ClaudeJ1

Speech and Music REPRODUCTION is, inherently, an "illusion" of the highest order. It is a never ending quest of diminishing returns and barking up wrong trees (like speaker cables, OMG). Vacuum tubes operate at high voltages with high source impedance. They have a voltage to voltage transfer functions. Modern loudspeakers are low/varying impedance devices that sometimes require lots of current to work well.This is the opposite of how tubes work, so the using transformer as "voltage to current" devices is a must for them to work.This makes the transformers a VERY important component in the chain of reproductions. Lots of quality variables are at work with just those. Tube "warmth" has more to do with the preponderance of even order harmonic distortion that has to further work impedance matching to speakers systems that must further "acoustically transformed" the that interacts with the room and our perception system. Tape produces low level hiss for the recording to work against. Without noise reduction "compander" tricks, like Dolby or DBX, the best signal to noise ratio available from reel to reel tape is about 60 db vs. the noise floor. Lots of systems at work there, so pick your favorite distortions to render what you believe is the best illusion and enjoy it. I will remind you, however, that the possible signal to noise ratio of Digital Signal Processing (given enough bits and clock speeds) is in excess of 120 db, So the 60 db difference in Signal to Noise ratio is 1,000,000 to 1 times better. This reminds me of all the Photoshop Plug In software that emulates old films by introducing THOSE non-linear distortions back into a linear system for effect. LOL.

It's like handling a piece of paper spayed on both sides with 777 tacky adhesive.

Personally, I avoid the whole thing by tri-amping through a single capacitor per horn (active rolloff on the woofer bin, so no inductor at all). The tweeter picks up where the mass rolloff occurs in the K-402/K-1133. Having discrete gain control for each driver tweaks up the final db or so, after which global room EQ takes over. Al K trashes PWK's "constant K" network. I remember from the "Dope from Hope" papers where a Heresy showed less amplifier distortion than an 8 ohm resistor when looking at a spectrum analyser BECAUSE it had a rising impedance at higher frequencies, not to mention 11 ohms on the woofer, but I digress. Al doesn't like varying impedance and uses a swamping RESISTOR across his autoformer, which is higher quality than Klipsch's. So I guess he's on both sides. I'm on neither side, as I prefer only one cap for passive networks with judicious efficiency and rolloff matching of each section and matching disperions angles for each respective band (took 5 years to evolve). My next step my be NO CAPS and go strictly active with PEQ and time delays with either first or fourth order. Let the ears and measurements decide.

Rob, I have a THT horn sub that is a perfect match to a LaScala, since it's the same efficiency. You can flex the glass in your windows with about 10 Watts of power. For sale in the Garage Sale section. $499. I'm in indy.

I can meet you in Detroit next Saturday or Sunday, that is more than halfway. Can you go through Ontario without a hassle? I think you can if you let the powers that be know ahead of time you are passing thru with a USA speaker. 1st, unbolt the front passenger seat and take it out. 2nd, squeeze the sub into that spot. Lastly, put a lamp shade over it and drive on through like nobody's bussiness. Funny. Still waiting to see it anyone is serious or just kicking tires.

When tested or heard, a horn loaded compression driver beats a cone. Even on Klipsch's Jubilee, their chief engineer said at 500hz., the compression driver won against the big horn with 12" cones in terms of low distortion and transient response.........................so, applying that logic at higher frequencies would make the RF082ii's 1,400 Hz. crossover point most desirable based on specs alone (which is not as good as testing and listening). IOW, it does a better job with the higher frequencies than the woofer, so the lower the better, to a point.

The crossover points are chosen to match the dispersion angle of the mid/woofer driver, which for an 8" driver, it narrows at about 2,200 hz. Anything above 1,200 hz. or so can be considered a tweeter. A "super-tweeter" is usually reserved for 3-way systems from 4-6 Khz. 1,200 Hz. is one of the highest fundamental note from a soprano voice, everything above that is harmonics. So pretty much all of the fundamental sound is from the cones, not the horn.

So, basically this guy just used walnut veneer over some raw birch cabinets or just made replicas from birch (not even the Russian Baltic Birch from what I can tell, what a cheapskate). I can hear the theme song from the "Man of LaMancha" in the backgroud..........."To dream the impossible dream.........." LOL. Then he makes up some BS, novel length, descripton. Looks like P.T. Barnum marketing and sales to me.

I have had great result with Audyssey Multi and will soon have Multi XT on a new Onkyo receiver by next week. I found the best trick is to put the mic about 6 inches in front of where your face would go in the sweet spot and about 1 foot on either side of that. I limit to 3 readings only and this has worked from small to huge rooms equally well. People who take read too many mike positions often end up compromising the sweet spot too much.

I can meet you in Detroit next Saturday or Sunday, that is more than halfway. Can you go through Ontario without a hassle? I think you can if you let the powers that be know ahead of time you are passing thru with a USA speaker.

