Islander

I've been using 8 gauge Karma Kable from KnuKonceptz for over a year and it sounds great. There's a noticeable improvement over the 12 gauge that I was using, especially in clarity and bass presence. It is a little heavy, though, so I support it so it's not hanging from the connectors. The improvement was very easy to hear with my previous speakers, but perhaps it wouldn't be so obvious with Heritage speakers, since the Scalas are 9 dB more sensitive, but the 8 gauge cables are all I've ever used with them. They're twisted pair, with a clear sheath over the two sheathed conductors and are about half an inch in diameter. As for 2 gauge, I think that was the size we used for locomotive jumper cables when I worked on the railway (CN). I was a mechanic, not an electrician, so I'm not positive. Anyway, struggling through the gravel in the train yard while pulling a 2-wheeled cart with 100 feet of that cable and its heavy-duty clamps was no picnic, especially in the snow.

Recordings all sound different, depending on the preferences of the artist, the recording engineer, perhaps even the intended audience. Try listening to the same CD on several different systems, ideally at least one or two fairly good ones. Some recordings will sound terrible on anything, it's just that it's more obvious on a really clear-sounding system. As well, do you think your system is performing at its best? For instance, are your speakers in the best possible location, pointing the right way? Is your room set up right, not too echo-y or too muffled, for example?

You can actually edit your post after it's posted. Don't know for how long. Just hit the "edit" button.

Wow! That looks great! Now how much more than a regular black Jubilee would that cost? It's easy to picture one of those on the cover of Stereophile or The Absolute Sound.

Wonderful. We will use your example to point out the fallacy of your premise. The cars performance will be dictated primarily by its chassis, suspension, transmission and motor, ie. source, speakers, and amplification. The body of the car (room) enhances or restricts that potential as do the auxillary systems. A Ferrari body does nothing for me if I stick a Yugo engine and transmission in it while a VW Jetta will fly with a Porsche engine and tranny. The car components analogy that you are both using for your debate is flawed in that the room would be represented by the road, not the tires. In that case, it becomes clear that certain cars will perform well on certain roads (sportscar on twisty roads) and other cars will outperform them on other roads (rally car or perhaps SUV on potholed roads, for example). Since there are no "standard" rooms or "standard-sounding" systems, it would seem that the room and the sound system should complement each other to sound best. If needed, room treatments could be one of the less expensive parts of the complete package...

No, Max, you're not losing it, but I've found that not all speakers want the same spacing to sound best. With the Audio Logic speakers (2-way bass reflex, twin 10-inch bass/mid drivers) I was using, a separation of 5 feet center-to-center spacing was fine (with 8.5 feet listening distance), but with the La Scalas, the soundstage was compressed and the imaging was disappointing. Last December, psg was in town on business and had time to stop by for a listen. He immediately said I should move them much further apart and offered to help me do it right then. Since it involved moving furniture and getting longer speaker cables, it took a couple of weeks to get around to it, but it was really worth it. They're now 11.5 feet apart center-to-center, toed in to point almost directly to the listening position 12 1/2 feet away, 3 1/2 feet from the back wall. The soundstage is bigger, the imaging is solid, on a left-to-right basis at least, and more mid-range fine detail is audible, much to my surprise (about the detail). According to the Heritage Series owner's manual, "Klipsch Heritage loudspeakers perform best when positioned on the corners on the long wall of a rectangular room. If the room is very narrow and long with corners farther apart than 18 to 20 feet, the stereo image may not be optimal. A room with a length to width ratio of 1.00 to .618 is preferred. In addition, Klipschorn loudspeakers seem to benefit from ceiling heights no lower than 8.5 feet. Since room acoustics vary, some situations may dictate speaker placement outside of the corner. In most cases, the speaker should be toed in toward the listening position. The degree of toe in should be adjusted to taste or to compensate for room placement." It goes on to say that "The Belle Klipsch and La Scala feature self-contained, front-firing, folded bass horns to permit placement out of the corner if required. However, because these models have less bass extension than the Klipschorn, the low frequency acoustic reinforcement of corner placing may be optimal. The Belle Klipsch and La Scala also offer full flexibility with regard to toe-in achievable for the desired stereo image." These instructions are different from typical manufacturers' recommendations, but Klipsch certainly has the years of experience to know what they're talking about. Paradigm, at least, recommend that speakers be placed from (listening distance) apart down to (3/4 of listening distance) apart. Max, have you found that the ideal speaker separation is independent of the listening distance? Could it be that an approximate equilateral triangle formed by the speakers and the listener is a good starting point in most cases?

I've made endless test runs from 200 Hz down to 10 Hz and while I can clearly hear a 30 Hz tone, I can't hear a 25 Hz tone at all, or anything below that. It shows on the SPL meter, but I can't hear it. Has anyone else noticed this? Age-related hearing loss is usually mentioned in regard to the upper frequencies. Wonder if it's an issue at the bottom end as well?

When you always note in your diary what you listened to that day and you're disappointed if you didn't have a chance to hear any music all day.

