Professor Thump

I think I might fall into that category...but for what it's worth, I've tried pretty much all sorts of IEM and normal headphones too. I hate stating it this way, but the Klipsch stuff is nothing like anything else I've ever tried. Without a doubt I could enjoy the Klipsch headphones, but the only problem is I don't do any activities where I don't have huge Klipsch floorstanders available. Heck, I've even got Klipsch in the labs at school now [H] Speaking of school....I think Klipsch should make a marketing push towards the college market. Everyone on campus is running around with headphones...and it's usually not the cheap stuff either. Hi Doc, How are things going at school? Hope you are getting good grades, staying away from the bad girls and going to bed on time. [|-)] You make a great point about selling IE's to the college crowd. We definitely want to market to this genre, due to their expensive tastes and extraordinary IQ. What would you recommend for getting the word out, and what distribution points would be effective in reaching the students? Are they more of a direct buyer since they are so PC savvy or do I need to look into book stores? As far as your applications, don't you ever have late nights that you can't crank your Klipsch Heritage Speakers up or that you might need more noise isolation for studying or is it that you are such a brain and hang out with bad girls all night long so you don't need to study? Hey if you are so smart have you ever thought of interning at Klipsch? I am not sure if the bad girls can join you though. [] I also want to put a warm welcome out to the Head-fi crowd. I haven't mentioned it yet but I want to send a demo set out to the main guy for eval as soon as samples free up. I realize that the Head-fi Forum is significant and I promise not to ignore them. Stick that Rock in your ear! ..........................................The musical genre that is.

Here is a pair of Texas Headphones... Oh....sorry that is just a pair of Texans. Getting closer.... Cute and similar to a TH Here is 1/2 a TH Ahhhh... Nevermind Here is a hilarious yet appropriate picture from the head-fi forums... http://www.head-fi.org/forums/showthread.php?t=261570&page=2&highlight=klipsch+earphones Thanks Mikeymad...[] The best I can do for finding Texas Headphones is picture of Phil Collins drum rig with near field monitors. As you can do the math...Concerts 5 nights a week at 135 dB peak average SPL @ 1 meter. Ouch!!! Do you hear that ringing? If you have any better TH pictures you can post them. Keep on thumping.....Just not this loud.

Interesting Jerol, I appreciate your comments. Why don't you like earbuds at all? I will tell you that in my case I am the opposite. It bugs me when my ears are hot from ear muff (circumaural) headphones. I also detest carrying a lot of luggage when I travel. You never know when you will find a good guitar deal and you need to carry it home in your other hand. This is what is so facinating about headphones. Eventhough loudspeakers are my favorites, headphones are much more personal to the user thus there is I believe a wider range of needs. Term for the day...Texas Headphones (TH) Texas Headphones to those in the Rock n Roll world are stage monitors for drummers. These TH's typically consist of a pair of 2 way 15's with 18" subs for their drum riser. Just ask Phil Collins. Colter's got a big pair of Texas Headphones now that he is packin with KP 600's! Why don't you stick it in your ear?

Welcome PeterDLai! It is good to see you on our new forum for Klipsch Headphones. Thank you for your support including the threads on Head-fi. When I have more time I would like to post some thoughts on the Head-fi Forum also. I am glad you are able to keep an open mind about our new HP products. Keep on Thumpin!

This is an exciting time at Klipsch as some of you know! All the elves at Klipsch are working in high gear polishing the design on Palladium and Icon speakers and of course our NEW HEADPHONES! Hey we even have a new category on the Forum as of today for Headphone discussions. As a speaker engineer for 20 years it has been an exciting change now that I have had the chance to work with a dynamic group of people making IE headphones. We are all using music in a different fashion than we did years prior. More people are on the go or stuck in places where they don't want to be because of the noise, but now they can enjoy their own environment with MP3 players and high performance headphones. We have come to the age of ultimate mobile audio designs in all senses and headphones are no exception to this category. Comparing balanced armatures to moving coil transducers in headphones is similar to the comparison of what Compact Discs have done for previous vinyl users. In our quest for that optimum design I am constantly wondering what people need in IE applications that would improve their musical experience, but more importantly I am wondering what people don't like about headphones that ruin their IE experience. So I would like to take this opportunity to have YOU, our loyal Klipsch family of users, tell us what bugs you about headphones. What could be better for that Ultimum User Experience and how can Klipsch help you achieve that level of musical extasy you have been looking for. Why are most of the current IE design in the industry uncomfortable for you? Why do you get irritated with certain design features? What makes your soul bleed for a better product? Tell us how we can make the ultimate IEM for your personal and professional needs... So why don't you stick it in your ear?

http://www.engadgethd.com/tag/speakers/ Taka a look at some of these new winners. Industrial Design in all shapes and sizes...

