By: Greg Roberts

Using money I earned selling sports cards at the age of fourteen, I bought a used pair of Klipsch La Scala speakers from my local Klipsch/McIntosh dealer and dragged them down into my basement bedroom.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but owning a pair of La Scalas at such a young age would shape my audio sensibilities for the rest of my life.

I heard MUSIC from those speakers.

They were exciting, powerful, and being able to own a pair was the coolest thing I could think of. I was hooked on hi-fi from that point on, and horn speakers would be the only speakers for me.

I wasn’t just a Klipsch owner. I was a Klipsch fan. I read Dope From Hope, collected Klipsch literature, hung around my local dealer whenever I could, and soaked up everything I could learn about Paul W. Klipsch and horn loudspeakers. Looking back, I probably spent as much time thinking about speakers as I did listening to them.

Later I traded the La Scalas for Klipschorns and enjoyed an even higher level of dynamics and realism for a long time. There was nothing else like them. The effortless way they played music made it impossible for me to consider any other type of speaker for my own system.

As I matured as an audiophile, I began to hear things that bothered me. I still loved my Klipschorns and what they were capable of, but I became increasingly aware of some of the compromises in their design and construction. Eventually those compromises started getting in the way of my enjoyment of the music.

Anyone with an interest in audio has read about horn-loaded loudspeakers and the strong opinions they create. Some people love them and can’t imagine listening without the effortless dynamics and life-like presence they can produce.

That was me.

Others dislike horns because of colorations, harshness, and limited bandwidth. A poorly designed horn speaker can indeed be a troubled mess, and in some ways I was beginning to feel that way about my own speakers.

I almost gave up on my beloved Klipschorns and considered a different direction altogether.

But really, there was no way I was going to give up the effortless dynamics and realism of these Khorns, which had become fixtures in my home.

So rather than sell them, I fixed them.

Over a two-year period, I bought and tried an array of aftermarket upgrades for my Klipschorns, but none of them made a significant enough improvement for me. So I began developing my own upgrades, starting with a new midrange horn that I built in my woodworking shop and installed in my speakers.

The larger 2-inch throat, shallower Tractrix flare, wood construction, and high-quality compression driver made a dramatic difference. The honky, shouty, unintegrated sound that characterized the original system was greatly reduced and, in some ways, eliminated altogether.

I really liked what I was hearing, so I kept going. I developed new crossovers, discovered much more refined and articulate tweeters, and gradually transformed my speakers into something I genuinely enjoyed listening to again.

I had my speakers back, and the excitement of listening to music returned.

During this time, the recession of 2008 hit and severely impacted the home construction business that my wife Laurie and I had built over the previous twenty years. A bleak outlook for the housing industry, combined with my renewed interest in hi-fi, set me on a completely different path.

What started as an effort to improve my own speakers soon became a business providing upgrades for Klipschorn and Belle owners. Volti Audio was born.

Before long, I was designing, manufacturing, marketing, and selling my own line of loudspeakers, beginning with the much-heralded Vittora Loudspeaker System.

Over the years I came to realize that many of the criticisms directed at horn speakers were deserved.

Limited bandwidth. Colorations. Harshness. Poor integration between drivers. I’ve heard all of those things myself, including from some of my own speakers.

Many of the older horn speaker designs suffered from these shortcomings, and if we’re being honest, plenty of newer ones still do.

The thing is, those problems don’t have to be part of the horn speaker experience. A lot of them come from design compromises, cost constraints, and in some cases just not doing a very good job of designing the speaker in the first place.

As I continued developing upgrades and eventually complete loudspeaker systems, my goal became pretty simple. Keep everything that makes horn speakers special and get rid of the things that make people not like them.

That’s still what I’m trying to do today.

Simply, it’s The Sound.

In the end, that’s what keeps me interested in horn speakers after all these years.

I’ve listened to a lot of different loudspeakers over the years, including some very expensive and very impressive ones. Many of them can sound beautiful. Many of them can be engaging.

But a well-designed horn speaker does something different.

Horn speakers give me some of the same qualities that I hear when I’m sitting in front of live instruments. The dynamics, the presence, the ease, the sense that the music is simply happening in front of me rather than being reproduced by a machine.

A painting of Great Pond in Belgrade, Maine is not the same thing as sailing a boat on it. Both can be enjoyable, but they’re very different experiences.

That’s how I feel about most hi-fi speakers compared to a great horn speaker.

When a speaker reproduces the sound of a piano in a way that reminds me of sitting ten feet from a real piano, I find myself giving the music and the musician the same respect I would if they were actually in the room.

Now that’s engagement.

That’s what grabbed me when I first heard those La Scalas as a teenager, and it’s what I’m still chasing today.

That’s why I build horn speakers.

My goal with Volti Audio has always been pretty simple.

I want to keep everything that makes horn speakers special while eliminating the things that have frustrated listeners for decades.

I want wide bandwidth.

I want natural tonal balance.

I want effortless dynamics.

I want a speaker that sounds like one complete system rather than a collection of individual parts.

Most of all, I want to hear music, not a stereo system.

When I’m developing a new product, I spend a lot of time thinking about my own experiences with horn speakers over the last fifty years. I remember the excitement of dragging those big La Scalas into my basement bedroom when I was fourteen years old. I remember the power and realism of the Klipschorns that followed. I also remember the shortcomings that eventually sent me down the path of developing my own upgrades and speaker designs.

Those experiences continue to guide me today.

Every driver, horn, crossover component, cabinet panel, and finish detail is chosen with one goal in mind: creating a loudspeaker that gets out of the way and allows the music to come through.

The name Volti comes from an Italian musical directive found in orchestral sheet music. It means “turn the page.”

I chose the name because it describes exactly what I wanted to do. Not abandon the past, but build upon it. To take the things that I loved about horn speakers and move the art forward. To turn the page on some of the compromises and shortcomings that have followed horn speakers for generations.

Developing a Volti Audio speaker is not easy. I’m my own worst critic and my standards are high. I spend countless hours listening, measuring, adjusting, and listening again.

I’m chasing a particular sound.

I call it The Sound.

I know it when I hear it.

The Sound of living, breathing music in my living room