Dear Ron,
What's unique about the Apogees is Ked, he's the one who single handedly raised them from the dead here otherwise Apogees are mostly long forgotten. Yes, they had some great attributes but getting them there was always difficult. Aside from some nostalgia and curiosity not sure how many of us who owned them in the past really want them back again. Personally I'm over all panels, IMO their limitations outweigh their benefits, specially the electrically charged types that can't handle volume and start buzzing like an electric fly killer when you crank it up a bit.
david
PC be damned!
I am however mostly in agreement regarding Apogees: They were good, they are good but speaker technology has evolved and more so than electronics IME. The nostalgia is strong and you will find a close to cult-following to many of those panels. There are some people who still swear by Acoustat for example... Acoustat were good then , they are not that great today, they have been surpassed
Horns are an interesting example. By their nature they couple better with air. Horns and their cousin wave-guides are acoustic transformers. They allow a better coupling of the transducer to the transmitting medium, in that case the air plus they can allow you to tailor directivity in ways panels or cones by themselves simply can't .. Physics, what many would like to think doesn;t seem to apply to the reproduction of sound via electro-mechanical means... On top of that there is in my mind that suspicion that higher sensitivity results in better dynamics or if you allow me to be a real audiophile, better reproduction of "micro-dynamics" while giving one a large berth on amplifier power, I favor high power even for high sensitivity speakers. When you add to a well designed horn multiple subs one can get rather close to what the real thing sounds like.
Yet (some) Panels remain a soft spot for me. As Gary Koh said, you drop a stack of subs with a 20.7 and frankly to match this you may have to spend 10 times more... Same with some horns, I don't believe they need to cost $600K to sound good. I have the JBL line in my line of sight...
As for the panels buzzing when asked to play loud .. Many stats are guilty of that. My experience with Soundlab is too limited to opine but most other 'stats I have heard don't take high SPL at the listener position too kindly. Horns don't have any problems with that, nor do the better cones. When it comes to play from soft to unhealthy loud (even if real) horns have no peer and now they image better and now they are getting less expensive and available...