AltmanEars

Reading is fundamental --- no one said too much power is a bad thing... Someone did say overkill in audio doesnt always work. Which is somewhat indisputable for anyone who is being honest about the hobby... I realize I am in the minority since I like quality over quantity. I wouldnt buy a speaker which is optimally suited to a 500 watt amplifier. On the other hand the professional reviewer who reviewed the Palladiums thought the 1200 watt McIntoshes worked perfectly so I'm sure for most people 500 watts on an RF-7 is just fine... I also have a different novel idea on testing the amps --- You buy them and use them in your system... You don't read about them on the internet since most of the reviewers don't know what they are talking about and certainly the people who give opinions on the forums are a bit dodgy (myself included), especially since they are usually trying to justify or rationalize their own purchases. BTW lets talk the math of headroom ---- Most people would feel 30db in practice is fine. So someone who listens fairly loud and averages roughly 90db 10ft away from their speakers in a fairly dead room with 10 db of falloff for a 100bd /m/w speaker actually needs 1000 watts to handle peaks... I would not think RF7's sound good at this level...probably should go for the big PMC's or Westlakes --- If you are a more normal person and you average 70db at the listening position a really good 100 watt amplifer gives you 30db peaks at the listening position.

Meandering comments... There are definately some sophisticated guys who have the Jubilees. I can assure you however, (as I raise my hand) there are certainly some 100% dummies who own Jubilees and needed to be hand held through the entire process. I know there is more than one Jubilee owner who was never exposed to biamping & actives, me being one. I will say though, given my starting point, I sure have learned a lot about biamping over the last 3 years. (doesn't mean I know much...just that my starting point was that low!) Going active doesn't necessitate a net higher expense. Perhaps in some circumstances it does, but you can use something like the Crown Xti's and have a VERY cost effective solution that also sounds PDG! Rigma spent somewhere around $3,000 on parts alone for his passives. Although he plans to showcase them on his wall in full view and I'm comparing to used Ebay prices... I just bought a used Dx38 on Ebay for $405. I'm still confused on something (Altmanears) Are you a net fan of biamping & actives or are you more of a net fan of passives? (presuming something like a Khorn since that was the start of this thread) I'm inferring you to be a fan of both at times and there's certainly nothing wrong with that! Thats both a technical and a personal question. Given my background I would always gravitate to active. Also when you consider the incredibly low cost for good equipment in 2009 --- the case for active is a bit stronger. The logical exception would be a 2 way horn system with a first order crossover and exceptionally expensive drivers. You could then make a strong case for passive. Companies selling 3-5 way "monkey coffins" priced from 10K-150K with passive crossovers are most likely frauds...On the other hand, the good engineers at razor are selling a biamped desktop pc system with 5 active channels of digital amplification for under $300 dollars. (the sound is superb)

Okay, Colin. You missed 1-16, but you get full credit for getting 17-20 right. I really love this type of quote...esp the part about making 1300% annually. Now for the rest of the story. People who consistently make money in these markets may have economic thoeries but price action is king --- mostly because of the amount of leverage we use... If you are relatively flexible in your approach you watch the oil market and trade the correlated currencies which tend to offer much greater liquidity, leverage and there are no real position limits. Our freind who was quoted merely was positioned so that he caught the massive yen move in October of 1998. Relatively small traders have positions of 20million + so if your average return is really 1,300%/year (more than 70%/month) you would be able to grow your $20 million into a conservative 2 X 10 to the 22 power in roughly 60 months... So the real truth is as follows --- """I had a theory about the oil markets and, as you know, Japan's economy and currency is highly dependant upon oil prices. I set up a trade and I was lucky enough to catch the biggest move of all time and make more than 10X on that trade. In retrospect this was mostly luck since I've had tradeable ideas before and after and they surely haven't all worked out as well. I'm counting my blessings --- humbly yours "Joe Trader"...""" I thought it very interesting that Mark ? was dead right on the value of fundamentals in the market. I have very good predictive software and you can prove most of the fundamentals have no predictive value -- such is the nature of markets. Furthermore, for every logical theory you have on oil prices I can find another logical theory on the other side of the argument. Its probably worth adding, the random walk theory is not actually the logical alternative. The random walk people failed to see that most markets are leptokurtic. All of you know this is true since you have lived through highly skewed markets with fat tails. Sorry I had to rant --- Because of my position and the nature of this thread I must add that nothing in this note should be considered advice. If you know the rant was true you probably were in Davos waiting in the long line to hear from one of the consultants we use and this is merely a very poor short review.