Unfortunately, Claude doesn't own a camera nor, even know how to use one. I know, it's shocking.Perhaps someone will lend him a point & shoot. (Hmmmmm, using iPad and can't find any smilie faces) Oh well, here's a good one OK all your smarta$$e$. Just got back from Nashville. Here's a quick snap of the sub. One can of Black Lacquer and it will be as pretty as a a black gloss or satin can be. All fine sanded and ready to go.

They don't go low enought for HT

A huge part of what made my all horn electo-acoustic transducers sound good in ANY room is the Audyssey Multi EQ of my receiver. Seriously. The 7 series gives your 7 channels of preamp outs, so you can use outboard signal processing and xovers, if you wish, and still get the benefit of Audyssey room correction. But if you have great horns to start with, so much the better.

Holy cow! That thing is huge! Not many people can say that! You can't drive a railroad spike with a tack hammer and you can't get realistic "Flight of the Phoenix" plane crash output from a mini sub.

PWK's original comments on "L-pad distortion" had nothing to with comparing to the hysteresis and non-linear behavior of autoformers (phase shift related). It was strictly a peak/trough ratio of AMPLITUDE being slightly greater. Roy Delgado, PWK's "golden boy" and prolific horn designer prefers resistors because they have linear phase and none of the other anomalies of autoformers. The inductor is the least perfect component (most parasitics) ever invented, so avoiding it's use except when absolutely necessary is a good thing.

My system is now in a house with a 13.5x19 foot living room. Same "stack" and surrounds, BUT I now have twin (front and rear wall centers) Danley DTS-10 subs and I'm is bass heaven. I have one of my MWMs-like bass horns designed and built, and will soon finish the other. Hoping I will not need the PEQ on the woofer section once I go from a 2.8 foot horn to a 5 footer (55 Hz. cutoff, then down to the Danley TH subs) with the same EVM 15 L drivers. I just got a B&K 12 channel amp with discrete volume controls for each and hope to run the whole thing with tri-amps passively. I will also experiment with active for the whole stack, but will try passive first. That little 2020 is still amazing in stock form, though. I probably will not use chip amps much longer, but you never know.

Not yet. I want to finish my "MWMs-like" bass horns first and lose the "LaScala-like" bass horns and see if I can get by without any bass boost or the minus PEQ at 135 hz. inherent in those short horns.

$499. Plug and Play. Gold Binding posts/banana jacks. Efficiency matches Khorns or LaScalas. Goes down to below 20 hz. when corner loaded 18" out. The ultimate sub to use with any Klipsch speaker down to Heresy's. 2x3x3' Black lacquer. Can use one last coat, but looks fine now. This is my smallest sub. Have too many and need the cash. Out of town. Will post photos when I return. See photos below. You can buy plans and build your own for a little over $300, but you will use way more the $200 in labor doing it. This is not a simple build.

$499. Black, 2x3x3' could use another coat of Lacquer for the picky, otherwise looks fine as is. Big box great sound. Have too many subs and need the cash. Out of town, but will post a pic when I return.

You may want to call Klipsch service and see if that is just a new name for the K-43 woofers. Forget the extra power handling aspect, you won't need it. However, being a Klipschorn and LaScala owner of many since 1977 (brand new then) I can tell you the K-43 has superior midrange and midbass response over the K-33 which tries to stretch the weak low end of the LaScala via resonance. It's a reasonable compromise, but a compromise nonetheless. If I were you I would make sure those are K-43's with a new name, then put them in the LaScalas, You can then sell the extra drivers on Ebay or here, and built or buy a THT subwoofer. I'm an electrical engineer with and I have been building/tweaking speakers/commercial sound systems since I was 12.Take advantage of my laborious Research and Development and free advice.

If you look at my Avatar, you can see I use a Peavey FH-1 (cheaper and more ruggedly built than old LaScala cabs). Inside, I have EVM-15L woofers with brand new recones using OEM parts. I'm driving this bass horn with a strock $22 Lepai from Parts Express being bandpasse filterered by a Behringer DCX-2496 because I hate inductors. DizRotus heard it when I was still in Michigan........FYI

Claude, Thanks for the lengthy reply. Good stuff. Would you do me the favor of making a recommendation. I am using a computer sound card to drive an active crossover bi amped setup that can easily go to tri or quad. I am using a tube amp for the high end and a new Audio by Van Alstine solid state for the low end. Assuming I go the pair of Danley DST-10 route for subs what amplification recommendation would you make to drive them. Brad Since I have my DTS-10's 4 ohm drivers wired in parallel, each cabinet represents about a 2 ohm load to the amp. Out of fear and paranoia, I WAS driving each cab with it's own Bryston 4B, using only one channel from each amp, thinking it would starve the power supply. Boy was I wrong. Now I'm using both channels of just one 4B to drive them and they never break a sweat, even with some of the most demanding Blue Ray soundtracks that shake the concrete and rattle everything in my house. Since the 4B has such high current capability via super low impedance, and HUGE transformers in it's overkill power supply, I no longer need two like I originally thought.

