Klipsch Forte III
I’m fortunate to have reviewed in recent years not one but three different pairs of horn-loaded loudspeakers. My jaw dropped when I reviewed what would prove the finest loudspeaker to ever grace my home, the Volti Audio Rival.1 Second came a pricey but pleasing pair from handlebar-mustache king Gordon Burwell, the Burwell & Sons Homage.2 Then, at the urging of occasional Stereophile contributor Steve Guttenberg, I took on the fat-boy Klipsch Heresy III.3 As the Beatles used to say, I was dead-chuffed.
Horn-loaded speakers achieve what few conventional cone-only speakers can: reproduce the note-perfect timing, rhythmic energy, and bloodpulsing impact of the real event. With their high sensitivity ratings and low power requirements, horns deliver music faster, like a skier blasting off a jump at warp speed: There’s no drag, no lag, no confusion—just jumpin’ jiminy dynamics at practically every volume level.
Though horn-loaded loudspeakers began showing up in movie theaters as early as the mid-1930s, credit goes to Paul W. Klipsch for creating some of the earliest horn designs for home use. The biggest and most famous of these arrived in 1946: the still-popular Klipschorn, for which Paul Klipsch was awarded nearly two dozen patents.
Designed and manufactured in Klipsch’s Hope, Arkansas, factory, where the company’s manufacturing arm remains, the K-Horn has been in continuous production for