Ahhh sure... Can we use your little speakers you got off the 18 wheeler last week?

Ships in November... Then you can... Stick it in your Ear!

Amy, You are a lot cuter than the bouncers in the bars I used to work at. Amy Unger, Chief bouncer of the Forum and resident beauty... []

Congrats on your new HT room! It looks great. I would guess you are getting some nasty flutter echo from the left/right walls. Cinder block does not absorb much sound at any frequency, but it is a little better than poured concrete. Depending on your budget there are several things you can do to improve the acoustics of the room. The easy things to start with is speaker placement. You mentioned that you had Klipsch Chorus II on bottom / Forte II on top for your fronts. I would have to look at the data but I am willing to guess that the horns project a 90 x 40 or 90 x 60 degree polar pattern. With this being said you may want to minimize sound projecting to the walls by placing them sideways as in your Avatar. This allows more sound to project in the vertical plane (away from the walls). The horns may be too low now so you may need to elevate them by several feet. I am not sure if you have enough room to do this or not due to the width of the room and the screen width. They will also match your center channel dispersion more closely. If you try a sideways placement experiment with putting the horns to the outsides to make the image wider. The sound stage is probably too narrow from looking at the pictures, depending on where the center couch will reside. I normally try to avoid multiple HF horns in the same bandwidth due to comb filtering effects. With the speakers on their sides you can line up the horns so they are next to each other which will minimize the dimension between these sources and push the comb filter cancellation frequencies higher. BTW... it would be good to tilt the center channel up a bit to minimize floor reflections and also because the speaker crossover was voiced at zero degrees axis, so the frequency response should be flatter. Now you may have minimized the flutter echo with speaker placement but you can go further by treating the surfaces of the room. Your first surfaced that is easy to treat is the ceiling. Stuff that turkey with your favorite dampening material. The best is fiberglass insulation. If you get the paper lined insulation make sure the paper is towards the ceiling so the sound hits the fiberglass first. You can also use closed cell foam (reticulated cell). After you have stuffed the ceiling you can do what Trey Cannon has done and lay dark cloth on the ceiling rafters to make it look better. You can now add several diffusors to your selected areas using the mirror method. Have someone help you with a step ladder. Move the mirror to the place you think you might want a diffusor and lay it flush on that surface. If you can see one of the front speakers then this is an acoustic reflection point and a diffusors would be good at this location. Rule of thumb if you have at least 10% of the ceiling with diffusors you will notice that the room will sound bigger. It is hard to put too much diffusion on the walls, but you want to treat any large flat surface area if possible. Next work on the side walls for diffusor placement. You will need one at the first reflection from the side wall since this is a significant one due to the speaker being close to this wall. You can also put them on the floor but that is not very practical since you will be tripping on them. Your carpet will help to dampen this reflection. What material do you use for diffussors. If you want to spend money on manufactured diffusors go to Auralex or RPG. See http://www.auralex.com/sound_diffusor_minifusor/sound_diffusor_minifusor.asp Auralex is more cost effective but RPG's are really cool looking. You can also have great success if you make them yourself as I have done. Any solid material will work that is reflective. Wood is best but heavy to hang on walls and ceilings. Another solution less durable is styrofoam. RPG diffussors are made out of styro which is poured into a mold. Since I would guess you don't have a diffusor mold you can buy sheets of styro or another solid core material. Take the big sheet and cut smaller strips and glue them together. Vary the wide and height of the strips to vary the frequency the diffusor reflects. Trey had a good idea to take those noodles you float on in your pool. They come in cylinders that you can slice in half and mount on a surface. And they are colored. This could be expensive but it is the end of summer in Indy so they may be on sale. Some wives, ahhh most wives would prefer some decor on the walls so you may have to get crafty and use a book shelf or afgan to spruce up the decor. Also large objects like guitars, duck decoys, collectable beer cans or Peyton Manning signature footballs will work for diffusors, it just gets expensive. (Hey maybe that is how I can justify another guitar. Honey I need this Les Paul because my wall need more diffusors. Doesn't that reverb bother you? Listen closer. There... Hear it? Thanks Forum Guys ...) Now addressing the most expensive problems.... Low Frequency standing waves. The bass nodes are a bigger problem to correct because the wavelength is so large. Start by adding several inches of foam to the back of the diffussors and fill any corners you can with foam or bass traps, (as the other thread discusses). This will deminish the room reverb at these frequencies also. The next thing that is most important is to move your listening position, as you have done, and move the sub around the room. A better way is to use two subs in different parts of the room. This makes the room modes less of an issue. The subs should be unsymetrical in the room so you don't duplicate any mode. The most important thing to do is HAVE FUN! Life is too short not to enjoy your HT system. Good Luck on your adventure... Keep Thumpin'

