pzannucci

Hmm, KLF-30s are going up in price. I guess I need to keep mine a while longer. Kind of like gold or the stock market Actually in the right room, they are definitely the sleeper of the Klipsch line. In my 20x22 open back family room with good corners, being 3 feet out from the corners and sides, they compared very favorable to k-horns. My k-horns are gone if that tells you anything.

And?

Bottom line is the K-55 is an excellent driver through it's range. 2" diaphragm / 1" exit. Best out there for the frequency range. If you were going to raise the crossover frequency to 500 on a La Scala you could get away with the older 250x Selenium though you would need a tweeter that could get down to 4/4.5k. This would not be a better driver on the k-400/401 for the money and experimenting on different horns with different crossovers could make it an alternative.

From what I understand, sealing the cabinet will keep the woofer from operating outside it's range. The problem occurs when the woofer unloads due to a PORT and output is applied under that port's resonant point. The woofer will unload and that's when damage occurs. The problem with sealing the cabinet is that you can't rely on the output of the port to supplement the bass of the driver and also will tune the driver higher, thus sacrificing low bass. If the cabinet is sealed you will need a lot of power, very large Xmax, and eq to compensate at lower frequencies. That is why you see HUGE amplifiers on sealed subs, especially if the smaller the box gets. Double the power for a 3db rise. So for sealed cabinets (bigger is usually better), heavy woofer with very high Xmax / high power handling, huge power amp, and eq'd compensation at the lower/lowest frequencies to raise the output to compensate for box size and T/S parms. Filling the cabinet only compensates a small amount to box size and can actually make the box smaller if not done correctly. You will need something like woofer tester run against the actually woofer (not with a power amp hooked up) to find out when enough is enough.

The passive has some advantages over an open port. I'm not sure you will do better than the passive in a cabinet that size. Play with a passive radiator calculator vs a round or slotted port calculator before messing with it. Since you won't have the T/S parms nor what the amplifier is doing for compensation, find a box calculator to model a box with a resonant point on where you want your cut off.

Good luck with that. Sad, looks like they used the grill cloth as a side and lifted there squeezing the woofers. Rocket science.

If not Klipsch K-33 woofers, for many the Belles would likely drop the price since they are not "Klipsch". The Belles are one that would seem to hold their value much better with original Klipsch parts. Some people may like mods but a wider audience would rather have them all Klipsch for the "Original Klipsch" factor. That doesn't mean you can't fix them if the woofers are blown, just go to Klipsch and get new K-33s. Pretty cheap in my book.

Congrats!! Very nice and thank you for sharing the other pictures. A very rare find, or at least someone who is willing to part with them.

Am I missing a full set of pictures? I would have liked to see the overall finish but any, too far to drive. Who ever picks them up will likely have a very nice furniture addition.

Better pictures of the full speaker, especially the tops and lots of them, .are needed to get anyone to bite with an offer at that your asking price. If the tops look anything like the veneer near the crossovers, they are likely very nice. I mention the tops because many people used BIG Klipsch speakers as plant stands and have big water rings on their tops. On beautiful speakers that look like that, it would be sacrilege Good luck on the sale.

are you familiar with the front and rear baffle adhesive problem that Klipsch had with the KLF series of loudspeakers? You need to know about this as it can help you to get a better price on these speakers if you are looking a units which have this problem. Good information for the deal. Not hard to fix if not already done for a killer pair of speakers.

You will typically hear a bit more clarity with the grills off and a slightly (likely not heard but measured) frequency response. If the speakers are too bright for you with the grills off, put them back on. Just make sure you don't have small animals like cats or kids running around the home if you do that. Bi-wiring is another one of the "try it, you may like it" items. Each speaker cable can have a slightly different balance, nothing dramatic, bug slightly. This nuance may be helpful or hurt as an end result of bi-wiring. You have to try it with different cables and see what your end results are. BTW, you will probably notice more of what bi-wiring adds or detracts with the grills off.

Do a bottom and make sure it doesn't melt or bubble the vinyl. If not, with a good sand, clean, and primer, you should be good.

CS3310 do electronic volume from the specs. As Mustang Guy stated, the quality of the sound will come down to the pre-amp quality. I pointed out the fact on the volume control because most people using DACs are more worried about the volume being done in the digital vs analog domain causing a reduction in resolution. This thread was mostly pointing to using or not using the volume.

Considering that this is a resistor ladder design and not done in the digital domain, the volume control shouldn't sound all that bad. If you are using it with a good pre-amp, there is likely no reason to use the volume control unless using headphones. The volume control would be best used if the DAC is used as a pre-amp instead of your current pre-amp. You will need to plug the DAC in and play with it to find the best sound. This is going to most likely come down to component matching and your preference.

Grizzog, Excellent to hear your thoughts..

I hope you can get that fan to move enough air and still stay quiet. If not, check out some of the fans made to be super quiet to begin with along with having full flow. Nice project!!!

This is dependent on the quality of the volume configuration and the buffer on the DAC, If you are using a pre-amp, likely the volume control on the dac shouldn't be used because the output is typically spec'd at a particular voltage, say 2volts. The pre-amp will be looking for certain voltage and impedance.. A DAC as you are referring to which likely is more geared to a headphone amp, would likely be best when using the volume control when used for headphones. If you are going to use the DAC's volume control, you should probably not be using it into the pre-amp. As Mustang Guy is alluding to though is, this all is really dependent on the DAC. Try it both ways and one type of matching may make you happy vs. the other.

