Number 9

Well ... they are opened up now, so that's the thing. I can deal with everything else later. I have changed the caps in the xover.

I've done the rope caulk thing on the Forte drivers. Before I put them back in, I'm wondering if its worth doing some additional internal damping. As it is - "stock" - there is one piece of foam approx. 1/2" thick x 15" wide wrapped around the upper portion of the internal cabinet. No foam at the bottom near the woofer, nor at the back or front of the cabinet. Is this good enough?

Lynn Olsen who designed the Arial and tried out a lot of caps along the way says the exact same thing. Even the best caps, sound coloured to his ears. That's why he prefers transformer-coupling in his amps. PIOs must colour in a nice way which appeals to some people.

Why PIOs sound better than Auricaps has puzzled me. I stumbled across this article today, and found the "conclusions" rather interesting. http://www.tnt-audio.com/accessories/auricap_e.html In regards to PIO: "...with paper in oil ones. I obtained a beautiful, lustful sound, with a lot of detail and a huge amount of depth. Really attractive. The depth is exceptional... Ah, but the sound is really lustful...". Kind of mirrors what Leok is saying. But ... on reading further ... "Which is the obvious perfect alternative to a coupling capacitor? A straight wire, obviously. ...And the test was really revealing. The Auricaps are rather difficult to distinguish from a direct connection. The paper in oil caps instead can be easily distinguished: as a matter of fact they outline a much more detailed, precise, deep and realistic soundstage, but such a soundstage is simply not present in the original signal! It is the result of a very peculiar form of colouration, that is evident in comparing the caps with the direct connection, and that makes the medium and lower frequencies thinner and lighter than normal." So maybe this explains what is going on with the PIOs. They are imparting a pleasant coloration!

Leok ... anything new to report?

I saw a pair sell on eBay about a month ago for almost $1K. But pretty much everything you've said holds true. Location, timing, condition, number of people looking, alignment of stars - all come into play. And yes, I would agree, most here seem to want their toys for cheap.

Do you have regular cable or digital cable? 800Khz is find for regular cable, but some cable providers need as high as 2Mhz for digital. Something to keep in mind for later.

Summer is not the best time of the year to sell ... too many people at the beach or cottage. If you can wait till September, things pick up then. This is a good place to sell if you are patient ... eBay is hit and miss. The issue with the Cornwalls is the shipping cost. They have typically sold in the $750 to $1000 range/pair depending on condition and location.

Oh my ... Khorns in a 13 x 16 room. And I thought I was pushing it with my Forte IIs in a 19 x 16 room. Congratulation, but I think you will be challenged to get the bass just right with such big speakers in that size of a room.

I have not heard both side by side. The Titan is quite a laid back sounding speaker IMO. It does a very good disappearing act. The Klipschorn seems more forward and balsy ... but hard to tell ... different electronics, rooms, etc...this is trying to go from memory.

I'm now dubious wether the 140VDC conditioning did anything based on how the testing went. The xover point of the tweets is pretty high in the Chorus ...so I'm also surprised the PIOs made such a big difference. Hmmm...can you describe the metaphor a little better? What does the "highs being better connected" mean? Does this mean the RF7s will be up for sale? Are the changes that good?

TBrennan ...why didn't you just get a pair of Chorus' if you preferred the Tractrix horn? I used to own a pair of Cornwalls too. I'm curious, did the Tractrix tame a bit of the agressive midrange you tend to get with the CWs? I met Dr. Edgar last year and heard his Titan speakers with monster-sized subwoofer. Very smooth ...

TBrennan, I didn't know that was John Risch's background. PA speakers are designed with different objectives entirely. So I would not necessarily use what he does for a living to shoot down his credibility. He obviously has an interest in hifi too. He does have the engineering background to at least talk about the subject intelligently. There must be something going on which must explain the differences I heard. And I did hear differences. Maybe its the cable construction or sleeve materials ... Can you point me to somewhere which talks about aluminum wiring being fine when used in hifi? Which speaker manufacturers today use aluminum wiring?

Very hard to speculate and guess what PWK would have done, though, he was alive when the Chrorus/Forte were created, and supposedly had a hand in their design. So, my guess is he approved. The tractrix flare has been around for a long time, but it was basically obscure and not well understood until Dr. Bruce Edgar started writing about it in the '80s. It seems that most horn speakers today now pick tractrix designs over exponential. As the ariticle mentions, tractrix loading when done right, is smoother because there is less interacion going on in the throat area. A shrter horn help too when dealing with speaker sizes. You must also remember, that there are two types, the circular and the squared versions (as in the Chorus/Forte) of the tractrix horn. Dr. Edgar prefers the circular designs if mated to a 1st order crossover and when the cutoff point is not too low.