Rock Star Mike, Hopefully you got the evaluation form from me. Let me know if you didn't. I look forward to hearing everyones comments. Rock On! BTW... The soft end goes in your ear, not the shinny narrow one that measures 1/8". You will find that you get a better seal if you follow this rule of thumb. Let me know if you need a diagram. [*-)] Stick it in your ear!!!...... The soft end that is........

I used to work at the R & D facility for Electro Voice which was part of the Mark IV Group. Mark IV was the mother company that also owned University, Altec and Gauss. We were rebranding a lot of product at that point as university that were old EV and Altec designs. I was in charge of measuring all the products for creation of new data sheets. The brand University was being set up as the commercial paging type product. In the 50's University had a competitive 6201 CoAxial speaker as you can see from HiFi Lit website. That was probably the best original speaker that they had created. I don't believe I had ever really listend to it, but it has a W shaped Alnico magnet structure, which is becoming more rare and expensive. Most of the the other products were aluminum spun horns (that ring like a bell). You would be lucky to find a CoAxial speaker from your friend or a compression driver. The driver probably would have a phenolic diaphragm so it would only be good for midrange but it would be efficient.

Good to have the Doctor in the house! [D] You wouldn't happen to have that fancy new guitar tube amp finished yet would you? Indy guitar show is coming up and ya gotta show your wares... Stick that mutha thumpa in your EAR!

It is interesting to note what users expect from surround speakers or shall I say "rear" speakers when playing back multi-channel music. In a previous life, I was working with Laurie Fincham, Chief Scientist at THX on certification issues for the Klipsch ProMedia V.2-400. Multi-channel DVD's were just getting big for the consumers via free DVD players in computers. DVD Audio was just an idea on the horizon for the average consumer but it intrigued me. THX is very secretive about their specifications for products and understandably so. It is their lifeblood for income. I was talking with Laurie Fincham about THX specifications for surround speakers when we got onto the topic of rear speakers for music, i.e. DVD Audio. We debated as to whether a mono-pole, bi-pole or di-pole speaker was the best solution for music source in the rear sound stage. The question that both of us had come to was...what did the mix engineer have in mind for sound stage imaging in the master mix? Was the listener to be in the middle of the band, or in the conductor's position? Could he or she be in the drummer's audible perception or in the audience of some premier performance hall with great acoustics? Any one of these answers could be correct depending on how we like to hear our music and / or what instrument we see ourselves playing. To be in the audience meant that a standard multi-pole speaker that was full range would be just fine if the master mix had reverb and fans clapping as the only signal going to the rear speakers. If you expected an instrument or especially a voice to come from one of these speakers you were in trouble. You didn't want the voice smearing across the rear walls of your listening area with out any direct signal coming from the speaker unless you were trying to imitate the performer singing away from you. I am a big fan of multiple speakers in the rear and above you for movie play back and any reverb effects. According to Thomas Holman, 20.2 is the limit before diminishing returns. I am only at 10.2 because I have run out of amplifiers and practical places to hang rear speakers. Now that we think about DVD Audio one could argue that you need a separate room or at least speaker designs for the rear, which is good for me because I design speakers. I just need to find an amplifier engineer to swap with....[8-|] Do you think Klipsch needs to make a DVD AUDIO SPEAKER? Keep Thumpin...

Thanks for the reminder. You are such a rock star now that you have those big thumpers from Florida. Can't wait to hear them. BTW guys and gals... if you want to hear preproduction samples of our In Ear Headphones Michael will be happy to show them to you. I even gave him a bunch of alcohol swabs so he can clean the ear cheese off the tips. And when you are done Michael said he would whip up some grilled cheese sandwiches.... Oh that was too cheesy [+o(] Stick THIS in your ears!

