BE36

Holding out for 21:9 that is 70+

Groomslakearea51, Great post, even after all these years. By blending and easing do mean tapering down both the side panel and the top panel veneer at the corners? (Double bevel - Bevel top panel and side panel at the corner?)

Sorry - bin working too late last couple of weeks. I am a tin ear but hear it goes: More accurate reproduction to live, less bright. Less ringing after the main note on instruments like a piano or symbols. Changes in "Sound" are sublte but there are two major differances between Fastrac/Tractrix and K-401 & K400: (Yes I have tried four different Mid Horns in my La Scalas) 1) I no longer get a headache after 45 minutes of listening 2) My dog stays on the couch when volume is 80dB or more. IMHO PWK would admit to two things if pushed: 1) Tractrix is better than exponential Horn for Mids ( Somewhere he is qouted as saying the K400 was too long?) 2) Horn effeciency is only really a benfit on the power hungry woofer, on the mids and tweeter it is more marketing than an engineering requirement. Regarding 2) -I have heard great sounding Direct Radiating Mids but the best tweeters Use some sort of a horn or reverse horn, JBL & B&W.

But extremes do sound good to me with VRDs in Utralinear.

Easy to replace mid horn - Fastracs are bolt on replacement, use same holes as stock horn. No drilling no soldering.

Will sound ok if speakers are rear mounted, will sound better if side mounted. Check out the THX site. Less than one percent of movies are engineered to send different sounds to the rears, most rears are just the same sounds the side get.

ALK universals or extreme slopes

I loved the Klipsh Heritage sound but I would get a Headache, literally, after a half hour or more of listening. The K400 & k401 produce a distortion/ringing, others can better explain technically, that makes your ears bleed. Tractrix horns solved the problem. FYI - Klipsch uses the crossover to attenuate the Mid Range, the distortion in K400 Series makes the midrange sound louder then the woofer and tweeter. When you go to a non distorting Midrange horn you will need to turn up the midrange. Must be hard for you to believe right now. The ALK have a feature that allows you to adjust the midrange, I raised over 6dB when I switched to Dave's Fastracs. I have a extra pair Dave's Fastracs. Fastracks are a drop in replacement for the K-401. Tubes or the correct solid state amp can also help solve the problem. Fastracs/Trackrix horns are fastest and easyest solution. I assume you are not far from 14 and Woodward? You can stop by and listen to my system and pickup some fastracs ALKs to demo in your system Send me PM for Contact Details. http://mysite.verizon.net/res12il11/id96.html http://www.alkeng.com/trachorn.html FYI - I do not get paid to endorse ALK, NOS Valves VRDs or Dave from Fastrac. I do it to save and promote Klipsh Heritage.

Replace the mid horn with Tractrix horn, fastrc horn is a bolt inreplacement. Replace homemadecrossovers with ALK crossovers. Bob tweetr is bolt in replacement. With these you have speakers that can compared to just about any speaker out there at very smal fraction of the price.

Excellent choice. Only problem is there will not be much to upgrade now. Just enjoy the music and search for albums worthy of your system.

Welcome to the Club!

Note that I find the range of bass drums and bass guitars (e.g., Jimmy "Flim" Johnson --bassist for James Taylor, Flim and the BBs) typically are sub-30 Hz recordings. Carol Rosenberger's Delos recording of "Water Music of the Impressionists" is very impressive (Bösendorfer Imperial). Babatunde Olatunji's "Circle of Drums", and any Billy Cobham, Marcus Miller, Stanley Clarke, etc., etc. recordings are sub-30 Hz. Virtually all pipe organ recordings that I own go below 30 Hz. My TH subs add a great deal to these recordings--among many others in my collection. Chris Chris, Cool Chart. Thanks for posting. For your music sounds like a sub is required. I do not own or listen to any of those recordings. Audio Systems Technology, Handbook For Installers States the lowest note on a Standard 88 Key Piano is 27.5 Hz. (Page 77)

2404 Boxes - Need Poly to help matching to the Cabinets. Thinking of using a 8" Round Tractrix with a 2" throut and mounting JBL 2404 next to round Tractrix and having it all fit inside a Stock Cabinet. Motor Board would be revised but the Stock Grill cover could be used and they would look perfectly Stock from the Front. Pay no attention the the man behind the curtain. FYI - Stock (prefered) or Box is required due to WAF issues.

JBL's really blow away the stock K77. Symbols sound so much more real. I have friend who used be a professional drummer, he can not believe how close they sound to the real thing.

I don't think amps make very good equalizers .Before any one has an outburst: I am not including amps that are clearly inadequate to begin with. Try relocating the speakers nearer to the front wall and the side walls. Warning: This can be a tedious process of trial and error. BTW, There is no harm in borrowing an inexpensive sub to see if that helps thing out. Not an outbourst but. I would rather buy adequate amp that matches the system and does not need an Equalizer. Equalizer adds too many compents and connectors and distortions into the signal path. Now the active discussion will start. . .

My Room with a Sub Crossed at 80 Hz. This weekend or next I will make Curves with the new Set up both With and Without the Sub. The La Scala 180 Hz nump can be seen, stiffing the side walls of the cabinate may help but then they might not have the La Scala Upper Bass that I love. Some the drop off is the room. If I boost the Sub to match the Fletcher-Munson curves on the low end it just does not sound right. The Low End between 20 - 40 gets real strong but neither the Sub or the La Scalas can seem to do much between 40 - 80. Writing this just got me thinking, since this graph was made I have new sofas, open underneath, and foot rests that are round and covered with soft material and look like they could be bass traps. Sound seemed to improve when sofa were replaced, maybe the 80 hz hole got plugged? New graphs should be entertaining. The highs when listened to are stronger and more accurate than the graph would suggest, especially when compared to a stock tweeter. The JBL tweeters are reported to be 2 - 3 dB hotter than stock klipsch tweeters, I believe those reports more than how accurate my Radio Schack Meter is calibrated. Local Band drummer who has played a Gig as teh main act in the Georgia Dome, has confirmed the tweeter balance. He is good enough to tour but prefers to stay closer to home with his wife.

