Mike Dubay

I do like tweeking the sound, so I do have an active cross over, and run valve amp for the mid/tweeter and solid state for the woofer. But mine have large format wood horn for the midrange and are a DIY Cornscala. If you have factory Cornwall's then the cross over frequency and driver balance is already taking care of, so you can just stay with the stock cross over and run the entire speaker with a valve amplifier. I do have 2 inch drivers in my midrange, the Selenium D440 Ti, they do sound sweet, but the orginal atlas mid ranges on your speakers are also very nice sounding. There are several both 1 and 2 inch high quality drivers out there, I don't believe at our wattage there is much of a mechanical need for 2 inch drivers. But if you plan on jumping in to the DIY and modification game, jump in!!

Fellow Klipschfans: So how tempermental is your 2 channel system to changes? My system seems to be very tempermental requiring adjustment after even what I would call minor changes. Case in point is what I expected to be a simple change this evening. This evening was a simple swap of my CD player, the older Dennon being replaced with my model CDP-5001 Marantz. I always found the Marantz to have a detailed sound, so I expected an improvement in detail in my system. First thing I noticed the high frequencies were lounder, giving a 'hot' overall sound, I got my spectrum analyzer out and with some final tweeking using male vocals and reset the mid/tweeter to woofer balance to 2 db less than previous. This change I would not have expected to have to make. But was then very dissapointed in the sound of the vocals, the frequency balance seemed right but having a harshness which I intrepret as distortion. Oh boy I thought that my detailed CD player just showed me how rotten my system sounded. So I do for more fussing around with the active cross over. The majic happen when I moved the cross over frequency from 600 hz, to 500 hz, then to 400hz. With each step an improvement in sound until at the 400 hz cross over I was back to the beautful vocals I have been used to. I know of another system based on Klipschhorns, (the Kevhorns) and no matter what you do it sounds great, change to a DIY valve CD player, sounds great. Play then on my SET amp, sounds great. Go from McIntosh solid state to tube amp, both sound great. Kevin goes from a McIntosh preamp to a Cary, both sound great to me. And always having a low noise level. I can look at my cross eyed which can cause a ground loop. So is your system tempermental? Have any horror stories on a small change causing unexpected changes? But at the end of the day my Cornscalas are in a good place, sounding etheral...

Drax, Actually, they come from the factory like that and do not have to be adjusted. My KG5.5s came from the factory with the foam suspended from the bottom by the top of the cross over, which centers it top to bottom. While you are in there check to see if the front or back panels of the speaker is loose or the glue has failed in some spot, this is a common occurance in the KG series, but has not happen to mine. You might want to replace the caps in the cross over. Also check to see if the gasket material around the drivers is still flexible. The Crites Ti diaphram is a common upgrade, althrough I'm am still using the orginal phenolic diaphrams. Enjoy your KG4.5's, I am the orginal owner of my KG 5.5's since 1996 and enjoy them greatly. - Mike Dubay

Gary, I have been throught two transformations in my listening rooms, carpet to hardwood floors, and concrete to carpet. My upstairs system went from floor to floor medium pyle shag carpet to 2 1/4 strip solid oak flooring. We have a long haired dog in our home and it was time to replace the carpet. My KG5.5 had always powerful bass in the room, moving to the flooring tightened up the bass with a bit less bass spls. I also moved from drapes to vinyl shades at the same time. I enjoy the sound and don't plan on adding any area rugs. I also enjoy the hard wood flooring, no daily vacuming the clumps of dog hair, better air flow. I took the carpet from the upstairs then put in my my man cave in the basement. I had been working on getting my basement less reverbant. The carpet did the trick, added some depth in bass frequency, and a more detailed sound with out the reverberation. So the carpet was a plus in the basement, removed the reverbant nature of the room. Removal of the carpet to hardwood did give up some bass, but a more detailed bass presentation, so call it an even trade off in the upstairs. Could do some tuning using area rugs, but enjoying the wood flooring right now. - mike

Side Two again? SIDE 1 in marker?, "The After Noon" plays? NO??!!! WTF!!! Patooooe!!!

Side Two, in marker SIDE 2, OK all I need to do is flip it over, I don't see what the problem is...

Here is my son's iphone adapter sitting next to my first piece of audio equiptment I purchased, a Technics SA200 reciever. Purchased in about 1980 with money from working under the golden arches. That and a pair of Koss pro 3a headphones, listening to the local radio station. Later purchased some generic 4 way bass reflex speakers with a big 12 inch woofer, and a quick sucession of cheap turn tables until I settled on my Yamaha P320, which I also still have, getting infrequent use on my work out system. The 30+ year old Technics reciever continues to get almost daily service in a 2 channel set up for the man cave, watching TV or playing X-box 360. I would say it is one of the more handsome looking pieces of audio I have bought.

By all means go with the Daytons. I have used Dayton (both 1% and 10%) caps will good results, as well as the Clarity Caps. I'm hard pressed to tell the difference between them sonicly. About the only difference I can tell is that I can hear there is some break in period with the Daytons. Play them for maybe 20 hours before you make your final decision.

For my first amplifier I built the predicessor to this amplifier: http://s5electronics.com/l8stereo.html This uses a circuit board that you populate. My first point to point wiring amplifier was this: http://diyaudioprojects.com/Tubes/50EH5/50EH5.htm I found doing the point to point project let me understand what was going on much better than the kit on a board.

Has anyone else use an external micorphone on an iphone4? Maybe something like this: http://tascam.com/product/im2/

You can see the iphone microphone response, the RTA pro does it best to calibrate the low frequencies, but with reduced signal it can only do so good. Yes, go to http://www.studiosixdigital.com/iaudiointerface2/, this is the external adapter for a microphone. It is a bit pricey at $400, costing a bit more than what a PC based software and hardware system for a laptop would cost. But you get the functionality of the portability of using your iphone instead of have to lug around a laptop. It is being released this month, I would wait and see if the price comes down in the coming months.

According to the web page use the internal ipod microphone with a "grain of salt", they try to generally calibrate the software to what an average iphone microphone responds to. They have upgraded hardware avalaible on their web page which allows you to calibrate an external microphone. But for the $5 spent it's a fun tool to use. I tuned my system with my calibrated SPL meter, then compared that to what I got on the RTA software, so gave me what to aim for in speaker balance.

I have a pair of Gold Lion tube in my SE amplifier for about a year now. No problem as of yet. Of course they sounded better than the pair of whipped out 3 year old Sovtek's they replaced.

Here is a quick snapshot of a frequency response.

The application is called "RTA", an iphone app. I use it and it does provide a useable real time frequency vs db display.