Awe shucks Amy! I know that I speak for Brad when I say that statements like this coming from you dear Amy really says something. We do have the smallest eartips that I have seen. They are approximately 2.5 mm in diameter most eartips aren't smaller than 4 or 5 mm. The truth is that when I was doing early studies I noticed that my daughter Nikki had REALLY small ear canals. We took impressions of her ears, (silicone molds) and I loaded the laser scanned data from the impressions into the 3D CAD system. I was surprised at how far off the industry was from her needs. She is an adult, although petite, she is probably similar in size to 30-40 % of the women internationally. So I was glad that I had used her for a guinie pig. I also learned that she like the IMAGE prototypes best. We had three styles of Industrial Design built but she liked these best because they were small chassis and didn't interfer with here tiny ears. They were also light and easy to load into her ears and take out. Why is this important? Because she puts verbal communication higher than listening to music. She needs to talk alot! Go figure...Most guys can not say a word for hours when they are listening to music. She also liked them better because they were small and tucked easily in her purse. She is a Lucky Girl... to have a Daddy like me. But don't tell her so, she will deny it. [] So again Amy, I am glad you are a convert. I have talk to lots of people that are opposted to earphones that have tried the IMAGE and have changed their minds. I think Klipsch is on the right track. STICK IT!.................In your ear of course...........

BTW Colter, Where did your new babies sleep tonight? Did you kick the other Klipsch kids out to stick these in your garage?

Michael, I talked with Kerry Geist today when he was out at the loading dock gawking at the wall of Voowho. He mentioned that he also worked on this product. Evidently it was his first project that he worked on in engineering at Hope. That KP600 has fond memories for me also. Back in about 1993 I was in NYC giving a paper at the Audio Engineering Society. One of the nights Tom Galager a good friend of mine, (who used to work at EV when I was there but worked for Klipsch at this point), invited me to a party he was throwing at a cowboy bar. It was called the Ranch or something like that. Anyway I believe this was the debute of this product for Klipsch. I will have to confirm with Kerry. It was a 150 seat club with a stereo stack of these flying from the ceiling. Kerry remembers being there also cause they flew him out there to troubleshoot a simple little problem with cables swaped in the signal path. The stack rocked! There is some series tecnology tucked into those balsawood boxes...multiple drivers on horn throats for very high SPL with low distortion. Can't wait to hear them again Michael. Let me know if you need any help setting the system up. It looks like you are going to be busy for a while reconditioning everything but it is worth it. Roy, How many of these did Klipsch make when they were in production? You can't stick these in your ears but....Thump On!