Continueing the Discussion . . . I think we are saying the same things. I think you are correct that a sub adds something on some songs. Most Bass Guitars go down to around 41 hz. A Boesendorfer Grand Pianio down to 21 Hz, most pianos are closer to 40 Hz. How often is that last string used all the way out to the kneck? That last few few keys on the Boesendorfer? To the great majority of music that I listen to a sub does not make one bit of difference and for me is not required when listening to music and I could listen to music the rest of my life and not miss my sub. So yes the sub is nice to have and it adds that last little bit if you are going for the ultimate cover all the bases all the time system. But for me it is not requirered to have a good system for Music. Long ago I decided for HT a Sub was required. So rather than port my Scalas that would just make a slight improvement to some of the music some of the time, I would just buy the sub that I needed any way. Sub came with it's own crossover.

If you purchase PureMusic for iTunes, then you can send up to 24/192 ( actually higher.. if you read the PM manual, but who as a DAC that can do 32/384?) Also did some more research and downloaded the demo. PM allows you do use the "AudioUnit Plug-ins" which are PRO Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) plug ins. There is one Plug in made by IK Multimedia that provides licensed MultiEQXT from Audysssey. Therefore, provide you purchase PM and the IK ARC plugin/w Mic you will have a full fledged 24/192 capable room correcting digital playback system. But wait there's more, PM allows users to take advantage of it's built in Crossovers ( up to 4 way), for those with Klipschorns, Lascalas,or other bi/tri amp capable speakers/subwoofers this means you can do all the crossovers in the digital domain and send straight to your 8 channel DAC (there are many pro ones out there) and then straight to you amps-preserving a limited Analog stage and getting the best fidelity. cool, huh? I do not have one, but there is a company in Colorado that just announced they have a low jitter 384 USB connection.

I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to disagree here. I used to be in this camp until I added RSW-15s to my Khorns and then my DBBs. There is a lot of music in that lower two octaves that we are have been missing out on. The problem is to seamlessly add the subs to your mains. But, once you do, you will always use a sub. As an example, listen to Billy Cobham's albums with and without a sub. You may find you have been missing quite a bit. Let see, maybe we can agree to disagree or at least gain some understaning. I have never heard of Billy Cobham, I will try to listen to sum of his music with and without the Sub. One of my test songs for bass response is Eagles, H#$$ Freezes Over, Hotel California. Others songs I have used to test bass with and without as Sub are Frank Sinatra and Diana Krall tunes. Both tend to use lots of bass. So when listening to these songs I have not heard any significant drop in Bass performance with or with out the sub, especially since adding the Bel Canto DAC and Pre. Maybe those songs and most of what I listen to just does not go that low, I have a Sound Level Meter but not one that measures frequency. During my next listening session I will use the Stereophile Warble Tone Test CD with and without the Sub to put some numbers around the La Scala performance in my system/room. Then I can post numbers from both with and without as Sub in graph form. The graph's I have posted before were always with a Sub, but were with a different Preamp that sent everything below 80 herts to the Sub.

I don't think amps make very good equalizers .Before any one has an outburst: I am not including amps that are clearly inadequate to begin with. Try relocating the speakers nearer to the front wall and the side walls. Warning: This can be a tedious process of trial and error. BTW, There is no harm in borrowing an inexpensive sub to see if that helps thing out. Totally agree with you Tom, speaker placement and siting position can make huge difference. Also inadequate amps compared to good ones that match the system make a big difference also. I tried have a perfectly flat response in my room Hated it. Put back to curved. Then Stumbles accross the Fletcher Munson Curves a few months latter. What a relief at least two other guys as crazy as me.

Cool. We always like pictures. I would say before1985 based on my 1989 Labels.

I like the apple route also. I keep the movies on Blue Ray when I want quality and Netflix streaming for others. DAC for less than $500 highly rated. http://www.cambridgeaudio.com/summary.php?PID=320 I am using fiber optic, over 45 feet long from an iMac to Bel Canto. Bel Canto reccomends less than 30 feet but I have tried shorter cables an not heard a difference. Fiber optic isolates the computer elctricaly from the DAC/system, less noise and no ground loop issues. Fiber connection on Apple and most systems is limited to 24/96. (Sounds so much better than CDs) Hearing rumors that Firewire may become the next way to connnect to a DAC and support 24/192. Replacing a Stereophile "A" rated CD Player with a good DAC, I am surprised by two things. 1) How good a good CD can sound (via iMac & DAC, much better than the old CD player) 2) How bad a good CD sounds compared to a good 24/96 recording.

Post a picture of the label.

No holes required for Music. NOS Valves VRD Amps will solve the lack of punch issue. Sub is only required for movies.

odysseyrevolver - Nails it. CD Player = Boat Anchor DAC + iMac + iPad = Way better than any CD player I have heard. CDs are on shelf in the basement. CD Player unpluged within 48 hours using the DAC. 24/96 and 24/192 is the way to go. 98% of Vinyl with 30% less hassle.