EdmundGTP

I had been meaning to update this post for a little while now. I think it's been like 2 weeks since last time. I did get around to doing some measurement and EQ work. I did a few rounds of slow, tedioius, manual measurement at various volumes, and found that I had a nasty dip at about 45hz and at 70hz, and a significant peak at 60hz. They were definitely noticeable by ear alone as certain bass notes around 45 and 70 would just seem to be "absent" in a particular piece of music or whatever. So I smoothed that out as best as I could for a first round, and I honestly think they sound better now than they did before since I now I can actually EQ them. That's not to say I couldn't have before, but regardless of the path taken, they're working now better than ever. Perhaps if I get bored again sometime soon I'll fine tune it a little more but for now its adequate. I guess if I wanted to get really crazy I could actually EQ each sub separate from the other though I'm not sure how I'd go about that. So anyways, here's a few more finished pics, and thanks for following.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mk_19_grenade_launcher

Update # 487 I retrieved the plates and brought them home. Please ignore my hideous countertop and linoleum. Made sure that the banana plug terminals fit the keyed hole cut-outs in the plate. Test fit the plate to the back of the speaker. Looks good so far! The next day at work I grinded down all the sharp corners, bead blasted them, and painted them black. Came home and fitted the banana plug terminals to the plates and then screwed them into place on the KSP's I think they came out pretty good if I do say so myself. Some preliminary listening is telling me that everything is working exactly how it should, and without any sort of EQ or calibration they sound just as good as with the original amps. I did bump my receiver's sub out crossover frequency to 100 hz from 80 hz. I started at 80 hz because thats where the upper section of the KSP tower is crossed over at but with the sub out at 80hz it sounded like there was a noticable "gap" in the response around 80hz. And I think I just won the contest for how many times someone could say 80hz in one sentence. But anyway, this weekend I will be cleaning up the mess in my living room and fine tuning the subs. Perhaps Ill get around to posting some room response graphs at some point. There will be some better quality pics to follow at some point as well. Thanks for following along!

Good news: The plates are done. Bad news: The guy who was picking them up for me, left them in his land rover at the repair shop.. GAHH!!! Can't win. Looks like I'll have to go get them tonight, finish/paint them tomorrow, and maybe install them tomorrow night. John, yours will be in the mail tomorrow if I go pick them up tonight.

I have an SC-1 for sale in the garage sale section. Email me if youre interested. edmund.alexander@gmail.com Pics are available if necessary.

Still WAAAAAAAAAAAAAITING... for the plates to come from waterjet. My own company keeps screwing me on these.. [:'(] Soon, I hope. Some pics of other progress.. Woofer and amp(s) out. Amp and unnecessary wires removed/tied off. Lead wires to sub installed. Cord seal applied around amp cut-out. Woofer out. Foam out. Lead-light in. Sub lead wires installed. Foam back in. Numerous layers of cord seal applied around woofer opening. Sub re-installed. Cord seal applied to amp cut-out and back side of control box. A view of the mess my living room has been for the past 2 and a half weeks. In case you're wondering, no I'm not married, so I can get away with stuff like this. As always.. Updates will follow..

I just had me another ridiculous idea..Wondered to myself how the sub section of the KSP-400 would sound as a ported enclosure instead of sealed. I could create a second version of the amp replacement plate out of wood which incorporates not only banana plug terminals for the sub, but also a port.. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Now the T/S params of this sub would come in really handy to model some different enclosure options.. Based on my drawings of the speaker enclosure the internal volume for the sub is roughly 2.75 cu ft. Admittedly on the small side for a ported enclosure for a 15" sub, but it sounds like it might be an interesting experiment none the less..

Ohhh Bummer [] Appreciate the response though. If anyone happens to have the WT3 system from PE and has one of these woofers kicking around, this could be some valuable info to the few of us still running these speakers.

Aaaaaaaaand still waiting for parts.. Apparently my company thinks that it's multi thousand dollar, time-sensitive jobs are way more important than my side-project here and it was bumped back as such.. [8-)] Oh well...

Just for curiosity's sake I wanted to model in WinISD the subwoofer section of the KSP-400s.

Thought about that. But I'd have a bit of a hard time justifying that cost for what relatively little I plan to do with the information.. Surely the data is kicking around somewhere at Klipsch. I sent an email directly to them but haven't heard back yet.

At the cost-point of that Denon you mentioned, you should really look into separates. The Emotiva UMC-1 and XPA-5 come to mind.

Does anyone here happen to have this information, or would anyone be able to point me in the right direction to find it? Thanks!

Yeah, we'll wait to see if im "the man" until after I get these back together and see how it all works. haha. Right now I'm still just waiting on the amp replacement plates to get delivered from my waterjet guy, which may happen as early as tomorrow. Updates to follow, of course.. I still cant believe nobody's tried this before.

