ClaudeJ1

hmmmmmmm and here I thought the simple answer was the cost of large, quality, transformers!

Which sound are you reproducing in this comment? Are you talking about playing discs, or something else? Pink noise. It contains all the music ever written! Still not relevant to the cost and peformance of tube amps. You need to start a new thread. Pink noise? So, with respect to your comment above: "All aspects of sound REproduction as opposed to sound production are measurable a repeatable." you use pink noise as your repeatable measure? How do you apply that? I was actually joking. But you really did not address the issue of cost of tubes. For some people the cost is worth it.

The few luthiers I have known would never agree that a machine-made guitar - made to precision dimensions with uniform materials - could ever be considered a serious instrument. That's not too surprising, after all, it is how they make a living. What is more important is that the bulk of musicians demand and pay for this level of human subjectivity. They're keeping luthiers very busy. A Stradivarius comes to mind as I read this.

Which sound are you reproducing in this comment? Are you talking about playing discs, or something else? Pink noise. It contains all the music ever written! Still not relevant to the cost and peformance of tube amps. You need to start a new thread.

The answer to this thread is simple: Profitable small products using the latest technologies that sell in high volume for the consumer, and large products that sell in low volume for entertainment venues. If PWK had only made Khorns, he would have been out of business by 1960's. Two things saved the company: Bob Moers as President, and the Heresy. Fred's company multiplied sales by 7X and enabled Klipsch to become one of the largest and most successful speaker companies in the world. Heritage products main function is to market the company's longevity using PWK's past achievements as a genius while providing real and nostalgic appeal in terms of performance, but not sales volume. Heritage for IMAGE, the latest high tech. gee whiz gizmos for real sales.

Not much relevance to your points concerning black boxes vs. wood boxes with strings suspended across a cavity as to the suject of this thread, which is the high price of devices that have a voltage based transfer function. All aspects of sound REproduction as opposed to sound production are measurable a repeatable. They do not rely on a subjective opinion of a "sensitive" person. Sound reproduction is, in basically a consequence of choice by the reproducer. 90% of the sound that is REproduced is the ROOM. So primarily it is the result of economics of neighborhood and historical construction methods along with "typical" room sizes. The other 10% and only 10%, so arguing about that 10% is what occupies everyone's time. The rest is tweaking to taste based on economics and attitude. All are measurable and repeatable with current technologies. Not matter what choices are made by anyone in the entire chain, the infinite permutations of how sound in air is generated and regenerated in various spaces, whether synthesized, acoustic, or amplified, the end result is nothing more than a personal ILLUSION, period. This is also true when the choice is headphones, where the acoustic space around the listener is not part of the 90% equation.

IMHO Frank Zappa is the exact opposite, the very antithesis of 'Off The Beaten Path'. He may not be everybodies cup of tea but his body of work is immense and spans several genres; rock, symphonic, and jazz. He's universally held by his peers as hugely influential and the critics as a musical genius. Now ron to be fair when is the last time you heard anybody say they are on there way to the store to buy some ZAPPA, Despite what the critics or peers say However on that note i found a 3 disc japan press Zappa album that i paid very handsomely to get (50.00 ) "Shut up an play your guitar" Recently got Joes Garage, Overnite Sensation, and Apostrophe on CD. Have Roxy and Elsewhere and Hot Rats on vinyl.

Jamming with Edward. Ry Cooder with the Stones in some basemant. Just got a Blue Ray: Some Girls by the stones recorded long ago. I hated it. I only like Stones studio stuff, they are horrible live.

How about big woofers in a big horn to REALLY move big air. (an 18 is the same Sd as tow 12's) Very simple math 3.14 X Radius Squared....... Radius of 12 inches is 6 inches. 6 inches squared is 36.... times that by two is 72. Radius of 18 inches is 9 inches. 9 inches squared is 81. 72 is NOT as big as 81, therefore two twelves have LESS displacement than a single 18. It takes two 12s and a 6inch driver to get the same surface area of an 18. RogER Thanks for the High School geometry lesson, but you are forgetting to subtract the edge surround, which is quite a bit of the usable area. If you go by the typical/average Sd specification of 12" SUB woofers, they are almost always half of an 18" one within about 5%. It can vary a bit more than that and is very much manufacturer and Xmax dependent.

Yo, Mustang Guy. I used to use 2 LaScalas in a commercial DJ system playing Vinyl in the early 80's. I always used the mono switch on my mixer because Stereo imaging is not a requirement for making people dance. The music should be the same everywhere, just a different level by way of the inverse square law. So I'm smellin' what your'e cookin'!!

I'm the king of cheap gear, Mr. Malette. Used, refurb, whatever. More fun to limit your budget and still get excellent sound. Bang for buck, mon. BTW, of the CD's you gave me at a Pilgrimage in Indy...........that piano recording of yours is the best I've ever heard.

I currently listen at or around 85dB. Your suggested volume would be.. 75dB? 50dB? For me, 85dB would be fine. Maybe most on here exaggerate, but that's usually plenty loud and I think you get to really hear the music and enjoy it when you live in that range. I'm with Dave, it needs to be about the music. Great gear is nice, a lot of fun, blah, blah, but I want my toes to start tappin'! Bruce I'm with you Bruce. I use a Radio Shack db meter and refer to an app on my iPhone for a second opinion when listening..................all at 85 db, slow C. Peaks are usually 13 db above that on most jazz recordings, and, assuming levels are pushed UP and not down on pop recordings, I can tell how compressed they are by how many negative DB's on my receiver I need to turn down to. I'm usually at -20 for the dynamic ones and down to -30 for the compressed ones. This is after Audyssey turns down my mains to -12, so it's negative 32-42 DB from the full 100 W output of my amps, or about 10 milliwatts typical, which agrees with my RMS volt meter. I always used to crank my Khorns to get to a "satisfying" level. As my speakers got better, I needed less and less volume to be satisfied, unless the alcohol consumption was up a bit, then I needed a few more DB to compensate. LOL.

