Ski Bum

Steve, the Fifteens are a knockout. I noticed that in some of the glamour shots of the Fifteens they're sporting what look like the spun metal woofers similar to the RP series, but in other photos they appear to have a more traditional paper cone woofers. I'm curious as to which the final product will be sporting, and would love to see more detailed specs and measurements.

Very interesting. I've always appreciated my forte II for their excellent bass response, a remarkable juggling act of extension, sensitivity, cab size, and tight, well defined bass. Is it possible that the relative weakness in bass in your old fortes is due to your comparably huge room, and that you have your fortes perched up on big bass bins, off the floor and away from walls? Also curious as to extension...original forte, forte II spec 32 (I get that sort of extension in room here, easily), but Roy said the III's only go to 38 hz. Typo? Better start saving those ducats for the III and some Fifteens.

Yeah, that's one thing where I think NAD and others are dropping the ball. Subs are ubiquitous these days, and the benefits of bass management are quite real. Two channel kit should really be designed to meet the needs of today, not 1978. (I wonder if Klipsch has it in their otherwise interesting, fancy new integrated amp...probably not.) Too bad Klipsch's new integrated hasn't hit the shelves yet, it looks like it would compete with the NAD and Cambridge. Anywho, take that as a rant against what the industry offers us, not an indictment of those particular products, which I don't know much about. A cursory glance shows that NAD to be one of their newer models using the Hypex n-core amps, which they seem to be switching over to across the board. I think that Klipsch is using the same in their new amp, too, but not certain. I think the CA is a traditional class a/b amp, tried and true tech. Either would probably work just fine.

For a 2.1 rig, I would recommend something with bass management. My go-to two channel solution are the slim line Marantz AVRs: effective bass management, pre outs for L and R to accommodate external amps (probably never need more power, but you can, as well as having the option to throw a tube amp in the mix).

Shameless plug. I've got a C372 for sale.

edit...

Up for grabs is my NAD C372 integrated amp. Excellent condition, well sorted pre amp stage, multiple sets of pre-outs, hoss of an amp, and homebrew cooling fan added. Original box, manual, remote included. $350/obo plus shipping. Here she is:

I personally love what SETs do for rock and other rockin' genres. Its the genres that sport really wide dynamic swings and highly complex content that seem more troublesome. They sucker you into setting the volume during a relatively quiet passage, only to have a more rowdy passage come along and expose the lack of power. 'Yes' to having a powerful backup amp, for when more than just a couple watts is required. Usually this is for something awful, such as my old lady listening to that damn Dave Matthews crap, which she likes at virtually concert levels. Sorry to hear of the circumstances. Best wishes to you.

F II rated to 32 hz, Roy earlier claimed only 38 hz for the F III. Hmmm.

Catastrophic! Well, since you called my post out, might I suggest one of these as the answer for your grave concerns: You can use it to knock the feet off the Fifteens, or even to smash them to smithereens if it makes you feel better.

Yep. I'm not the only one clamoring for a passive version for this very reason. I think that would sell, at least as well as other fringe, large format speakers do. The speakers themselves appear to have the makings of a highly capable music machines. Large format tractrix crossed at 800 to a 15" has the potential for excellent directivity characteristics as well as high sensitivity/low distortion. I was actually shocked that Roy wasn't involved in the development of these, with the apparent seriousness of the design.

How can you be pissed at this? It might not be worthy of the Heritage name, as neither Roy nor PWK had anything to do with it. But this does not appear to be Voxx bleeding the name. This particular speaker looks like one of the best, most Klipsch-like, bad *** new designs they've uncorked in ages.

Well, not just the risk of failure or obsolescence with the electronics, but the Fifteens are by far the coolest looking new design to come out of Klipsch since, well, forever. They have the looks of actually reflecting the design principles of PWK, unlike virtually all of the post PWK, tall skinny tower crop of products. The Fifteens actually look like real Klipsch, something PWK would be proud to bring to market, something that has more than a snowball's chance of checking a lot of boxes on the eight cardinal rules list. I was actually quite surprised to find out that Roy was not involved with these. Anywho, they're too cool to restrict to the lazy plug-and-play audience. Give us passive versions, Klipsch overlords!

Chad, do you know...wait a minute, you're the wrong one to ask. Roy, Chief, if you're tuning in still and don't mind answering questions, are the Fifteen's fully active, or 'amplified passive speakers' a la the R-15PM? Are there any plans for a passive version, for the tube nuts and others who may not be as interested in the electronics as the speakers?