Update: Living room is still a disaster area. I've ordered/bought and recieved all of the following so far. Crown XLS202 Amplifier Behringer Feedback Destroyer Pro DSP1124 Behringer UltraGain MIC2200 2-Pairs of AR 10 gauge, terminated speaker cables RCA 1M to 2F adapter RCA 1M to 2F Cable Splitter (2) RCA to 1/4" phono adapters (2) 1 meter 1/4" phono jumper cables (2) 1 meter XLR jumper cables (2) Female RCA to Male XLR adapters I'm waiting for my amp replacement plates to get finished before I can go any further, but right now I have it set up so that the sub output from my receiver splits into 2 signals and feeds into channels 1 and 2 of the UltraGain, From there it jumps into Channels 1 and 2 of the Feedback Destroyer, then from there to channels 1 and 2 of the Crown amp. Having both the UltraGain and the Feedback Destroyer are probably overkill for just the two subs in the KSP towers, though they offer an insane amount of adjustability and eq capabilities. Once I have the KSP's all back together with the amp delete plates, I'm going to set a high pass filter on their subs at 25-30 Hz, since by spec they're 3dB down at 27 Hz anyway. I'm planning to add an additional sub to handle the extra deep material. After doing a bit of reading over at the hometheatershack I'm fairly certain ill build a custom Sonosub with either a soundsplinter 18 or 15, and I'm going to route the signal for that through the UltraGain and the BFD as well like so. Split the sub output from the receiver into 2 signals and feed them into channel 1 and 2 of the UltraGain like they are presently. And again send those to channels 1 and 2 of the BFD. From there I'll split the signal coming from channel 1 of the BFD into 2 signals which will feed channels 1 and 2 of the Crown XLS202 amp. Channel 2 from the BFD will be ran to the amp which will power the extra sub. So that's what I'm working with/thinking about so far. Thoughts? Ideas? Concerns? Please share! Pics of the mess:

Yeah I noticed that as soon as I fired it up. It is LOUD. I was able to rob a super quiet fan from a PC power supply I had laying around, and now it's inaudible if youre more than 5 feet away from it. But like you said, the swap is super easy. I think it took me a total of 15 mins including the time it took me to actually find the fan and pull it from the power supply.

Hmm.. I'm speechless for the moment. I'm sure I'll have more to report on as the weekend progresses.

Turns out I can pick up a BFD locally, so I may pick one up, and try it out to see what kind of levels I can get out of it, then if it doesnt work, I'll just return it, or maybe even keep it and use it in conjunction with an UltraGain.

Sounds like it would work but you could achieve the same results by setting your speakers to small in your receivers setup menu and using the receivers high pass filter in it's bass management. At that point all you'd have to buy would be a BFD for PEQ duties. They can be had for about a hundred dollars or so. Does the BFD have any sort of signal gain capabilities built into it? I'd read through the owners manual online but unfortunately their website doesnt have one available.

Well this would go in between my receiver and my amplifier for the subs in my KSP towers. The sub output from my receiver doesn't appear to have a high enough voltage to work effectively with the amp I just got, and would also convert RCA inputs to Balanced XLR outputs. In addition, the MIC2200 would also serve as a high pass filter to avoid subsonic damage, and it can be used as a parametric EQ to aid in smoothing frequency response.

Thanks again for the info, though after some more research it looks like this guy here will be most helpful. Behringer UltraGain Pro Mic2200 Dylanl Sorry for the Hijack! That component might be worthwhile for you to check out as well.

You can use it to go from pro style XLR's to RCA's. Most pro amps have XLR's and run at a different voltage than the home stuff. http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=cart_accessories&A=details&Q=&sku=288115&is=REG Interesting.. I'm wondering if something like this would be usefull for what I'm doing over in my KSP thread. What exactly would be the benefit of using something like this instead of some simple XLR to RCA adapters like these. http://www.parts-express.com/pe/showdetl.cfm?Partnumber=240-438 Is the voltage from an RCA signal (i.e. sub signal from a receiver) significantly lower than what the amp would "like to see" coming in through the XLR inputs?

what is this "clean box" you speak of?

My water-jet guy is charging me $20 a piece for the amp delete plates.

That QSC amp looks like a solid option. I went ahead and ordered a Crown XLS202 last week for $230 and it should arrive here today. The way my room is set up, I could notice immediately when the one sub stopped working. With only one sub running I get a very noticable lull in the bass output at my listening position, so running only one of them wasn't really an option for me. The other thing to consider with subs is that from what I've seen, there pretty much is no such thing as overkill. Just because you're running a higher wattage amplifier to the subs, that doesn't necessarily mean they're going to play louder than they did previously, since the amp isn't sending all 300, or 400 or whatever peak wattage at all times. Furthermore, regardless of how much power you apply to your subs, you'll still want to match the output level of them to the rest of your system so that for a given volume level there isn't an excessive amount of bass. So running both of them with slightly higher wattage wont really be "overkill". All that the extra wattage does, is give you the ability to turn the volume up a bit higher before the subs will start to distort. Unless there's some sort of magical subwoofer EQ circuitry in the original KSP amplifiers, your sound quality after the fact should be the same as before. My main objective in a standalone amp was to find one with about the same or slightly higher power output at a reasonable price. I'm going to try running the new amp without the Reckhorn at first to see if it will even be necessary. Another option I've come across for sub EQ-ing is using the Behringer Feedback Destroyer. There's a really detailed article over at hometheatershack.com which explains how to EQ your subs using it. It sells for about 90 bucks and looks to have MUCH more flexibility, although with that comes more complexity, than the Reckhorn unit. I sent my drawings for the amp delete plates to a local water-jet cutter (the same one who cut the custom feet which I'm using on the KSP's) and haven't heard back on a price for them yet. I'll be sure to post when I do.