Horns, waveguides and surface mounts

[jgstudios]

I'm sitting here looking at an ad in the feb/march Sound & Vision mag for a JBL tower speaker. I quote: "Featuring 1" aluminum dome tweters with high-definition waveguides..." and it got me thinking. I always see and watch commentary about the Klipsch speakers with horns, then I also remember an ad for the Cerwin Vega XLS-215 monsters which also use the term waveguide. I never really paid it much attention until I saw this JBL ad. So what's the difference between a horn speaker, a tweeter with a waveguide? Is this just some colorful terminology for the same thing? Or perhaps they trying to bamboozle us noobs into thinking these are true horn speakers? Also, does a tweeter/waveguide unit improve upon or offer some significant difference against a surface mount tweeter? Please clarify. JG

 

[shadyJ]

From Wikipedia:

"The term "waveguide" is used to describe horns with low acoustic loading, such as conic, quadratic, oblate spheroidal or elliptic cylindrical horns. These are designed more to control the radiation pattern rather than to gain efficiency via improved acoustic loading. All horns have some pattern control, and all waveguides provide a degree of acoustic loading, so the difference between a waveguide and a horn is a matter of judgement. "