The relationship between horn-loaded loudspeakers users and honk sound that some horns tend to produce migh be stratified by the following sequential categories.

1)      Ignorant hate
2)      Ignorant acceptance
3)      Dealing with it
4)      Mature dealing with it
5)      Mature hate
6)      Creative use.

I will briefly explain each category.

1)  The “Ignorant hate” covers 95% of all direct radiator users. They heard some ignorantly-made or crappie old horns, they heard the horrible honk and the caped sound. They hated it and they invented for themselves the term “horn sound”.  They are uninformed and not familiar with reasons, consequences or better results and they hate what they heard, not knowing that what they heard were not horns sound but the sound of badly designed or Ignorant implemented acoustic system.

2)  The Ignorant acceptance is a second step in the Honk Evolution. Some people are deaf, stupid or do not care and they get some of those “ignorantly-made or crappie old horns”. I would estimate that 30% of hors user in this stage. The worship their honky playback – there is nothing wrong with it. It is like living with ugly women: if you like her then she does not look ugly to you and this is all that counts. Despite that at this stage there is a perfect balance between owner requirement and the actual result the actual sounds of those people is still unnaturally honky and might not be considered as acceptable from perspective of “advanced audio and evolved music reproduction techniques”

3)  Next category is the people who “Dealing with it.”  They are probably 80% of all users from former “Ignorant acceptance” category. They head the hone from their playback, they do not like it and they are willing to “tweak” playback to minimize or to eliminate honk. To a degree they are more or less successful, the results are wary greatly.

4)  The most advanced people from the former “Dealing with it” group learned what is necessary to be done in order honk does not show and they form own group: “Mature dealing with it”. They no just tweak but drastically re-design or design  from scratch acoustic systems that are more or less free from honk. They are perhaps 5%-10% of the former category.

5)  The next group is “Mature hate” group and they are the most advanced groups of horn users. They hate honk distortions of any kind and the developed rules for own horns use that virtually made honk appearance imposable. They are literally a few people, I would personally name no more than a dozen of them and there is perhaps a 2-3 times as much out there all together.

6)  There is however another group or I would say not a group but a level of understanding. Most of musical instruments run very ugly Q hyperbolic curve and they are naturally honky. Some people understand that there is Bad honk and there is Good Honk and they know how tweak the rules from the previous level in order acoustic system to produce “good honk” – when it necessary, at proper dynamic level, at right time of pitch’s decay or rise …. It is very hard to estimate the amount of the people who are able to do it. You won’t read about it and you won’t get it from picture or system description. However, this is the most sophisticated level of horns using and no other topology is able to handle the effect.

Paul S wrote:

I realize I will never get horn dynamics with direct radiators; and I still wonder … if anyone actually gets the Tone (without shaping) with horns.