In regards to your ear canal response you do have a resonance in the 2-3kHz range but you have trained your brain to believe that this is a flat response. Go figure!!! You bring up a great point... Your fingers are some what oval which makes for an easy demo that anyone can do for checking to see if your ears are oval.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /> There are a lot of consumers who are confused about which earphone to choose. This is understandable. The earphones have one or two or maybe even three little thingies inside them and the more thingies the higher the price. It just doesn't make sense to the average consumers, so what is difference? At first...When I was a virgin user of balanced armature technology, I was working at Apple Computer. We had an earphone company come to Apple to demonstrate their single armature (arm) product. Many people didn't like it because you have to jam it into your ear all the way to your brain, or at least this is what the 3 flange ear tip felt like to most users. For those users that didnt get a seal (where the air leaks out of the canal) which was a majority of users, they complained about not having any bass. I couldn't believe they were saying this. The design had reasonable bass; they just weren't using it correctly. This is when I first realized that a better solution is needed. The creature comforts were not considered. How many arms do I need? Here is the lowdown as best as I can explain it without you having the earphone models in your ears.... Before I explain how many armatures you need. Let's go over some terms first: IEM or IE = In Ear Monitor - this is usually a professional level earphone that is customized to fit your ear canals. The performer will use these to minimize stage volumes, so they can work for more than 10 years without losing your hearing. With lower volumes it is easier for them to control what they want to hear in the monitor mix thus saving their hearing. Now the performer can stay on pitch and keep good timing. PM = Personal Monitors, earphones with armatures Headphones or HP = General description for all types Earbuds = Similar to the Apple headphones with Moving coil transducers inside Entry Level PM's.......... use a simple balanced armature. The challenge the engineer has primarily rests in the balance armature design itself, the damper and the nozzle design. This is a very difficult task to make full range since the transducer will work well in the LF or the HF but not generally wideband. Typically the Bass, Vocals or Drums suffer the most with this design, sounding slightly harsh or not having any output that is audible in that range. In other words the vocal sounds throaty or scratchy depending on the model. There is also limited SPL with this design due to being a single arm design. Even with these disadvantages it sounds better than any moving coil design that I have heard since the mass of the diaphragm is much less the HF is much more accurate than a standard earbud with a moving coil. Custom 1 has been optimized to give the best balance of LF and HF. This design uses a KG332 armature. Mid Level PM's............ use either premium single armatures that are usually smaller or dual armatures with minimal or no EQ. Each product has its limitations. For Klipsch's IMAGE PM a premium armature is used which is a proprietary KG926 driver. The KG926 is ultra compact. Less weight generally means more comfort because there is less force on the ear canal. This model has "special sauce" which I can't go into, due to its proprietary nature, but it is very full range with delicate high's and smooth deep bass. The sound is very accurate due to its light weight diaphragm and the multiple levels of treatment to the design. Generally speaking people will have a hard time complaining about this design. It is easy to use and sounds very accurate. Vocals are silky smooth and drums have a nice snap to them. You can not believe your ears...a product this size sounding this full! The primary limitation is that it is small so you must have a good air seal or you will loose bass. The way we have minimized this problem is by making the chassis micro small with a thin aluminum extruded body or chassis. This small diameter allows the armature to get closer to your eardrum than all of the others models out there. Precision machining is required to make this model, and the design is complicated to get correct due to its size. The patent pending eartip also insures a better seal since it is similar to the shape of your ear. Another type of mid level design is using dual armatures similar to our Custom 2. In the Custom 2 design we have partnered with Sonion and have applied for a patent on this armature, so I can talk about some of the details. The KG534 driver is really two drivers i.e. two motors two armatures and two diaphragms that are tandem (back to back). The benefit of this design is that the diaphragms pump air in opposing directions so any vibration modes are minimized. Think of this similar to dual air bellows on your fireplace with a single nozzle. When you have dual diaphragms your SPL increases by 3 dB and your distortion goes down because it is not working as hard. Part of our applied patent evolves around the low pass acoustic filter that is built into one of the two armatures. This give Klipsch greater control over the EQ since we can have two pistons, one optimized for bass and one optimized for full range. This baby rocks! Musicians will love this product because it is portable yet very efficient. Your vocals will stand out in the mix as an IEM application. High Level PM's...............use two or three armatures and a passive crossover. Our Custom 3 goes much further. Not only does it have two different types of drivers and a passive crossover it also has a patent pending low pass acoustic filter. The Custom 3 utilizes a Klipsch KG723 for the HF tweeter which is a premium armature. This allows the vocals to be ultra silky and very low in distortion. The LF is implemented by a KG732 armature for the LF woofer. The Custom 3 has TWO low pass filters the armature has an internal LP filter plus an additional.... you guessed.... patent pending LP filter on the outside which is optimized for a very low crossover point in such a small chassis without sacrificing sensitivity in the low region of the response. This bad boy has it all! Looks! Comfort! And Concert Level Sound! The passive crossover has 5 components more than any other in its league. With the two acoustic filters and a second order crossover, the LF has a 24 dB per octave rolled off at 1 kHz. Why so low? Everyone else seems to crossover above the vocal region but we wanted to eliminate Intermodulation Distortion (IMD) so we have removed the kick drum and bass tones from the tweeter so the diaphragm can concentrate on silky highs without movement from the LF signal. This also allows us to take advantage of the shape of the crossover for additional EQ in the midrange. The vocals are so natural that this high end IEM won't fatigue your ears like most designs can. But my favorite part is the BASS. I use to have a regional touring pro sound system for live performance applications. I had eight 18 inch 1000 watt drivers just for the subs, so I don't have to tell you how much I can appreciate good clean bass. Image hearing headphones flat BELOW the musical bandwidth. There is no limitation to the bass. I just wish it would shake my pant legs like my pro system did. I encourage everyone to try this product before the buy any other. You will find that the money was well spent. So what type of HP do you need? You will have to be the judge, but you will need to keep in mind that there is a reason why there is large range of prices. The number of arms does make a difference for the IE headphone family. Why don't you stick it in your ears!

Brad, I am going to start calling you Gilligan from Gilligan's Island. Oh I forgot you don't know who he is cause you weren't even born yet. Wait a minute... the Howels had the Hawaian shirts. Didn't they? Any way I will bring in some VHS tapes from that TV show. Oh do you know what those are? Your dad probably has some VHS tapes.[:|] Let's get back to headphones. What topics are people interested in? Where will you use them the most? Exercising? Commuting? (except drivers) at home? When you are trying to block out your significant other? http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.metrotimes.com/sb/79411/CS_ZIAM_Headphones.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.metrotimes.com/editorial/story.asp%3Fid%3D5179&h=200&w=200&sz=15&hl=en&start=2&um=1&tbnid=CdOvVp9boD2Y4M:&tbnh=104&tbnw=104&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dfunny%2Bheadphones%26svnum%3D10%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DG'> No... Stick it IN your ear!

