophile" sacred cows that were getting slayed.

For the initial setup I was using an old AudioArts 2-way crossover (analog and a little noisy) with a Yamaha 1/3 octave EQ ahead of it in the signal chain so I could smooth out some room nodes and remove a little of the horn sound around 1-3k. From there I used an old ATX 8x50 channel "whole house" amp on both the lows and highs. I didn't even have enough proper 1/4 -> RCA cables so a lot of the connections were using 1/4->RCA barrel connectors. It was a Frankenstein setup and would have made any card-carrying audiophile break out in laughter.

That is, until the music started...

O M G

I thought I knew dynamics

I thought I knew how a bass drum should sound

I thought I knew how a trumpet should sound

I thought I had accurate vocal reproduction in my own system

In short, a favorite quote from GoT was playing over and over in my mind ... "You know nothing John Snow".

:-)

I am not even sure that I am going to mess with a digital xover like a DriveRack. The sound is just so well balanced that even with a little hiss between tracks, it's just stunning. There's nothing below about 30hz and there's nothing above 15khz. It's noisy and the imaging is not exactly holographic. But damn it's just addictive to listen to. Track after track we tried to trip up the system and find something it didn't do well. Our own "audiophile" speakers (I have Revel Salon 2's and he has Ariel 10Ts) were suddenly looking very, very overmatched for everything other than being able to smell Diana Krall's breath :-).

It's a new world here in 2021 for me. Looking forward to a new journey into large format JBL horns!

jblnut