I recently acquired a pair of Horn Shoppe's The Horn speakers, and noticed that they haven't been reviewed for awhile. I thought that I'd throw my 2 cents in, especially since these reviews (along with the professional's) helped me a lot in my decision to buy these. I have the latest version with the Fostex FE126EN drivers. The MSRP listed above is outdated- these speakers now cost $925, S&H included.

Background:

I am a "Maggie Man" in general, having owned 4 pairs now. I have climbed the ladder from MMG's to my highly modified 3 series. I have put a lot of time, work and expense into my system, and enjoy the journey as much as any crazy audio obsessive. I put together a second, smaller system in the loft awhile back, and that's what got me tuned in to the virtues of point source speakers and simple tube amps.

My main system is pretty elaborate. It consists of actively XO'ed, tri-amped, DEQX'ed true ribbon Maggies in mahogany ("Gunned") frames with dual subs. Most of the tricks/ tweaks under the sun have been employed. Of course, it sounds very good, and can do many things that the simple system with the Horn Shoppes can't. But, it still sounds kind of "hi-fi" at times, so I find myself chasing "upgrades" in an endless circle. Don't get me wrong, the Magnepans aren't going anywhere. They are also integrated with my home theatre, in which they really excel.

My experience with the Horn Shoppe Horns so far:

I'll admit, I did get myself a bit hyped up by reading the reviews before I received them, so I had high expectations. I'm happy to report that they lived up to them, and then some. I listened to tunes last night for a good while, and had the same reaction as I do every time I hear them: These speakers just reproduce satisfying music, period. It's an experience that leaves you smiling, dancing, singing along and craving more.

The Horns just let the music do it's thing. There is something to be said about keeping it simple. The sound is very pure, and they are doing things that I just didn't expect at all. Their detail retrieval and texture is just stunning. I am hearing ambient bass and spatial information in the background. The bass doesn't go as low or get as powerful as some, but I just don't miss it much because I am hearing more of the actual music as a whole. That's one of their greatest strengths- coherency, top to bottom.

The treble is crisp and extended, even without a tweeter. They have no problem recreating the sizzle of a brushed cymbal or the startle of an electronic pulse. No listener fatigue, even after a couple of albums in a row. They are much faster than I expected- they really are peers of, or dare I say better than the Magnepans in this regard. Those Fostex drivers are really something else. Someday, I may try adding the Heils and/ or the Horn Shoppe bass module, but I am more than satisfied without them, and want to avoid the "more is better" syndrome again.

For the record, in reference to and also to quote the review below, I completely disagree (with Nick). I'm not saying that what he heard was wrong, but obviously something was wrong. I listen to a lot of complex music, and The Horns tracked it all with ease. They are finicky to set up, but when you find the optimal positioning of the speakers in the room, there is plenty of mid- bass and low-ish bass down to about 50 Hz., in a 12x18' room anyway. I also found that they imaged like crazy in the sweet spot, yet sounded amazing even in other areas of the house. I've played them LOUD, experimenting with my big Counterpoint hybrid amp hooked up to them, and they only showed signs of strain during intense crescendos.

I am really enjoying listening to MUSIC with The Horns. Definitely a winner, because they get the one thing that matters right.

Just writing this review as a response to some of the other posts.
2-way and 3-way systems are not all that bad or evil. When you refrain from a religious debate point source vs. multiple x-over vs. line source vs. active x-over etc. at the end of the day you need a speaker that sounds good in your room.The horns are difficult to set up right and only make sense for one person sitting exactly in the tiny sweet spot.
Still no bass. Typically in a room half of the notes are missing. No mid bass. If you had a track with only bongos playing, I'd say the horns are fantastic. More complex music: something is missing. Even with a sub. A single 4" driver can not be the answer to all questions. I used flea SET, regular tube mono amps, now solid state mono blocks and I can't get the sound right. I have RTA and a tricked out system and my other speakers image much much better. If you drive the horns loud they start to smear. If making a great speaker was as easy as smacking a single 4" driver in a relatively plain enclosure.....that's what everybody would be doing, don't you think? I just needed to post this because the other reviews are so one-sided and I completely disagree with them. I would say the horns are a good investment for a secondary system to experiment with (not expensive) but I doubt that many people would be happy with the horns for their every day listening needs.

Very natural sound with excellent imaging. Vocals are stunningly real. Price - no better deal on the market After sales service - 100% satisfaction.