Your posts puts a smile on my face because it's true. You and I started our MWM quest in late 2007 as I recall. We sold our Khorns to get on the "big journey." I was certainly influenced by Mike Colter, JC, and Keving Harmon. They all had the Jube and Pro Gear Attitude. I felt a need to better the sound of vanilla Khorns with AA's that I had for over 30 years while I was too busy raising kids to bother. It was time and has been a fun journey that continues to this day. I hope to build my second bass horn and put them into service in a few weeks. This should bring my stack down to less than 5 feet. Once I achieved world dominanced (over my city block) with an el cheapo-hybrid-horn-from-every-maker setup MWM 7-1/2 foot "stack," I immediately set out to take stuff out and lower the stack without making compromises. I told people that 1 MWMs bin per channel was enough, but apparently no one else bothered to measure the difference and took your advice instead of mine, since I see so many people use up space that could be used in a better fashion, IMHO. 1 MWMs an do the same job as two when you add subwoofers, I set out to go from 4-way plus Subs (5 way really) and lower my "stack" from 7 feet to 6 without any sonic compromises. My space is smaller than yours, so I can get away with it. So I can get rid of EQ in my Peavey FH-1 bins with EVM 15 L woofers, I designed my own version of an MWM that fits neatly into a corner and should't need any PEQ ahead of room corrections from Audyssey. But it will have a digital Xover, similar to yours, along with it'is own amplifier so I can control the voltage gain at the input. So, relative to my quest to "downsize without sonic compromise" in a smaller room stand in contrast to the fact that I crown you the ultimate "MWM Animal," the "MacDaddy" if you will. I mean that with the utmost respect to what you have done. I will be out there with my stack of CD's before you know it!

Create a sweet spot and always sit there when listening. If you do it with the lights our AND with your eyes shut, only your ears will work (I call THIS double blind listening). Do it with no distractions or external noise........just..........LISTEN. For program material, it's good to have a variety of styles of music. Some with lots going on and some with just voice and one or two instruments. I have my own list of standard recordings and I have the test CD's that Klipsch uses. The trick is to listen to maybe about 24 different standard test songs over and over until you know them by heart. That way you will have your own reference standards deemed excellent by the experience and ears of others. Is this a good start? Maybe I should start a list......................lemmeno.

No super deals there yet.

I have Audyssey XT32 in my Integra preamp. Oddly, it just adds distance to achieve the delay. It's somewhere around an extra 12-15' if I remember right. Works like a charm. BTW, I think on a THT it's around +11-12ms. I have just XT with no 32 and it does the same thing as yours. Mine about 13 ft. I tried manual override at both ends, 0 and 30 ft, but it loses bass intensity and cohesion on music. I do 2.1 from Oppo Sabre DAC's plus Audyssey via CD input on Onkyo 709), so it's 13 ft. selection sounds best on movies and music. But I have one in front and one in back of me and my sweet spot is a front/rear distance ratio of about 60/40% and music is way more critical of bass definition, so I guess Audyssey struck "the great compromise." I can actually turn off my subs and listen to music with less bass since my PEQ'd "cheap Scalas" are pretty flat to 50 Hz. Also I noticed that when they play classic tunes while rolling credits in a movie, there seems to be greater overall clarity than I can remember from the originals. I guess when you have big movie budgets, you can afford to get a hold of master tapes and transfer them to 48/96 Khz., uncompressed sampling on Blue Rays, eh? Maybe Hollywood can afford better mixing monitors?

Lots to choose from on the DIY and AVS forums. Most look like a larger version of the one I built for a Lab 12. If you have LaScalas or Belles, you may want to think about an F-20 since it goes higher. For Khorns or any Direct radiator that get down to 40-60 Hz., a tapped horn will get you lower for a given box size. I'm a fan of the $85 JBL 1214 driver for Tapped Horn duty. It's got a higher Fs than the LAB12 (better for Tapped Horn) and costs 1/2 as much. There's a Kraken 212 design on the DIY forum that you can build for about $300 that will rival my Danley DTS-10's if you want some real "nads."

Hey, Mustang Guy. After reading Jason't comment about me preaching to the choir, I see you have twin THT's. Sahweet. How are you doing time delay?

Yes. But I got mine used so I don't know if that's normal wear or if it's always been that way.

Nice KCBR's. That is what I started with in 77.

Paul Klipsch himself told me that he considered the Heresy and the Cornwall to be of too high distortion as a center in a 2PH3 system. Even if the "mono in the middle" was operated a -6 db from the flanks, he felt that the distortion was high enough to muddle the low distortion of the Khorns. So after creating the LaScala, he created the Belles (named after his first wife, who died of lung cancer) as the matching center (aesthetically and distortion-wise). He also told me that after creating the K-500 horn for the Belle, the the K-400 was probably a little longer than it needed to be. So, your initial comment about him "getting it" is incorrect with respect to IM distortion. He also told me that he left the Heresy box empty because he wanted a pure capacitance on the woofer. What he did finally "get," is that the Heresy saved the company from financial ruins because Khorns were too big and too expensive. Heresy accounted for over 50% of the company gross sales. By 1985, even he was suprised that his company had grown so large to over $20 million in sales, later to be grown to 7.5X that figure by Fred Klipsch and Co.

Finally another one gets it.

How about big woofers in a big horn to REALLY move big air. (an 18 is the same Sd as tow 12's)

No clash, but you would soon figure out who the "Mac Daddy" is of the two.

It already has.