Hmmmmmmm how about TOLERANCE? Literally and figuratively.

Well, when I measure an 85 db average level at my sweet spot (where A/V receivers calibrate and, co-incidentally my listening level), my mid horns only draw about 10 milliwatts, so I'm 10 db below that. Besides, since I "gain matched" my drivers I only use one cap and no resistors or autoformers in the signal path. I guess you might say it's not part of my listening or design equation.

I don't know exactly what you mean. If CD's go to 4 Hz. and modern amplifiers are DC coupled, then they are not the limiting factor. The Danley DTS-10 is approx. a 24-foot long tapped bass horn, so it's 1/4 wave represents 11.72 Hz. Besides you can simply use a sine wave sweep from 10 Hz. on up and plot the response using a $50 Behringer microphone with any number of outboard phantom supply/digital I/O device with USB connection on a laptop. REW software is free, as is Audacity. Tested mine against a $2,000 calibrated microphone and it was only 1/4 db off at 19 Khz. which I can't hear anyhow. Hope this answers your question. Well in a way. But then why does a DC coupled amp inherently have the ability to go that low. Seems most of the equipment I remember reading about always seem to use 20Hz as the low end. Then there are pre-amps and in my case sound cards (because I am computer driven all digital). Seems the modern A/V amps rely on the subwoofer amp in most setups. Things were simpler when my source material was limited but with high res digital I am now embarking on options to go lower and higher. Brad With old tube amps, it takes lots of "iron" to go down there. It's all about the output transformers. While there may be a significant rolloff because of this, I don't know because I have never needed to measure that aspect of amplifier performance. I do know that, regardless of coupling, Solid State amplifiers can get into the single digits with insignificant rolloff and the "standards" of measurement have never demanded it in the specs. Going higher has never been a problem. Even ancient theater 2-way system can be EQ'd for more top end sizzle. My hearing has gone from 17Khz to 12Khz. max in the last 30 years. Paying the price from my garage band and club days I guess. So I limit my volume to a very satisfying level of 80-85 db. Now the low end is where most engineering feats have occurred in the last 30 years, since Tom Holman, formerly of Lucasfilm has promoted THX in theaters and contributed to what we now know as 5.1 HT sound. Tradition is the only reason people don't spec. anything below 20 Hz., but a 10-100 Hz. sine sweep and a good mic. will tell you the real story. We CAN have 10 hz. performance, and if we wish, even below that. BUT one must question the sanity and diminishing returns of that extra expense. One of the nice features of a Tapped Horn design is that it behaves better when the driver resonance is 1.5 to 2x the cutoff frequency. As an extreme example, a woofer with an 18 Hz. free air resonance would work best in a 30 foot long tapped horn. Not very practical or cheap, but it can be done. Paul Klipsch, during the development of the MCM 1900 system, was quite impressed with the performance of a 2" Gauss driver that went out to 19 Khz. He said if a driver can do 19 K, then it will be better at doing 10 Khz. than those that barely make it there. Look at the modern berylium compression drivers that easily get to beyond 20 Khz. as an example. Not super tweeters required, but they are pricey. So if we can borrow the same idea for the low end, the same thing can be said. Horns are inherently narrow band devices, (unless you are Tom Danley and you have figured out how to make a Synergy Horn, but I digress) so shifting the frequency band down to about 11-60 Hz. give true subwoofer performance and makes short bass horns (La Scala owners REJOICE) a reality for most of the musical information. This is the approach I'm taking, for better or worse. My new bass horn is designed for 55-600 Hz. performance and will cross at about 320 Hz. to the amazing K402/K1133 driver combo that came from a Regal theater/all Klipsch Pro setup. That would NOT be possible without a great subwoofer section to match, but it costs lots of cubic footage and dollars to achieve. When I go to theaters, after having been spoiled by my twin DTS-10's, I am fully aware of the missing octave, (since all THX theater setups have a 4th order rolloff below about 25 Hz.) in the sub bass rich modern Blockbuster movies with monsters, explosions, and crashes. Hollywood sound men are taking full advantage of digital sound mastering in the sub sonic range because they can without any extra cost to them in the program material. When I came to Indy for my second Pilgrimage, I got a chance to feel what a 3 Kilowatt amp could do on a very expenisve 18" driver with two 18" passives in a solid box in IndyKlipschFan's all-Klipsch home theater. Mike Hurd from Canada brought the sub and it was impressive. He also showed me the spectral output of music CD that clearly contained some 16 Hz. notes. Subwoofers are not just for HT anymore, we need them for a lot of modern music that takes advantage of the modern proliferation of better bass than in the last millennium. Fact, not fiction.