Big Stew as others have indicated, the choc is probably Lindt --- but since you are on this forum and you like expensive toys and she's a new flame you need to test your ability to lie very early in the relationship. Buy her a hersheys bar and tell her the Lindt thing is a scam since Lindt is a division of Hersheys. If she lets you get away with this lie -- she is really into you... If she calls you out, get rid of her...she'll never let you buy good hifi... [] Since women are smarter than men she will know the truth in either case...

1) They are time aligned physically and need no delays. 2) Some of the audiophools who might be attracted to the Palladium series want a simple signal path, and polyamplification is anything but. I've heard this logic tons of times on this forum so I am completely mystified. 1.) The physical alignment of the drivers does not mean you have the same arrival time for the sound to propagate through the medium(air). Furthermore ,if you look at a Palladium the voice coil of the tweeter and the midrange are not in the same plane. Does Klipsch say they are time aligned??? 2.) The path on passive is logically much more complex than active because the passive crossover has inductors. The Palladium is a 4TH ORDER crossover and is fairly complicated. In active the signal travels from the amp directly to a driver. Passively there is so much wire in the inductor for the bass frequency you lose 30% of the amp's power before it gets to the driver. So it comes down to ---if you have a multi driver speaker are you better off dividing the frequencies before the amplifier or after and the answer is before. I think the confusion on this subject stems from a belief that adding 3 additional boxes (2 more stereo amps and one crossover) to a system means the signal is complicated. While the box count is up the path is simplified. By the same box count logic you would never buy a separate preamp and power amp since that would complicate the signal path... Now for the rest of the story --- The biggest reasons you don't want to introduce an active crossover into the Palladium mix are as follows: 1. Due to the market segmentation a Palladium prospect would have to be educated to the advantages. Dealers dont like to educate --- thats old school 2. The Jub customer is assumed to be more intelligent/knowledgeable and in some case is in the pro audio field which takes all this for granted. 3. If you had an active and passive version, reviewers would listen to both and proclaim that the speaker is pretty good passive but really comes alive when it is active. Potential customers who can't hear and take everything they read as gospel would interpret the reviews as you need to go active which would push the speaker into a much higher price bracket when one includes the cost of amplifiers and the electronic xover....

you are in for a world of hurt since if you do it right it will sound better and worse at the same time... If you tend to listen to digital the better should outweigh the worse esp if you can run your transport directly into the crossover.

Yeah what he said... sorry about the typo

Wow that is really shocking... I'm beginning to think you asked the forum one question and Mark and entirely different one... Also keep in mind that Klipsch owners have a repution for not being able to hear so it is entirely possible that he (Mark) took this into consideration and merely put the big monster on the table so as to feed into all of your misconceptions about the hobby. I've never heard a 250 on Klipsch but it will run B&W 802's with no problem... BTW hifi is a hobby where overkill doesnt always work.

Coytee Ignoring all the issues with impedance matching and insertion loss --- The higher the slope of your crossover the more passive devices you need. The steeper the slope of the passive the more phase shift you will get. Also the steeper the slope the louder you can drive the loudspeaker without blowing the tweeters...etc In your example the "fixed" parameters for an active JUB could be entirely different than the active counterpart since you can tailor the sound with the active xover without damaging the phase relationships. This also is before we get to a compensation circuit for a time delay. The funny thing about the original Paul Klipsch quotes is that I was around in 1972 and there was a major difference between a Marantz and a McIntosh 275. They sound totally different -- so someone who could pick one from the other was hardly a golden ear. OTOH It wasnt until the late '70s that there were a number of good audiophile active crossovers.