The Fifteens are drop dead gorgeous. Curious to know more technical details on them, e.g. are the fully active, or do they have passive networks a la the R-15PMs (relevant to your amp concerns, Dean), or if there are plans to offer a passive version, for all the tube nerds and old school purists who are strictly interested in the speakers themselves.

Original forte used an exponential similar (same?) to Heresy and CW. The forte II used a larger hybrid tractrix profile horn, which was also shared with the Chorus II and Quartet. It would be nice if the FIII had an even larger mid horn, one that would hold a pattern lower, and allow a lower woof-to-mid crossover frequency. The Fifteens are just killing me. Love the mid-century mod style. I want a pair, like right now.

Forte III and the 15's, **** yeah!

Lucky, perhaps. Too bad Santa didn't deliver a calibrated mic for you to use with REW, to get a handle on what's going on, but there is nothing wrong with the empirical approach. It's quite interesting the effects of changing the tonal balance via eq can bring about, even in areas you may not expect, e.g. correcting speaker response so that it draws less attention to itself can pay dividends in soundstage/imaging. It's a fine line between "drawing less attention to itself" and sounding recessed or muted. I notch down a db or two at ~3khz to manipulate this forward/neutral aspect. Here's a fun, interactive link that may help inform your exploration of different eq: http://www.independentrecording.net/irn/resources/freqchart/main_display.htm Happy holidays everyone!

Audyssey DynamicEQ and Yamaha's old school variable loudness controls, both used judiciously, actually work, for the very reason's Chris mentioned. I think Yamaha calls their loudness compensation on their AVRs 'YPAO Volume' and it's much the same as Audyssey's approach. It's easily over done, particularly when high sensitivity speakers that feature reflex loading are involved, and many of the fixed loudness controls of yore were goosed excessively to help sales, not because it was such a good implementation. I recall PWK strongly discouraging the use of fixed loudness controls in Dope From Hope articles.

Wow. I find it amazing how defensive some folks become...about a corporate info-tainment network, of all things. In terms you folks may understand, bless your hearts.

By your logic, BOSE makes the best speakers, budweiser is the best beer, Big Macs are the greatest burgers, Walmart exemplifies the best of commerce, etc. Fox has the retired silver hair demographic locked up. They watch a lot of TV.

Neither quintet nor R-14m would necessarily match the Heresies, but for surround it's really not absolutely essential anyway, so go with something small that fits your placement restrictions and covers the listening area. As for another recommendation, the center, optimally, should match the Heresies, and the best bet would be to use another Heresy. Three identical speakers across the front pays pretty significant dividends, so if you could accommodate a Heresy as a center, I would lose the Mirage and prioritize that over surround speakers. Another thing, consider throwing that sub in a corner. Small, sealed subs typically roll off exactly the opposite that corner loading tends to reinforce, and that sub will need all the help it can get to keep up with your mains...your small room is in your favor, it won't take much to pressurize it.

I do see the appeal. The weak spots in canned music are always the transducers, mics at one end and speakers at the other, so any effort to minimize speaker distortion seem like a worthy goal to me too. You have the flexibility of adapting your MEH to this sort of amplification easily enough (well, that's easy for me to say), you just need one to try, right? Seems that the compression drivers would lend themselves to this quite well, with either active correction or zobels so they play nice with the current source. The woof's Qm may not be quire right for this approach, and they will be operated at their resonance frequencies. Since you're foregoing electrical damping by choosing the current source route, the woofs would need to make up by having rather heavy mechanical damping, somehow or another. Maybe if you stuff the crap out of the enclosure it would help? Maybe a few holes (aperiodic port) would drop the impedance peak at resonance, too, making the rest of the system calibration easier? It could demand different woofers, or the one's you have may demand the more orthodox voltage source approach. There also seem to be plenty of schematics for transconductance amps you could build that would not come anywhere near the cost of an F1, tube or ss.

Oh, Chris. It's all in the production quality, not the bits. Quality production work in redbook format preserves the decay of notes as well as any hi res format can. But that's neither here nor there. Here is a paper that dives into all of this (transconductance amps, not the hi res debate) that others may find interesting: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01103598/document and another: http://sound.whsites.net/z-effects.htm

Pretty rare bird, and an excellent amp: http://www.decware.com/cgi-bin/yabb22/YaBB.pl?num=1481120112