dhtman

They are in the UK and will be delivered on Monday! [] Three pallets! They wanted to know if I have a fork lift truck here! So a busy weekend coming up - I'm putting in some new walls shelves for my system and I need to get that finished for Monday. Then the XLR to phono interconnects to finish off. I'll have to just admire them for a few days because I don't think the Electrovoice crossover will be here Monday. The wait continues. Watch out for pics soon. d

I've just had an email from Klipsch in the Netherlands with an invoice. My Jubs will be there early next week so I've had my bank wire some Euros. It's getting close. Anticipation and excitement rising! [] d-soon-to-be-jub-man

I saw that dem at RMAF last month. The only difference a Valhalla cable makes is to your bank balance! To say the dem is "clever" is an understatement - it's a performance that rivals David Copperfield! Lars does an A/B comparison working through the Nordost range, starting off playing obscure Norwegian/Danish/Swedish folk/pop, changing the track for each cable comparison. He directs attention towards an aspect of the track (e.g. "listen to the emotion") and always lets the more expensive cable play longer, often to include a rousing section that he didn't play with the cheaper cable. When he reaches the most expensive two cables, he plays familiar tracks, in my case Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd, and again fades out the cheaper cable before the "good bit" in the song. The other Nordost proposition is wide bandwidth, by which I reckon the best value cable must be Cat8 network cable. What I can't work out is how recording studios and the whole music production process manages to get by with humble screened microphone/patch cable that costs 70 cents/foot!

Yup, I've got one. And I'll be using it when my new babies arrive! dhtman

Intact Audio http://www.intactaudio.com/atten.html

Back to the OP's question. I heard Ron Welborne's Ultrapath linestage at RMAF in a very good sounding (some said best in show) system so it clearly cuts the mustard. I know Ron's kits come with great instructions and I can vouch for his after sales support. I also heard Mark's Blueberry Extreme and that too is a very fine sounding pre with a great phono stage. Many here get great results with Juicy Music pre's in their systems - it strikes me that the Welbornes are more SET audiophile mainstream, which means that there's always good second owner demand.

They are probably built in the same factory as the amps on eBay that you can buy direct from China for a bit less. The Chinese cut corners on the expensive parts - the chassis might have sharp edges and be roughly built compared to western brands. And the output transformers will limit sonics - so expect bloated bass. I like the Parts Express description "Bring the warmth and accuracy of premium hand-made tube amps to your own critical listening experience." Spot the contradiction there! lol If you want to try tubes, my advice would be to do it properly and buy a Bottlehead or Welborne kit (they are straight forward to build) or a used, ready built amp off Audiogon. You can rely on these guys and you will get most of your money back if you want to upgrade. There's no second user demand for these unkown Chinese amps.

Roy, that's great. I've been out of town a lot and haven't checked by here recently. I last heard a delivery estimate of early December with the invoice 2 weeks before, so it must be getting closer. I really must get round to making up the cables forr the Electrovoice crossover! dhtman

A great site - I love the way he debunks the BS about cables and interconnects. I was fortunate to hear Roger's IDS-25s at RMAF in Denver last weekend. A very good sounding speaker - the only convincing line array design I've heard.

I agree that with so many horn speaker companies exhibiting at RMAF it would be fertile ground for the Heritage range. The SET/horn guys can be a bit snobbish though - they acknowledge that Khorns are "pretty good" then go and spend twice as much on something from a boutique manufacturer.

Well, I worked on it! I gave her the full story first - PWK's last design, not officially sold to individuals, very rare and special, etc. I also showed her some pics of some real ugly speakers (Wilsons, etc) too before showing her the pics that Richard posted here. She's a musician, with good ears, and knows that audio that looks good rarely sounds good. And the Jubs will look better than the enclosures I built for a pair of 12" Tannoy drivers I'm currently using.

Richard, that $500 hasn't arrived yet. Should have gotten here by now! Mike, thanks for your comments, your input sure helped a lot. Sorry for the delay in responding here, I've been away enjoying some great Colorado hospitality and the wonderful Rocky Mountain Audiofest. I had the opportunity to meet Mr Juicy Music (Mark Deneen) and hear his wonderful electronics. He was using a pair of RF-52s (which I haven't heard before) and they made a delightful sound that put most of the audiophile drek at the show to shame. Long live kick-*** audio!

Thanks. It's funny you mention Sir Paul because Liverpool is my home city. I actually went to the same junior school (Dovedale CP) as John Lennon and was taught by one of his teachers. I'm not one of those guys who changes their speakers every couple of years - I've had two pairs since 1981 so I'm looking forward to the thrill of playing loads of old albums again and enjoying them with the Jubs. Many late night sessions ahead methinks. Sir Paul would be welcome to come hear mine any time he chooses!