As you say ... the key differences are the midrange and bass loading. The pros of using a tractrix midrange horn are best explained by the man who has been their biggest advocate, Dr. Bruce Edgar. Here is a PF interview where he discusses the tractrix. http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue4/edgarinterview.htm I once had read somewhere, that the reason Klipsch adopted the Tractrix midrange horn was because they were so impressed with it (sound-wise). It also enabled building a shallower cabinet, comparatively to one required for an exponential horn. The drone/passive radiator aslowed Klipsch to eke out a lower bass cutoff point without increasing the size of the cabinet significantly. A passive radiator loading, otherwise behaves much like a bass-reflex cabinet, whereby the bass response falls off very rapidly below the cutoof point. So, technically, the use of "newer technology" should make the Choruss II a better speaker, though some prefer the sound of the Chorus I for various reasons. All things being equal, technically, the bass should go a little deeper and midrange s/b bit smoother with the II vs. the I.

I suggest using the search function ... has been discussed a few times before.

http://www.geocities.com/jonrisch/s1.htm Strabo ...look down the page where John Risch lists the better to worst sounding conductive materials. Also note, the sleeve materials and manner of cable construction come into play to.

TBrennan, you have your opinion, I have mine. What's childish, is to put down my opinion. We can certainly disagree, but the put downs are unecessary. The wires going from the xover to the speakers is not copper in my Forte. Maybe some of you (maybe even all of you) have had experiences to the contrary, but I say from my own experiences, when I've swapped out old aluminum cables with decent quality OFC copper, there has been a big improvement. That's my experience. I'm not talking Nordost Valhallas here, but even the stuff you can pick up at Rat Shack for .60c/foot seems to do better to my ears. As they say, your mileage may vary!! I have high respect for what John Risch has written about cables and he explains quite eloquently what is going on in cables a lot better than I ever can. Here: http://www.geocities.com/jonrisch/cables.htm And here: http://www.geocities.com/jonrisch/s1.htm http://www.geocities.com/jonrisch/c1.htm His analysis is very credible IMO. He is skeptical of big $$ cables and does try to determine the factors which contribute to good sounding cables. So this is where I am coming from when you say I am making "assertions" that are baseless. OTOH I personally have not seen anywhere that aluminum makes for great audio cables. So on what basis do you come to your conclusions? Hey, I'm not trying to turn this into a pXXXing contest, but if you have info that says otherwise, I'm all ears. I would love to know. That's the point of this thread isn't it? I would offer, that maybe the reason I have not had good experiences with aluminum cables has less to do with aluminum, but other factors such as the sleeves and cable construciton. Hard to tell. But I heard what I heard.

I sensed a shot was going to come my way too at one point. So childish.

>>> 3 inches of aluminum does not create a massive resistance differential vs 3 inches of copper, and aluminum doesn't oxidize and corrode like copper. But we are talking about more than 3 inches. This is used everywhere in the cabinet. This may go off on the tangent that all cables sound the same, so I won't go there ...its like arguing about religion and favorite colours ... but in my experience ... oxygen-free copper cables sound much better than alluminum. And I say that from having heard really big differences. Call me anal, say that I'm wasting my coin, but I'm going to replace the wires in my Fortes with copper.

Aluminum wire works fine for speakers?? That's the first time I've heard anyone say that. Why?

I emailed Klipsch and they don't carry replacements. They suggested reconing.

hoggy ... its not tinned copper ... I tried so hard to believe that this could not be true, but the wires in my Forte circa 1990 are not copper.

Oh dear. You've not had any luck so far have you? Personally, pretty much any good quality OFC cable (does not have to be exotic) will be much better than that lampcord used in the Klipsch. Those wires are defintely not silver. I can't believe they did not use at least copper wires. Perhaps that is why MONSTER CABLE is hyped so much today ... retribution for past sins. The distances are short, so I don't think you will hear a big difference if you went with something exotic. Hookup wire, 14-16 gauge should be fine.

12" Strabo. That's pretty high. In my mind, 5 - 6" seems about right, but you may have higher ceilings and a bigger room than mine. What if you were to build a stand that looks like a small table (with 4 legs) the size (W x D) of the Fortes? Make it 10" height. Remove the Forte bases. And then use the additional two inches for a constrained layer (to minimize the resonances). See my comments above for constrained layer "recipes". Some have gotten away with just 3 layers (alumminum or steel plate, PE foam, allluminum), while others go with 5 (an MDF layer between the alluminum and PE Foam). Either way, you can do a lot with just 2". As long as the legs of the stand are strong enough to support the speaker, you will be able to decouple the transmission of resonances through the constrained layer. It would look a lot nicer that way IMO than a 12" tall hollow or sand-filled box. Finally, you can put spikes or Vibrapods on the bottom of the feet to keep the entire structure from moving. Overall, easier to do than building sand bases.