Lot cheaper to do a 2.5 way though the key is the crossover points. In this day and age of cost cutting, the extra portion of the crossover may not be near as expensive as a dedicated midrange with associated crossover parts, but it still adds cost that bean counters (and people purchasing many speakers in Klipsch's price category's) will notice. $10 in parts, $20K in engineering time, and poof, the speaker went up $500. Depending on your position in the vertical plane, the suck-out will be noticed closest to the crossover point in the two way. That is why the center speakers incorporate it. More people will complain about the notch when sitting off axis in the horizontal plane with a laid down center speaker because of the loss of intelligibility of vocals, for which the center's main reason is for. The other reason for a 2.5 way or a usage like the PSB T3 staggered 5 way is to gain bass by increasing the radiating area due to the bass loss around baffle step compensation frequency. Peter": it is the woofer section of a crossover where the big part costs are with large inductors and large value capacitors. As soon as you say you are going 2.5 way you are saying that you are going to build two woofer crossover sections, one for each woofer. The more woofer you stack vertically the more radiating area you have but you also start to loose floor coupling so with three vertically stacked woofers the top woofer is going to loose some coupling to the floor compared to the two lower units. I am wondering if that at that height perhaps the top woofers response is better behaved to cross to the mid/hi horn? I have to admit to being a crossover dummy. my math skills get me into the soup when trying to design such things. Grouping woofers makes for increased radiation. I have seen a good number of loudspeakers with a couple of woofers at the bottom of a tower then a vertical gap and a similar size unit being used as a bass/mid so the triple stack of woofers is not be so very different. I don't have much experience with electrical filters but AI have experimented a good deal with acoustical filters doing this job. While not so dramatic as when using an electrical filter the acoustic filter makes for a nice improvement in diminishing unwanted driver interactions. I use this in my H3 on the woofer and on the woofers in my KLF20. The result is improved clarity with better stage and image. On the floor coupling, the lowest woofer should be running the lowest frequency since it is farthest away from the tweeter and closest to the floor. A simple 6db crossover loading that lower woofer should be adequate. By the time you get closer to the crossover point to the mid/tweeter, most output should be out of the driver next to the mid/tweeter. The driver coupling at low frequencies produce the bass reinforcement. The closer or shall I say within wave coupling / phase between each driver and the next handed off to driver, will make the behavior at crossover good or bad. Creating timing issues, notches or bumps in the crossover region. The higher woofer (from the floor) will usually have some cancellation from the floor bounce. Floor coupling for bass is good. The reason for the different gaps between the woofers will either be for looks or to mitigate floor bounce and coupling between woofer issues. The key is frequency arrival times. The key is to increase the radiating area as the frequency goes down. This minimizes the bass loss from not having (like the old infinite baffle designs in the closet) the whole wall to radiate from. There are interactions due to having staggered woofers between the woofers themselves and the next up driver. The time for coupling between the mid-bass and tweeter will be less between the closest woofer and farther one. That has to play a roll also and the more off axis you are compared to the crossover point, the worse the likely notch will be. This is why I shy away from horizontally laid out drivers, driver interaction is much higher on the the horizontal plane. It can be used to an advantage, such as Legacy does, by focusing what you want your mid-range dispersion to be and minimize room interaction due to the cancellation of frequencies by horizontal mid-ranges. These are some of the things I think about when building or buying a speaker. I believe the time domain is why mini-monitors can disappear. Not size but lack of time domain oddities for imaging but you don't have the bass power (nor blurring) of a multi woofer system.. To get imaging right in large speakers you need matching drivers and the crossover designed to the drivers integrate in the time domain (of course based on listener positioning). My thoughts anyway.

I need to add, size and distance of the staggered drivers (from each other and the next crossed over driver) also needs to be included in the equation for the 2.5 / staggered array and above crossover design.

Lot cheaper to do a 2.5 way though the key is the crossover points. In this day and age of cost cutting, the extra portion of the crossover may not be near as expensive as a dedicated midrange with associated crossover parts, but it still adds cost that bean counters (and people purchasing many speakers in Klipsch's price category's) will notice. $10 in parts, $20K in engineering time, and poof, the speaker went up $500. Depending on your position in the vertical plane, the suck-out will be noticed closest to the crossover point in the two way. That is why the center speakers incorporate it. More people will complain about the notch when sitting off axis in the horizontal plane with a laid down center speaker because of the loss of intelligibility of vocals, for which the center's main reason is for. The other reason for a 2.5 way or a usage like the PSB T3 staggered 5 way is to gain bass by increasing the radiating area due to the bass loss around baffle step compensation frequency.

The 8" woofers work well but their dispersion suffers. Also crossing over in the 3k range poses other problems. 3k with 6db, is another story altogether. In multi woofer systems, as you go up in the frequency range, you time domain issues get worse along with having to manage the dispersion characteristics. That is why a MTM in a 2 way (if possible) or the use of a 2.5 or more way crossover should be incorporated in a multi-woofer staggered, non-MTM design. I would guaranty this is why CF-4 and the CF-3 is loved. Lower crossover and MTM cleaning up some of the time domain issues (if listened to at proper angle otherwise much worse). Grizzog, What are your initial impressions of the new horn and tweeter? I wanted to know why you stated "why must I like all Klipsch speakers".

So you are talking LOTs of rubbing with goo b gone

Just go for it. How often to you get the SO to say "just go buy new audio equipment"? Well my SO is trying to get me to add a set of PSB T3s in Cherry to my pile of equipment. I know as soon as they would get here, she'd kick out the KLF-30s.

If you find something to take off the Klipsch glue, let us know.