It works well enough but you need to know how to use the data. BTW we have found that intelligent people who self-identify themselves as having advanced knowledge of the market are the best to trade "AGAINST". You are very very observant about the the fractals. My team uses a number of systems which we test against multiple timeframes. The systems which test the best are "self similar" and tend to make the most money. The other observation is that volatile markets beget more volatility --- most market math assumes gaussian distributions which is why most people didn't think the market would recover as well as it did...

Islander I read your response and while Linn could improve on the crossover they are crazy people and wouldnt care about making it inexpensive. The high end crossovers they sell are more than jub's partly because of a high tech, made in house, aluminum machined case. Your answer probably raises more questions than answers --- Off the top I wonder if Klispch (Roy) would share the optimal settings for an active KHORN ?and why are the Palladiums passive given the cost no object approach...

Honest answer Coytee --- Again dont want to put words in your mouth but are you assuming that a company that supplies an active and a passive solution would have the same crossover parameters and hence there should be no difference in sound. If so consider this: Even if the crossover parameters were the same the sound of the active setup would be much better due to the short path length and impedance matching between the amp(s) and speaker. In practice the speaker designer would not use the same parameters for the active and passive solutions since he/she would be able to select a better sounding setup on the active side which has fewer overall design compromises. Also most quality brand supplied active crossovers allow fine tuning around the optimal points. BTW, Linn and Naim really know crossovers and their products all have level adjustments on the active side that they don't have on the passive side...

I am prohibited from saying anything too direct here but these types of forums are so important I have a service which does a bit of datamining to see what "most" people are saying. An index is computed which basically charts the occurance of terms like CDS, currency, "the rally is over" etc and we can determine when there will be turning points in major markets. The science behind this is known as behavioral finance. Don't even think about asking the name or price of the service...

Very timely --- I have a 1,000 square ft storage room for hifi I dont use and I'm going through the subwoofers today to see which two might be best for KHORNS and movies. The multiple subs actually work to pressurize the room more faithfully/evenly. So far I dont like Khorns and subs for music but Colin does and has found a good solution.

reading between the lines, it sounds like you need a matching amp and preamp --- you don't as far as sound is concerned. the Aleph is the ticket for the reason you arent comfortable with --- it is low powered. If you need high power you could consider the McIntosh MC501 used which is 6-7K. I would not go for the high powered Pass stuff for some of the same reasons Pass likes the First Watt... The used MC501 is the perfect amp since it has a high resale value once you see the light. Let me digress though --- HIFI is like everything else --- At the margins the conventional wisdom is always wrong. The conventional wisdom would be go with a big amp since there is only a minor difference between amps and you are obviously getting more for your money with a big cheap amp. Also I am completely biased since I have met Nelson Pass on a few occasions and I consider him a smart guy with good ethics and really good ears.

Thanks. Just curious is there a reason you went with the stereo amp over the monoblocks since they are about the same price. BTW to answer the original question Sophia sells demos of the highly regarded Baby for less than $600 --- so that is an option for a real budget tube amp.

Something tells me if you liked the Pass you will find the Emotiva is not the same sound quality. But I actually think there are differences in amps. The biggest advantage of Klipsch is that you dont have to buy a giant amp with a massive part count. If you want, you may be able to best your freinds system by going to Reno hifi and buying a reconditioned low powered Pass Aleph 30... I'd go with a nice tube preamp like the Doge 8 or a used Mcintosh C220.

Chris, the Westlake experience was about 18 months ago so it might not pass your recent experience test but I thought it was more relavent since I consider the Westlake a good horn speaker like the Klispch --- only a bit better and obviously 10-20X more expensive. The reason why I mentioned the other older speakers is that the conditions were more controlled and there was a listening panel. I truly appreciate your comments regarding --- "the speaker is 10x more important" I've not found that to be the case --- for example in practice passive MG20.1 are OK but active MG20.1 are a whole different speaker. I'm only guessing here but I'm beginning to think the enthusiasm many have over Jub's is that they are active. Its infinitely easier to get a two way active to sound better than a three way passive aka Khorn. All that said --- I'm sure you are in the majority opinion and much of this discussion assumes one can hear and knows how to tailor a crossover to a room/speaker --- Those are big assumptions --- failing that you are always better off passive. BTW Did you read that as I'm saying you cant hear ??? Don't please Don't.

