I would have toyed with the idea 20 years ago, but these days I'm making horns a quarter the size of the Karlson that run 6dB hotter, so it's not a path I'd likely go down.
It really doesn't. The only resemblance is in the shape of the exponential cutout of the front. From a performance standpoint it's a dual chamber reflex, but the front port is so large it doesn't exhibit the usual bandpass characteristics of dual chamber reflexes. It resembles a horn in that there is a chamber that the front wave fires into rather than going direct to the air. That chamber does lower the box Fb as compared to without the front chamber, but it does not add significant broadband gain to the system as a horn does.
That's what I thought. If it doesn't add gain, I guess I just don't understand. Seems like front chamber would cause reflections and color the sound. If it doesn't add gain to make it worthwhile, what's the point?
Because the lowering of the Fb by the front chamber allows the driver to operate to a lower frequency than otherwise. In effect you do get gain in the low end over a single-chamber reflex, but the amount of gain is slight (3-5dB or so) and only extends over perhaps a half-octave range at best, compared to a horn where gain of 10-15dB over a two octave or better bandwidth is de rigeur.
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