Sensitive to room placement - better for serious sit down listening than for background music for parties. Bass is very natural but not enhanced to satisfy lovers of rock music. A good quality subwoofer can be added. A very good low wattage amplifier is required preferably tube - these speakers will faithfully reflect the strengths of the components used to drive them.

I researched full range horn speakers for some time. Though I was impressed with the sound (for instance 8 inch Lowthers) the size of the cabinets and cost held me back. Ed Shilling, the creator of the Horns has come up with a no-compromise solution - 4 inch full range drivers in a good looking and, mercifully, medium-sized cabinet. The Horns simply don't disappoint. I listened to them for a year without subwoofer with great satisfaction. I have recently added an excellent subwoofer (from another system). While there is some improvement the original Horns have a natural and very satisfactory bass with some sensitivity to placement in the room. They are best driven with a low wattage tube amplifier. I have a LEAK Stereo 20 (with Telefunken tubes). The clarity, imaging and overall presence is phenomenal. Ed is one of the best people you'll ever meet for honest advice and excellent after sales service. Highly recommended.

PART 2 SETTING THE STANDARD Because The Horn has only one driver, it is essentially a point source. This gives it the edge and ability to task imaging unlike anything you’ve ever heard with multiple drivers, including line source arrays. I have owned a lot of speakers over the years, and thought I knew what good imaging was. You have to experience The Horn to know what I’m talking about. Nothing from Magnepan to mini monitors can image like The Horn. Some manufactures attempt to time align their drivers, but this doesn’t even come close to being the same thing as the sound still comes from more than one location. Think of it this way, the entire range of the human voice comes from only one mouth, not from two or three separate holes in the head (or body) lined up on a vertical plain. On this point alone, the logic of multi driver systems is inherently flawed from the get go. No amount of ingenuity can alter or compensate for the laws of physics. Experience The Horn! At the output terminals of your amplifier, the electrical signal is complete and ready to become mechanical energy. With The Horn this is exactly what happens. However when a signal gets butchered by a crossover and delivered to multiple drivers, it becomes filtered, reconstituted and enriched with distortion. Every electronic part including the circuit board they are mounted on will affect and add it’s own signature the signal delivered from your amplifier. This damage the integrity of the amplifiers signal is very audible. Listen to The Horn and you will soon discover just how much a crossover can corrupt the signal from your amplifier. Crossovers implemented in the mid range are evil, a black curse on audio resolution. If used beyond the jurisdiction 120 Hz, they are nothing more than a lame excuse to merge multiple inadequate drivers for compromised performance. As The Horns do not have a crossover they are ruthlessly revealing. This is clearly evident in the midrange where conventional two way systems are crossed over. With The Horns, vocals take on a presence that is so uncanny you’ll swear the artist is in your room performing live without a microphone. I have yet to hear a conventional 2 or 3 way speaker at any price point that can equal The Horn in this regard. The single driver and lack of a crossover is so coherent and true you’d think you radically upgraded your electronics upstream. The original 4” driver had a maximum frequency response of 17K. That’s high enough for most people, but the new driver shoots up to 20K. Regardless, the high frequencies sound as clean and crisp as anything I’ve heard from the best tweeters, including the very same tweeter mounted in Focal’s JM Lab Grande Utopia. Low frequency extension reaches 70 Hz at which point it falls off sharply. By placing The Horn in the corner, you can reach 50Hz, however like many discriminating audiophiles, I like my speakers positioned well out into the room, as far as possible from the walls. Even though the quantity of bass doesn't dig as deep as I'd like it to, I am stunned by the quality of the bass by The Horn. A 4" driver doesn't muddle the bass like bigger drivers do. It's extremely clean, tight and responsive. If a sub were to be integrated, I wouldn't expect much unless it was capable of the same excellence in its range as The Horns do within their range. So of course The Horn Shoppe also makes a Horn Line augmenter for The Horn. It too utilizes a small driver and provides seamless integration down to 30Hz. CONTINUED BELOW