Hi GMONEY, As long as all the speakers are working correctly you have a killer system with a lot of THUMP. Mixing two HF horns is normally not recommended unless they are very close together. This is because you will experience comb filtering or "swishiness". When the 1/4 wavelength of sound is as small or smaller than the distance of the two sources (from the axis of each tweeter) you experience this problem. Your KV-4 should get plenty loud by itself. If you want to use both centers I recommend that you place the KV-2 on top of the KV-4. This way the horns are as close as they can be together. You will still experience issues above 1 kHz which is significant. Rock On!

Hi Mike, We like to call it playing with "ear cheese". Sounds much more fun than ear wax, but it doesn't make it any more fun. I got to admit I clean my ears more than once a year now. [+o(] Just a joke... You 07 pilgrims heard this inwall or the THX version KS-7800. Both sound great and are extremely wide disperson in the HF region. Here is the Klispch link: http://www.klipsch.com/products/details/ks-7800-thx.aspx I can see why the average layman might not be that impressed with these model because it look unassuming. I would have prefered that we use a common mouth flange on dual throats. That is another claim in our patent that we should do for Reference. It would have looked better and people would have understood it better. If you look closely at it the tweeter axis of each they are skewed by 90 degrees which is the trick, so those high frequencies that normally beam get splayed to 160 degrees at 10 kHZ. I have never measured a speaker that was that wide. What I think is wild is that you can literally walk from the wall to the 0 degree horizontal axis and it sounds the same with no swishiness (technical concert array that I just made up). I need to put a couple in my family room since my wife thinks the theater in the basement is "too dark" and she prefers this room. That's okay I don't mind having a "Man Cave". http://www.klipsch.com/products/details/ks-7800-thx.aspx'> Next time you are Indy I will have to demo it for you. Keep Thumpin...

Ben,<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /> It will be interesting to see how the IE/PM launch goes. From my perspective I get a kick not only out of people enjoying our products but also seeing how well our predictions were for consumer needs and opinions on our new IE sound signature. I will explain this a little further. It gets messy describing inner ear EQ so bare with me... Developing The Klipsch Sound Signature... Early on Tom Gospel and I gathered all the guru's of Klipsch engineering and had discussions about who we were going to be in regards to headphone products. What does the public like about our products and how can we translate these traits into headphones? We realized that this comparison is apples and oranges. A speaker radiating into a room has certain characteristics. Sound bounces around then it bounces on your body and then to one or both ears depending on the frequency. These are the effects of reverb and Head Related Transfer Function (HRTF). To make things more confusing, sound bounces off your Pinna and Concha (flappy things that are on the side of your head that we call ears) and into your ear canal after making a couple of cork screw turns to your ear drum. We call this location at your eardrum the "earDrum Reference Position" or DRP. ...........................................Are you confused yet? ............................................ Stand up take a break and come back in 5 minutes cause were going back in to your head.................................Okay, I feel better and hope you do too..... Now where were we? I forgot. (isn't that a big surprise...The professor CRS!) Okay now I got it. I am back in your head, or my head or that little green man's head we call HATS........................ The frequency response that you want to hear at the DRP is not flat. What? Okay think of it like this. When you design a speaker most people generally design it so the frequency response is flat. Some people don't measure it at all. Which is stupid cause it's not flat. But I digress. Not too long ago I talked with Mead Killion of Etymotic. Mr Killion is a legend in the IE industry. Mr Killion has done a lot of research on DRP response which lead to the development of his ER4. Nice headphones but not very comfortable. Sorry Mead, don't mean to dog you. To me this IE sounds similar to a studio monitor but a little bright for my taste. He hears differently than I do, no surprise, just the reality of our ears. How did he come to this conclusion? He used his IE microphones to measure subjects in a controlled environment. Quoting Mead..."There have been three major studies of the sound pressure developed at the eardrum by a sound field: Wiener and Ross (1946), Shaw (1976), and Killion and Monser (1978). All showed a nearly identical frequency response that included a 15 dB boost in pressure at 2.8 kHz coming from the combined resonance and horn action of the concha and ear canal." So in other words your DRP curve or transform has a 15 - 17 dB rise from nominal at 2.8 kHz due to your funny looking earhorns and the resonance of the canal. I would think this is pretty accurate data for flat anechoic response with so many correletive studies. But is this what you really want to hear at the DRP? Definitely not. Things like room gain and master mixes need to be considered. My Ears Are Burning! I don't know about you guys and gals (Amy and D'tel's wife?) but i have listened to a ton of speaker in my days. I have had a bunch of speakers (ask Mrs Thumper) in my home. Many of them I would love when I first got them. Wow! What sound. And then the day came that I listened to this one particular track that made my ears ring. (You pick the track it happens to most speakers) Once I hear that problem with the speaker it bugs me to no end, like a little scab you keep scratching. This is mental ear fatigue my folks or as I call it the case of the spikey speaker. Woof! You finally found the weak spot of that speaker and you can't get that song out of your head. You now hear it on more tracks cause you are looking for it. This is something I always looking for when I design a product. Speakers or in this case micro speaker that doesnt burn your earballs out. Am I picky? Heck ya. It's my JOB! How is it done? If I told you all my secrets it wouldn't be fun...<?xml:namespace prefix = v ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:vml" /> There is more to explain on the Klipsch Sonic Signature Epic but I will give your brain a rest for today. Stick it in your ear! .................................................... Please? Professor Thump Filed under: Earbuds, Sonic Signature, Earphones: Headphones

