boom3

Trying to describe how a speaker sounds in words has been a challenge for audio reviewers since Day One. I don't claim to solve that, but after extended listening sessions to a friend's set of Khorns with many discs, I've come up with an analogy. Speaker rhetoric often borrows from photography-"transparency, clarity, imaging" etc. The analogy that came to me is "resolution". I have a Canon 9600 Mk II scanner that has a resolution of 9600 dpi optical. When I first bought it, I experimented with scanning 35 mm film and slides at higher and higher res. I found that 4800 dpi was the highest I could scan a well-preserved 35 mm negative or slide , and anything above that started resolving the grain of the film. My cross-walk to Klipschorn performance is that they can let me hear into the grain of the music in a way no other speaker can. On a well-recorded organ disc, I can hear the organ "breathing" which may or may not a be a good thing, but again, a unique opportunity. Of course, the organ is the most powerful single instrument, and only a powerful audio system can begin to do it justice. This ties in with PWK's assertion that speakers with low FM distortion allow the "inner voices" of the music to be heard. I tell non-Klipsch (or those not having had the privilege of the Khorn experience yet) friends that until they hear Khorns, they can't fully appreciate the inevitable gap between music live and recorded music. I had the pleasure of hearing the same organ in person at the Naval Academy chapel and on disc via Klipschorns. Reproduced, It can't be the same experience but it's still the best available.

A friend bought some 1986 Klipschorns this spring. Tweeters are Crites CT120 and crossovers are B&K A/4500. Cabs in great shape, think he paid $4K. 1000 mile R/T to get them. As noted so many times, Khorns are easy to upgrade (if one knows what one is doing). In one Dope from Hope, PWK discussed the upgrades then available (think it was early 1970s) and concluded that the Klipschorn had "somewhat less than zero obsolescence. Don't you wish you could do that with your 1948 Cadillac?" or words to that effect. Klipsch used to sell the bass horn individually, many, many years ago. I with I could buy one and have the lab space to try different tops with active crossovers just for my own amusement.

An artist pal updated this for stereo:

thank you!

The Scott Brothers never cease to amaze me. This will give your rig a workout!

I had recapped Dahlquist DQ-10s in my study for 16 years until Hurricane Michael got them. I saved the Phillips mids. Imaging (they practically invented the modern concept) was superb, and the most life-like playback of solo piano on any speaker. But, in other areas they were not so great, and often sounded like I was listening through a velvet curtain. I replaced them with a pair of homemade speakers using 12 inch woofers, 12 inch PRs, and Great Heils-thanks to Chris on this forum for reminding me how good the Great Heils are, and his help interpreting REW measurements. Not the equal of the four Corn IIs, Klipsch derived center, and Rhythmik 12 subwoofer in the "big set", of course.

Hi, discovered another YouTube maven, "Look Mum No Computer". This guy is amazing. I find his manic Cockney delivery refreshing from some other techno-presenters who lean pompous and self-assured. Anywho, he recently acquired some Leslie modules. IIRC, there was a way to control Leslies from a keyboard. I am not a musician, so I'm unsure how this was done, or which keyboards could do that. Right now he has two PWM modules and independent panel-mounted speed controls on his Leslies; he mentioned there is a "voltage input" which I think means a voltage controlled oscillator that can drive a PWM controller to vary speed. I've seen pro acts that controlled Leslies from the keyboard (think Yes and "Roundabout") and even garage bands with Hammond B3's that could do it. Any insights appreciated!

secret garden

Some years ago, there were calculators all over the web for these horns. MH audio had one, and there were others. Today I looked at the MH site and all it has is a calculator for backloaded horns. The other calculator links are all dead as far as I can tell. Anybody know where they may be found? thanks

It took me years to find out that the 'noise' at the beginning of "The Immigrant Song" was a faulty effects pedal. Prior, thought it was a tape deck spinning up.

Not defending deception, but this is ridiculous. Only the lawyers make money on class action suits and the average customer gets $1.98 or less. This may well push them out of business, so I hope whoever filed suit will be proud of themselves.