PART 3 COMPARED TO WHAT ?? I have heard a variety of electrostatic speakers over the years -which by the way are usually single drivers operating within the same range of The Horn. Electrostats are very coherent but unlike The Horn they are not very efficient and require a very stable amplification as the impedance tends to be all over the map. The other concern with electrostats is that they lack dynamic range. Even if you never heard live drums in your life you’ll quickly recognize something is terribly wrong when you hear them through electrostats. Electrostats are great –within their limitations. That’s the great thing about The Horn. Regardless of your mood, musical preference, or how loud you like to listen, The Horn can convincingly play any kind of music with a supernatural realism that is very difficult to describe. Ed Schilling, father and creator of The Horn has measured sound pressure levels of 115db sitting 15’ back. It takes tremendous power do that, in excess 500 watts. Yet The Horn is efficient enough to be driven reasonably loud with just a few watts as is the case with the excellent Decware Zen. So here we have a small speaker with a single 4” driver, actually if you measure the diameter of the cone it’s more like 2.5”! You would think small speaker equates small sound stage, right? Wrong. Using a single ended triode amplifier with a total output power of less than 5 watts, I get a huge solid wall of sound. Lateral width and depth of field is astonishing. Of course placement in the room, the quality of amplification and components up stream will make a difference. Although these speakers are not by far the most expensive I’ve ever bought, performance wise they surpass I everything ever owned or had the privilege to listen to. But before I owned or even had a chance to listen to The Horn, I read a post on Audio Asylum about a Horn owner who had made some intriguing comments about his Horns. He compared them very favorably to his Martian Logan CLS (5K) and his Wilson Watt Puppies (20K). I was very skeptical but his remarks caught my attention. I had also heard some other reports coming from people that owned the highly esteemed Magnepan 1.6 QRs, New Form Ribbons and many other highly regarded speakers boasting great value according to the audio magazines. Then one day I had the opportunity to hear them for myself. My skepticism stayed with me right up until I heard Anne Wilson’s voice coming out of The Horn. It was so live, so real and present it completely took hold of me and blew me away like an adolescent experiencing his first orgasm! A speaker ought to reveal what it has been given. And once you’ve heard The Horn it is utterly shocking how bad even the so called “best speakers” fall short of this mark. Ed Schilling at The Horn Shoppe sells these with a no hassle 30 day money back guarantee. You can find out more by visiting… www.thehornshoppe.com

Incredible coherancy, speed, dynamics, revealing layers of detail in spades. Sound stage and imaging to die for! Efficient enough to be driven by almost anything including flea amps. Incredible mind boggling value.

Limited low frequency response, however the quality of bass that is in there range is outstanding

PART 4 ADDENDUM To further increase the resolution of these speakers, Ed suggested I bypass the binding posts by drilling a small hole (big enough for the speaker leads to pass through) 0.5” behind each terminal of the binding posts. Then by using the binding posts merely as clamps, you can touch the speaker leads directly to the leads of the driver and lock the connection tight without having to pass the signal through the binding posts. This little tweak worked so well I performed it on my amplifier as well. The difference is very apparent, however cosmetically there is a price to pay as things get altered. The following link illustrates what this modification looks like on my speakers. http://groups.msn.com/SightUnseenSeemlyVisual/shoebox.msnw?actio n=ShowPhoto&PhotoID=2 If you are interested in furthering the performance of these magnificent speakers beyond this, you might want to consider installing Bybee Quantum Purifiers on each driver… www.bybeetech.com Von Schweikert puts these in their statement/flagship model DB 100 (10K) and Marten Design puts them in their statement/flagship model Coltrane (40K), I installed one on each driver in my Horns too. And yes, they do contribute to even higher resolution. So even if you can’t buy into Bybee’s explanation as to how and why they work, you might want to try them anyhow. They too have a thirty day money back guarantee like The Horns There is another device known as the ZERO Autotransformer that comes with the same thirty day money back guarantee. The ZEROs were designed for OTL (output transformerless) amplifiers to multiply the speakers impedance by 2, 3, or 4 times so the amplifier can work at its optimum. www.zeroimpedance.com I use the ZEROs in reverse to lower the impedance my amplifier sees as it strangely enough prefers and performs better a 2 ohm load! Whether the ZEROs will benefit your system or not largely depends on the amplifier and its optimum operating range. Finally, it’s worth repeating that Ed does have a bass augmenter (not a sub) available to fill in that part of the first octave that is out of the range of The Horn.

Dynamics, realism and Ed's total support. Very tweakable.

Long break in time. May have moderate WAF (I think they look classy). Some may want to add a Sub for the final bottom octave.