Coytee absolutely right on --- There is a clarity and immediacy of sound you would get from the active approach that you wont get even with a very expensive amp. In virtually all my tests the active crossovers were designed by the speaker designer. This begs the request that Klipsch design a few active crossover for the heritage line. Someone else mentioned or assumed that the speaker is the most important factor dwarfing all other concerns and though this makes perfect sense I have not found it to be true. The case in point was when a few freinds wired a Linn Kan actively with two naim 250's and a custom made naim active crossover. This was much more fun to listen too than the Wilson speakers we used as a "highend" benchmark. The Wilson WATT/Puppy was driven with a monster Krell amp. Even though there ware several hifi things the Watt's did a bit better, the biamped KAN communicated more music... Odd but true. Fast forward --- today the active crossovers are way better than what I was using and inexpensive solid state amps are way cheaper and better than they were a decade ago...

I havent tried that with Khorns but I have tried that kind of experiment with Maggies, Linn BRIC's, and the big Naim speakers and in all cases you are better off with a single really good amplifer than 3 suspect sounding amplifiers and, in the last two cases, a purpose built active crossover. BUT --- BIG BUT --- there are many good inexpensive relatively low powered amps like the parasounds and the ATI's which I would bet would sound better run actively than more esoteric, passively run, higher powered SET amps. I've heard the urban legend that active is for inefficient speakers and while this makes all the sense in the world it actually does not seem to work in practice. The big efficient Westlakes sound much better actively than passively.

Jay do you have the Sophia stereo 300B or the mono amps.

John I guess we do have a point of disagreement but thanks for your thoughts anyway. I have very little experience with engineering but I do have an engineering degree from a top school and I did work at Bell Labs at the beginning of my career before I figured out that the "Global Economy" values moving money around more than it values engineering good products. Very little in audio is properly engineered. The cost to bring a team of material, electrical, and acoustical engineers together for a project such as finding a cost effective replacement top for a standard Klipschorn could easily morph into a multimillion dollar project. A project, I might add, which would be so expensive one could not properly amortize the development costs let alone make a profit. Again, given my personal situation it is better to keep the Khorns "as is" , optimize the rest of the system around them and if needed replace the Khorns with what I would call a fully engineered solution using better drivers. Fortunately a number of firms have developed TAD and vintage Altec based solutions which fill this niche.

Yeah it kind of sounds that way but I've gotten good information and leads and I really appreciate the tips. I've learned this though --- 1. Many paths to better Klipsch end up with the Altec or TAD drivers attached to a horn of Altec or custom origin 2. Some of the less ambitious paths lead to mod passive x-overs with existing drivers or mod passive x-overs and new drivers 3. A number of people have had good results with active crossovers even relatively low cost digital ones...(though these pose some interesting engineering challenges) 4. For me, if I concede the TAD and Altec drivers are significantly better it is probably more cost efficient for me to enjoy the Khorns as is and sell them for a pr of Yamamoto's or Shindo's which would be fully engineered solutions. Again sorry I totally understand how it would appear that I was not properly valuing others opinions.

John --- I think you missed the whole point --- I was making the point that some of the mod's like the Duelands are not cost efficient. My McGuyver comment was an attempt at humor and it should imply the solutions work but are not fully integated and properly engineered. That you think the majority of the suggestions on the forum represent fully engineered solutions which are cost effective --- we will part company. The mods for the Khorn are clearly a result of a few smart guys who have fairly deep insight into some aspect of loudspeaker design who are attempting to honestly offer major improvements, but there is little evidence these are fully thought out integrated solutions.

Actually I also own some McIntosh gear but I'm actually reading the guy's message. He needs to buy a prepro a decent tube preamp like the C220 and a higher quality lower powered amp. Now I own or have owned all the Krell's the Threshold/Pass amps and the McIntosh amps. To my ears in every case the lowest powered amp in the amp line sounds the best as long as the speaker is efficient, so why pay the extra money? Now one of the other guys on this forum typcially uses 1 watt on average which then argues for keeping the MC352 since that would afford the listener adequate headroom for lets say 30db peaks but I think the original poster was liberal with their definition of average power.