It is not impossible to have both. Expensive, perhaps, and large per Hoffman's Iron Law. And horns, well, I believe there are many horns still designed on ancient principles ignoring later research-or designed for different goals such as constant coverage in PA situations-or just copied from some other commercial design without much knowledge. But some horns can sound very nice indeed.
As for what is wrong with low and medium efficiency, nothing necessarily, though Paul Klipsch claimed that correlated to increased distortion (I haven't read that paper in a long time so I don't remember the mechanism). On the other hand, I've never heard a very low efficiency tiny driver system that I truly liked. And some folks prefer amplification styles which simply do not yield high power therefore necessitating efficient speakers.
There is nothing perfect in audio, it is all just tradeoffs, for which each person has different tastes.
Sure, why not? Every book has something to offer, especially if newer. This one
High Performance Loudspeakers book by Martin Colloms
is a good one as well.
- Status
- This old topic is closed. If you want to reopen this topic, contact a moderator using the "Report Post" button.