No... I need to thank all of you! If it wasn't for your support Klipsch wouldn't be where they are today. I think I am gonna cry...[:'(] But seriously, how many companys have the kind of loyalty that we have? It is because of you that we can pursue our dreams and dink around with cool stuff every day. This is a huge reason why we have been growing at the rate we have. While other companies have been drying up financially we have become worldwide. I imagine you were climbing the walls not talking about our little secret project. I bet Jay can't wait to see his new headphones. Jay, I got a pair at Kmart for you. It was a blue light special. []

Hi Anarchist, Being a design engineer has many great advantages and a few bad ones. You should probably know that the payoff for an engineer is similar to the crowd's roar for the performer on stage. Every time I launch a new product i get butterflies in my stomach cause you never know what way the product is going to go for consumer acceptance. You can compare me to an expectant father whose wife is in the third trimester and then the OR waiting room. We are preparing for MP launch so when the switch is turned on at the production line there will be thousands of parts spitting out the end of it. Gee i hope we thought of everything. <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /> Brad our wonder boy genius and first time father to mass produced product has been a pleasure to watch. I am the lucky guy who gets to break the FNG in. Thank goodness he went to Purdue. I couldn't even tell you how many hours Tom, Brad and I talked about the correct way to design a micro speaker for your earhole. I know it was closer to 60 hours a week. It's not really about the money; our payoff is seeing that little baby grow up, taking her first steps and eventually flying. Designing speakers for your living room or HT is one thing but designing this little gal is MUCH more personal. People are really sensitive about sticking something in their ear canal and pushing it towards what feels like your brain. (Actually your ear canal takes a couple of turns and ends up going more up and forward...less I digress) This is Klipsch's first product in this category so the headphone team is setting precedence which others will compare to for a long time. So it is real important to get it correct. Now the design is in final polishing phase. Voicings are 90% complete, although the debate never goes away because everyone hears slightly differently and it is such an emotional decision that you can't just put it on paper and say it should measure like this. You really need endless hours of audition to make sure every track (if recorded properly!?!) sounds perfect. Oh did I mention your manager says you are already late! (that is an inside joke we have, you were late before you started cause everyone wants and needs it sooner!) Now your baby has his first day of school and you worry that the teachers will take care of her. In K language, all the other departments have to kick in and executed. Marketing needs to get the word out to the public. And the big issue is that we are looking at all kinds of new and novice users. So there are so many facets to the image of the product that has to be considered. From what I am seeing Marketing will be knocking this baby out of the PARK! They are all excited about headphones on the web. Kevin P has this undertaking and we will be calling him the Wizard of Web very soon. Press releases and FAQ's are being wordsmithed so you Forum folks will have an answer before you even ask the question. We hope this will cut down on all the false rumors that always occur with public perception. Sarah is trying to crawl in my nerdy engineering head and pull out words that the rest of the world can understand. That is big challenge, but she has been calling me all week with her questions which I really appreciate. Big Shooter our Sales Lead is introducing this product to all our potential buyers. Our baby is in their hands. Without these key people accepting our concepts the product will have a hard time launching. It is so good to see so many people taking an interest in this product and molding this child into the rock star we think she will be. So Professor Thump is pacing the floors of the waiting room. Wondering if this baby girl is going to be healthy and if she can sing and play the guitar as well as he hopes. The doctor will be out of the delivery room soon and I can stop pacing the floors. I guess this is why I have taken the time out of my busy schedule to jump onto this forum and explain our internal process. Now you will know how we feel when we get feedback from all the blogs. Call it a public report card if you will. Some opinions will be good and some may be bad. But that is how we learn as a company to build products for you. I really get a kick out of hearing people talk about how bad they hate headphones until they try Klipsch new ear gels with the ergonomic fit. When Tom and I first started out with initial concepts