Hupple

Thanks for all the responses. I've played around a bit with the positioning of the speakers, but only within a pretty narrow range - I don't have a lot of room to play with in this set-up. I hadn't thought of tilting or raising the speakers before, and I'll try that. Right now, one speaker is almost parallel to a back wall, about a foot and a half away from the wall. I toyed with moving this out, which did improve the sound, but not enough for me to place it out in the way of movement. Oddly enough, I found placing a small open-shelf coffee table behind the speaker cleaned up the low bass a little bit. The other speaker is close to a side wall, and tilted maybe 30 degrees off of perpendicular. Clearly these speaker positions are not optimal. If I recall correctly, I didn't carefully listen to the upper bass when I was playing with the positions. I'll try again and see how much difference it makes. Yeah, it would be great to hear one of the three way horn speakers sometime. That's really the only way to know if it would work for me. Maybe when I have some more free time, I'll try to see if anyone in the area has a system they'd be willing to let me hear. I'll report back if there are any developments...

I acquired a pair of Klipsch Quartet speakers a few weeks ago, and spent some time getting used to their sound. Here are my impressions: These are my first Klipsch speakers. In the way of background, I just got interested in audio a year ago, so I don't have a huge amount of experience with equipment, although I am an amateur violinist, have played in orchestras, and grew up in household listening to my sister practice piano for hours each day. The majority of my music listening is classical - both large scale and chamber. I attend live orchestral and opera concerts fairly regularly (I'm in the SF bay area). Equipment I have heard and thus am comparing the Klipsch to are my current set-up of an Antique Sound Labs KT-88 budget SET + Triangle Titus speakers, my roommate's sennheiser HD580 headphones (with various amplification), and my roommate's NAD C370 amp + KEF cresta2 speakers. The Quartets have replaced the KEF speakers and are driven by the NAD. First, the good things: the quartets have the most realistic sounding violins I have heard. This is quite important to me, as a violinist. In fact, this was the main thing that bothers me about the Triangle speakers -- they make violins sound way too thin, to the point where it impedes my enjoyment when I've hooked them up to the NAD. With tube amplification, I can get used to the sound, but it still doesn't sound real. The Quartet's capture the vibrations of the strings and body. The Quartets also let me pick out all the separate strands of music clearly -- a big plus with orchestral music. I hadn't realized before that my other speakers didn't allow me to do this. The Quartets let me hear things separately when I think about picking them apart, but the music remains a coherent whole. I did notice a little less detail resolution in the highs as compared to the other speakers (oddly enough, this seems to be unrelated to how well I can separate out different lines in the music). Of course, the Quartets are much louder than the previous speakers I have had. I used to think that I didn't mind having reproduced music at lower than realistic levels. Having the Quartets makes me think it might be nice. They manage to involve you in the music -- which is a combination of the volume and other characteristics. In contrast, for example, the KEF's present things seemingly at a distance. Now for the negatives, which is the real reason I'm posting. The Quartet's have much more bass than any of my other speakers. But I don't feel like the bass they have is very good quality. Playing an orchestral piece, I heard double bass parts I didn't even know were there on my monitor speakers, but it was sloppy and unclear. To me, that's understandable -- at least they have something there. What bothers me most is the mid bass. Specifically, when I hear a cello on the Quartets it just doesn't sound right. It's missing some sort of woody vibration -- which I've heard (and love) on my Titus, and the sennheiser headphones. In high registers, cellos sound ok, but lower down my roommate (an amateur cellist!) even asked "Why does the cello sound like a frog?". I'm assuming that this is due to the lower frequencies being reproduced by the woofer rather than the horns. Is this correct? Has anybody else noticed this sort of thing with Klipsch without the horn-loaded bass (Forte's, Cornwall, Chorus, any others?) The fact that the horn mids get the violin absolutely right encourages me, but it seems like the Quartets just don't have the same sort of control over the mid bass that I'd like. This was all using the NAD for the Quartets. To experiment, I also tried my tube amp out. It helped some (no more frogs!) but it still wasn't close to reproducing cello as well as the other speakers. I got the Quartets because I'd heard about Klipsch and was intrigued, but had also heard they were harsh and fatiguing in the highs. I wanted to see if I could live with the sound before considering the larger La Scala etc. What I've found out is that the highs don't bother me (well, sometimes a little harsh, but the tube amp really helped there), and in fact are wonderful. But the bass leaves a lot to be desired in terms of quality. On rock and pop music (and TV/movie) I can't hear the problems in bass, but in my usual music I can. How much improvement could I expect with horn-loaded bass? Any cellists/double bassists out there with the fully horn-loaded Klipsch? I'm hoping that having the horn instead of a woofer in the bass fixes things up -- the violin on the mid-range horn was a revelation! Could there be an equally big revelation for cellos with a bass horn? Or could the problem be something else completely? I admit the room the Quartets are in is not ideal, and the Titus in fact are in a different room. However, the KEF monitors were in the same room the Quartets now reside in, and they also sounded better with cellos, although not as good as the other speakers still. I guess I could move the Titus out to this room to rule this out.. but that might be too much effort at the moment.. Ok, this has turned out longer than I thought it would. I'll stop here. Any comments from you all with more experience than I have would be greatly appreciated!

---------------- On 8/2/2004 9:17:39 PM thebes wrote: Opps. Sorry if I screwed up. I read the ad and noted the dog reference, but I still thought somebody might be interested and thanked Hupple for posting it. Thought Neo was being a little short with the guy and thought I was teasing Neo in a nice way. My apologies to Neo and welcome aboard Hupple. ---------------- Thanks for the welcome... I didn't find Neo's comments curt, either, so no worries there. There are certainly some colorful characters here, though .

Hi, I've been lurking a couple weeks, and here is my first post. I just came across an advertised pair of La Scalas for $550 in St Louis. Unfortunately, I don't live anywhere near St Louis. Maybe they'll be a good deal for someone else here... http://stlouis.craigslist.org/ele/38136951.html