So that's Dynamat Xtreme applied to a K400 horn. I first made templates of heavy paper to fit the horn, then cut the Dynamat to match the templates. Scissors work, but you have to use strong soap or solvent to clean them after. Since I added some grille cloth the the inner side of the cabinet (neater looking than attaching it to the outside), I can't be positive that the damping alone made the difference, but those two changes certainly made the La Scalas more pleasant to listen to.

Ah, finally figured out how to post a picture. It's more complicated than it was before the forum update.

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It sounds like a narrow beam has proportionally more surface or perimeter compared with a wide beam, so a narrow beam of pressure waves is more affected (or easily deflected) by the surrounding air, tending to spread out sooner than a wide beam, which has many more air molecules in its larger center. Accordingly, the wide beam's center would be more protected from interaction with the surrounding air, so it would tend to continue in a straight line for a longer distance. As for the frequency question, I'm not too sure.

Well, that makes total sense! As it happens, I previously had the sub set at 180 degrees, but with the Scalas it gives the best readings at 90 degrees, so right on, Mike! However, I think the bass bin path is more like 3.5 feet, counting 2 feet to the back,1 foot to the center, then roughly six inches into the doghouse. Does that sound about right, or did you mean it's about 2.5 feet longer than the squawker? The squawker path is more like 20 inches, and the CT125 path is about 3 inches. On a related note, is phase sort of the same as delay (or advance), within one wavelength at least?

Thanks for the tip, Johny, but I checked the wiring pretty closely when I replaced the crossover caps and again when I recently replaced the speaker cables with longer ones. It would also be odd for both speakers to have a problem. I think it's just a quirk of the YPAO, since it gave the same result when I first got the speakers, before I changed anything. The manual mentions that it can be fooled sometimes. As well, checking woofer wiring on La Scalas is a bit more of a project than I'm into at the moment...

If you like jazz, check out KPLU 88.5 Seattle-Tacoma. Jazz nearly all day, blues Saturday and Sunday evenings, Jazz on the Grooveyard after midnight. Talk 3 pm-7:30 pm.

Of course you can incorporate them into your HT setup, or more accurately, set it up around the Khorns. The center and surround speakers will need their levels turned up about 10 dB to match the output of the Khorns, but most AV receivers will let you do that. With my La Scalas, which have very nearly the output of the Khorns, I wound up having to set them at -3.5 dB with the most distant surround speaker set at +9.5 dB, but it all works and sounds good. As your budget improves over the years, you can consider adding more Heritage speakers to your system. There are members on this forum with several Klipschorns in their systems, or combos of Klipschorns and La Scalas, Belles, Heresies, Cornwalls, or whatever suits their listening space and budget. Bottom line is that you have a system that's above 95th percentile in your room, compared to that of the average Joe. Why would you want to trade down? And you can get different grille cloth...

Is that the article in this month's Stereophile? Looks like PWK was years ahead of his time.

Audio memory, not sure, but I recall my first two hi-fi memories. When I was in high school, one of my buddies had a part-time job at the local radio station, a really small one (CJQC, later CFOM). I stopped by one evening and he let me use the mic off-air. I was surprised to notice that our voices didn't sound amplified and "stage-like", but just like someone was poking his head out of the speaker with no electronic assistance at all. Years later, I was at the Toronto Exhibition, the big late-summer fair, and found a display of big B&W speakers in a quiet corner in one of the buildings. One of them was playing a saxophone solo, and it sounded just like there was a sax being played right in front of me, not at all like any stereo I'd ever heard. Those two experiences have stuck with me more than any other stereo shop demos or home listenings I can recall, although sometimes my current system approaches them.

The last time I used the auto setup on my Yamaha receiver, it declared that both La Scalas were "out of phase", while none of the other 5 speakers (center, surround and surround back) were. Since the cables were connected correctly, does this indicate a polarity mixup? According to the manual, some speakers will show up as out of phase even if they're not. Is there something odd about horn speakers in this regard? When the program checked the distance (in order to set the delay), I was interested to notice that it measured the distance from the listening position to the diaphragm of the squawker horn, not to the front of the speaker (a difference of nearly 2 feet). Obvious when you think of it, but with typical speakers, I'd measure to the dust cap of the midrange driver. The YPAO program seems best at measuring speaker distances from the listening position, while the other parameters like speaker size and level are better set manually, in my experience at least.

Just the thing for the turntablist of the future!

That German Klipsch dealer is Werner Enge and his website is at http://www.klipsch-direkt.de/

Haven't heard of the Super AA. What's that? I'm using AA with BEC's Sonicaps and CT-125 tweeters. Sounds good and clear to me, but I don't listen at high volume that often.

A rave on wheels? Now there's a concept!

Saturday, 3/17/07 @ 9:30pm, CST, on speedchannel. Been waiting since October 2006 for this. F1 2007 begins HoooWaah! And MotoGP has just started. Valentino Rossi took second at Qatar. Hope this year is better for him than last year's list of disasters...

Criminal mastermind? Only in the movies! Most crooks are idiots...