Originally Posted by Neel

Hey guys, horns are very far from being "outdated" , Image Dynamics no longer makes them because the founder of the company (Eric Stevens) left the company and since he personally holds the patent to the horns, Image Dynamics can no longer make them. I know Eric is working on launching a new car audio company soon and for now he is still selling the horns and compression drivers under "Stevens Audio".

"At one time I was a huge car stereo fanatic and as such in my day the dream was to have a pair of Soundworks HCLDs."

Do you mean Speakersworks? Speakerworks made wave guides that are much different then the HLCD's that Image sold in the past. Although both are horns and are extremely efficient, the HLCD's have a controlled dispersion. Controlled dispersion meaning the mouth of the diaphragm is designed to attenuate as well as direct certain frequencies which helps with staging , width etc.. without having to use a ton of processing.

bigaudiofanat,

"Also because of the limited leg room they are not going to have much room to reproduce as well as a tweeter in the a pillar or standard location."

I'm sorry but this is not correct, Horns do a wonderful job in cars such as the 350z due to the fact the dash is very flat and fairly even on both sides, the reason for this is that the horn actually uses the dash itself as an extension of its throat when installed correctly. I have never heard horns in the new 370z, however I have heard a very nice sounding 350z with horns at finals a few years ago.

As far as mid bass drivers are concerned when running horns, there is one major thing to keep in mind... EFFICIENCY!!! Horns are usually right around 110db efficient , compared to your average mid or tweet that sits right around 80 or so... remember that in order to increase output by 3 db , you need to double the power going to the driver. The best bet is to find a very efficient mid that can take a lot of power (such as the ID XS65 or better yet the ID XS57s). Another good choice would be the 7" Scanspeak revelators, I actually have a pair myself and they are fantastic for this application. It's funny actually back when Speakerworks was selling horns , they would sell the revelators to customers and tell them that they were "Speakerworks/USD Audio" custom speakers... In fact the last time I went to the shop, they still have a pair of horns and revelators on display... Also I am pretty sure Eric Holdaway still runs them in his truck.

I don't see any processing on your list so I am not sure how much control you are going to have over the stereo overall.

So remember one of the cardinal rules in stereo is to have speakers equidistant to you (especially if you dont have the luxury of signal delay) at all times as to not have issues with primarily phase and amplitude. This goes into the actual way our brain distinguishes where sounds are coming from (Interaural time differences and interaural level differences). Turns out in most cars, your kick panels are pretty darn close to being the same distance from left to right (this is why so many competitors and enthusiasts choose to make custom kick panels to mount their speakers. So having your horns mounted under the dash and having the compression driver basically touching your firewall makes for a great start to achieving a solid soundstage. You don't need a whole lot of crazy processing to get horns sounding good, Eric himself has said multiple times that you really only need 5 bands of parametric equalization to get the job done. You should never even touch your EQ until you have figured out the correct crossover point , amplitude and phasing (and I don't mean just having the positive and negative on the right way.)

I hope this helps clear up any confusion on horns!

Hey OP, where you at in California?