Hornloading, fatigue, comb filtering...

[walker]

The following paragraphs are about horn loaded speakers, it is from a Kilowatt thread. It has me thinking that there must be some more uptodate information on horn fatigue.

{ The next paragraph is my memory of articles I read in the early 80s. I'm sure that there are those on this forum that are more up to date on psychoacoustics, please jump in and correct the following if you disagree.

Kilowatt, you may have noticed that horn loaded speakers, (mids and highs included) aren't very popular in hifi. They sound spectacular but few people can live with them. Horns produce peaks and valleys in the frequency response, called comb filtering, these occur close together and often don't show on the plots. The brain, cleaver beasty that it is, recognises the response, (after all horn loading occurs in nature) and actively tries to flatten the response. After an hour of concentration you can get very fatigued. I find myself turning down the volume after about 30 mins and I'm not afraid of a few dBs. You don't get fatigued at concerts because of the ambient noise.

I stress that that is my take on horns. I repeat my invitation if more research has been done since then. }

Whats your understanding of this issue?
Regards WALKER

I was tempted to call this thread feeling horny but thought better of it.

[GRollins]

Horns distort.
There is distortion at the throat where the driver meets the horn. Another, similar, distortion occurs at the mouth where the horn unloads into the room. I also seem to recall reading that some flare rates (perhaps all, I can't remember) cause distortion.
Distortion, in and of itself, is annoying.
All that efficiency comes at a cost. Nothing's free.

Grey