The immediacy part, I’m more certain of. I think they sound very “immediate”. My oldest daughter (a Frank Sinatra fan) actually had a big grin yesterday when she put on a new CD that had just arrived – “Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim”. It sounded very right, very “immediate” to me. I asked her what she was smiling at – she said “it sounds gooood”.

I’m not disparaging your experiences or opinions, just commenting on my own.

And part of the difference in experience might be due to some differences in what I’m working with and the stuff you used. Since I’m an old man now I have access to a bit more disposable income. I have huge bass drivers with very high Xmax and relatively low Qts. (If I sell the stuff I have on eBay, I’m going a step further and buying some Adire Tumults). The mid drivers are pretty much tailor-made for the application (OK not actually, but much more so than just a random 8” midrange driver). I’m running the bottoms with a Crown K2 – not lacking in power or control. I have active crossovers, equalizers, and a RTA to adjust them.

What I’m trying to suggest is that the past for loudspeakers might be their future. Paper cone dynamic drivers and the materials they’re made out of may have arrived at a point where it makes sense to return to open baffles. When Rice & Kellogg started out the electronics weren’t available, and neither were the filter theories well developed (Linkwitz hadn’t even been born). The materials were limited and the amplifier power certainly didn’t exist. Boxes and horn loadings were attempts to compensate for the lack of excursion, sensitivity and amplifier power – all obstacles that don’t exist any longer.

Same for horns – sticking an Edison phonograph horn on a crystal radio receiver earphone in the 1920’s let other people listen. Sticking a horn on a compression driver let 20 watts fill a movie theater. The horns let the otherwise impossible happen. Would they have been applied to domestic listening for so long if they hadn’t been necessary at the outset? I’m betting not. Not that they don’t have their applications – there’s no other effective way to get to the back seats in your local stadium. But that isn’t about fidelity of music reproduction.

Paul Klipsch built his horn to complement his 2 watt amp. I know this because I heard it from his own lips in 1983. Don’t get me wrong – I love Klipschorns, but they’re not the best I’ve ever heard in terms of clarity and coloration. And Paul worked on them for 50 years to improve their tonal balance. Would he have started with a horn if he didn’t need it to overcome other obstacles? I don’t know, but that wouldn’t be very effective engineering, and he was the consummate engineer.
It’s something worth thinking about anyway [I’m sure wasting enough time on it!)

Charlie