This smells very odd

My angle on this is Fremer's reaction. I don't know him and what I am about to say is not critical of him personally. There is a feeling among many professions that unless you possess a degree in the field and you are connected with academia, what is referred to as "The Academy" regardless of field, that you should not publicly comment or educate or have commercial practice in that field. For doctors, lawyers, certain science fields, this all is correct. I might add that if you practice in a field, you should obey the ethics of that community, because they are there for good reasons. However, to say that Academy professionals are the only ones who should address issues in their fields is ludicrous, territorial and ultimately sad. I understand that people with expensive educations feel cheated when a non-Academy person takes center stage on what "should be" their professional interests. I've run into this myself. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak were/are not engineers. The information explosion of the last 20 years has opened up new vectors of learning and knowledge, and academia is struggling to adapt. For audio, the non-Academy folks have taken us in some interesting directions and built up the industry. It's true that some of those directions have been trips to charlatan la-la land, but, well, caveat emptor.

The Wall of Sound sounded very good indeed. It was as loud as required, but with the multiplicity of drivers, the volume was diffused over the entire arena. I saw the Dead with the WOS in Freedom Hall, in Louisville in 1974. We got in on the sound check and they played some esoteric cuts for us before the rent-a-cops chased us out.

Gary, I've often wondered what happened to the Wall of Sound (there were two of them) after the Dead realized what a money suk it was to move and operate them. The individual components would be worth a great deal if certified to have been part of the WOS. I can just hear the ad copy now: "Put your ear next to the T-35 tweeter and you may be able to hear Jerry playing China Cat Sunflower!" And the Mac 2300s-wowsers! What could be gotten for each one of those! I'd ask Bear but he crossed over some time ago...

Here are a few examples of chart recorder outputs from the man himself in 1963. He also put some chart records in various editions of Dope from Hope. K400 Paper.pdf

I owned a pair of Dahlquist DQ-10s for about 16 years. The DQ-10s and their early glowing reviews really kicked off the current imaging discourse. Of course, long before then, there was Klipsch Wide Stage Stereo, but few people had the room and pocketbook for that. The DQ-10s were great at "imaging" but not so great at other factors, like dynamic range. The best rock in-concert imaging I ever heard was from the Dead's Wall of Sound. Granted, I've not heard a lot of concerts recently, but I'm wondering if for amplified music anyone has ever approached that. Live orchestras, just areas of sound, woodwinds on that side, strings on the other, percussion in the back, the usual. If you listen to the Philadelphia + Ormandy Columbia recordings made in the late 60s you will hear quite a bit of "added" imaging and a very "forward" frequency balance. People either love or hate those recordings. I tend to agree that most in-home imaging is created at the soundboard, and I'd further add that a lot of imaging, even in speakers that are not "temporally aligned" is due to beaming at the upper end of the midrange driver. There are very few three-way systems with conventional drivers that don't have this issue. FWIW, the DQ-10s crossed over at the point where each driver's dispersion narrowed to 60 degrees. So the 5.25 inch cone midrange crossed over at 1000 Hz to a dome driver than in turn crossed over to a smaller dome at 6000 Hz, and then at 12,000 Hz to the piezo tweeter. I think PWK wrote a Dope From Hope on imaging.

Apples and oranges. It's not the recorder (yes I've used them) but the rest of the set-up. The test room is the overwhelming variable and I would take the curves you see in old High Fidelity or Audio articles as general indications of a speaker's response, but not with the precision we now have with REW and its peers. If you see near-field measurements of bass response in the later years of Audio it's pretty accurate since the room was taken out of the variables. The old chart recorders hooked to the typical General Radio BFO analyzer had "smoothing" but not by design. The inertia of the mechanical stylus (pen) created a degree of "smoothing" but not designed to be "1/3 or 1/6 octave" etc. With the exception of the later years of Audio (Mr. Heyser) I'm not sure any of the mags published raw curves, especially High Fidelity which was notorious for twiddling with the curve to make it look prettier. The exception I recall was there review of the LaScala, which got PWK riled up so much that the mag disavowed the review.

Let me make a suggestion that may help...in my book research I encountered a lot of scanned old newspapers in French. Some of these were so poor in image quality that copy-pasting them into Google Translate just didn't work. So I created a table of commonly encountered French words, like "Avec" and "Avis" with their English equivalents. Not the same as translating, but it enabled me to get the gist of what was being said. I'm attaching it as a starting point for you. Of course, you will need add technical terms that I did not encounter in reading 19th century articles. French to English.xls

This book is addictive, great for a long flight

I'm pretty sure this has shown up on the forums before