Peter Parts

Paul Klipsch disparaged Karlsons. When I was at Bell Labs in Murray HIll, NJ, and fooling with motional feedback systems, I tested my old Karlson enclosure and Khorn, that was 1967. I sent him various sine and pulse results (motional feedback really does great changes to pulses (not always positive) as well as flattens the response curve). He sent me back his own tests labelled "Multi-resonant bass enclosure" if I recall and some unkind remarks about it. Klipsch was a nice fellow to write to me; but I think it was because he had an enduring respect for Bell Labs, formerly on West Street in NYC. I thought the Karlson enclosure was wonderful for those pre-AR-1 times. Bright and efficient because it had the least bit of padding on the bottom and with strong bass. Karlson, if I recall, was a bright fellow, specialist in microwave guides which he thought was related to his speaker concept, heavy-set. He was pretty exhuberant about his concept although the theoretical basis seemed strained to me. Airex on Chambers Street in 1956 had all their drivers in big and little Karlsons, maybe three dozen lined the walls. Their store and nearly the entire NYC downtown hi-fi and surplus district was razed to make way for the World Trade Center......

As far as I know, not possible to take measurements and predict accurately your experience of quality bass in your living room, not that it wouldn't be helpful to have such a measurement. Easier to find specs which anticipate HF experience reasonably well. Without electronic augmentation, Khorns do not go awfully low (but surely low enough) and they are not awfully smooth (but smoothness is not a direct listener experience parameter). But there is nothing you can readily buy off the shelf that cleanly and potently wafts about great masses of the air in your room in response to good bass in a CD.