I first read about this speaker in Art Dudley's Listener audio journal. I was intriqued as Ed was using a driver with a lineage that I had a long term familiarity with (Foster/Fostex). I called Ed up and after a bit of banter about musical tastes, gear and wood finishing, I ordered a pair. Ed did a great job matching the finish of the furniture I already had in my living/listening room. Although Ed prepared me that they would require a lengthy break in, I was immediately awestruck at the huge soundstage and transparency of the sound! I've had them now since Oct. 2000 and have since made a few modifications to them (Ed is constantly improving upon his product). I have added a 20-gram roll of Acousta-Stuf just behind the driver to minimize midrange shout from the horn, upgraded the internal wiring and also added 23 lbs. of 7.5 lead shot to the bottom cavity of each enclosure. I also added steel spikes. These mods vastly improved the bottom end and cleaned up the overall sound. Ed's early models had a "treatment" applied to the cones. I changed mine out for stock FE-108Z's. (He has since discontinued this practice and there has been a upgrade to the Fostex driver he now uses.) I have carefully measured the in-room response of my system and the results were a very impressive 55 to 18,000 Hz +/-3dB. And this is from a four inch driver! Oh, and if you are worried about acoustic output, I have measured over 100dB of SPL at TWO meters distance! The build quality is rock solid. The fit and finish on mine have that home-grown, hand-sewn quality to it, but that's alright. They exude character in every regard! A very lively presentation with enough finesse to leave you with the impression that you actually heard the singer in your room! BTW, I am using these with a McIntosh CDP directly driving a Pass Labs Aleph 30 SE power amp.

Construction is rock solid. Tap on any part of the cabinet and it you'll know what I mean. Ed is Mr. Customer Service and Support. Great guy to deal with. I call every 6-12 months and he still is interested in hearing about how I feel about his Horns.

Break-in time was long. Extremely well built but not overly attractive. Low end response is not overwhelming. I don't care; these speakers continue to please.

I've been listening since the late sixties. I am a former member of the speaker of the month club. I called Ed and ordered my Horns five minutes after I finished reading Art Dudley's review in LISTENER. I bought them wih the standard drivers but after two months I purchased the Fostex upgrades from Ed. After the long break-in period I found nothing much lacking with the standard drivers except looks. The Fostex just looked better and more purposeful. My wife felt the Horns were unattractive but not ugly or poorly made. I stripped off the finish and sealed and painted them with black lacquer. They were then color sanded and hand polished. Not piano black but my wife was happy. I felt the Horns were somewhat unstable and top heavy so I cut a hole in the bottom of both (with Ed's blessing) and put 18lbs of lead shot in plastic bags in each. I routed two oversized bases of 1" MDF and countersunk 4 brass Big Toes in each base. Now my horns are coupled to the floor and completely stable. This added a good deal of low frequency focus and punch. I have no need for a sub-woofer. My current electronics set-up is pretty basic; an old Fisher X-100 integrated amp and a custom made CD player from Pierre Sprey. With the modded Horns, the CD player and the refurbished Fisher I've got less than $2000 tied up. In the past I've had Linn, Naim and Cary and considerably more money invested. I like my current system the best. My musical tastes are acoustic. Most of the time I listen to jazz, blues and chamber music. Vocal music is more involved and breathy. Female vocals seem to hang suspended in mid-air. With the Horns the presentation and delivery is so realistic it makes you want to search your music collection and find something you haven't heard in a while. I have generic Celtic music CD with several tracks that present a wall of sound that extends from side to side and floor to ceiling. With the lights out it is positively eerie. I am looking for a CD copy of "Hearing the Solars Winds" by the Harmonic Choir; that I am sure, would be haunting maybe even scary. For the last two + years I have listened to these speakers several hours a day. I have never been bored by them. I could probably replace them with something else for more money but why? They do everything thing I want and need. And it is still fun when an unsuspecting listener starts to look for the other speakers in the room. I WILL NEVER SELL THESE.

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First speaker of its type I've used

Musicality, imaging, detail, accuracy, speed, soundstage, price.

Loooong break in time - be prepared, no bass below about 70Hz, need a sub, placement can be difficult.

The clear, natural sound from upper bass to highs is simply wonderful. The Horns excel at Vocals, jazz, acoustical, Celtic, folk, and many other types of music. Note attacks are quick, clean, and very natural sounding, and note decay simply sounds the way it should. When placed properly the Horns have a huge soundstage. It seems that sound coming from front and back acts like a bipolar speaker making a soundstage that simply doesn't collapse, no matter where in the room the listener stands/sits. Imaging is superb, one of the best I've ever heard. Instruments and voices can be placed accurately in 3-D space. The Horns are great fun!!

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the horns do not need a lot of power to play loud, low powerd tube amps sound best with this speaker in my room.

lack of bass ( need a sub)

I got the horns to see if a single driver speakers would sound as good as the zen amp nuts say they do. I have to say that this combo is the best i have had to date.I enjoy LPs and CDs that i had a hard time enjoying before, when this happens i know things must be right. the sound is so live i just get into the music so much more.

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