for this product we started prioritizing what would be most important to the customer and what had not been considered by our future competitors. (Brad was still in college chasing girls and waking up with hangovers wondering what he had done last night...I mean he was STUDYING for his next test... Yeah Brad like we believe that!!! ) So here is what we came up with... 1. Comfort - We believe that if you can't stick it in your ear and not slit your wrist from the extreme pain it doesn't matter how good it sounds, you STILL are not going to use it. There are two trades that don't talk much to one another but are inter-related... Audiologist and Audio Engineers. Audiologist go to their hearing aid conventions and Audio Engineers go to AES conferences where ideas are exchanged and papers written. There is one big difference between these two groups. Audiologist normally don't listen to their products because they would damage their hearing (those that do lose their hearing! (Ironic isn't it?) AE's measure their products but the ultimate test is ALWAYS critical listening evaluations. (Brad can tell related stories about this...) Both fields are similar technically but the end use is different. When I first started researching IE applications, I read a lot of patents to understand the history of IE development. I came across one that was a big cylindrical hearing aid from the 60's I believe. If the hearing aid didn't fit the patient or victim the doctor would literally take a drill to the ear canal! I thought...Egads what are these guys thinking. Did they ever think of the patient? Well technical advances in micro electronics have allowed custom ear shells to be created which has made comfort an obvious improvement. But it made me realize that nobody was concentrating on the fundamental human need...Comfort. I started doing research on ear canals, ear tip patents and ear cheese but didn't find any art related to ergonomic designs. With the help of my friends Eric H and Greg H from Sonion we started making ear impressions of people. Ear impressions are silicone injections into the ear to acquire the exact shape of that individual's ear canal. Every ear is different but there are many similarities. With these impressions 3D scans could be made to get digital data which I could analyze with a computer. If you look at the crossection of most people's ear canal you will find that the shape is generally oval. Hmmmm has anyone noticed this before? Probably... Well I have spent innumerous hours with Jim Hunters help in reviewing patents pertaining to ear tips but I couldn't find any art pertaining to oval ear tips. Thus the patent pending application was born for an oval eartip that created minimal pressure in any one given spot of the ear canal. Now we have reduced tickle, firmer placement and the holy grail a complete AIR SEAL (needed for bass output). 2. Sound Signature - I will be going into greater details about this i.e. whitepapers if I have the time, but it has GOT TO KICK *** or it is not a Klipsch product. But you Cornerloaders already knew this. If it was lamo you would say BULLSHIT! or at least flip your lapel and show us your PWK badge. Sorry for the French Amy, but you can't put it any other way. 3. Industrial Design - We have incredible resources on ID every year, designing great looks under the tutelage of Glenn Fuller. The public won't buy many of these if they look like doggy dudu. Headphones are very personal not only in comfort but looks. We are all vain in some ways and looks are important cause others judge us by our looks first. So this thing needs to be like a fine piece of jewelry that you can be proud to wear every day. Some of the models are more discrete. IMAGE is very unobtrusive you almost can't tell that they are wearing PM's. You also won't get mugged as easily for wearing a white cable cable plugged into your ear advertising your beautifully expensive iPod. 4. Durability - It has got to be rugged because it's Klipsch! Need I say more? We have tested these puppies in so many ways thanks to Boy Wonder Brad's ME Purdue skills and Black Belt Brian M's expertise that Brian has to use a wheel barrel to cart the test documents around. Cables go through tens of thousands of flex cycles at every joint, strain and stress. We actually have a sweat test to see if these babies corrode! Temperature cycle tests beyond the extremes of human safety. There are more priorities but I will stop there so you don't fall asleep from the details... I remember going over the details with Anarchist at the Pilgrimage. He was bummed that he picked the most expensive model. I do that all the time. But it is a precise operation designing micro small, ultra light designs that kick booty! That is why they cost more money. It is hard to compare it to other single armature designs because of these benefits. I believe this is why you are going to love this product. It is simple to use, easy to load and unload, very comfortable oh and it sounds great! Our baby is all grown up...