Almost 30 years ago, as a teenager, I visited the London audio show. Back then, the British audio scene was even more parochial than it is today. Speaker manufacturers were obsessed with achieving flat frequency responses, using complex filter circuits. Whilst the specs looked good in the brochure the music was invariably boring and lifeless. At that show, one room stood out from the rest the first time I ever heard a pair of La Scalas. They filled the room with raunchy sounds that came closer to recreating a live gig than anything else I had heard. At that time they were way beyond my budget, however I promised I would treat myself to a pair when I could afford them Sadly, the UK wasnt ready for Klipsch at that time. You know how sometimes it takes courage to stand out from the crowd by going against whats fashionable, and there werent enough customers in England prepared to do that, so the Klipsch line was no longer imported. Last year I started looking for a new turntable and I visited Colorado to hear a couple of promising designs. The dems I heard featured current audiophile horn designs with low output tube amps. I liked the punch and immediacy there was something there, however there were also compromises that I didnt want to make. However dht amps with horns was the direction I wanted to take. Then I remembered the La Scalas and also the Khorns I heard once. I started looking for a pair of used Khorns (as rare as rocking horse shit over here) and just missed out on a pair last fall. I visited a friend in Italy who has an amazing horn system based on vintage PA speakers. It sounded awesome but failed the WAF miserably. In discussions online I heard about the La Scala bass bin mod and that someone had built some great speakers using the La Scala bass bins with 200 Hz Oris horns. I visited this forum looking for clues on how to build the modded La Scala bass bins and how to build the crossover. As I read further through old threads it confirmed my suspicions that cross over design is a specialisation that requires skill, experience and measurement equipment so I shifted my sights onto a speaker design that had been developed by someone who knew what they were doing! By chance I came across one of the Jubilee threads and these speakers really captured my imagination. Fortunately, there are thousands of words written here on the Jubilees and I am familiar with the sound of many of the other speakers that they have been compared to, so I was able to form a good impression of how they perform. I contacted Richard off list with some questions and he suggested I check with Mike too. Mike and I had a long phone conversation one weekend and as we talked, it became obvious to me that Mike and I had the same kind of priorities in how we like our music to sound. We had made similar equipment choices and had followed a similar path in our system evolution. It sounded like Jubilees would be just the horns I was looking for! Richard and Mike bought their Jubs through a Klipsch cinema dealer. But Klipsch isnt currently represented in the UK would I be able to get a pair at any price, would the cost of shipping make them too expensive? Only one way to find out - I emailed Roy Delgado back in August and he was excellent. He made the connections internally and I was introduced to Klipschs European Operations Manager in the Netherlands. We had a phone conversation, and yes, he would prepare a price quotation for me. The email quote arrived this Tuesday and amazingly the before tax price comes in very close to what Mike and Richards cost, including shipping. Amazingly they will cost me less than a pair of plug n play Oris horns too! So finally, 30 years after first being blown away by a pair of Klipsch speakers, I get to buy my first pair! My order is in delivery quoted is 12 weeks, so Im guessing they will be arriving some time in January (if they are shipped from Hope before the Christmas holiday). Watch out for pics and my listening impressions.

I was at an audio show in London today and heard a very nice pair of B&W stand mount speakers that went surprisingly deep. However they didn't come close to a pair of La Scalas. Being a Brit, I was weaned on the British speaker sound and D-Man is right, it's compressed, distorted, colored and boring. Trade your horns and you're choosing boring. I don't find that dr speakers necessarily image better than horns - it's very much source and room dependent. My suggestion is that you keep your horn speakers in your smaller room and work on improving the room's performance. Bass traps in the corners - a bookcase across each corner angle filled with paperbacks is a cheap way to go. Maybe some diffusers at the reflection points and lots of absorbent furniture and drapes.

What do you want from speakers that your Heresys and La Scalas aren't giving you? If you want a different type of presentation, try a different driver topology - Quad or Martin Logan electrostatics or maybe Linkwitz Orion open baffles.

Most modern PA speakers are way too large for home use. I think you will find that most pro amps have ruler flat frequency responses and can cope well with low impedance loads too. How a sound engineer chooses to set the EQ on a gig is another matter though. There are examples of pro gear crossing over into home use: the Benchmark DAC-1, Behringer and Alesis power amps, Behringer digital equalizers, etc. I think some favorable reviews in the Audio Critic have started something of a trend. If you read an audio mag review you soon realize that they value aesthetics highly. Because pro electronics are utilitarian and rack-mountable they don't get considered yet in sonic terms I would defy anyone to identify them correctly in ABX blind testing.

I think PRaT (pace, rhythm and timing) is a label that classifies a particular type of distortion - characterized by good leading edge transient response followed by overdone decay of the notes (in electronics) and massive deletion of low frequencies and complexity (in turntables)! Point is, in a well constructed audio system, PRaT should be in there, along with tonal balance, low distortion and noise, good detail resolution, etc. It gets a bad name in systems where the other stuff is missing - e.g. Naim amps don't do detail very well (IME).

I ran a jazz label in Europe in the '90s and sat in the studio control room when a good few albums were being mixed. A couple of points about studio mult-track recordings: First, a mixing studio has its walls covered with acoustic damping materials, so that the engineer and artists aren't subjected to relfections from the monitor speakers. Second, whilst terms like forward, back, up and down are used in the mixing process - they are in relation to amplitude of any recorded track in relation to the others. I never heard any discussion about 3D imaging or soundstage height - these are audiophile artifacts induced by high frequency reflections in a listening room allied with the way the ear/brain interprets the reverb on individual instruments. In live recordings it's possible for this to be perceived as depth. The whole "holographic 3D imaging" concept is a fabrication invented by certain audio reviewers/magazines, in support of the "higher price/better sound" scam that serves the magazine emplyees and their advertisers. For the OP, the best way to test your speakers/room would be either with a recording using simple stereo crossed pair mikes (find some local amateur musicians who are happy to help out) or alternatively a test cd like the one from Linkwitz Labs.

What a fantastic gesture by Roy and his colleagues. I'm sure the Jubs are special enough already for you and Mike, however it's really good to see the effort and care that has gone into getting those speakers to you. It's so easy to think of Klipsch as another big corporation, so it comes as a pleasant surprise to such evidence of the attention to detail and passion for the products shown by the people in Hope. I can't help thinking that Roy has raised the level of expectation now though - everyone in future who decides to buy Jubs wil be expecting the same!