John:

You've no doubt seen the Avant Garde horns from Germany? They are pretty hard-core looking. I heard them at a Stereophile show and wasn't impressed particularly. How about you? I am particularly sensitive to the traditional tendency of horns to sound 'honky' for lack of a better word. The Avant Gardes sounded honky to me. Actually, _most_ horn designs I've heard sound not so good, at least to my ears. It's taken about 50 pounds of "Aquaplas" on my high frequency horn (they're a couple feet wide at the mouth) to get them to sound right. The result _was_ worth it though.

I've also found that horns almost demand to be driven by tube amps, and single ended triode tube amps are even better.