Someone sent me an e-mail asking specifically about "horn honk", and I thought it would be a good idea to post part of my reply here.
Horn honk is probably the great unspoken reservation people have upon first seeing the Rhythm Prisms, and I don't blame them a bit. Most prosound horns have honk and/or harshness that makes them unpleasant to listen to, and many horn systems for home audio have the same problem to some extent.
Unfortunately my new generation of speakers hasn't yet been outside my living room at this point (early April 2010), so there are no independent assessments of their sound. But there is a great deal of commentary on the sound of a well-respected DIY project that uses the same horn, and that provides relevant information.
On the AudioKarma website is a massive megathread and several related threads about a DIY project called the "econowave" (it uses an inexpensive waveguide-style horn with an inexpensive compression driver - hence the name). The horn I use is the same one, though I didn't realize it was already quite popular in DIY circles when I first "discovered" it, while researching horns for a high-end bass guitar cabinet. Here is a thread that gives a brief introduction; see in particular posts 3, 5, and 22:
http://audiokarma.org/forums/showthread.php?t=197859&highlight=econowave Here is the AudioKarma megathread if you're so inclined. Over ten thousand posts; I have not and do not intend to read it, though I have skimmed parts of it:
http://audiokarma.org/forums/showthread.php?t=150939 Now what is interesting about the econowave project is its massive popularity among DIYers who started out with a healthy anti-horn prejudice. Here is a clickable list of econowave projects, click on the names and you can read comments by some of the builders:
http://audiokarma.org/forums/showpost.php?p=2260584&postcount=2409 Now let's get into why I think my speakers are significantly better that the best of the econowaves: First, my crossover kung fu is mas macho; and second, I'm using a better compression driver.
In the curves that I've seen on the econowave thread, I can see evidence that the builders are either overlooking or not adequately dealing with a couple of issues. Now in all fairness it took me several solid weeks with some pretty good test equipment to appreciate the consequence of these issues and figure out how to deal with them. The econowave project is an excellent design, but I believe that my speakers using the same horn incorporate two refinements that are worthwhile.
The compression driver I'm using is a fairly expensive unit that I had to import from Europe, though US distribution should be in place by now. I believe it to be the finest driver of its type for this application, and I have tried all of the likely contenders or their equivalents. My driver uses a polymer diaphragm and is smoother-sounding than the metal diaphragm drivers, and its internal geometry allows a better transition to the horn's relatively wide flare in the horizontal plane. I will reveal its identity to my customers so that if I hit a moose one night they can get replacements if they ever blow a driver (unlikely).
I have not encountered any online commentary saying "I heard the econowaves and they have horn honk" or words to that effect, and I looked hard to find anything like that before writing what you see above. I'm not saying no such comment exists, but the trend is in the opposite direction: The econowave continues winning over people who hate horns. My claim is that my speakers that use the same horn are even further removed from having audible horn coloration.
